computer science research institute - Research - University of Ulster

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group is focussed on methodologies for reasoning, inference and classification, with applications to knowledge engineering, natural language processing and bioinformatics. Application of artificial intelligence research to healthcare informatics is a directing influence, with particular emphasis on Ambient Assisted Living. 2006-07 has seen the launch of a major infrastructural initiative: the Intelligent Systems Research Centre was formally launched in May 2007 and represents a substantial commitment to long-term expansion and sustainability. The Centre has funding support totalling £7.2M over the next 5 years from InvestNI, through its Centres of Excellence programme, and the government’s Integrated Development Fund. The University is investing additional support commitment of £7.31M that will enable relocation of the Centre’s research staff to a designated refurbished building and state-of-the-art infrastructure. The Centre is creating 12 new posts: 3 senior academic staff, 6 research staff, a support post for knowledge and technology transfer, a commercial exploitation manager, and secretarial support, and a business plan is in place to attract a further £5.95M of external income over the next five years to support further expansion of research staff and students. The Centre, under the directorship of Professor Martin McGinnity, will focus on four areas of research activity: cognitive robotics; biologically inspired computation; wireless technology / ambient intelligence; and brain-computer interfacing. The Centre will provide a sustained programme of visiting international researchers, an integrated business realisation unit and incubator facilities, and an expansion of activities in technology transfer and new industrial and community partnerships to inspire and support regional economic development. 2006-07 has been another strong year for new research grant income. There have been three new major awards from the UK EPSRC: funding of £571,002 through to June 2011 for healthcare informatics research on Self Management supported by Assistive, Rehabilitation and Telecare Technologies; funding of £118,919 to lead a UK-India network for Next Generation Networks Systems and Services: Enablers for the Digital Economy, involving 25 UK and 16 Indian academic and industrial partners; and funding of £125,000 to support a five-year UK Research Council Academic Fellowship through to September 2011. New grant awards have been secured from a range of funders to support research within the Healthcare Informatics sector, aligning with the UK Research Councils’ Ageing Research programme and EU initiatives in Ageing/Ambient Assisted Living (a flagship area within the i2010 initiative). Funding from the EU Framework 6 programme supports the COGKNOW project (£262,551): Helping People with Mild Dementia Navigate their Day, to develop a prototype user-validated cognitive prosthetic device and associated services. Funding from the HPSSNI R&D Office (£149,009) supports collaborative work with the Belfast City Hospital’s Memory Clinic to develop and assess cognitive prosthetics, in conjunction with funding from the ETAC consortium (£70,673), sponsored by the Alzheimer’s Association, Intel Corporation and Agilent Technologies, to develop and assess the use of cell-phone video streaming in care support for Alzheimer’s disease. Support through to 2011 for new research personnel and infrastructure has been secured through the Nestling Technologies Initiative (£420,555) and the InterRegIIIa-funded NETWELL project (£80,468), in collaboration with the North-East Health Services Executive (Republic of Ireland), Dundalk Institute of Technology and Dundalk Council; this award has enabled the refurbishment of a laboratory replicating a kitchen and living area, each comprehensively equipped with a network of activity sensors, to support research in ambient artificial intelligence technologies for assisted living. This environment replicates the design of real dwellings that will be developed within the Nestling Technologies Initiative and supports experimental design, data collection and analysis. In association with 5
the EPSRC-funded project Multidisciplinary Assessment of Technology Centre for Health (MATCH), led by Brunel University, funding from HPSSNI (£266,431) has been secured to develop Markov models and decision support tools for patient management; these tools will be evaluated in partnership with Brunel, Cambridge and Southampton Universities in the EPSRC-funded project Research into Global Healthcare Tools (RIGHT) to characterise healthcare problem domains. New awards for collaborative work with industry include industrial partnership with SAP, with three-year funding of £172,350 for research on Performance Prediction for Service-Oriented Architectures (PERSERVE), combining aspects of modelling, software engineering and distributed systems to develop a range of performance and resource models that evolve over time. Two new Knowledge Transfer Partnerships have commenced with Precision Industrial Services Ltd (£149,616) and Hunter Apparel Solutions Ltd. (£99,744), along with a number of knowledge and technology transfer projects within the all-Ireland FUSION programme. Details of funding awards notified over the last twelve months can be seen in Section 6. A number of major research projects and initiatives have come to successful completion during 2006-07. Following completion of an InvestNI-funded Proofof-Concept project, SOPHIA, to develop information analysis tools for corpora of heterogeneous electronic documents, a spin-out company, SOPHIA Search Ltd. was established in 2007, with Dr. David Patterson as CEO, to commercialise patented document search tools. Two collaborative projects funded by the Higher Education Authority (Republic of Ireland) North South Collaborative Research Programme have been completed in 2007: work with University College Cork and the Tyndall National Institute on the InterWave project to develop novel techniques to implement high density spiking neural networks via electronic wave propagation in silicon; and work with Trinity College Dublin on combining prior domain knowledge and data mining for biomedical decision support. Other funded research concluded at the end of 2006 includes: work on advanced data- and knowledge-driven methods for state failure risk, supported by the NATO Security through Science programme; work on intelligent image capture and processing, supported by the Nuffield Foundation; and the Wireless Broadband Flagship initiative, funded by D.E.T.I., to implement three wireless enabled environments: wireless study facilities throughout the University’s Magee campus; a wireless paperless working environment for Derry City Council; and wireless provision of information for businesses and tourists within Derry’s historic city walls. The Wireless Broadband project won the 2006 Communication in Business “Best Wireless Project” award, sponsored by Cable & Wireless, and established the Wireless Technology Demonstration Centre to encourage SMEs to incorporate wireless technology in their products. During 2006-07 the CSRI, together with research strategy initiatives by the PVC Research and Innovation, has continued to support and co-ordinate a programme of Visiting Scholars, hosting a number of distinguished visitors. A list of our 2006-07 Visiting Scholars is shown in section 7. The CSRI’s partnerships with other academic institutions and industry have been extended through new projects funded by UK EPSRC, EU Framework programmes and a range of other funders. International collaborations continue to expand, with particularly exciting developments for research co-operation with India. Two new three-year projects funded by the UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) are about to commence: a collaboration with IIT Kanpur for research on Innovations in Intelligent Assistive Robotics (£145,000); and a project to lead the development of a UK-India graduate training and exchange programme as part of an international Virtual Research Graduate School (£148,000). This latter project, together with funding already secured from EPSRC to lead a UK-India network 6
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Page 9 and 10: 3. RESEARCH INSTITUTE MEMbERS Surna
Page 11 and 12: 4.a NEw RESEARCH STUdENTS Name Ched
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
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