computer science research institute - Research - University of Ulster

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1. FOREwORd by THE PRO VICE CHANCEllOR (RESEARCh ANd INNOvATION) I am delighted to welcome readers to our annual reports from University of Ulster Research Institutes. We have had an excellent year marked by great achievements in recruiting superb researchers to academic and research posts, attracting external income and completing work that has led to highly prestigious papers, books and other outputs. There has been a very strong flow of research findings as new disclosures to our Office of Innovation. These are being managed as promising new intellectual property and that Office also ensures that the expertise of our staff is accessed by external organisations through consultancy contracts. Overall our Institutes provide high quality research environments that are strongly supportive of research. Our achievements point to improved research capacity and capability amongst the University’s staff – the best possible training environments for our increasing number of research students. We are very proud of every student who graduates with a doctoral degree and delighted that our statistics for successful completion rank very highly in UK national comparisons. This past year was marked by final preparations for the forthcoming UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). The work to be submitted for RAE has been underway since 2001, so some of it is detailed in the current Annual Reports. The University is proud of the quality of its RAE submission and looks forward confidently to the announcement of outcomes at the end of 2008. The enhanced research performance of recent years is in line with that planned for in our Strategy and Action Plan for Research, Research Training and Innovation, entitled SUPPORTIVe 1 . Developed through comprehensive, university-wide consultation, SUPPORTIVe articulates our commitment to ensuring that research at the University of Ulster fully supports our goals summarized as ‘excellence, innovation and regional engagement’. I commend this report to you as a demonstration that University of Ulster research ranks proudly amongst UK institutions; documents, analyses and shapes the modern Northern Ireland and attracts international recognition and awards. Professor BM Hannigan Pro Vice Chancellor (Research & Innovation) 1 http://research.ulster.ac.uk/office/supportive.pdf 3
2. FOREwORd by THE RESEARCH INSTITUTE dIRECTOR This is the second Annual Report of the Computer Science Research Institute (CSRI), which was established as part of the University’s institutional strategy to facilitate greater selectivity in research support. The Institute currently comprises 48 research active staff from three Schools in the Faculty of Computing and Engineering: Schools of Computing and Information Engineering (at Coleraine), Computing and Intelligent Systems (at Magee), and Computing and Mathematics (at Jordanstown), together with 20 research associates and research fellows, and over 70 doctoral research students. A list of academic staff members of the Research Institute can be seen in Section 3. A major development during 2007 has been the establishment of the Intelligent Systems Research Centre, to which we welcome two new senior external appointments: Dr. Laxmidhar Behera (Reader in Robotics) and Dr. Shyam Chakraborty (Reader in Wireless Technology), along with four new research associate appointments. We also welcome three new appointments under the University’s Research Lectureship programme: Dr. Ammar Belatreche, Dr. Damien Coyle, and Dr. Dewar Finlay. The end of the academic year has seen the retirement, after a long and distinguished career, of Dr. Tony Donegan (Reader Emeritus in Mathematics). In cooperation with the Faculty of Computing and Engineering Research Graduate School, the CSRI again recruited some of the most highly qualified research students in the University in our annual competition for scholarships funded by DEL and by the Vice-Chancellor’s Research Studentship programme. 13 new PhD students were recruited during 2006-07, and details of all of the new projects can be seen in Section 4. The last year has been a very successful one for PhD student completions, with 13 doctoral students completing their thesis between August 2006 and July 2007. Thesis topics covered a broad range of research areas, including telecommunications network services and protocols, information retrieval, computational neuroscience, embedded systems, computer architectures, business systems modelling and optimisation, logic, medical image processing, and healthcare informatics. Details of the completed PhD projects can also be seen in Section 4. Our programme of research student internships with Cisco Systems research laboratories, USA, continued in Summer 2007, with two PhD students completing internships in San Jose, California and one in Rayleigh, North Carolina. In 2007 the Faculty’s Research Graduate School extended its already rigorous progress assessment schedule for our PhD students by introducing a very successful poster presentation session for Year 2 students at the annual Faculty Research Dinner. The CSRI has established a track record of research publication in internationally leading journals and conferences. The 2006-07 year has been particularly productive for research outputs, including over 20 publications in the prestigious Transactions of the IEEE/ACM. Details of selected publications by members of the Research Institute during 2006-07 can be seen in Section 5. Research within the Information and Software Engineering group is focussed on four areas: knowledge and data engineering, image processing, software process engineering, and telecommunications and network engineering. In the Intelligent Systems group, research is focussed on computational intelligence, particularly biologically-inspired computation, including work on spiking neural networks, fuzzy systems, cognitive robotics, wireless sensory systems, re-configurable computing and embedded systems. Research within the Artificial Intelligence 4
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Page 7 and 8: the EPSRC-funded project Multidisci
Page 9 and 10: 3. RESEARCH INSTITUTE MEMbERS Surna
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Page 13 and 14: Name wall, Julie Title of Project P
Page 15 and 16: Name Pilz, Norbert Anton Title of P
Page 17 and 18: 5. RESEARCH PUblICATIONS AUGUSTO Ha
Page 19 and 20: Yaxin Bi, Werner Dubitzky: An evide
Page 21 and 22: CONdELL COYLE Joan V. Condell, Geor
Page 23 and 24: GLASS Glass, D.H: Coherence measure
Page 25 and 26: MAGUIRE Qingxiang Wu, T. Martin McG
Page 27 and 28: Marisol Giardina, Francisco Azuaje,
Page 29 and 30: MORROW Bilal Al Momani, Sally I. Mc
Page 31 and 32: Ching-hang Fong, Gerard Parr, Phili
Page 33 and 34: Petre Kulkarni, Mohammad Nazeeruddi
Page 35 and 36: WU M. P. Ware, F. George Wilkie, Ma
Page 37 and 38: 6. RESEARCH FUNdING Staff Name(s) T
Page 39 and 40: Staff Name(s) Title of Award Fundin
Page 41 and 42: 8. EXTERNAl PROFESSIONAl ACTIVITIES
Page 43 and 44: hARKIN ¢ Member of the editorial b
Page 45 and 46: MORROW ¢ Secretary of the Irish Pa

computer science research institute - Research - University of Ulster

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