Lee Christie

Dr. Lee Christie is a Research Fellow at Robert Gordon University's School of Computing, Engineering & Technology, where he conducts research in optimization and artificial intelligence. He is affiliated with the Complex Optimisation Research Group and maintains connections with the National Subsea Centre through his research on net-zero operations.

His educational background includes:

• BSc (Hons) in Computer Science from Robert Gordon University (2003-2007)
• MSc in Information Engineering (Distinction) from Robert Gordon University (2009-2011, part-time)
• PhD in Computational Intelligence from Robert Gordon University (2011-2016)

Dr. Christie's research primarily focuses on combinatorial optimization, structure learning, and blockchain technologies. He investigates how to make non-deterministic solvers more transparent through trajectory mining and feature extraction. His work bridges theoretical optimization techniques with practical applications in transportation systems (particularly connected autonomous vehicles), renewable energy (wind farm optimization), and supply chain management. He has published extensively on explainable metaheuristics, with a growing emphasis on making optimization algorithms interpretable for end-users while maintaining effectiveness.

His recent publications (2021-2025) demonstrate a clear research trajectory toward explainable AI for optimization algorithms, with applications spanning transportation systems, renewable energy infrastructure, and complex supply chains. These works showcase his ability to translate theoretical advances into practical solutions for real-world problems with societal impact.

Dr. Christie has secured research funding for projects including the A.R.T. Forum NSR (2019-2022), which developed implementation roadmaps for automated road transport in the North Sea Region. He teaches programming for business analytics courses and actively contributes to the Aberdeen Python User Group as a steering committee member.

His academic service includes supervision of PhD students, with Dr. Martin Fyvie recently completing a dissertation on 'Explainability of Non-Deterministic Solvers' under his guidance as second supervisor. Dr. Christie maintains active collaborations with researchers including John McCall, A.-C. Zăvoianu, and A.E.I. Brownlee, resulting in consistent publication output across reputable venues in evolutionary computation and artificial intelligence.