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Preface

This thesis is submitted to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doktor Ingeniør. This work
has been conducted at the Department of Computer and Information Sciences
(IDI), Trondheim, Norway.

Acknowledgments

The work presented in this thesis has been financed by the Norwegian University
of Science and Technology through the Electronic Commercial Agents (ElCo-
mAg) project funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

First, I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Mihhail Matskin for his con-
tinuous advice, coaching and support. Together with Professor Arne Sølvberg he
has made my work possible by getting funding for and managing the ElComAg
project.

I would like to thank all my students, in particular Espen, H°

avard, Jørgen,

Kristoffer and Øyvind. I would like to thank my colleague and friend Magnus
Lie Hetland for the interesting discussions, and our jointly published research in
particular. I would like to thank my co-entrepreneur and friend Thomas Brox
Røst for providing a fruitful link to the IT industry through our company Agen-
tus AS, and a thank to our investors Alexander Vik (Xcelera Inc.) and Hans
Eirik Olav (Juno Finans AS).

I would like to thank the people I've been working with and for in educational set-
tings during the PhD scholarship time: Associate Professor Stig Frode Mjølsnes,
Associate Professor Øystein Nytrø, Torbjørn Krøvel, Professor Arne Halaas, As-
sociate Professor Pinar Ozturk, Per Kristian Lehre, and Professor Agnar Aamodt.

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