NiSIS Members
Please find hereafter a list of all members supporting our project work actively.
By clicking on each line you can find a short institution profile
BAE Systems Advanced Technology Centre, Bristol
Our Advanced Information and Data Processing capabilities provide major contributions to the creation, acquisition and development of those strategically important information-processing technologies necessary to support the future success of BAE Systems. From sophisticated modelling of electromagnetic propagation in the earth's atmosphere to complex, automated assembly techniques, our expertise in information and data processing can be applied to a wide range of applications. BAE SYSTEMS is pursuing research that seeks to exploit the revolution in science and engineering that is anticipated to arise from the convergence of biology, physics, and computing.
Brian Bell is an engineer and psychologist with 25 years research and development experience in the aerospace industry. A Principal research scientist with experience in Human Factors as well as strong skills in image analysis, design tools and Bio-inspired computing methods
BioControl Jena GmbH, Germany
BCJ was established as a company in 1996 and has its expertise in biodata analysis, bioprocess optimization and control to support process stabilization, quality assurance and cost management. This expertise covers biotechnology and information technology alike. BCJ’s intelligent technologies include fuzzy logic, neural networks, machine learning, data mining and knowledge based systems to carry out biodata and bioprocess analysis and to provide optimization and control strategies as well as software. There is a strong focus on cluster and rule based methods but also on systems engineering approaches.
BCJ has been applying its intelligent technologies to a wide range of bioprocesses. This includes the optimization of fermentation processes in the pharmaceutical industry, the optimization of processes in environmental biotechnology, e.g. biological wastewater treatment, the optimization of processes in food biotechnology, e.g. in the brewing and dairy industry, and in particular applications in medicine, e.g. cancer diagnosis based on gene and protein expression data as well as hemodialysis treatment optimization based on clinical data. Current developments focus on bioartificial cell systems, liver failure therapy, experimental and clinical rheumatology, diabetes treatment and transplantation after-care. BCJ has been playing an active part within the Jena Centre for Bioinformatics (JCB) and the European Network on Intelligent Technologies (EUNITE). Within the JCB, the work of BCJ focuses on the development of bioinformatics methods to identify differences between healthy and pathological states of human cells. BCJ is developing methods for data mining to generate hypotheses about gene regulatory and metabolic networks, for their modelling, simulation and prediction based on gene and protein expression data obtained from patients and healthy subjects or from cell cultures.
Within EUNITE, BCJ has been co-initiator and co-organiser of two Task Forces (‘Intelligent Technologies for Gene Expression Based Individualized Medicine’ and ‘State-of-the-Art of Rule Based Systems’). Within the context of the former Task Force, BCJ has been organising two one-day EUNITE Workshops on ‘Intelligent Technologies for Gene Expression Based Individualized Medicine’ 2003 and 2004 in Jena and also a one-day Spring School on BioData Mining 2004 in Jena. BCJ has been contributing papers and talks to the former ESIT and to all EUNITE Annual Symposia since 2000.
BCJ’s commercial references and scientific papers (currently more than 50) can be found on BCJ’s home page: www.biocontrol-jena.com
Bournemouth University Higher Education Corporation, School of Design – Engineering and Computing, United Kingdom
Bournemouth University is an institution whose primary objective is provision of higher education in the South of United Kingdom. As a leading vocational university, it regards research as a vital component for underpinning a high-quality curriculum and for maximising the University's contribution to the regional and national economies.
The main applicants are based in the School of Design, Engineering and Computing which is one of the largest Schools in the University, with over 1600 undergraduate and 100 postgraduate students. The research activity of the School attracts funding from the Research Councils, EU and industry. Within the School of DEC, the research work most relevant to the area of NiSIS is primarily carried out within the Computational Intelligence Research Group (CIRG) but also in the Microelectronics and Multimedia Research Centre, Empirical Software Engineering and Human-Computer Systems Research Groups.
There is a considerable level of expertise in the School and CIRG spanning the domains of smart adaptive systems, evolutionary computation and complexity, artificial neural networks, fuzzy systems, machine learning, human computer interaction, digital signal processing, symbolic artificial intelligence, intelligent agents and knowledge-based systems. There are and have been a number of collaborative research projects with industrial partners utilising one or more of the intelligent technologies for tackling complex real world problems. The school members have organised a number of workshops and conferences. There is also an ongoing collaboration with a number of major research centres and universities both in UK and abroad.
University of Bristol, Dep. of Mechanical Engineering, United Kingdom
The Mechanical Engineering is a modern and forward-looking department, with balanced strengths in teaching and research. The Department is consistently highly placed in the UK by The Times Good University Guide. We were awarded the level of Excellent in the last Teaching Quality Assessment and graded 5A in the latest Research Assessment Exercise.
Prof Stuart C Burgess is Professor of Design & Nature and Head of the Department. His research interests are in efficiency modelling of structures and mechanisms; design and nature; structural efficiency of trees; insect flight mechanisms; roller chain wear and efficiency modelling; car transport efficiency.
BT Exact, Pervasive ICT Research Centre, United Kingdom
British Telecommunications plc is one of the world's leading providers of telecommunications services. With a market capitalisation of around £70 billion, it is one of the largest private sector companies in Europe. Its principal activities include local, long distance and international telecommunications services, mobile communications, Internet services and IT solutions. In the UK BT serves 28 million exchange lines and seven million mobile customers. International direct-dialled telephone service is available to more than 200 countries and other overseas territories - covering 99 per cent of the world's 800 million telephones. BT is expanding its presence overseas rapidly and has operations in more than 30 countries worldwide, with ventures in the Republic of Ireland, France, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Latin America and India. BT and AT&T have also created Concert, the leading global telecommunications company serving multi-national business customers, international carriers and Internet service providers worldwide. Concert provides customers with communications services on an unprecedented scale, scope and quality, with the industry’s broadest portfolio of voice, data and Internet services. Concert’s frame relay network reaches every major city in the United States and the United Kingdom, and extends to an additional 170 cities in 47 countries. Its global public network reaches directly 237 countries - more than any other existing network.
BT Exact based at Adastral Park is an internationally known research organisation which conducts short, medium and long term R&D for BT in a diverse range of topics such as network technologies and AI. A major function of research groups at BT Exact is to set up collaborative projects with academic institutions around the world to stimulate research in particular areas of interest to BT and participate in state of the art research projects. The Pervasive ICT Research Centre is a part of BT Labs that carries out world-class technology R&D programmes. The aims of the BT PICT centre are to create lightweight technologies and architectures that help to reduce the complexity and cost of ICT systems and to create collaboration and co-ordination tools to enable service delivery across diverse information resources. The group is currently working closely with a number of UK and international universities such as the Santa Fe institute, MIT and Imperial College on collaborative R&D projects.
Czech Technical University of Prague, Faculty of Electrical Engineering Dep. of Cybernetics, Czech Republic
The Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) founded in 1707, is the most important technical university and currently the leading technical university in the Czech Republic. At present it has approx. 15 000 students enrolled in engineering courses. This represents more than 10% of all university students in the Czech Republic and more than 30% of all students enrolled in engineering courses in this country. CTU with its 1300 members of academic staff is also one of the largest research institutions in the Czech Republic. Research is undertaken at CTU in all the basic disciplines taught at the university: i.e. in mathematics, physics, computer science, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, nuclear and physical engineering, architecture, transportation science, and in many interdisciplinary areas as well. The Department of Cybernetics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering (FEE) provides Master and postgraduate courses in technical cybernetics, artificial intelligence, computer-integrated manufacturing, computer vision, pattern recognition, and biomedical engineering. In 2000 the department became the Centre of Excellence – project MIRACLE (Machine Intelligence Research and Application Centre for Learning Excellence) supported by the European Commission under the 5 Framework programme.
The GERSTNER LABORATORY (GL) for Intelligent Decision Making and Control (http://cyber.felk.cvut.cz/gerstner/) is a vital part of the Department of Cybernetics at CTU. This research and technology transfer laboratory (36 academic staff and researchers, 34 Ph.D. students) was founded in 1996 as an extension of the Joint Research Centre of CTU Prague and FAW Linz (A) and supported by the “University Research Support Scheme” grant of the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic. The research focus covers the areas of Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Multi-Agent Systems, Machine Learning and System Diagnostics, Datawarehousing & Data Mining and Evolutionary Computing with main application areas in Intelligent Robotics, Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Software Testing and Software Diagnostics. Adaptive systems have been actively studied at the department since 1980 when the former department head, Prof. Emeritus Kotek, published the first Czech book on this topic.
ELITE European Laboratory for Intelligent Techniques Engineering, Germany
ELITE was founded in Aachen in 1991 under the guidance of Professor Zimmermann of Aachen Institute of Technology (RWTH). Intensive technology transfer via seminars, user meetings and consultancy services provides a basis for project work. The ELITE consultancy center offers assistance to companies and individuals wishing to get involved professionally with fuzzy technologies, neural networks, and machine learning, by providing the comprehensive literature database CITE, individual consultancy, in-house training sessions tailored to specific company needs, and by demonstrating tools, independently of any particular manufacturer. Since 1995 ELITE has hosted the ERUDIT Service Center and has been the Prime Contractor for the Network of Excellence EUNITE.
ENEA Energy New technologies and Environment Agency - ENE/SIST group
ENEA was founded in the early 60s to promote research on atomic energy but since 1988 its activities have been converted to alternative and renewable energy sources. Nowadays it is the main public Italian agency for applied research and it has more than 2000 employees.
The ENE-SIST group is focussed on the field of computational intelligence applied to the monitoring, optimisation and control of energy plants, buildings and urban traffic. This group has about 50 people working on these topics and worked in several EU projects. Morover we were a key node in the EUNITE network of excellence.
Stefano Pizzuti studied computer science at Rome's 1st University "La Sapienza" and since 1997 worked at ENEA as scientific consultant and software developer. His expertise is focussed on the area of chaos theory, A .I. and computational intelligence applied to modelling, optimising and controlling real complex processes (combustion, oil fields, urban traffic, incinerators, medicine, financial problems) in order to build (smart) adaptive systems. studied computer science at Rome's 1st University "La Sapienza" and since 1997 worked at ENEA as scientific consultant and software developer. His expertise is focussed on the area of chaos theory, A .I. and computational intelligence applied to modelling, optimising and controlling real complex processes (combustion, oil fields, urban traffic, incinerators, medicine, financial problems) in order to build (smart) adaptive systems. He took part in several EU projects and was the ENEA's responsible in the EUNITE NoE and he is author of dozens international publications. During his career he provided various private company with consultancy and worked also in different fields like networking, data bases and satellite remote sensing.
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Faculty of Economics, Dep. of Computer Science, Netherlands
Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands has a reputation of being a practically-oriented university, which provides studies in law, economics, management, social sciences and medicine. The Faculty of Economics functions as a knowledge-center for the Mainport Rotterdam, one of the largest ports in the world. The faculty is active in the renowned Tinbergen Institute for Economics, and conducts research covering European and world markets, finance and banking, trade and transport, logistics and distribution, information systems and information science. The Department of Computer Science specialises in intelligent information systems and simulation for business, finance and marketing. It provides the study "Informatics and Economics" for 150 students. Further, the department participates in the international Global E-commerce Masters (GEM) program in cooperation with seven different universities. The research program focuses on the applications of modern computer technology and intelligent systems in business and finance. The research efforts of the group fall under two headings.
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Intelligent business economics. Intelligent business economics group studies the benefits of intelligent technologies and intelligent information systems for logistics, finance, business and marketing. Knowledge discovery in large data sets, learning of exceptional patterns and problem solving using intelligent agents are several topics of interest. The techniques applied include neural networks, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms, logical analysis of data, decision tress, rough sets and association rules. Further, the group has experience with distributed problem solving techniques motivated by economic models and implemented in agent-based approaches.
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Business modelling and simulation. The group Modelling & Simulation focuses on discrete-event simulation. It applies simulation and advanced computer science techniques to solve a variety of problems in logistics, supply chain management and other complex systems. The members of the group have a background in mathematics, computer science and economics.
Degussa AG
With a clear focus on specialty chemistry, Degussa creates valuable and essential products. Our 45,000 employees worldwide help shape the future of our planet: with innovative products and essential solutions that can help your business take off. Degussa is a multinational corporation consistently aligned to high-yield specialty chemistry. It stands for innovation, reliability, excellence and intelligent linking. As its claim "creating essentials" expresses, its products and system solutions are valuable and indispensable for the success of its customers.
Degussa is characterized by speed, flexibility and flat hierarchies. Responsibility for operational business is held by five divisions –Construction Chemicals, Fine & Industrial Chemicals, Performance Materials, Coatings & Advanced Fillers, and Specialty Polymers – divided into 20 Business Units. Degussa is particularly committed to research and development as a means of creating a basis for profitable growth, and aims to step up its efforts still further in future. Over 2,900 of its employees work in R&D at over 40
research locations all over the world, and Degussa cooperates with universities in 500 cases as a means of swiftly introducing fundamental knowledge into the company. Some 20 percent of its sales are based on products and technologies developed over the past five years, whereby the Science to Business Center Nanotronics is its latest flagship in its research operations.
Monika Berendsen studied computer science. She started her career in 1981 at an energy supply company. After 5 years she got an employment at HÜLS AG im Marl, which merged in 1999 with Degussa to Degussa-Huels, and later on in 2001 with SKW Trostberg to the new DEGUSSA AG. After working in the computer science department where she was involved in devoloping and implementing laboratory information management systems and data analysis and data mining applications, she moved to the Process Technology and Engineering department, where she now is member of the group for Automation and Production Managment.
Faculdade de Ciencias da Universidade do Porto,
Departamento de Matemática Aplicada
Porto, Portugal
Investigation project main goals:
(within Research Group on Mathematical System Theory and Applications)
Prediction, Modeling and Control of Biomedical systems
Analysis and development of algorithms and control methods suitable for the control of physiological variables by continuous infusion;
Pharmacodynamical modeling and prediction applied to drug delivery systems.
Software developement: an advanced software tool for the automatic control of neuromuscular blockade, with a friendly graphic interface for personal computers, has been developed and extensively validated.
Hans-Knöll-Institut for Natural Products Research, Dep. for Applied Microbiology, Germany
The overall subject of the department AMB is the functional analysis of proteins and natural products in biological communication networks. This is achieved by integrating microbial, molecular, and bioinformational approaches.
To obtain proteins and natural products for functional analysis the department applies its strong expertise in microbial cultivation, especially in high cell density cultivation and computer aided fermentation. Knowledge in molecular biology and physiology of apathogenic strains of Escherichia coli is exploited to optimize the production of functional recombinant proteins of scientific interest.
Proteins are used as tools for screening protein-protein and protein-effector interactions to discover novel therapeutic targets as well as for metabolic engineering of microorganisms. The interaction of certain proteins and their effector molecules (small natural products or proteins) are studied both in vitro and in vivo using Escherichia coli. The dynamics of these interactions in regulatory networks under transient conditions, the biosynthesis of certain molecules (proteins, peptides, secondary metabolites) involved in these processes as well as the total transcriptome are investigated both by experimental and bioinformatics methods. The overall subject of the Bioinformatics group for Bioprocess Data Analysis, Modeling and Optimization is the Knowledge Discovery in BioCommunication Processes.
Goals: Fermentation Process Control & Optimization, Identification of Diagnostic Markers and Therapeutic Targets, Individualized Medicine: Diagnosis & Therapy
Methods: Data Mining, Rule-based Dynamic Modeling, Model-based Experimental Design, Model-based Optimal and Predictive Control
Staff: 19 researchers, 7 of whom are Postdocs, 5 are PhD students, 4 are Research Assistants. They are funded by government and industrial contracts.
INESC - Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores, Lisboa
INESC-ID is a not for profit, privately owned, institution, with the status of "utilidade pública", dedicated to advanced research and development in the domains of electronics, telecommunications and information technologies.
INESC-ID was created in 2000 and was awarded the status of "Laboratório Associado" in December of 2004. INESC-ID is owned by Instituto Superior Técnico (the faculty of Engineering in which Prof. Lemos is integrated as full professor. According to the organization of the Electrical Engineering and Computers Department ofIST, all professors are integrated in a research institute.) and by Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas and Computadores. It integrates more than 60 PhDs and 100 pos-graduation students working in one of the five main action lines:
Information and decision support systems
Communication networks and mobility
Virtual interactive environments
Embedded electronic systems
Computational processing of the Portuguese language
Prof. Lemos is integrated in the action line of Embedded electronic systems, where I coordinate a research group on Control of Dynamic Systems.
INESC-ID has three major sources of financing: national projects of R&D, funded by FCT (portuguese national research funding organisation - state owned); international projects of R&D, funded by the European Community; development projects funded directly by direct contracts between INESC-ID and national or international companies.
You can find more about INESC-ID at http://www.inesc-id.pt/.
King’s College London, Centre for Neural Networks
The King’s College Centre for Neural Networks has considerable experience and expertise coordinating and participating in multi-disciplinary projects. The Centre has recently participated (with S. Kasderidis and J. Taylor) in the FET DC ORESTEIA project and in a number of other EU and UK projects (totalling 4 projects). Besides ORESTEIA, the Centre is involved in the emotion recognition project IST ERMIS (with N Fragopanagos & J. Taylor), developing such recognition from speech and facial images. The Centre is also developing a LADBRAIN Architecture for simulating natural language processing (with Dr N Taylor & M Hartley). Other related research is concerned with developing detailed simulations of numerous psychological paradigms on attention and motor control. The Centre has been the coordinating node for the Neural Networks EU Network of Excellence. The main interests are in brain science, consciousness, attention, attention-based control, neurobiological modelling, artificial neural networks, time series analysis, intelligent agents, cognitive science, and hardware implementations (P-RAM neural chip and a new chip design system based on brain-based attention processing and concept formation).
Lancaster University
Lancaster University is one of the top ten UK research-led Universities (RAE 2001). The Department of Communication Systems (DCS) is hosted in the InfoLab21, which is an internationally leading ICT centre with more than 250 researchers.
The recently established Intelligent Systems Research Laboratory is equiped with (currently) 5 mobile robots and aims to be a centre of excellence in this area. Recent contracts with British Aerospace (BAE) Systems on UAV colision avoidance, Adaptive Route Planning and Adaptive Decision Making contribute to this aim. The Research Group is also funded by Nokia who donated the equipment for the so called Nokia Lab.
Osaka University, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology,
Our laboratory has been actively involved in the application of biologically-inspired methods to information networks since 2002. This work has been performed within the framework of the 21st Century Center of Excellence project "New Information Technologies for Building a Networked Symbiosis Environment" by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan (October 2002 – March 2008). In the line of this project, there has been close collaboration between researchers in the fields of information science, applied mathematics, and bioinformatics to find possible abstractions of behavioral models of various living organisms and apply them to new control methods for communication networks, especially for peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), and sensor networks. Within this project, several new biologically-inspired approaches have been proposed and published in conference and journal articles. These proposals include among others the synchronization of sensor networks using pulse-coupled oscillators based on flashing of fireflies or application of attractor selection to multi-path routing in overlay networks. Since July 2006, our laboratory at Osaka University is among the members of the follow-up project, titled "Special Coordination Funds for Promoting Science and Technology: Yuragi Project", which deals with modeling and analyzing the impact of noise and fluctuations on network control methods. By participating in the NiSIS project, we hope to exchange knowledge and current research ideas with European research institutes working in the field of nature-inspired networks.
Kenji Leibnitz, Specially Appointed Associate Professor, Osaka University, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology,
E-mail: leibnitz@ist.osaka-u.ac.jp
WWW: http://www.anarg.jp
Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg, Institute for Mechanic, Germany
The Otto von Guericke University was founded in 1993 and is therefore one of the youngest universities in Germany. It has evolved from the former Otto von Guericke University of Technology, the Teachers Training College and the Medical Academy. With 9 faculties and nearly 10000 students it is gaining in importance as a centre of teaching and research just like Magdeburg, the state capital of Sachsen-Anhalt. The Magdeburg University offers optional education in different subjects and fields of specialization. Correspondingly, there is a whole variety of possible combinations among the offers of the faculties The University is named after Otto von Guericke the renowned son of Magdeburg, who got famous far beyond Germany for his pioneering research on the vacuum.
The chair Technical Dynamic and Mechanics of vibrations, Institute of mechanic is engaged in the field of Soft Computing Methods since 1990. Starting with the development of fuzzy pattern recognition tools for the condition monitoring of rotating machinery the Group has developed many applications based on Soft Computing methods. Actually four research engineers work in this area. Other research topics are linear and non-linear vibrations and chaotic and instable behaviour of rotor systems. Members of the department published more then 100 papers, articles and contribution for books during the last 5 years. The team has a long standing collaboration with other partners in Europe.
Politecnico di Bari, Dep. Elettrotecnica ed Elettronica, Italy
The two laboratories "Computer Advanced Systems" and "Robotics" are doing research in the broad contexts of adaptive control, stochastic or randomized optimization algorithms, wireless and mobile sensor networks, distributed control, control of distributed systems and multi-agent-systems.
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany
Neurocomputing is concerned with fundamental problems of information processing that are solved by organisms and their nervous systems. Artificial autonomous systems are confronted with these same problems. Our goal is to understand the organizational principles through which nervous systems solve these problems and to form these principles into new solutions to problems of information processing in technical systems. We do this around the exemplary areas of artificial action (autonomous robotics), artificial perception (computer vision) and artificial cognition. Industrial applications are pursued in driver assistance systems, face recognition, medical engineering, and geophysical remote sensing. Our methods come primarily from the mathematical theory of neural networks, the theory of stochastic dynamical systems, and the theory of learning.
Christian Igel received his Diploma degree in computer science from the University of Dortmund, Germany, and his Doctoral degree from the Technical Faculty of the University of Bielefeld, Germany. He is junior professor for optimization of adaptive systems at the Institut f"ur Neuroinformatik and faculty member of the International Graduate School of Neuroscience at the Ruhr-Universit"at Bochum. His research focuses on machine learning and information processing in biological systems. He is a senior member of the IEEE.
Homepage/Publications: http://www.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/PEOPLE/igel
Schott AG, Dep. of Mathematical Simulation and Optimisation, Germany
In the department for Mathematical Simulation and Optimization different processes of glass manufacturing are simulated; processes can be optimized based on simulation results. We use rigourous (CFD) and empiric models based on process data. Concerning EUNITE, we posted the competition problem 2003 (data based modelling and prediction of glass quality) and delivered the corrsponding data. We are planning to continue this work within the EUNITE network.
Steinbeis Transfer Center R-Tech of Steinbeis Foundation, Germany
The Steinbeis Foundation StW (www.stw.de), was established in 1971. The Foundation offers global services in technology and knowledge transfer. It has subsidiaries, joint venture partners and project associates in 42 countries. The partner Steinbeis STC (Steinbeis Transfer Center Advanced Risk Technologies R-Tech, STC R-Tech) is one among currently over 500 centers of the Steinbeis Foundation. The Center is active in consulting, software development, analysis, project management, representation, auditing and education (courses, workshop, etc.). The main competence of the center is in the area of assessment, analysis and management of technical and business risks. Main methods used are those based expert appraisal (using standard and client-customized check-lists and inquiry forms), statistical analysis and data mining and, in the area of project management, structured project management (SPM) methods. Typical projects/references include BRM (Business Risk Management) projects, risk audits in project proposals for the European Union, different governments (Belgium, Norway, Japan) and industry, implementation of Data Mining and Data Warehouse (e.g. Daimler Chrysler Corporation), development of www-portals for BRM (e.g. insurance companies), in-house SPM courses (e.g. Microsoft, Belgium). Consulting in application of innovative "intelligent" technologies deals with:
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Neural networks
- Case-Based Reasoning
- Knowledge-based systems
- Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM)
StW/STC offers consulting, courses and training in English, French, German and other languages, in the following areas:
- Project Management
- Application of Intelligent Technologies
- IT Projects
- Technical and Technological Risks in Projects
- Identification and Ranking of Business Risks
- Project Rescue
- Consulting in Introduction of Risk Based Methods
- Evaluation of national and EU projects and proposals
The consulting and analysis services offered include (but are not limited) to the following areas:
- Safety & Risk
- Process Hazard Analysis
- Process Safety Management
- Risk Management Programs
- System Reliability
- Reliability Programs
- Risk-based Maintenance
- RAM Analysis
Knowledge Engineering Research Group (GREC), Technical University of Catalonia, Spain
The Knowledge Engineering Research Group (GREC) was founded in 1972. The main interest was to look for subjects on any matter enables to include Qualitative Reasoning. This leaded the research to the Connectionists and Learning Systems. Her legacy also included the thought that rules the group, i.e., that diversity enriches and empowers knowledge. The GREC research group is multidisciplinar. Members include experts on mathematics and artificial intelligence, but also on other very different areas like finances, psychology or biology whose knowledge complements the group knowledge. The main objective of GREC's researchers is the application of the research to real live problems in order to implement solutions. At present, we are working in robotics, process control, company analysis and maintainable development. GREC's researchers belong to different Universities and Research Centers, including Technical University of Catalonia (U.P.C.), Ramon Llull University (U.R.L.), the Laboratoire d'Analyse et d'Architecture des Systèmes of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (LAAS-CNRS) and the Spanish Center for Scientific Research (CSIC).
Cecilio Angulo obtained his BSc/MSc in Mathematics from the http://www.ub.edu/homeub/welcome.html University of Barcelona (1993) and a PhD in Sciences from the http://webesaii.upc.edu/ Department of Automatic Control of the "http://www.upc.edu/ Technical University of Catalonia (UPC)</a> (2001, with Dr. Andreu Catala). In September 1994, he was appointed Assistant Professor in the department of http://ima.udg.es/" Informatics and Applied Mathematics at "http://www.udg.edu/" University of Girona. In September 1998, he joined the http://webesaii.upc.edu/ Department of Automatic Control at UPC as an Assistant Professor. He carried out a predoc at a http://www.univ-perp.fr/see/rch/lp2a/"> LP2A - University de Perpignan (1999) with Dr. Monique Polit, and a postdoc at href="http://www.iiia.csic.es/ IIIA - CSIC (2004) with Dr. Pere Garcia. His professional position was changed into a Lecturer position in September 2004. His research interest include machine learning, intelligent control and biological cybernetics.
Technical University of Denmark, Department of Automation, Denmark
The Automation section of Oersted-DTU covers the main research area: Control and Supervision. Within the area, the work is focused on various topics, specifically fuzzy and neural network control. The staff consists of 14 full time researchers, 2 temporary researchers, 5 technical support, and 8 PhD students. The department is hosting approximately 10 midterm projects and 21 master thesis projects per year. More details at http://www.iau.dtu.dk.
Technical University of Lisbon
IDMEC is a non-profit private association founded by Instituto Superior Teccnico -Technical University of Lisbon (IST) and Faculdade de Engenharia - University of Porto (FEUP). The Institute has been created in April 1991 by the Departments of Mechanical Engineering of both IST and FEUP. A variable number of researchers from other Institutions collaborate with IDMEC. Consolidated in a technological structure, IDMEC is focused on specific and specialized actions within Mechanical Engineering. The mission of IDMEC is to develop a close cooperation and coordination of R&D activities between the two main national groups in the field of Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Management, create specialized and differentiated research teams with critical mass to undertake large projects both at national and international level, in particular the leadership of European Union programs. IDMEC is divided in Research Units supported in high technological Laboratories contributing to the development of specific aims. The IDMEC-IST branch has the following Research Centers: Center of Mechanical Design Center of Intelligent Systems Center of Advanced Production Technologies Center of Energy Technologies The subscribers of this proposal belong to the Center of Intelligent Systems of IDMEC-IST branch, which is led by Professor Jose da Costa. Its main research groups are: Systems and Control, and Robotics and Automation. The first group is devoted with theoretical and applied problems in control, while the second one has a stronger application bias. At the present moment, the center consists of 11 doctorate members, 1 post-doctoral researcher, 14 PhD students and 9 MSc students. Applications range over a wide variety of topics â¦" e.g. wave energy, transport, robotics, manufacturing, computer vision and UAVs. Exciting developments most relevant to the NiSIS include research in the following areas: identification of nonlinear state-space models using separable least-squares; robust model based predictive control of hybrid dynamical systems; robust finite horizon optimal control of piece-wise affine models; optimization problems in multivariable fuzzy predictive control; optimizing of logistic processes using a fuzzy decision making algorithm and meta-heuristics; development of fault detection and diagnosis algorithms using neural networks and fuzzy models.
Universidad de Salamanca, Computing and Control
The University of Salamanca is one of the oldest highter accademic institutions of Spain. It has arround 27000 students and over 3000 staf members. There are many groups researching in the areas of interest of NiSIS and in the gruoupe that I lead we work on the development of Nature-inspired Systems Modelling, Optimisation and Control, Technology Transfer, el-earning, etc. http://bisite.usal.es
Juan Manuel Corchado Rodrígu ez (PhD.) received a PhD. in Computer Science from the University of Salamanca in 1998 and a PhD. in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Paisley (UK) in 2000. At present he is Associate Professor, Director of the Biomedicine, Intelligent Systems and Educational Technology Group (http://bisite.usal.es) and Director of the MSc Programs in E-commerce of the University of Salamanca (Spain), previously he was Sub-director of the Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Informática of the University of Vigo (Spain, 1999-00) and Researcher at the University of Paisley (UK, 1995-98). He has been a research collaborator with the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (UK) since 1993. He has worked and/or leaded on several Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research projects sponsored by Spanish and European public and private Institutions and has supervised seven PhD. students. He is the co-author of over 130 books, book chapters, journal papers, technical reports, etc. published by organisations s uch us IEEE, IEE, ACM, AAAI, Springer Verlag, Elsevier, Morgan Kaufmann, etc, most of these present practical and theoretical achievements of Hybrid AI Systems. He has organised over 50 courses focused on different aspects of the software security, e-commerce, e-business and the developments of games for PCs and mobile devices. Juan M. Corchado has participate in the European Proyects Agent Link and Agent Cities, and international projects with NERC.
Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Autonomous Systems Laboratory
The Autonomous Systems Laboratory (www.aslab.org) is a research group of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid focused on the provision of technology for robust systems autonomy. While ASLab research fits mainstream bio-inspired systems research, in a sense, we do all our activities from an industrial-biased stance. We want to develop technology for autonomous systems in the real world, so they will free humans from supervising them once they're up and running. They will self-manage. ASLab Research Lines: -Integrated control architectures -Model-based control systems -Bio-inspired systems architecture -Cognitive control systems -Ontologies for autonomous systems -Development processes for complex controllers -Reusable control components -Real-time middleware and platforms for distributed control -Rettargetability of embedded control components -Technology of systems self-awareness -Philosophical implications of the technology of self-aware machines.
Ricardo Sanz is professor in Systems Engineering and Automatic Control. He has been doing research on intelligent control systems, AI, systems architecture and engineering processes for more than 15 years. Some recent projects he has coordinated: - COMPARE: A Component approach for real-time and embedded - AMS: Autonomous Modular Systems - ICEA: Integrating cognition, emotion and autonomy (ongoing) - C3: Cognitive Control Systems (ongoing)
www.aslab.org
Technical University of Madrid, Dep. of Artificial Intelligence, Spain
The Department of Artificial Intelligence (part of the Faculty of Computer Science of the Technical University of Madrid - UPM) includes 36 faculty members holding Ph.D. Degrees in Computer Science, Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, Decision Analysis and other fields, as well as several research assistants at the doctoral, graduate, and undergraduate levels.
There are several research groups and laboratories whose main areas of research are the following:
- Knowledge engineering (Know. acquisition, Reasoning, Industrial Diagnosis)
- Computer vision and robotics
- Neural networks and genetic algorithms
- Logical models
- Logic and constraint logic programming
- Natural language, intelligent man-machine interaction
- Information retrieval
- High performance implementation and parallel processing
- Decision analysis
- Medical informatics
The Department has participated in a large number of international and national research programmes and collaborations. In particular, in the last years the Department has contributed to several EU funded research projects. Research projects active during last years are supported in part by EU funds , by Spanish public funding agencies or by other Spanish private organisations and companies.
University of Genova, Dep. of Biophysical and Electronic Engineering, Italy
The Department of Biophysical and Electronic Engineering (DIBE) established at the University of Genoa in 1984, spurred on the initiative of a group of researchers active in: Electronics, Telecommunications, Bioengineering, Circuits and Systems, Electromagnetic Fields, Mathematical Physics. DIBE is a continuously evolving scientific technical and educational endeavor. Its members exploit the potential offered by research and teaching activities for developing applications within a well established framework of co-operation and contracts with the European Commission and, national and international Research Agencies, Industries and Institutions. DIBE's teaching and professional structure consists of "research groups" aimed at the study and solution of the different issues which arises in the analysis and application fields of Information Technology and Biophysical Engineering. Each group is composed by a teaching and research staff and external collaborators. The research groups are autonomous, but also frequent interactions occur for specific projects and achievements. For all the experimental and theoretical research activities, DIBE has an efficient network of laboratories, all of them used also for teaching purposes. DIBE is a crossroad, where demands from society meet scientific research, and positive stimuli in all directions occur. Research and teaching resources are applied to projects achieving great efficiency, making possible technology transfer and innovation at controlled costs. DIBE has been one of the first university departments to be authorized by the European Commission to charge cost statements on a full basis. The management philosophy, assumed by DIBE since its inception, has resulted in steady growth asserting DIBE in the European advanced technology scenario as an innovative and productive scientific-teaching institution.
Research activities: Applied Electromagnetics, Interation between electromagnetics fields and biological system; Optical signal processing; Electromagnetic modelling and numerical simulations at radio and microwave frequencies; Nonlinear media; Scalar and vector fields in the presence of noise; Electromagnetic compatibility; Electromagnetic techniques for detection, non-destructive tests and environment monitoring; Space Science and Engineering: The SSE group has been carrying out space research since the beginning of the 80's, contributing to the ASI and NASA programs in the following fields: space telecommunications, materials under microgravity conditions, prospection of geosphere. Mathematical Physics: Wave propagation. Application of the wave splitting technique to waves in inhomogeneous media; methods of solution through integral equations or through the reflection and transmission matrix. Mathematical models of continuous media. Models of mechanical and electromagnetic continua with dissipativity induced by memory effects. Neural and Bioelectronics Technologies: Solid-state microtransducer-based systems for biotechnological, pharmacological and enviromental applications; Automated instrumentation, data acquisition and signal processing for biomedical applications; Neuroinformatics and computational neuroscience; Design of array of microtransducers and multisensor-based integrated systems; Characterization of potenziometric and amperometric biosensors: automated measurements and computer simulations; Recording and simulation of the electrical activity of networks of neurons and brain tissue coupled to microtransducer arrays; Scanning Force Microscope and microcantilever based sensors. Natural and Artificial Nonlinear Complex Systems: Nonlinear circuit theory and applications: analysis and synthesis of cellular circuits, circuit modeling of hysteretic phenomena and of biological neurons, chaotic circuits; Molecular electronics: modelling of molecular assemblies for intelligent processing of information, nanoscale characterization of molecular devices, quantum information processing, self-assembling super-lattices for parallel processing, molecular dynamics; Bioelectromagnetics and bioacustics on molecular assemblies: therapeutic and diagnostic applications, biotechnologies, safety studies; Dinamics of financial systems. The Physical Structure of Perception and Computation: Models of natural perceptual systems neuroinformatics and visual neuroscience): recurrent models of spatio-temporal receptive fields; Design of artificial perceptual systems (machine vision): distributed architectures for texture analysis; stereo depth estimation; complex motion analysis; Neuromorphic microelectronic design (perceptual microsystems): CMOS visual sensors for early visual tasks.
University of Aberdeen, School of Engineering and Physical Sciences
The University of Aberdeen is a higher education institution in the UK. The University has a number of groups working in nature inspired computing. For example integration of neuro and evolutionary methods for Bio-informatic and financial data prediction. (This has resulted in a spin out company). Also applications of evolutionary computing in systems biology.
Dr George M. Coghill is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Aberdeen. He is leader of the Intelligent Data Analysis research group in Computing Science and joint co-ordinator of the Systems Biology research group in the University. Dr Coghill has worked on a number of European Projects and has held grants for both national and European projects. In particular he was a Director of the European Network of Excellence on Model-based Systems and Qualitative Reasoning (MONET). His main research interest is in Model-based Reasoning (with application to Systems Biology) and currently has projec ts on using evolutionary computation to learn fuzzy qualitative models of biological systems.
The University of Aveiro
The University of Aveiro (www.ua.pt) was created in 1973 and has around 11,000 students, ranging from areas as science and technology, management and health to arts, humanities and education.
Based at the Department of Mathematics, our Mathematical Systems Theory Group (MST) is part of the R&D Unit "Mathematics and Applications", which gathers more than 50 researchers in several fields of Pure and Applied Mathematics. The group itself has 11 researchers whose interests cover different aspects of mathematical systems and control theory, with special emphasis for control in biomedical applications.
Paula Rocha obtained a BSc in Mathematics at the University of Oporto in 1983 and a PhD in Mathematics and Natural Sciences – specialization in Systems and Control – at the University of Groningen, in 1990. She has been an Assistant Professor at the Deft University of Technology from 1990 till 1992 and moved in 1993 to the University of Aveiro, where she is a Full Professor in Mathematics (Systems and Control) since 2002. Her interests are in the areas of the behavioral approach to systems theory, multidimensional systems and control in biomedical applications.
University of Barcelona -CEMIC
CEMIC (acronym for the Catalan Centre of Microsystems Engineering for Instrumentation and Control) is part of the Catalan network for support to the Technologic Innovation. CEMIC is formed by two research groups, namely the Sistems for Instrumentation and Control (SiC) and Electronic Materials for Engineering (EME) of the Electronic Department of the University of Barcelona. CEMIC is composed by 21 senior researches and 75 other persons. The research of CEMIC is being developed in the following fields of expertise: Microelectronics, Communications and RF systems, Instrumentation, Electronic Devices and Sensors and Actuators. The main research lines are:
Digital communications systems and information processing
RF and microwaves
Distributed control and instrumentation
Design and modellization of microsystems
VLSI design
Signal Processing
Bioelectronics and microsystems for biomedicine
Structural characterization of materials for microelectronics
Nano technology
Sensors and Actuators
Advanced materials and devices for renewable energies
Powering of integrated circuits
Dr. A. Dieguez is the responsible of the VLSI design activity. The group has expertise in full custom analog design, mixed-signal and digital design. The design of SoC (Systems on Chip), embedded systems and reconfigurable systems is the main part of the more recent activity. Recent projects or projects in which the VLSI design group is nowadays participating are related to microrobotics and swarm behaviour and integration of medical devices and systems for exploration of the human beings.
The University of Bristol, Advanced Computing Research Centre, Dep. of Engineering Mathematics, United Kingdom
The University of Bristol (www.bris.ac.uk) is one of the leading research universities in the UK. Its research teams are known throughout the world for their outstanding creativity and record of discovery. Bristol is a member of the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN).
The Artificial Intelligence group (www.enm.bris.ac.uk/ai/) is internationally recognised for its work in developing and applying fuzzy and probabilistic methods to Artificial Intelligence problems and has been responsible for many developments in basic fuzzy logic research as well as implementing fuzzy knowledge-based systems in diverse areas of application. These include user modelling, information fusion based on metadata, region classification and change detection in images, face and mood recognition, classification of hand-written character sets, geological database prediction, and fuzzy control, in collaboration with a variety of funding partners including EPSRC, DERA, BT, CEC, British Airways and BAe Dynamics. The AI group has strong links with Computer Science (Machine Learning, Vision and Multimedia groups) and the ILRT Semantic Web research group.
The University of Bristol, The Machine Learning and Biological Computation Group:
The Machine Learning and Biological Computation Group is interested in general principles underlying learning and intelligence in machines and biological systems. Group members specialise in the following areas, but continuously seek to evaluate their work in the broader context:
* Machine Learning:
o Learning with higher-order logic and inductive logic programming
o Reinforcement learning and multiagent systems
o Kernels, distances and probabilistic models for structured data
o Collaborative data mining and meta-learning
o Network Learning
* Biological Models
o Computational neuroscience
o Decentralised decision making in social insects
* Bio-Inspired Computation
o Learning classifier systems
o Evolutionary algorithms
o Social insect algorithms
The group benefits from strong links with related research groups nationally and internationally, in computer science and other disciplines.
Its research has attracted funding from EPSRC, BBSRC, the European Union, and industry.
University of Brussels
The Computational Modelling Lab, COMO, is headed by Prof. Dr. Bernard Manderick and Prof. Dr. Ann Nowe, and has on average 10 PhD students. The research group focuses on the one hand on the modelling of natural phenomena, and on the other hand on developing algorithms for complex problem solving inspired by these natural phenomena. COMO has experience in a wide range of learning techniques such as Reinforcement Learning, Genetic Algorithms, Neural Networks, Support Vector Machines, Bayesian Networks, etc. The research at COMO is organized around two major research tracks:
1) Machine learning techniques for data mining applications
2) Evolution and Learning in multi-agent systems (MAS)
The second research track is of particular interest within the scope of NiSIS
In the evolutionary approach to MAS, we use biological metaphors like natural selection, co-evolution and evolutionary transitions to investigate problems like how collaborative or cooperative behaviour can emerge in a complex environment of interacting agents that compete for the limited available resources. In evolutionary biology, we often see cooperation at the group level although the individuals are competing for limited resources. This dilemma has been overcome several times in evolutionary transitions for instance from unicellular organisms to multi-cellular ones. Our goal here is to find the necessary and sufficient conditions under which cooperation can emerge between competing individuals and to use it in the context of MAS.
The University of Burgos - Applied Computational Research Group.
Grupo de Inteligencia Computacional Aplicada (GICAP)
http://www.ubu.es/investig/grupos/LSI-1.htm
GICAP was founded in Burgos (Spain) in 2003 under the guidance of Professor Emilio Corchado of Universidad of Burgos.
Our multidisciplinary research group (GICAP) at the University of Burgos is interested on research related to the field of Artificial Intelligence, and mainly in the fields of neural networks, data mining, projection methods and dimension reduction and visualization techniques. These techniques have been applied to different and interesting areas as Knowledge Management, Chemistry, Physics, Civil Engineering, Computer Network Security and so on. Our previous work has been published in international journals (as Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, Neurocomputing, IJPRAI, JETAI, etc) and also we have some contributions in relevant international conferences as ICANN, ESANN, NNSP, ICONIP, Industrial Conference on Data Mining, MICAI, IWANN, IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, IDEAL, CDVE and so on.
Person CVs: The GICAP research group is a multidisciplinary group compounded by computer experts, physicists, chemists, industrial organization engineers and so on. Emilio Corchado is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Burgos, Spain. He is also the Area Coordinator of the Vice-Rectorate of Research and International Relations of the mentioned University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and his undergraduate degree in Physics from University of Salamanca (Spain). His research interest centers on artificial neural networks, with a particular focus on exploratory projection pursuit and self-organising maps. He is the Head of the GICAP research group at the University of Burgos, Spain. He was a member of the Applied Computational Intelligence Research Unit at University of Paisley, United Kingdom. He is a member of some international scientific committees as: ICANN 2005, IDEAL 2004 and 2005, AC 2005, 2006, KES 2006 and so on. GICAP is member of some AI Spanish network, mainly related to Data Mining and Multi-agents Systems.
University of Cyprus, Department of Computer Science
The Networks Research Laboratory of the Department of Computer Science of the University of Cyprus performs generic research in networking issues, such as architectures, protocols, algorithms, and mechanisms that support the provision of Quality of Services in both fixed and wireless/mobile networks. The principal aim of our research is the performance enhancement of both fixed and wireless/mobile networks, with emphasis in the development of efficient and effective networking protocols and control t echniques. New networking architectures and techniques, as for example sensor networks and VANETS, are also being investigated. For understanding and investigating the features of theses solutions an extensive and in depth theoretical analysis is carried out, supported by the development of appropriate simulation models as well as pilot applications. Research issues under consideration include computational intelligence (Fuzzy Logic) based QoS aware congestion control, non-linear and adaptive control based congestion control, control structures and techniques and nature inspired techniques for effective control, network survivability, and optimization of resource allocation using computational intelligence. Various resource management algorithms, based on the IP protocol, enabling Quality of Service provisioning and differentiation while optimizing resource efficiency in fixed and 3rd Generation mobile communication networks and beyond (e.g., enhanced-UMTS, cellular IP) are investigated. Additionally security issues are also studied, especially in the context of adhoc and sensor networks.
Andreas Pitsillides received the B.Sc. (Hns) degree from University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and PhD from Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia, in 1980 and 1993 respectively. He is an Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus, and heads the Networks Research Laboratory (NetRL) (http://www.NetRL.cs.ucy.ac.cy). His research interests include fixed and mobile/wireless/adhoc/sensor networks, flow and congestion control, resource allocation and radio resource management, and Internet technologies and their application in Mobile e-Services, e.g. in Tele-Healthcare. He has a particular interest in adapting advanced control techniques, such as non-linear control theory and computational intelligence, to solve problems in computer networks.
University of Granada Models of Decision and Optimization (MODO) Research Group
University of Granada is one of the oldest universities in Spain with approximately 62.000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in twenty four faculties and technical schools, and one hundred and twelve departments and institutes of research, to which belong more than three thousand teachers and researchers. Because of the high quality of the research and teaching carried out, University of Granada is in the 10% top group of spanish universities.
Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (DECSAI) was founded in 1988, and it is the main Department in Granada devoted to Computer Science. It involves more than 90 researchers, faculty members, Ph. D. Students and technical and administrative staff. Research at DECSAI focuses on a wide area which ranges from theoretical computer science models to digital image analysis, and including other fields as for instance neural networks, bioinformatics, decision support systems, learning, bayesian networks, etc. A very important research line in DECSAI is devoted to develop Soft Computing-based models in machine intelligence. MODO (Models of Decision and Optimization) is the acronym of the research group dealing with this topic, and has developed a long list of national and international projects (ESPRIT, ALFA, JOULE, TEMPUS, ...) oriented to a variety of fields: Optimization, Decision-Making, Routing and Transporting, Control, Medical Applications, Genetic and Bioinspired Algorithms. A number of group members are involved in other former EU thematic networks (EvoNet, Erudit, EUNITE, AgentCities), being highly experienced on the topic considered under NiSIS framework as their curricula show.
University of Konstanz, Bioinformatics and Information Mining:
Prof. Michael Berthold, The Chair for Bioinformatics and Information Mining closely collaborates with the Steinbeis Transfer Zentrum for Information Mining Technology. Via this collaboration we offer consulting, research and software development in the fields of intelligent data analysis, machine learning, data mining, and interactive data exploration.
Our consulting services center on enabling our clients to understand and compare advanced technologies for the analysis and interactive exploration of large information and data sources. We offer comparative studies of state-of-the-art techniques, as well as assistance with the analysis of in-house data and information sources - to name but a few.
Research collaborations are targeted at problems that require cutting-edge research because even the most up-to-date methods fail. The newly developed algorithms are prototypically implemented in the context of an existing data exploration platform and can be transferred to production grade modules - in alliance with the Steinbeis Transfer Zentrum.
University of Konstanz, Chair of Information Processing
Prof. Daniel A. Keim is the Chair of Information Processing in the Computer Science Institute. His research group (DBVIS group) at the University of Konstanz focuses on research related to databases, data mining and visualization including High dimensional indexing, Visualization of geo-related datasets, Similarity search in 3D and geo-databases or visualization of large data sets.
In the past we have proposed many research publications in these areas containing InfoVis and IEEE journal publications. We were also member of the PANDA project funded by the European union.
University of La Laguna, GCI Intelligent Computation Group, Spain
The "Intelligent Computation Group" (GCI) of the University of La Laguna (Spain) was formally created in 2004 based on a previous joint work of several researchers conducted by Professor José Andrés Moreno Pérez. The group consists of 15 people. Among them there are several fixed and temporal PhD teachers of the University of La Laguna and doctoral students. The main research topics of the group are Metaheuristics, Data Mining and Logistics. The group has several papers published in international journals in these topics.
University of Leipzig - The Institute of Biochemistry
The Institute of Biochemistry has a strong engagement in liver research with respect to both, basic and applied research. Particular emphasis is on mathematical analysis and modelling of different aspects of liver function and regulation as reflected by the participation of the research team in the systems biology initiative of the German BMBF, Hepato Sys.
Prof. Dr. Rolf Gebhardt is currectly director of the Institute of Biochemistry, Medical Faculty of the University of Leipzig. He was trained as a mathematician and diplome biochemist at the Universities of Stuttgart and Tübingen and graduated (in biochemistry) in 1980. After a postdoctaral stay in the USA (Du ke University, NC; American Health Foundation, Valhalla) he habilitated in 1987 at the University of Tübingen. In 1997 he accepted a call on the chair of "general biochemistry" at the Medical Faculty of the University of Leipzig.
University of Maastricht, Dep. of Mathematics, Netherlands
The Universiteit Maastricht (UM), founded in 1976, is the youngest university in the Netherlands and growing rapidly. Presently, the UM has over 11,500 students and 3,500 staff, organized in seven faculties and a University College. The Universiteit Maastricht is internationally known for its unique education system: problem-based learning. The UM has a strong international orientation and pursues active interaction with the (Eu)region. This has led to academic cooperation with the nearby universities RWTH of Aachen (DE) and UL of Liege (BE\Walonie) in the ALMA organization (Aachen-Liege-Maastricht), and in the Trans-national University Limburg (TUL) together with the University of Diepenbeek\Hasselt BE\Vlaanderen).
The research profile of the UM is marked by a predominantly multidisciplinary approach of selected research themes. The areas of genomics and proteomics act as foci for the research in the UM. With the start of Genomics Centre in 2002, the UM has the availability of state of the art microarray technology. Similarly, with the new school for Molecular Life Sciences, a start has been made with the expansion into the rapidly growing areas of Bioinformatics and Computational Genomics. The school is focused on the relationship between molecular sciences, health, and mathematical and computational sciences.
The department of Mathematics of the UM, together with the department of Computer Sciences, form the school of Knowledge Technology. The education offered by this school emerged as the best in the national educational review on "Artificial Intelligence". The section Systems Theory of the department of Mathematics is, and has been, active in several national and international research programmes, such as:
Brite/Euram BE-7686 PSYCHO 1993-1996
Brite/Euram BE-3180 IntelPadPrint 1996-2000
Franco-Dutch ‘van Gogh’ research framework: cooperation with INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis (France) on the area of Systems Theory. 1998-2002
Biosense project from the Royal Academy of Sciences (KNAW/STW) in the area of biotechnology and systems theory. 2004-2008
The section Systems Theory of the department of Mathematics is associated to the Royal Academy of Sciences’ (KNAW) foundation ‘Dutch Institute for Systems and Control’ (DISC). The systems theory group works closely together with the department of Genetics and Cardiology in modelling and identification of microscopic biophysical and biochemical processes.
University of Málaga, Spain:
Our group at the University of Málaga (SPAIN) worked from 1990 progressively in the fields of genetic algorithms, exact techniques, hybrids, metaheuristics and their real world applications. We are about 15 people interacting with researchers in different domains to achieve new software tools and solving hard problems that have merited publications in JCR indexed journals, internatinonal conferences and also books. We hold numerous links to european and international groups that usually send and receive researchers in collaboration with us. Many active projects are running in the goups linked to the interests of NiSIS (http://neo.lcc.uma.es).
Dr. Enrique Alba is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Málaga, Spain. He got his Ph.D. degree on designing and analyzing parallel and distributed genetic algorithms. His current research interests involve the design and application of evolutionary algorithms, neural networks, and other bio-inspired systems to real problems including telecommunications, combinatorial optimization, and bioinformatics. The main focus of all his work is on parallelism. Part of his ongoing research lies in the fields of ad hoc metropolitan network optimization, optimal design of GSM networks, logistics, vehicle routing, natural language tagging, software engineering for optimization tools, DNA fragment assembly, gene microarrays, cutting/packing, software testing and validation, and in general combinatorial problems lying in the base of real world problems. New fields like multiobjective techniques, grid/P2P/Internet platforms, dynamic optimization of problems whose definition change in time, and heterogeneous algorithms are dealt with as part both of basic and applied research. As to the techniques, Dr. Alba and his group are dealing mainly with metaheuristics, either bio-inspired or not, and also hybridization with other (maybe exact) methods. In concrete, genetic algorithms, particle swarm, ant colonies, simulated annealing, branch and bound, and related solvers are used. Dr. Alba has published three books on metaheuristics and bio-inspired techniques, more than 30 papers in impact journals, and around 80 conference papers. He has coordinated several national and international research projects in the past. Some of the active projects are OPLINK (http://oplink.lcc.uma.es), INRIA-PERFOM, and an European CELTIC project (CARLINK). Dr. Alba holds collaborations (join publications, visits and exchanges) with more than 20 international universities and labs, and his research in Málaga is also provoking industrial transferences to several companies. Finally, Dr. Alba works in the program committee of well known important conferences in several fields, like GECCO, IEEE CEC, PPSN, EvoCOP, IPDPS and many more, as well has he organizes international events like NIDISC or IEEE/ACM MSWiM. He also works as reviewer for IEE Transactions (on EC, PDS, Education, SMC), JPDC, PARCO, Journal of Heuristics, JMMA, EJOR, Computer Communications, etc. Besides, Dr. Alba works in the editorial board of several international journals related to optimization, telecommunications and parallel systems.
The University of Murcia
The denominated Intelligent Systems group (IS) is a group of interest and research within the department of Communications and Information Engineering, of the University of Murcia (Spain). This group IS, consists at the moment of 25 investigators dedicated to research interest areas of "cooperative intelligent systems", "sensorial processing and data fusion", "optimization and data mining", "learning", among others. The group is making part of its work in the subject of Data Technology, but concretely, in the area of Data Mining. The obtained results have been published in journal of international prestige and diverse research projects are being made, whose objectives are the application of data mining to real cases. This group belongs to the University of Murcia (Spain). This University distributes 64 degrees, 78 courses of post-degree, 292 courses of educative promotion and 51 doctorate programs. This University has 28,507 students of first and second cycle, 1,266 students registered in doctorate programs and 1,919 teachers (assistant professor, associate professor and professor). In this University there are 891 Eramus students, and 300 students of this University are Eramus students in other European Universities. Finally, to emphasize that it has 4,911students in practices in companies
University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences Vienna, Dep. of Biotechnology, Austria
The group of Karl Bayer, Institute of Applied Microbiology at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Science in Vienna (BOKU), work in close co-operation with the Austrian Center of Biopharmaceutical Technology (ACBT) (www.acbt.at), a competence centre in the field of bioprocess development for biopharmaceuticals production. The group of Karl Bayer focuses on bioprocess development for the production of recombinant proteins, whereby the main objectives are to gain maximal exploitation of the cell factory by optimal control of the flux ratios between the biosynthesis of host cell proteins and recombinant proteins. Thereby particular emphasis is placed on the analysis of metabolic regulatory networks to discover key analytes of metabolic state and on the application of advanced on-line and off-line monitoring and modelling techniques. for the development of bioprocess control strategies. This includes two fully equipped computer controlled lab scale bioreactors (7 and 20 liters), an in-situ fluorescence multi-wavelength sensor, a capacitance biomass monitor and off-gas analysis devices. The final goal of current projects is to adapt and modify host/vector systems to comply with bioprocess requirements using state of the art molecular biology techniques and to develop tools for optimal tuning of recombinant gene expression. Recently reporter concepts for stress monitoring of bacterial hosts, regulation of gene dosage (plasmid copy number) and advanced vector design have been established and successfully implemented. Standard analytical equipment for metabolite, recombinant protein and gene dosage analysis, such as HPLC, HPCE and immune-chemistry are available. Recently equipment for transcriptome analysis (Agilent microarray reader and RT-PCR) and proteome analysis by standard and differential 2-D-electrophoresis (Typhoon) has become available. Access to Maldi TOF-mass spectrometry is provided through collaboration. This broad range of measurement equipment is useful for the study of genome and proteome wide impact of stress response phenomena due to recombinant protein production in the E. coli model system.
Computational Systems Biology Group
As more is discovered about the structure, organisation and behaviour of cells, tissues, organisms and communities of biological systems the need to understand how all of these systems and phenomena work and interact in a holistic fashion becomes more urgent.
The promise of being able to use the power of computers and of recent computational and mathematical modelling techniques to understand and predict important aspects of the behaviour of biological systems is an exciting and vitally important opportunity for medicine and biology.
The Computational Biology Group is at the fore front of this endeavour and is working extremely closely with experimental biologists and clinicians in building realistic and useful models of biological phenomena from the molecular level, to the cellular, tissue, organismal and social levels. The work is founded on an integrated approach to several key areas.
University of Nottingham, School of Computer Science and IT, United Kingdom
The Automated Scheduling, Optimisation and Planning (ASAP) research group is one of four main research groupings within the School of Computer Science and IT at the University of Nottingham (http://www.asap.cs.nott.ac.uk). The School received a grade 5 in the UK Government's Research Assessment Exercise, 2001. ASAP has been carrying out innovative research into the development and investigation of meta-heuristic techniques and hybridisations to a wide range of optimisation problems (particularly scheduling and timetabling) for the last 10 years. It has been at the forefront of research in the area during this period and is internationally recognised within the optimisation and scheduling community for its work. It is funded from a variety of national sources including EPSRC, ESRC, BBSRC, DTI and commercial organisations. The group currently has 5 members of academic staff, 8 research assistants, 23 PhD students and two secretaries. ASAP's role within the ADCOMS network will be co-ordinated within the Inter-disciplinary Optimisation Laboratory (IOL) at the University of Nottingham. The lab is based on the brand new £50M Jubilee Campus and provides a supportive framework and environment in which to build on existing collaborations and to develop exciting research directions at the interface of several disciplines. Its main aim is to provide a focus for a variety of multi-disciplinary themes that are being carried out by the ASAP Group in conjunction with researchers from other disciplines within the University, including Chemistry, Biology and Psychology (http://www.asap.cs.nott.ac.uk/iol).
University of Oulu, Control Engineering Laboratory, Finland
The Control Engineering Laboratory is working in the field of Process Control. The latest research has been directed to the application of Adaptive Intelligent Methods in process industries and on several application areas: process control, fault diagnosis, process design, managerial decision making, and production planning and scheduling. Applications are in pulp and paper, metallurgical, chemical, biochemical and also lately in electronics industries. On average 25 researchers have been employed in research projects. Own technology has been developed and Linguistic Equation approach provides a consistent method for developing control and expert systems for complex industrial processes. Laboratory has on-going co-operation with several research groups in Finland. In managerial decision making and production scheduling, research has also been done in co-operation with the Decision Technologies Group, UMIST, England. Laboratory has been an active member in two early ESPRIT working groups: FALCON - Fuzzy Algorithms for Control, and SiE - Simulation in Europe. It was actively involved in ERUDIT Network of Excellence (Membership in the Steering Committee) and in EUNITE Network of Excellence. Laboratory has participated in TMR and IHP projects co-ordinated by the Plataforma Solar de Almeria. Regular student/researcher exchange programs continue between several universities in Europe.
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