Karl Tuyls

Karl Tuyls (FBCS) is a research scientist, entrepreneur, and professor. He currently holds honorary positions as Professor of Computer Science at the University of Liverpool, UK, and Guest Professor at the University of Leuven, Belgium. In February 2025, he will join a leading AI company as a Research Director. Previously, he was Research Director at DeepMind, where he led the Game Theory & Multi-Agent Team. He co-founded H Company in April 2024, departing in August 2024. Earlier in his career, he held academic roles at institutions including Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Hasselt University, Eindhoven University of Technology, and Maastricht University. Prof. Tuyls is known for significant contributions in AI, notably co-inventing DeepNash, the first AI agent to reach human expert-level performance in the imperfect-information game Stratego (published in Science), and co-developing AlphaRank, a method for ranking agents in multi-agent environments. He is also the author of AI for Sports and co-developer of TacticAI, a football analytics system in collaboration with Liverpool FC, published in Nature Communications. His research has gained substantial media attention, with features in Wired UK and Nature, among others.  In recognition of his work, he has received several awards, including the Information Technology Prize 2000 in Belgium, the best demo award at AAMAS 2012, and several Robocup@Work competition wins (2013, 2014). He has also delivered keynotes, notably at AAMAS 2023. Prof. Tuyls is a Fellow of the British Computer Society (BCS), serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, and is co-editor-in-chief of the SpringerBriefs in Intelligent Systems series. He is also an emeritus board member of the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems.