The Advanced Course on Artificial Intelligence ACAI 2001 with the subtitle M ulti- Agent Systems and Their Applications , held in Prague, Czech Republic, was a joint event of ECCAI (the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence) and AgentLink, the European Network of Excellence for Agent-Based Computing. Whereas ECCAI organizes two-week ACAI courses on different topics every second year, AgentLink s European Agent Systems Summer School (EASSS) has been an annual event since 1999. This year, both of these important events were merged together, giving weight to the fact that multi-agent systems currently represent one of the hottest topics in AI research. The name, ACAI 2001 Summer School, is intended to emphasize that this event continues the tradition of regular ECCAI activities (ACAI), as well as the EASSS summer schools of AgentLink. The Prague ACAI Summer School was proposed and initiated by both the Gerstner Laboratory, Czech Technical University, Prague (GL-CTU) and the Czech Society for Cybernetics and Informatics (CSKI), with the support of the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Vienna (OFAI). Part of our motivation was catalyzed by experience gained in 1992 during the International Summer School Advanced Topics in Artificial Intelligence (see Springer s LNAI vol. 617) which was organized by the same Czech and Austrian bodies. One of the most important stimulating factors behind the organization of ACAI 2001 was the support provided by the European Commission to the Gerstner Laboratory within the frame of the MIRACLE Center of Excellence project (IST No.
