Research Areas in Computer Science

The faculty of the Department of Computer Science are actively engaged in research and teaching in two disciplines: Computer Science and Mathematics.  Within each of these disciplines, the Department has an extensive research activity in diverse subjects in core areas of the aforementioned disciplines. Faculty are heavily involved in all activities associated with research: scientific publications, instruction of research, reviewing and conference organizing, funded project coordination and participation.

KEY RESEARCH AREAS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning/Data Mining

Research activities in this area include an extensive publication record and project participation in evidential reasoning, Bayesian Networks, Neural Networks, Computer Vision and Image Understanding.  Faculty have been developing novel methodologies in the aforementioned areas, with machine learning applications on the Web, Social Media, Medical informatics and Geographic Information Systems. Finally, focus area include mining and learning from user generated data (Sentiment Analysis, Opinion Mining, Educational Data Mining, Computational Social Sciences, Behavior Pattern Mining) as well as Urban Data (Smart City data), Data Stream Mining and Multi-Label Learning.

Big Data Systems and Technologies

Faculty interests in this area include the research of fundamental concepts behind the design and development of scalable, self-adaptive and fault-tolerant indexing schemes for high-performance computing, distributed databases, and data-intensive processing engines to query and derive analytic insights from big data. To achieve economies of scale, satisfy low-latency requirements and preserve data privacy, faculty also examines how to deploy big data systems in distributed, mobile, cloud, and edge computing settings.

Mobile (Machine-to-Machine (M2M)) and Wearable Computing, Internet of Things (IoT) and Mobile Cloud Computing

Research deals with spatial and temporal scheduling applied in Mobile and Wireless systems as well as with the design and implementation of hybrid wireless testbed environments, including high performance Cloud and Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) systems, modeling and simulation of mobile computing environments and development of new ‘green’ mobility-based protocols for IoT-enabled ecosystems. Research is broadly concerned with Mobile Computing and Peer-to-Peer communication systems as well as with Mobile Cloud Computing systems. Research activities in these fields include a dense publication record (including Books and Issues in leading publishers in the area) and project participation in the fields of Internet of Things (IoT), Wearable devices and related infrastructures for Smart Ambient Systems.

Geometric Modeling (Computer Graphics)

This research includes Geometric Modeling, Spline methods, and Subdivision methods, for modelling articulated figures based on arbitrary topological meshes. The work has been supported by a number of research grants and has been published in various International Conference Proceedings and Journals.

Knowledge Management

The research interest in the area focuses on the successful implementation of knowledge management within a business.  This involves analyzing critical success factors; examining best practices and lessons learned; investigating, developing and promoting modern technologies, etc.  Special interest exists on the implementation of knowledge management in the educational sector.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Education

Research activities in the area involve the investigation, design, and implementation of ICTs in education. Consequently, the impact of ICTs on the learning activity is also examined.  Examples of ICTs examined include Web 2.0, 3.0; Social networking – communities; Online learning; Various educational applications.

Security, Trust and Privacy

The research activities in this area are multifold, and include formal trust and security management models in collaborative environments, applied security standards (ISO 27000 family), active defense mechanisms and data privacy frameworks. Novel research results have been published on the trust and security requirements for critical infrastructures and grid computing, the development of an integrated framework for active defenses using open source honeypots and the design and development principles of a GDPR-compliant privacy framework.

Middleware and Distributed Computing Systems

Research activities in this area include an extensive publication record and project participation in middleware such as status dissemination middleware and Grid computing middleware as well as in distributed systems in a variety of application domains such as medical data, active defense techniques (honeypots), cryptocurrency systems and data privacy. Prototypes of various systems in the areas above have been designed and developed, with a few being provided as open source.

KEY RESEARCH AREAS IN MATHEMATICS

Numerical Solution of Partial Differential Equations

Faculty working in this area focus on the development, analysis and implementation of Numerical Methods for solving Partial Differential Equations modeling processes in Physics, Fluid Dynamics and Engineering. There is an extensive publication and project participation record which includes Galerkin Spectral Methods, Finite Difference Methods and Finite Element Methods which are used to solve a variety of problems ranging from Convective Flows in Microgravity to Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in Nematic Liquid Crystals.

Solitons

Faculty develop various numerical methods and algorithms for the investigation of problems which possess solitary wave solutions. The numerical methods and the algorithms are robust and extremely efficient for problems of this kind. This allows researchers to investigate in detail several aspects of the physical properties of the model equations including soliton interactions.

Operator Theory and Applications

Research activities in the area of Operator Theory include a publication record on Reproducing kernels, Hilbert spaces and applications to Invariant Spaces of Function Spaces. Faculty has also published results on Hardy Classes and their Integral representation, using tools of Complex Analysis.

Estimation of Parameters in the Presence of Censored Data

Research activities in this area include publications and project participation in Medical Statistics such as survival of grafts in transplants and quality of life indices in Type II Diabetes patients.

Applied Statistical Modelling

Activities in this area involve presentation and participation in conferences and workshops and publications in academic journals and conference proceedings. The area of focus is on robust Generalized Linear Models, Measurements Error models and Monte Carlo Simulation models. Furthermore, links with the business world have been developed that allow such statistical models to be applied. Some areas of application are logistics, genetics and education.