Andreas Brännström, PhD

Contact Information

Name

Andreas Brännström

Current employment

Postdoctoral fellow
Department of Computing Science, Umeå University
From 2025-07-01

Contact

E-mail: andreasb@cs.umu.se
Phone: +46(0)76-8113782

I research formal and neuro-symbolic methods for trustworthy, human-centered AI, ranging from theoretical foundations in knowledge representation and reasoning to applied research on interactive system verification and intelligent decision-support. I am currently a Postdoctoral Researcher and WASP Fellow, supported by the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program. Alongside my academic work, I have worked in digitalization, software engineering, and ICT startups (primarily with customers in the municipal sector) since 2009, particularly in healthcare, and since 2016 as co-founder of Senovic Solutions AB.

As co-founder and technical lead of Senovic Solutions AB (2016–2025), I have been responsible for quality management and the overall software development lifecycle of the company’s IT services, applications, and products. My role includes establishing quality control and information security standards, coordinating between developers and stakeholders, ensuring usability and documentation standards, and integrating customer feedback into product planning.

Academic Research & Teaching Positions

Industry Positions

Higher Education

Doctoral Thesis

Formal Methods for Verification in Human-Agent Interaction
Umeå University, Department of Computing Science, 2025.
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Juan Carlos Nieves
Co-supervisor: Prof. Virginia Dignum
Opponent: Prof. Stefania Costantini
DiVA record

Publications

• Brännström, A., Sakama, C., Nieves, J.C. (2025). Formal verification of manipulation dialogues. In: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2025). IFAAMAS (2025).
• Brännström, A., Dignum, V., & Nieves, J. C. (2025). Goal-hiding information-seeking dialogues: A formal framework. International Journal of Approximate Reasoning, 177, 109325.
• Berglund, W., & Brännström, A. (2025). Heuristic Search and Constraint Verification for Value-Centric Electrification Planning. In: Proceedings of the 1st Interdiciplinary Conference on Digital Humanism, Vienna, November 20–21, 2025.
• Granström, J., Brännström, A.. (2025). Ontology-Based Risk Assessment in Smelting Plant Logistics. In: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Hybrid Human-Artificial Intelligence (HHAI 2025), June 9–13, Pisa, Italy.
• Brännström, A., & Nieves, J. C. (2025c). Formal verification of social engineering in information-seeking dialogues. In Proceedings of the DigForASP Workshop at the 16th European Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Mathematics (ESCIM 2025), A Coruña, Spain.
• Brännström, A., Wester, J., & Nieves, J. C. (2024). A formal understanding of computational empathy in interactive agents. Cognitive Systems Research, 85, 101203.
• Brännström, A., & Nieves, J. C. (2024). Towards control in agents for human behavior change: an autism case. Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, JIFS-219335.
• Taverner, J., Brännström, A., Durães, D., Vivancos, E., Novais, P., Nieves, J. C., & Botti, V. (2024). Computational affective knowledge representation for agents located in a multicultural environment. Human-centric Computing and Information Sciences, 14.
• Nieves, J. C., Osorio, M., Rojas-Velazquez, D., Magallanes, Y., & Brännström, A. (2024). Digital companions for well-being: challenges and opportunities. Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, JIFS-219336.
• Persiani, M., Guerrero, E., Brännström, A., Kilic, K., & Kampik, T. (2024). Fantastic Argumentation Tools And Where To Find Them. In International Workshop on Systems and Algorithms for Formal Argumentation (SAFA2024). CEUR.
• Vossers, J., Brännström, A., Borglund, E., Hansson, J., & Nieves, J. C. (2024). Human-Aware Planning for Situational Awareness in Indoor Police Interventions. In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Hybrid Human-Artificial Intelligence (HHAI 2024), Malmö, Sweden, June 10-14, 2024.
• Brännström, A., Dignum, V., & Nieves, J. C. (2023). A Formal Framework for Deceptive Topic Planning in Information-Seeking Dialogues. In Proceedings of the 2023 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (pp. 2376-2378), London, UK, May 29-June 2, 2023.
• Campano, E., & Brännström, A. (2023). An Ontology of Gradualist Machine Ethics. In 2023 Asia Conference on Cognitive Engineering and Intelligent Interaction (CEII) (pp. 88-95). IEEE.
• Wester, J., Brännström, A., Nieves, J. C., & van Berkel, N. (2023). “You've Got a Friend in Me”: A Formal Understanding of the Critical Friend Agent. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (pp. 443-445), Gothenburg, Sweden, December 4-7, 2023.
• Brännström, A., & Nieves, J. C. (2023). Multi-mind dynamics in intentional agents. In 2nd International Workshop on HYbrid models for coupling Deductive and inductive ReAsoning (HYDRA)@ ECAI-23, Kraków, Poland, September 30-October 4, 2023.
• Vossers, J., Danelid, F., Brännström, A., & Nieves, J. C. (2023). Towards deception detection in multiplayer dialogue games using trust-based argumentation. In The Workshop on Ethics of Game Artificial Intelligence (EGAI)@ ECAI-23, Kraków, Poland, September 30-October 4, 2023.
• Bahuguna, A., Haydar, S., Brännström, A., & Nieves, J. C. (2023). Do datapoints argue?: Argumentation for hierarchical agreement in datasets. In 2nd International Workshop on HYbrid Models for Coupling Deductive and Inductive ReAsoning (Hydra)@ ECAI-23, Kraków, Poland, September 30-October 4, 2023.
• Brännström, A., & Nieves, J. C. (2022). Emotional Reasoning in an Action Language for Emotion-Aware Planning. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning (pp. 103-116), September 5-9, 2022. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
• Brännström, A., Kampik, T., Ruiz-Dolz, R., & Taverner, J. (2022). A Formal Framework for Designing Boundedly Rational Agents. In The 14th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (3) (pp. 705-714), Online, February 3-5, 2022.
• Brännström, A., & Nieves, J. C. (2022). A Framework for Developing Interactive Intelligent Systems in Unity. In Proceedings of the Engineering Multi-Agent Systems (EMAS 2022), Virtual Event, May 9-10, 2022.
• Wester, J., Brännström, A., & Nieves, J. C. (2022). Towards a Formalization of the Critical Friend and Socio-Moral Decision-Making in Autonomous Systems. In CHAI’22: Workshop on Communication in Human-AI Interaction@ IJCAI, Vienna, Austria, July 24, 2022.
• Brännström, A., & Nieves, J. C. (2021). Modelling Human Mental-States in an Action Language following the Theory of Planned Behavior. In ASPOCP’21: 14th Workshop on Answer Set Programming and Other Computing Paradigms, virtual, September 20–27, 2021. (Vol. 2970). CEUR-WS.
• Brännström, A. (2021). Strategic Argumentation to deal with Interactions between Intelligent Systems and Humans. Online Handbook of Argumentation for AI, 2.
• Brännström, A., Kampik, T., & Nieves, J. C. (2020). Towards human-aware epistemic planning for promoting behavior-change. In Workshop on Epistemic Planning (EpiP)@ ICAPS, Online, October 26-30, 2020.

Selected Research Posters

Intelligent Training Environment in Virtual Reality
Poster presented at EACD 2021 – Childhood Disability in a Changing World.
Download poster

Empathic Healthcare Assistant in Augmented Reality
Poster presented at MIRAI 2.0 Research & Innovation Week 2021.
Download poster

Goal-Hiding Information-Seeking Dialogues – A Formal Framework
Poster presented at AAMAS 2023 – The 22nd International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems.
Download poster

Formal Verification of Manipulation in Human–Agent Interaction
Poster presented at AAMAS 2025 – The 24th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems.
Download poster

Teaching

Course Coordination

• [2025, Autumn] Course coordinator and Teacher: Reasoning and Information Processing.
• [2023, 2024, 2025] Course coordinator and Teacher: Cognitive Interaction Design.

Teaching & Lecturing

• [2025, Autumn] Teacher in Course: Knowledge and Memory (Cognitive Science Program).
• [2025, Autumn] Teacher in Course: Action (Cognitive Science Program).
• [2025, Autumn] Teacher in Course: Perception (Cognitive Science Program).
• [2023] Guest lecturer: Research Ethics in AI for Medicine and Healthcare, Faculty of Medicine, Umeå University.
• [2023] Lecturer and Lab assistant: Trends in Intelligent Environments.
• [2022] Lecturer and Lab assistant: Interactivity in Smart Environments.
• [2022] Guest lecturer: Introduction to AI and Applications in Diagnostic Radiology Nursing, Autumn 2022.
• [2022] Guest lecturer: Trends in Intelligent Environments.
• [2021] Guest lecturer: Interactivity in Smart Environments — Lecture: Knowledge Graphs and Building OWL Ontologies.
• [2021] Guest lecturer: Trends in Intelligent Environments — Lecture: Action Reasoning Languages.
• [2021] Guest lecturer: Reasoning and Decision Making (AI for Industry) — Lecture: Integration of Answer Set Programming (ASP) and Unity Game Engine.

Supervision

Scientific service and other scientific qualifications

Community building and Organization

• [2025] Organizer of CLEAR Workshop at European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Bologna, Italy, October 25, 2025.
• [2025] Organizing the Arctic Research Retreat on Responsible AI, Lövångergården, Sweden.
• [2024] Chair of student volunteers. HHAI 2024: Hybrid Human Artificial Intelligence, June 10-14, 2024, Malmö, Sweden.
• [2024] Organizer and chair. Workshop on Trustworthy AI and Deception in AI @ National Institute of Informatics (NII), Tokyo, Japan, Aug 20, 2024.
• [2024] Organizing the Arctic Research Retreat on Responsible AI, Granö, Sweden.
• [2023] Organizing the Arctic Research Retreat on Responsible AI, Lövångergården, Sweden.
• [2023] Organizer and chair. Workshop on Knowledge Elicitation @ WASP-HS Annual Conference Nov 14, 2023.
• [2022] Organizer and chair. WASP-HS seminar series, Spring 2022: Deception-Aware Autonomous Systems.
• [2021] Member of Student Council in Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program, Humanity and Society (WASP-HS) Graduate School.

Peer reviewing and other scientific evaluations

• [2025] PC member in IJCAI: International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
• [2024, 2025] PC Member in International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS).
• [2024, 2025] PC Member in Workshop on Fair FEAR.
• [2024] Reviewer in Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.
• [2023] Reviewer in CCAIS 2023: International Workshop on Cognitive Computing and Advances in Intelligent Systems. November 30.
• [2022, 2023, 2024] PC member of OHAAI: Online handbook of Argumentation for AI.
• [2023, 2024, 2025] PC member in ECAI: European Conference on Artificial Intelligence
• [2023] Subreviewer in UMAP 2023: User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization.
• [2023] Subreviewer in PAAMS 2023. Practical Applications of Agents and MAS.
• [2023] Reviewer in ETIN - Journal on Ethics and Information Technology.
• [2022] Reviewer in ACM's Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT).
• [2021] Reviewer in XIII Workshop on Agents Applied in Healthcare (A2HC2021).

Research Visits

• [2024 Summer] Two months research visit at Wakayama University, Wakayama, Japan. JSPS Summer Program 2024.

• [2024, 19-22 August] National Institute of Informatics (NII), Tokyo, Japan. Chair of Workshop on Trustworthy AI.

Attendance of training schools abroad

• [2022] Training School: Digital forensics, evidence analysis via intelligent systems and practices. Napoli (Italy).
• [2021] Advanced Course in Artificial Intelligence (ACAI 2021). Berlin (Germany).

Implementation of Algorithms and Software Prototypes

• [2025] Standalone Microservices for Hybrid Heuristic Search (modified A*) and Constraint Verification (ASP) for Value-Centric Electrification Route Planning. [GitHub]
• [2023] Ontology for representing Computational Empathy in agent reasoning, implemented in OWL. [GitHub]
• [2022] UnityIIS: a Unity library integrating symbolic reasoning and planning via Ontologies and ASP. [GitHub]
• [2022] Framework for modeling human emotion dynamics using Appraisal Theory and Hedonic Emotion Regulation principles in ASP. [GitHub]
• [2021] Framework for modeling human motivation dynamics based on the Theory of Planned Behavior, formalized in Answer Set Programming (ASP). [GitHub]
• [2020] Virtual Reality Training Environment for Autistic Children: a human-aware planning system supporting adaptive mixed-reality interaction. [GitHub]

International conferences over past five years

Attendance of conferences

• [2025] The 4th International Conference on Hybrid Human Artificial Intelligence (HHAI 2025). Pisa (Italy).
• [2025] The 24nd International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2025). Detroit (USA).
• [2024] The 3rd International Conference on Hybrid Human Artificial Intelligence (HHAI 2024). Malmö (Sweden).
• [2023] The 26th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2023). Krakow (Poland).
• [2023] The 22nd International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2023). London (UK).
• [2022] Training School (Napoli, Italy): Digital forensics: evidence analysis via intelligent systems and practices.
• [2022] The 14th European Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Mathematics (ESCIM 2022). Naples (Italy).
• [2022] 16th International Conference on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning (LPNMR 2022). Genova (Italy).
• [2022] COST action meeting: Digital forensics: evidence analysis via intelligent systems and practices (DigForAsp), Umea, (Sweden).
• [2021] Advanced Course in Artificial Intelligence (ACAI 2021). Berlin (Germany).
• [2021] Answer set programming and other computer paradigms (ASPOCP 2021). Online.
• [2020] Workshop on Epistemic Planning (EpiP@ICAPS 2020). Online.

Interaction with the surrounding society as well as popular science activities

Presentation and Dissemination

• [2023] Presentation at Medical faculty advisory board for Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems. ChatGPT/LLMs.
• [2023] Presentation at Umeå University, dep. Molecular Biology. ChatGPT/LLMs.
• [2022] Presentation at the Training School (Napoli, Italy): - Abstract presentation: Dialogue Models for Online Grooming Detection.
• [2022] Presentation at Habilitation Centre seminar day, 2022, Umea, Sweden. How can a computer game understand Autism?
• [2021] Conference poster at European Academy of Childhood Disability (EACD). Intelligent Environment in Virtual Reality for Facilitating Social Behavior in Youth with Autism Spectrum Conditions.
• [2021] Poster/Presentation at Artificial Intelligence Day at Faculty of Medicine, Umeå University, 2021-09-10.
• [2021] Presentation at Habilitation Centre seminar day, 2021, Umea, Sweden. Dynamic Training Environment in Virtual Reality for children with Autism. Results from the Vinnova project: Collaborative Mixed-Reality Aid For Children With Autism.
• [2021] MIRAI 2021 (online, Sweden and Japan). Conference poster and presentation: Empathic Healthcare Assistant in Virtual Reality.