Research Directory

CISA undertakes basic and applied research and development in knowledge representation and reasoning. Through its Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute (AIAI) it works with others to deploy the technologies associated with this research.

• Alan Bundy - Understanding the processes of mathematical reasoning and discovery, including the processes of inference, learning, analogy, proof analysis and problem formalisation. In particular, the development of "proof plans".
• Jacques Fleuriot - Mechanical geometry theorem proving, mechanization of standard and nonstandard analysis, interactive and automatic proofs.
• Michael Fourman - Formal models of digital systems, system-design tools, proof assistants, categorical semantics, propositional planning.
• Igor Goryanin
• Ewan Klein - Computational approaches to natural language semantics, syntax, prosody and phonology; spoken language processing; communicating with mobile robots and embodied devices; the Semantic Web and ontologies.
• Dave Robertson - Design and deployment of multi-agent systems; large-scale, automated design and transformation of knowledge bases and problem solvers; agent-oriented software engineering.
• Michael Rovatsos
• Alan Smaill - Constructive logics and non-realist semantics; reflection principles and their application within automated reasoning systems; theorem proving in relation to programming.
• Austin Tate - Research, development and use of planning and activity management systems.
• Bonnie Webber - Question answering, bioinformatics, discourse, Natural Language semantics, knowledge representation and inference.

The ILSI was formed for work at the informatics/life sciences interface and will draw together and build on existing work including well-established activities in neuroinformatics, modelling,sensori-motor control and bio-mimetic robotics, together with computational systems biology, synthetic biology and bio-informatics.

• Douglas Armstrong - Bioinformatics, Neuroinformatics, Behaviour Genetics and Astrobiology and Gravitational Biology
• Vincent Danos - Foundational approaches to quantitative biology; syntaxes for representing, modelling, and understanding large protein networks; concurrent and stochastic systems.
• Jacques Fleuriot - Mechanical geometry theorem proving, mechanization of standard and nonstandard analysis, interactive and automatic proofs.
• Stephen Gilmore - Formal methods of program development, formal specifications, software engineering, concurrent systems.
• Igor Goryanin
• J. Michael Herrmann
• Jane Hillston - Stochastic process algebras, Markov processes and performance modelling.
• Gordon Plotkin - Applications of logic, especially: the denotational and operational semantics of programming languages; type-theory; domain-theoretic and categorical analyses of computation; general proof theory; the semantics of natural language; process calculi and computational biology.
• Subramanian Ramamoorthy
• Sethu Vijayakumar - Statistical Machine Learning, Robotics, Motor Control, Multimodal Sensory-Motor Integration and Computational Neuroscience.
• Barbara Webb - Perceptual systems for the control of behaviour, Robot models of animals. Simulation of neural circuits.
• Bonnie Webber - Question answering, bioinformatics, discourse, Natural Language semantics, knowledge representation and inference.

The Institute studies brain processes and artifical learning systems, theoretically and empirically, drawing on the disciplines of neuroscience, cognitive science, computer science, computational science, mathematics and statistics.

• Douglas Armstrong - Bioinformatics, Neuroinformatics, Behaviour Genetics and Astrobiology and Gravitational Biology
• Jim Bednar
• Chris Bishop - Neural networks, probabilistic graphical models.
• Nigel Goddard - Parallel computation, medical image interpretation.
• J. Michael Herrmann
• Jon Oberlander - Automatic discourse generation diagrammatic reasoning and communication individual differences in interaction
• Peggy Series
• Richard Shillcock - Psycholinguistics, cognitive neuropsychology and cognitive modelling.
• Mark Steedman - Computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, formal grammar, spoken intonation, statistical parsing, spoken language processing, animated conversational agents, computational musical analysis.
• Amos Storkey - Bayesian inference, probabilistic graphical models, machine learnig,Gaussian process models, probabilistic image models, image processing/computer vision techniques, scientific data mining, machine learning methods in astronomy, bioinformatics, probabilistic methods in functional magentic resonance imaging, e-science.
• Mark Van Rossum
• Chris Williams - Theoretical and practical issues in neural networks, statistical pattern recognition, probabilistic graphical models and computer vision. Prediction with Gaussian processes, image interpretation.
• David Willshaw - Modelling of the development and functioning of specific neural systems.

The Institute concerns basic research into the nature of communication among humans and between humans and machines using text, speech, and graphics, and the design of interactive dialog systems with applications including information retrieval and presentation, education, and instruction.

• Julian Bradfield - Modal and temporal logics, model-checking, concurrency, independence logics, descriptive complexity and set theory, UML and modelling languages.
• Rob Clark - Speech Synthesis and intonation.
• Michael Fourman - Formal models of digital systems, system-design tools, proof assistants, categorical semantics, propositional planning.
• Sharon Goldwater - Unsupervised learning of language (human language acquisition and machine learning), Bayesian models, cognitive modeling, morphological and phonological processing.
• Claire Grover - Discourse analysis, design environments.
• Frank Keller - Human sentence processing, cognitive modelling, statistical parsing, evaluation of NLP systems
• Simon King - new accoustic models such as Linear Dynamical Systems for speech recognition and automatically finding suitable units to model with them; integrating speech recognition with other tasks like information extraction or dialogue move detection; the use of articulatory information for both recognition and synthesis, including applications such as join cost calculation and join smoothing for unit selection synthesis;extending my earlier work on the use of phonological/accoustic/articulatory features for ASR; applying methodsdeveloped for speech processing to the singing voice.
• Ewan Klein - Computational approaches to natural language semantics, syntax, prosody and phonology; spoken language processing; communicating with mobile robots and embodied devices; the Semantic Web and ontologies.
• Philipp Koehn - Statistical machine translation, machine learning methods to natural language texts, large-scale text processing.
• Mirella Lapata
• Alex Lascarides - Computational semantics and pragmatics, probabilistic modelling of semantics, discourse processing and lexical processing.
• Victor Lavrenko
• John Lee - Multimodal dialogue, graphics in reasoning and learning, computing and cognition in design.
• Johanna Moore - Computational linguistics (natural language generation, dialogue, and discourse), intelligent systems for education, personalised information presentation, multi-modal interaction, user modeling, knowledge representation.
• Jon Oberlander - Automatic discourse generation diagrammatic reasoning and communication individual differences in interaction
• Miles Osborne - Machine Learning of Natural Language, Computational Linguistics.
• Helen Pain - Use of artificial intelligence in education: developing tools to support learning; managing tutorial skills, educational dialogue, user modelling; second language learning (ICALL); accessibility and special needs.
• Steve Renals
• Paul Schweizer - Philosophical logic, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind.
• Hiroshi Shimodaira - Trainable lifelike conversational agents, Acoustic models for automatic speech recognition, Handwriting recognition.
• Mark Steedman - Computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, formal grammar, spoken intonation, statistical parsing, spoken language processing, animated conversational agents, computational musical analysis.
• Henry Thompson - Markup languages (XML, SGML) and architectures (Standoff markup, Schema languages, pipelines); Web Architecture; Philosophy of the Web.
• Bonnie Webber - Question answering, bioinformatics, discourse, Natural Language semantics, knowledge representation and inference.

The ICSA is primarily concerned with the architecture and engineering of future computing systems. Its fundamental research aims are: to extend the understanding of the performance and scalability of existing computational systems; to improve the characteristics of current systems through innovations in algorithms, architectures, compilers, languages and protocols; to develop new and novel architectures and to develop new engineering methods by which future systems can be created and maintained.

• D. K. Arvind - Integration of Asynchronous Concurrent Systems, Parallel and Distributed Computation.
• Marcelo Cintra - Computer architecture, parallel and high-performance computing.
• Murray Cole - Parallel algorithms, skeletal parallel programming.
• Aris Efthymiou
• Bjoern Franke
• Paul Jackson - Mechanical theorem proving, reactive systems, linear temporal logic.
• Mahesh Marina - Wireless and mobile networking,performance evaluation, distributed systems and algorithms.
• Michael O'Boyle - Auto-parallelising compilers, adaptive compilation, linear program transformation.
• Nigel Topham - Design and analysis of high-performance computing systems, architecture simulation tools.

Linking computational action, perception, representation, transformation and generation processes to real or virtual worlds: statistical machine learning, computer vision, mobile and humanoid robotics, motor control, graphics and visualization.

• Bob Fisher - Automatics acquisition of models of: architecture, industrial parts and people, using 3D data. Range data acquisition and interpretation. Cognititve vision, including visual attention, shape model acquisition and feature extracted from log-polar images. 3D scene understanding. Computational vision.
• J. Michael Herrmann
• Taku Komura
• Subramanian Ramamoorthy
• Sethu Vijayakumar - Statistical Machine Learning, Robotics, Motor Control, Multimodal Sensory-Motor Integration and Computational Neuroscience.
• Barbara Webb - Perceptual systems for the control of behaviour, Robot models of animals. Simulation of neural circuits.

Achieving a foundational understanding of problems and issues arising in computation and communication through the development of appropriate and applicable formal models and mathematical theories.

• Stuart Anderson - Design and analysis of dependable systems, formal proof in systems development.
• David Aspinall - Computer security (particularly proof-carrying code), type systems for specification and programming languages, and proof development environments.
• Malcolm Atkinson
• Julian Bradfield - Modal and temporal logics, model-checking, concurrency, independence logics, descriptive complexity and set theory, UML and modelling languages.
• Peter Buneman - Databases: data models, query languages, semistructured data, data provenance, databases and programming languages. Programming languages: functional programming and type systems. Bioinformatics and scientific databases. Mathematical phylogeny.
• Amin Coja-Oghlan - Efficient algorithms, random discrete structures, exact analyses of heuristics, combinatorics.
• Mary Cryan - Randomized algorithms, especially algorithms for sampling and counting; learning theory; algorithms for computational biology.
• Vincent Danos - Foundational approaches to quantitative biology; syntaxes for representing, modelling, and understanding large protein networks; concurrent and stochastic systems.
• Charilaos Efthymiou - Discrete mathematics, random structures, algorithms for random constraints satisfaction and sampling algorithms.
• Kousha Etessami - Automated verification, model checking, modeling and analysis of reactive and concurrent systems, testing, temporal logic and automata, algorithms and computational complexity, applications of logic, databases.
• Wenfei Fan - Database theory and systems: data integration, data quality, query languages, database security, XML, distributed query processing, integrity constraints, and applications; Web services: models, verification, composition and aggregation; logic and computation.
• Michael Fourman - Formal models of digital systems, system-design tools, proof assistants, categorical semantics, propositional planning.
• Stephen Gilmore - Formal methods of program development, formal specifications, software engineering, concurrent systems.
• Jane Hillston - Stochastic process algebras, Markov processes and performance modelling.
• Paul Jackson - Mechanical theorem proving, reactive systems, linear temporal logic.
• Kyriakos Kalorkoti - Computational complexity, computer algebra, decision problems in group theory.
• Elham Kashefi - Models of quantum computing and their structural relations, exploring new applications, algorithms and cryptographic protocols for quantum information processing device.
• Leonid Libkin - Databases and Applications of logic in computer science.
• John Longley - Higher type computability, semantics of programming languages, program verification.
• Richard Mayr - Automated verification, automata and temporal logic, model-checking and semantic equivalence checking, formal verification of real-time and probabilistic systems, infinite-state Markov chains and stochastic games.
• Robin Milner - Rigorous foundations for mobile interactive systems, including process calculi such as CCS and the pi calculus, leading up to the generic model of bigraphs. This model aims to provide a platform for the mobile behaviour of ubiquitous and pervasive systems, and is part of the UK Grand Challenge for Computing Research, called "Ubiquitous Systems: Experience, Design and Science".
• Gordon Plotkin - Applications of logic, especially: the denotational and operational semantics of programming languages; type-theory; domain-theoretic and categorical analyses of computation; general proof theory; the semantics of natural language; process calculi and computational biology.
• Don Sannella - Algebraic specification and formal software development; correctness of modular systems; types and functional programming; resource certification for mobile code.
• Rahul Santhanam - Computational complexity theory, and applications to cryptography, game theory and learning theory; algorithms.
• Alex Simpson - Category theory, domain theory, logic, type theory.
• Alan Smaill - Constructive logics and non-realist semantics; reflection principles and their application within automated reasoning systems; theorem proving in relation to programming.
• Ian Stark - Semantics of computation, functional programming, concurrency, category theory and domain theory.
• Perdita Stevens - Software engineering, concurrency, logic, verification.
• Colin Stirling - Models of concurrent computation, modal and temporal logics, verification of program properties.
• Stratis Viglas - Database systems, query optimixation, data stream processing, database theory, XML, peer-to-peer networks.
• Philip Wadler - Programming languages, functional programming, type systems, web programming, query languages for databases, hybrid and gradual typing, Haskell, Erlang, Java, XML.