Prof. Dr. MSc. Stéphane Galland is the Director of the research laboratory on Distributed Knowledge and Distributed Artificial Intelligence – CIAD UR 7733 of “Université de Technologie de Belfort Montbéliard” – UTBM – and “Université Bourgogne Europe” – UBE – (22 full-time Researchers, ~20 PhD students, ~5 Postdocs, ~10 Research engineers) from 2024 to 2028. He has co-created CIAD in 2019 and was its Deputy Director from 2019 to 2023. After being graduated in Formal Computer Science with his Master from “Université de Franche-Comté” in 1998, Professor Stéphane Galland received his PhD in Computer Science from “Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Etienne” in 2001. He obtained his French accreditation to supervise research (“Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches” – HDR) in 2013 from “Université de Franche-Comté“.

In 2025, Professor Stéphane Galland was selected as one of the AI Ambassadors by the French Ministry for AI and Digital Technologies for the Burgundy-Franche-Comté province. Since 2023, he has been an expert member chosen by the French Ministry of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion to the National Evaluation and Selection Committee – COMEVAL – for all the French researchers associated with this Ministry (~500 Researchers). Since 2024, he is a member of the French National Thematic Group (GTN) on Transport in relation with the National Public Policy and the European Commission. He was also the Head of the international programs ARFITEC-17-10 and ARFITEC-19-11 from 2017 to 2023 related to the exchanges of Researchers and engineering students between UTBM and Argentinian universities.

His personal research interests are focused on the domains of “Agent-oriented Software Engineering” and “Agent-based simulation,” two sub-fields of multiagent systems in the AI domain, applied to transportation, mobilities, smart cities, smart buildings, energy, industry 4.0, and e-health issues. His research keywords are: Agent-oriented software engineering, agent-oriented programming languages, organization-oriented software engineering, holonic and cyber-physical systems. He is one of the creators and major authors of the ASPECS modeling and implementation methodology for multiagent systems, the SARL agent programming language, and the Janus agent framework. He has supervised 18 PhD students and 27 master students. He has also built up and coordinated numerous academic and industrial projects. For example, from 2018 to 2023, he was responsible for 6 academic projects, including two EU projects (H2020, EDIH), and 6 projects with private companies, for a total budget of 1.7M€. He was the scientific referent for the Voxelia spin-off company from 2009 to 2014. In 2022, he was also at the origin of the creation of another spin-off company that is currently in the pre-maturation stage in France. Professor Stéphane Galland has published more than 40 International Peer-Reviewed Journals, participated in more than 100 International Peer-Reviewed Conferences with Proceedings, 10 National Peer-Reviewed Conferences with Proceedings, 25 oral presentations and posters in International Peer-Reviewed Conferences with Proceedings. He has also published 1 scientific book and 5 chapters in scientific books. He is the author and owner of 7 software, with 2 protected by French patents.

In addition those related to his position at UTBM, Professor Stéphane Galland was invited for giving seminars and lectures on multiagent systems in different universities across the World: University of Technology of Shanghai (UTSEUS, China, in 2007 and since 2023), German University of Technology in Oman (Oman, since 2025), Shanghai University (China, 2019), Shanghai Tongji University (China, 2023), Tunisia Sfax University (Tunisia, 2016-2020), Belgium Hasselt University (Belgium, 2016-2018), “Arts et Métiers Chalon sur Saône” (France, since 2022), “Université Bourgogne Europe (France, since 2018).

Professor Stéphane Galland has delivered numerous conferences and seminars to introduce artificial intelligence to a wide range of audiences – from corporate teams and hospital staff to associations, children, and retirees. His goal is to foster a broad understanding of AI, helping people grasp not only its remarkable capabilities but also its limitations.