John-Jules Meyer

Timeline

1. 1954–1985

   A doctorate at VU Amsterdam

   Born in The Hague in 1954, he studies mathematics with computer science and digital signal processing at Leiden University. In 1985, he completes a PhD at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam with the thesis "Programming Calculi Based on Fixed Point Transformations", supervised by Jaco de Bakker and Willem-Paul de Roever.

2. 1988–1993

   A chair in logic and AI

   From 1988 to 1993, he holds a special chair at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in logic for distributed systems and artificial intelligence. He also serves as an extraordinary professor of theoretical computer science at the Catholic University of Nijmegen from 1989 to 1993.

3. 1990s

   Deontic logic and DEON

   In the 1990s, he plays a central role in developing epistemic, non-monotonic, dynamic and deontic logic within AI. He co-initiates the international DEON conferences on deontic logic in computer science, whose best paper award bears his name.

4. 1993–1994

   Professor at Utrecht

   He becomes a full professor in the Department of Computer Science at Utrecht University in 1993, and by 1994 he holds a chair in formal methods in computer science there. His research covers modal, epistemic, deontic and nonmonotonic logic and their uses in knowledge representation, databases and AI.

5. 1999–2003

   The 3APL agent language

   In 1999, he coauthors "Agent Programming in 3APL" with Koen Hindriks, Frank de Boer and Wiebe van der Hoek, proposing a language for programming agents whose mental states consist of beliefs and goals. An April 2003 article by Mehdi Dastani, Frank Dignum and Meyer presents the 3APL project at Utrecht's Intelligent Systems Group, which has built a Java interpreter for 3APL agent programs.

6. 2005

   A EurAI fellowship

   In 2005, he is named a Fellow of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI), now the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI), in recognition of his lasting contributions to the field.

7. 2011

   Utrecht supervisor of the year

   By 2011, he heads the Intelligent Systems group in Utrecht's Department of Information and Computing Sciences and is scientific director of the Alan Turing Institute Almere, which applies AI techniques to the health sciences. Nine of his PhD candidates defend their dissertations in 2011, earning him the title of Utrecht University supervisor of the year.

8. 2022–2025

   Succeeded as group chair

   In 2022, Mehdi Dastani succeeds him as chair of the Intelligent Systems group. He dies in 2025, having supervised more than 60 PhD candidates, published more than 500 papers and co-founded the SIKS research school, which he also led as scientific director.