QMUL Interdisciplinary research meeting Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Engineering and Ma

1
QMULInterdisciplinary research meetingComputer
Science, Electrical Engineering, Engineering and
Mathematics5 November 2003

• 14.00 Introduction
• 14.10 Session 1 Dynamical systems / control
• 14.35 Session 2 Discrete maths / logic /
  experimental design
• 15.05 Session 3 Intelligent systems /
  Information retrieval
• 15.35 Session 4 Computer vision / multimedia
• 16.05 What next? Making the inter-disciplinary
  connections
• 16.10 Tea/Coffee and discussion groups
• 16.50 Plenary
• 17.00 End

2
Why are we here?

• Goal for the day
• Explore common interests and multidisciplinary
  research opportunities across our 4 departments,
  and potential for lightweight IRCs
• Why multidisciplinary research?
• The problems we are trying to solve are
  inherently multidisciplinary understanding and
  predicting the behaviour of massive data,
  massive networks and massive computation, both
  natural or artificial
• Why lightweight IRCs?
• Goal of CS research strategy we want to have an
  international reputation for leadership in
  fundamental and innovative multidisciplinary
  research, and applications, with a lasting impact
  on the subject
• IRCs will be centres of critical mass to support
  significant multidisciplinary research, enrich
  the PhD environment and anchor external
  strategic funding, eg EPSRC, DTI, RDA, EU,
  industry

3
The national scene?

• Research councils
• Increasing recognition of the importance of
  multidisciplinary work and emphasis on special
  initiatives e-science, crime and security,
  complex systems, London software systems IRC,
  MathFit
• Increase in mechanisms to support fewer larger
  grants, at centres of critical mass- eg IRC,
  basic technology grants, Faraday partnerships,
  platform and portfolio grants, maths
  interdisciplinary critical mass
• Industry and RDA funding
• One off projects often short-term, problem
  based, need to seize opportunities within
  existing robust infrastructure
• Major strategic investment possible where goals
  align, hard work.
• RAE despite rhetoric, emphasis still on
  traditional indicators strong publication
  record in high quality outlets, grants, PhD
  students

4

• Current QMUL EPSRC support (
  4.11.2003 )
• Computer Science 13 2,776,533
• Engineering 6 2,418,037
• of which Basic Technology Nanotech
  1.7M
• Materials 9 1,554,752
• Electronic Engineering 9 979,805
• Medicine Dentistry 1 154,327
• Biomedical (IRC) 4 1,026,187
• Physics 6 607,221
• Maths 14 1,567,708
• Chemistry 10 1,229,019
• DTA 4 2,231,392  
• Total number of Grants 76
• Total value of support (UK ) 14,544,981

5
EPSRC grants current on 1.1.03 K

• ITCS program area
• 1 S'oton 22,241
• 2 Nottingham 12,903
• 3 Oxford 12,072
• 4 Newcastle 11,407
• 5 Imperial 11,084
• 6 Edinburgh 9185
• 7 Manchester 8017
• 8 Surrey 7804
• 9 Glasgow 7669
• 10 Cambridge 7451
• 11 York 6752
• QMUL 6057
• Source EPSRC Annual report 2002-3
• Note ITCS program covers CS EE

• Maths program area
• 1 Cambridge 3261
• 2 Imperial 1708
• 3 Bristol 1704
• 4 Warwick 1326
• 5 Oxford 1292
• 6 Leeds 1163
• 7 Manchester 1011
• 8 L'boro 986
• 9 Nottingham 877
• 10 QMUL 661

6
Who are we?

• Computer science, external funding 3.5M, 50
  staff lt 5 years
• Models of computation
• Logic and semantics, logic for computer science,
  Peter OHearn 8
• Example model resource allocation in distributed
  computer systems
• RADAR decision making under uncertainty, Norman
  Fenton 2
• Example apply Bayesian techniques to legal
  evidence, eg DNA profiling
• Interaction and information
• Information retrieval from massive data sets,
  Mounia Lalmas 3
• Example new theories of informativeness
• Vision extracting information from image
  sequences, Sean Gong 5
• Example detecting non-rigid motion in video
  sequences
• IMC cognition and action human-computer
  interaction, Pat Healey 4
• Example understanding interaction between
  improvising jazz musicians
• Other work in network and parallel computing, ODL

7
Who are we?

• Engineering, RAE 5B, external funding 3M
• Computational Fluid Dynamics
• Medical Engineering
• Thermofluids Engineering
• Structures and Computational Mechanics
• Control engineering

8
Who are we?

• Electronic Engineering, external funding 3.2m
• Communications Group
• Antennas and Electromagnetics Lab, Clive Parini
  4
• Example characterisation of on-body
  communication channels
• Intelligent Communications Lab, Laurie Cuthbert
  4
• Example provision of quality of service on
  wireless networks
• Network and Service Assurance Lab, Jonathan Pitts
  3
• Example resilient optical networking
• Digital Signal Processing Multimedia Group
• Digital Music Lab, Mark Sandler 3
• Example automatic polyphonic music transcription
  using multiple-cause models and independent
  component analysis
• Multimedia and Vision Lab, Ebroul Izquierdo 2
• Example bringing user satisfaction to media
  access networks

9
Who are we?

• Mathematics
• Astronomy Prof John Papaloizou 12 staff
• Accretion disks and star-planetary formation
• Solar wind -- Imaging (CASSINI)
• Cosmology Relativity
• Pure Mathematics Prof Stephen Donkin 12 staff
• Group theory - combinatorial, computational
• Combinatorics -- Graph theory
• Logic -- Design theory
• Quantum groups and non-commutative geometry
• Applied Mathematics Prof Christian Beck 9
  staff
• Dynamical systems -- Relativity
• Statistical mechanics -- Theoretical biology
• Statistics and Probability Prof Rosemary Bailey
  6 staff
• Design of experiments
• Bayesian Statistics
• Combinatorics
• Design theory resource server

10
What next?

• Questions for break out sessions
• What collaborative short term and long term
  opportunities can you see
• What can the departments do to support them
• What would be your number one priority for a
  lightweight IRC?