Meet the team: Robert Greener

Robert Greener, agent-based modelling team member at Aerogility

Robert arrived in January 2024, after a mid-PhD internship with us the previous year. He is a member of the core agent-based modelling team at Aerogility, applying his deep design and development expertise to a range of scheduling and forecasting challenges, and plays a leading role delivering customer projects that use our expanding technology.

What made you want to join Aerogility? Is it what you expected?

I was introduced to the company during my PhD, which was co-supervised by the Head of AI at Aerogility, Simon Miles, and last year I undertook a three-month placement at Aerogility working primarily on supply chain modelling.

I enjoyed my placement, so when I got the chance to come back, I jumped at it. My PhD focused on agent-based simulation, so it’s been great to apply these same skills in a commercial setting. I find the application of agent-based modelling to aerospace and defence — as well as other sectors — an interesting problem and one where it produces useful insights for customers.

What would you say is the most rewarding aspect of your role at Aerogility?

Personally, I find it rewarding to be able to apply AI methodology in a way that is robust and useful to customers.

For example, being able to understand their requirements, extend Aerogility’s agent framework to fulfil those requirements and then seeing them used by customers to help them achieve their aims, be it forecasting to understand the impacts of business decisions or scheduling a maintenance plan.

What impact have you seen of Aerogility’s software on the way aviation businesses save money, improve yield, save carbon and so on?

Before Aerogility, a lot of our customers were using spreadsheets to schedule their maintenance. The drawback of this is that it was taking a lot of time to reschedule when there were deviations from the plan, for example, because something overran, or when there were conflicts in the plan. Aerogility reduces this timeframe to a matter of minutes by being able to replan very quickly, as well as automatically resolve conflicts. It also allows for a better optimisation of a maintenance schedule, increasing the maintenance yield.

Any unexpected challenges you’ve had to overcome?

Before joining Aerogility, I thought the majority of the challenges would be technical ones. However, the challenge for me has been more understanding the domain, including the lifecycle of maintainable assets and the various rules surrounding them. For example, when to merge two maintenances, or how should competing constraints be weighed against each other.

I’ve got a good handle on it now, although I never expected to know so much about asset maintenance!

What are you working on now?

I’m currently working on the development of a next-generation search-based scheduler to allow customers to schedule maintenances based upon a wide range of constraints and preferences. I also support our existing customer deployments to ensure they can achieve their aims.

What do you enjoy outside of Aerogility?

I like getting outside walking my greyhound in the countryside (weather permitting). I’m also a keen skier and try to get a couple of weeks away in the Alps every year — I’m slowly trying to tackle Europe’s most challenging runs.

I enjoy watching football, particularly my local non-league team, St Ives Town FC, as well as Tottenham Hotspur. I do also like a bit of gaming with my friends.

Check out other posts where you can meet the rest of the team or email us for more information on this story.