Professor Robin Purshouse
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Professor of Decision Sciences
+44 114 222 5618
Full contact details
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Amy Johnson Building
Portobello Street
ºù«Ӱҵ
S1 3JD
- Profile
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Robin Purshouse received the MEng degree in Control Systems Engineering in 1999 and a PhD in Control Systems in 2004, both from the University of ºù«Ӱҵ. His doctoral studies, under the supervision of Peter Fleming, pioneered the research field of many-objective optimization. Robin worked in industry (in roles at Logica, PA Consulting, and Rolls-Royce), before returning to the University of ºù«Ӱҵ in 2008 as Research Fellow in Health Economics and Decision Modelling. In this role he was lead developer for the ºù«Ӱҵ Alcohol Policy Model, which has gone on to become one of the most prominent computational models used to inform population health policy decision making. He was subsequently appointed Lecturer (2010), Senior Lecturer (2014), Reader in Decision Modelling and Optimization (2017) and Professor of Decision Sciences (2020) in the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering. He continues in this role in the new School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
Robin’s research sits at the interface of computational modelling, optimization, and systems science. He was awarded an ESRC Future Research Leaders Award (2012-15) for the project ‘Complex systems modelling of alcohol consumption dynamics in the British population’. He was subsequently Principal Investigator for the NIH R01 project ‘CASCADE: Calibrated agent simulations for combined analysis of drinking etiologies’ (2016-22), founding Co-Director for the UKPRP research consortium ‘SIPHER: Systems-science informed public health and economic research for non-communicable disease prevention’ (2019-25), and is now Co-PI for the NIHR project ‘NOURISH: The impact of food environment policies and food insecurity on less healthy food consumption, obesity and health economic outcomes – a model-based appraisal’ (2024-27). He is also ºù«Ӱҵ lead investigator for the CRUK programme grant ‘Targeting multiple levels of ‘the smoking cessation system’ using novel scientific approaches’ (2022-27), a further NIH R01 project ‘SIMAH: A microsimulation of alcohol control interventions to advance health equity and reverse the current decrease in life expectancy in the US’ (2020-25), and the UKRI interdisciplinary research cluster ‘HealthMod: Enhancing policy modelling capabilities to tackle the economic determinants of health and health inequality’ (2024-28).
- Qualifications
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• 2012 PGCert Learning & Teaching University of ºù«Ӱҵ
• 2004 PhD Control Systems University of ºù«Ӱҵ
• 1999 MEng Control Systems Engineering University of ºù«Ӱҵ
- Research interests
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• Computational modelling of complex social systems
• Agent-based modelling, machine learning, and uncertainty quantification methods for generative and inverse generative social science
• Decision modelling for population health policy appraisal and evaluation
• Evolutionary multi-objective optimization and multi-criteria decision-making
• Bayesian optimization and multidisciplinary optimization for the design of complex engineered products and processes.
- Publications
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Journal articles
- . Social Science & Medicine, 117577-117577.
- . Procedia CIRP, 130, 1358-1363.
- . BMC Public Health, 24(1).
- . Nicotine and Tobacco Research.
- . Drug and Alcohol Review.
- . Environmental Modelling & Software, 173, 105959-105959.
- . Health Economics.
- . Futures, 152, 103200-103200.
- . Appetite, 189, 106933-106933.
- . Health Economics.
- . Public Administration.
- . American Journal of Epidemiology.
- . International Journal of Alcohol and Drug Research, 10(1), 24-33.
- . Addiction.
- . Scientific Data, 9(1).
- . Addictive Behaviors, 107094-107094.
- . Addiction.
- . International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(11).
- . Addiction (Abingdon, England).
- . Applied Soft Computing.
- . Complexity, 2020.
- . Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 23(3).
- . Statistical Methods in Medical Research.
- . Health Education and Behavior.
- . Wellcome Open Research, 4.
- . Addiction, 113(2), 372-373.
- . Alcohol and Alcoholism, 52(3), 372-381.
- . Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, 24(1-2), 71-81.
- . Engineering Optimization, 48(4), 652-671.
- . Annals of Operations Research, 236(1), 149-176.
- . Health Economics, 24(10), 1368-1388.
- . Addiction, 110(8), 1272-1280.
- . European Journal of Operational Research, 243(2), 442-453.
- . International Journal of Systems Science, 46(13), 2407-2420.
- . European Journal of Operational Research.
- . Information Sciences, 282, 363-387.
- . Frontiers in Psychiatry.
- . Lancet, 383(9929), 1655-1664.
- . Addiction, 109(4), 568-569.
- . J Health Econ, 34, 96-103.
- . IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, 44(11), 2221-2231.
- . BMC Fam Pract, 15, 26.
- . Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation - GECCO '14.
- . International Journal of Systems Science.
- . NORDIC STUDIES ON ALCOHOL AND DRUGS, 30(5), 445-447.
- . Alcohol and Alcoholism, 48(2), 180-188.
- . Alcohol and Alcoholism, 48(2), 241-249.
- . Information Sciences.
- . Lancet, 375(9723), 1355-1364.
- . Addiction, 105(3), 383-393.
- . Addiction, 105(3), 400-401.
- . IEEE T EVOLUT COMPUT, 11(6), 770-784.
- Evolutionary algorithms in control systems engineering: a survey. CONTROL ENG PRACT, 10(11), 1223-1241.
- . IFAC Proceedings Volumes, 34(22), 14-25.
- An analysis of intersectional disparities in alcohol consumption in the US. Social Science and Medicine.
- . Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 26(2).
- Methods for constrained optimization of expensive mixed-integer multi-objective problems, with application to an internal combustion engine design problem. European Journal of Operational Research.
- . Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 18(3).
- . International Journal of Microsimulation, 13(2), 21-60.
- . Drug and Alcohol Review.
- . Drug and Alcohol Review.
- . Drug and Alcohol Review.
Chapters
- , Natural Computing Series (pp. 3-28). Springer International Publishing
- , Lecture Notes in Computer Science (pp. 424-438). Springer International Publishing
- Improving the pharmaceutical R&D process: how simulation can support management decision making., Computer Applications in Pharmaceutical Research and Development (pp. 247-273).
Conference proceedings papers
- (pp 37-50)
- . SSM Annual Scientific Meeting (pp A28.2-A29)
- (pp 319-332)
- The impact of alcohol availability policies on alcohol-related mortality by socioeconomic status in the united states: A modelling study. ALCOHOL-CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH, Vol. 47 (pp 250-251)
- Targeted brief intervention strategies in social groups: An empirical agent-based modeling study. ALCOHOL-CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH, Vol. 47 (pp 137-137)
- Mapping intersectional inequalities in alcohol consumption in the US: A multilevel model of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy. ALCOHOL-CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH, Vol. 47 (pp 358-359)
- Simulation of alcohol control policies for health equity (SIMAH) - A novel approach to modeling alcohol control intervention scenarios in the United States. ALCOHOL-CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH, Vol. 47 (pp 38-39)
- . 2022 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI), 4 December 2022 - 7 December 2022.
- INTRODUCING THE SIMULATION OF ALCOHOL CONTROL POLICIES FOR HEALTH EQUITY (SIMAH) MICROSIMULATION MODEL. ALCOHOLISM-CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH, Vol. 46 (pp 32A-32A)
- . 2021 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), 17 October 2021 - 20 October 2021.
- . GECCO '21: Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Companion (pp 1531-1539). Lille, France, 10 July 2021 - 14 July 2021.
- (pp 721-733)
- . 2020 28th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED), 15 September 2020 - 18 September 2020.
- . 2019 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC) (pp 2148-2153). Bari, Italy, 6 October 2019 - 9 October 2019.
- . Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference
- ALCOHOL POLICY MODELING USING THEORY - A NEW COMPUTATIONAL PLATFORM FOR DEVELOPING MECHANISM-BASED EXPLANATORY MODELS. ALCOHOLISM-CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH, Vol. 43 (pp 142A-142A)
- SYNTHESIZING THE RATIONAL ADDICTION AND MYOPIC CHOICE ECONOMIC MODELS TO EXPLAIN POPULATION ALCOHOL USE AND UNDERSTAND PRICING POLICIES: AN AGENT-BASED SIMULATION. ALCOHOLISM-CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH, Vol. 43 (pp 141A-141A)
- Toward a unified framework for model calibration and optimisation in virtual engineering workflows. 2019 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SYSTEMS, MAN AND CYBERNETICS (SMC) (pp 3148-3153)
- . Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2018) (pp 689-696), 15 July 2018 - 19 July 2018.
- . Proceedings of GECCO '18, 15 July 2018 - 19 July 2018.
- MODELING SOCIAL NETWORK SELECTION AND INFLUENCE MECHANISMS ON ALCOHOL USE AT LARGE SCALE: AN EXPLORATORY AGENT-BASED MODEL. ALCOHOLISM-CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH, Vol. 42 (pp 331A-331A)
- A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR MODELING ALCOHOL USE DYNAMICS OVER OPULATION HEALTH TIME HORIZONS. ALCOHOLISM-CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH, Vol. 42 (pp 331A-331A)
- PLATFORM FOR CALIBRATED, SYSTEM-BASED MODELS OF ALCOHOL USE DYNAMICS. ALCOHOLISM-CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH, Vol. 42 (pp 331A-331A)
- (pp 490-497)
- TOWARD A DYNAMIC ALCOHOL POLICY MODEL FOR APPRAISAL OF POPULATION-LEVEL INTERVENTIONS. ALCOHOLISM-CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH, Vol. 41 (pp 330A-330A)
- . Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 10173 (pp 1-15)
- . Proceedings of the 2016 on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (pp 597-604). New York
- . Advances in Transdisciplinary Engineering, Vol. 4 (pp 662-671)
- (pp 141-155)
- . 2014 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC), 6 July 2014 - 11 July 2014.
- . IFAC Proceedings Volumes, Vol. 47(3) (pp 2634-2639)
- . Proceedings - 2013 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, SMC 2013 (pp 615-620)
- . The Lancet, Vol. 382 (pp S47-S47)
- . GECCO 2013 - Proceedings of the 2013 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Companion (pp 101-102)
- . IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, Vol. 17(4) (pp 474-494)
- . 2013 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, CEC 2013 (pp 916-923)
- On Finding Well-Spread Pareto Optimal Solutions by Preference-inspired Co-evolutionary Algorithm. GECCO'13: PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2013 GENETIC AND EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION CONFERENCE (pp 695-702)
- . Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), Vol. 7811 LNCS (pp 337-351)
- . Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), Vol. 7811 LNCS (pp 726-740)
- . Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), Vol. 7811 LNCS (pp 428-442)
- . Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), Vol. 7811 LNCS
- . Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), Vol. 7811 LNCS (pp 21-35)
- . 2012 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, CEC 2012
- . IEEE Aerospace Conference Proceedings
- . GECCO'12 - Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (pp 513-520)
- . Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), Vol. 6576 LNCS (pp 136-150)
- MODELLING GENERAL AND TARGETED PRICE POLICY OPTIONS: ESTIMATION OF EFFECTS ON DIFFERENT SUBGROUPS OF THE POPULATION. ALCOHOLISM-CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH, Vol. 34(6) (pp 251A-251A)
- Many-objective optimization: An engineering design perspective. EVOLUTIONARY MULTI-CRITERION OPTIMIZATION, Vol. 3410 (pp 14-32)
- Evolutionary many-objective optimisation: An exploratory analysis. CEC: 2003 CONGRESS ON EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION, VOLS 1-4, PROCEEDINGS (pp 2066-2073)
- Conflict, harmony, and independence: Relationships in evolutionary multi-criterion optimisation. EVOLUTIONARY MULTI-CRITERION OPTIMIZATION, PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 2632 (pp 16-30)
- Adaptive divide-and-conquer methodology for evolutionary multi-criterion optimisation. EVOLUTIONARY MULTI-CRITERION OPTIMIZATION, PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 2632 (pp 133-147)
- Why Use Elitism And Sharing In A Multi-objective Genetic Algorithm?. GECCO (pp 520-527)
- Evolutionary computing: Opportunities for control. NEW TECHNOLOGIES FOR COMPUTER CONTROL 2001 (pp 21-32)
- Surrogate Strategies for Scalarisation-based Multi-objective Bayesian Optimizers. Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization, 4 March 2025 - 4 March 2025.
- Incorporating the COM-B model for behavior change into an agent-based model of smoking behaviors: an object-oriented design. Proceedings of the 2024 Winter Simulation Conference. Orlando, Florida, 15 December 2024 - 15 December 2024.
- . Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Companion (GECCO '23 Companion), July 15--19, 2023, Lisbon, Portugal, 15 July 2023 - 19 May 2023.
Reports
- Active Robust Optimization - Enhancing Robustness to Uncertain Environments
Preprints
- , Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
- , Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
- , Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
- . Social Science & Medicine, 117577-117577.
- Research group
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Machine Learning for Engineering
- Grants
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Current Grants
- The HealthMod Cluster: Enhancing Policy Modelling Capabilities to Tackle the Economic Determinants of Health and Health Inequality, MRC, 04/2023 - 03/2028, £9,055,452, as Co-I
- Targeting multiple levels of ‘the smoking cessation system’ using novel scientific approaches, CRUK, 04/2022 - 03/2027, £531,098, as PI
- , RCUK, 06/2021 - 11/2022, £181,653, as Co-PI
- A microsimulation of alcohol control interventions to advance health equity and
reverse the current decrease in life expectancy in the US, NIH, 10/2020 - 09/2025, $332,505, as sub award PI - (the SIPHER Consortium), 09/2019 - 03/2025, £6,926,749, as co-PI
Previous Grants
- Developing a proof-of-concept agent-based model of the relationship between food advertising and food choices in England, RCUK, 09/2022 - 03/2023, £24,990, as Co-PI
- SIPHER – Systems science in Public health and Health Economic Research, Research England, 04/2021 - 03/2022, as PI
- Many-objective Optimisation Pilot Project, Industrial, 10/2018 - 05/2019, £64,720, as PI
- Consortium Developmental Grant, UK Prevention Research Partnership, 07/2018 - 11/2018, £46,105, as Co-I
- DYNAMO: DYNamic Analysis Modelling and Optimisation of GDI Engines, 04/2018 - 06/2021, £401,252, as PI
- Liger - an Open-source Integrated Optimisation Environment, Digital Engineering and Test Centre, 01/2018 - 05/2019, £60,000, as PI
- CASCADE: Calibrated Agent Simulations for Combined Analysis of Drinking Etiologies, NIAAA, 08/2016 - 04/2022, $2,313,250, as PI
- Optimization for robust design: Integrating model-based systems engineering with multi-criteria decision-making support in a distributed framework, EPSRC, 05/2014 - 05/2018, £1,074,429, as co-PI
- ASUR hybrid power packs, Industrial, 10/2013 - 03/2014, £29,991, as PI
- Value-based Bayesian sequential analysis for fault monitoring, EPSRC, 01/2013 - 08/2014, £18,099, as co-PI
- Complex systems modelling of alcohol consumption dynamics in the British population, ESRC, 10/2012 - 09/2014, £173,428, as PI
- Alcohol policy modelling and evaluation, MRC, 11/2010 - 10/2013, £1,034,163, as co-PI
- Teaching activities
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ACS6132 - Agent Based Modelling
- Professional activities and memberships
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• Association for Computing Machinery (2017-present)
• Research Society on Alcohol (2016-present)