Research Interests

• Autonomous agents for Electronic Commerce, focusing on automated negotiation and contracting. This is my thesis research area.
• Scheduling and resource allocation problems, especially those involving real-time incremental-improvement search, anytime search, stochastic search, search performance analysis.
• Constraint processing, modeling and simulation of organizations and processes.
• Distributed systems architecture.

Technical Specialties:

• Object-Oriented analysis and design, multi-tier component architectures, distributed objects.
• Project planning and management, OOA/OOD, software engineering.

Since Fall semester 2002, I am a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Computer Science department at the University of Minnesota. I teach in both the undergrad program and in the Master of Science in Software Engineering (MSSE) program. I expect to assume the directorship of the MSSE program in the next year or so.

Since 1998, I have taught a semester course in Distributed Object Systems in the University of Minnesota's MSSE program. The course is in the program because I submitted a proposal and was awarded a contract to develop it. I also teach the Advanced Software Engineering course in that program, and I developed and taught a 40-hour course on Enterprise Java Beans for the University's Continuing Engineering Education program.

Since October 1997, I have been an independent consultant. I have done technical pre-sales work, including customer interviews, project planning, risk analysis, and project proposals. I led a process improvement initiative for a local software company. Other projects have included technical analyses of potential partnerships and acquisitions, system architecture analysis, research and analysis on technology adoptions, and a detailed analysis of enterprise-class distributed object infrastructure products and standards.

I was at 3M from 1969 through 1997. While there, I had considerable freedom to explore and develop technologies, define products, put together business cases, propose projects, build development teams, and spend time with potential customers. At least 60% of my time at 3M was spent working on projects that I proposed. I am principal or co-inventor on 16 US patents. Highlights of my tenure at 3M include:

• 7 years researching, developing, and commercializing an advanced dynamic resource scheduling system for Field Service and similar markets. An alpha system was in production use inside 3M from 1993 through 1998. A Field Service product was field-tested and released, and was turned over to Imation. I conceived and sold the project initially. I alternated between technical leader and project leader for up to 17 people. 4 US patents have been issued related to this work.
• 4 years researching and developing a constraint-based system for altering garment patterns. The system was used for several research projects at the University of Minnesota and generated considerable excitement among potential customers. 3M decided not to pursue full commercialization and sold the 3 patents and all other rights to another company. During most of this period I led the team as it grew from 2 to 12 people.
• 2 years researching and developing an internal "demonstration of capability" application that predicted physical characteristics of polymer formulations. The system included a chemical structure editor and elaborate structure-matching capabilities. The prototype continued in use by several chemists until the Xerox Dandelion died.
• 4 years as technical leader of an internal software and electronics design services group. Much of this work was in embedded systems. My role was divided among proposal writing, project organization and leadership, and development. A highlight was development of a page description language for an early version of a laser printer (around 1981).

Ph.D., Computer Science, University of Minnesota, 2002.
My research was primarily in advanced planning and scheduling systems in the context of autonomous agents. I was project leader for a research group studying issues in automated negotiation and electronic commerce. The group is designing and implementing the University of Minnesota's MAGNET market-oriented contracting system.

MS Computer Science, University of Minnesota, 1985.

BS, Electrical Engineering, Iowa State University, 1969.

Many of these are publicly available here.

J. Collins, "Solving Combinatorial Auctions with Temporal Constraints in Economic Agents," Ph.D. thesis, University of Minnesota, Computer Science Department, 2002.

J. Collins, W. Ketter, M. Gini, and B. Mobasher. "A multi-agent negotiation testbed for contracting tasks with temporal and precedence constraints," Int'l Journal of Electronic Commerce, 2002.

J. Collins, C. Bilot, M. Gini, and B. Mobasher. "Decision processes in agent-based automated contracting," IEEE Internet Computing, pages 61-72, March 2001.

J. Collins and M. Gini, "An Integer Programming Formulation of the Bid Evaluation Problem for Coordinated Tasks," In B. Dietrich and R. V. Vohra, editors, Mathematics of the Internet: E-Auction and Markets, volume 127 of IMA Volumes in Mathematics and its Applications, pages 59-74. Springer-Verlag, New York, 2001.

J. Collins and M. Gini, "Exploring Decision Processes in Multi-Agent Automated Contracting," submitted to the Fifth International Conference on Autonomous Agents, Montreal, Canada, May 2001.

J. Collins, C. Bilot, M. Gini, and B. Mobasher, "Mixed-Initiative Decision Support in Agent-Based Automated Contracting," Fourth International Conference on Autonomous Agents, Barcelona, Spain, June 2000.

J. Collins, R. Sundareswara, M. Tsvetovat, M. Gini, and B. Mobasher, "Search Strategies for Bid Selection in Multi-Agent Contracting," Agent-mediated Electronic Commerce (AmEC-99), at IJCAI'99, Stockholm, Sweden, August 1999.

J. Collins, M. Tsvetovat, R. Sundareswara, J. van Tonder, M. Gini, and B. Mobasher, "Evaluating Risk: Flexibility and Feasibility in Multi-Agent Contracting", Third International Conference on Autonomous Agents, Seattle, May 1999.

J. Collins, M. Tsvetovat, B. Mobasher, and M. Gini, "MAGNET: A Multi-Agent Contracting System for Plan Execution," Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Manufacturing: State of the Art and State of Practice, AAAI Press, Albuquerque, NM, pp 63-68, August 1998.

J. Collins, B. Youngdahl, S. Jamison, B. Mobasher, M. Gini, "A Market Architecture for Multi-Agent Contracting," Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Autonomous Agents, Minneapolis, MN, pp. 285-292, May 1998.

J. Collins, S. Jamison, M. Gini, B. Mobasher, "Temporal Strategies in a Multi-Agent Contracting Protocol," AAAI-97 Workshop on AI in Electronic Commerce, Providence, RI, 1997.

J. Collins and E. Sisley, "Automated Assignment and Scheduling of Service Personnel," IEEE Expert vol. 9 no. 2, pp 33-39, April 1994.

J. Collins and E. Sisley, "Experimental Evaluation of Distributed System Configurations," in Proceedings of the International Workshop on Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunications Systems (Mascots '93), Society for Computer Simulation, San Diego, CA, 1993.

J. Collins, "Documenting Protocols in CLOS: Keeping the Promise of Reuse," in Object-Oriented Programming: The CLOS Perspective , A. Paepcke, ed., pp. 253-274, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1993.

J. Collins and E. Sisley, "AI in Field Service:The Dispatch Advisor," AAAI-93 Workshop on AI in Service and Support , Washington, DC, 1993.