Markus Wagner

Markus Wagner is an Associate Professor at the Department of Data Science and AI, Monash University. He also serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Adelaide and a Visiting Professor at Harbin Institute of Technology. His research spans heuristic optimization algorithms, search-based software engineering, and renewable energy systems. He has been a key figure in sustainability initiatives, including founding the IEEE CIS Task Force on Computational Intelligence in Energy and serving as the first Sustainability Officer at ACM SIGEVO.

Education: PhD in Computer Science (University of Adelaide, 2013), Diplom in Computer Science (University of Koblenz-Landau, 2009). Notable awards include the 2024 German IT Security Award and the HUMIES Gold Award. He has attracted over AUD 12M in research funding and led projects like Grid Guru and Australian Research for Global Power System Transformation.

Research Interests: Optimizing wave energy converters, algorithm design, and AI-driven sustainability solutions. He has pioneered methods in genetic improvement of software and contributed to smart energy systems through roles at the Monash Energy Institute.

Awards: Multiple best paper awards, DECRA Fellowship (2016–2018), and recognition for contributions to evolutionary computation. His work bridges theoretical research with industry applications, funded by Google, Facebook, and defense/mining sectors.