UNIVERSITY OF WALES, ABERYSTWYTH

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

Vacant Post: Further Particulars

The Town and the University

Aberystwyth is a small town on the west coast of Wales, set in rural surroundings and within easy reach of the Pembrokeshire Coast and Snowdonia National Parks. It is a cultural and educational centre: in addition to the University, there are the National Library of Wales (a major copyright library) and the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research, a research establishment of international importance. A rail service operated by modern 'Sprinter' trains connects Aberystwyth with the Inter City rail network at Shrewsbury.

The University of Wales at Aberystwyth was founded in 1872 and is the oldest constituent institution of the federal University of Wales. The University of Wales as a whole has some 40,000 students, about 6,000 of whom are at Aberystwyth. Some departments still occupy the original buildings on the sea front, but most, including Computer Science, are situated on the modern Penglais campus, a pleasant site overlooking the town and Cardigan Bay. As well as the academic buildings, the campus has extensive student accommodation and excellent sports and leisure facilities, including a theatre and concert hall.

The Department

The Computer Science Department at Aberystwyth was founded in 1970; it is a particularly successful department, both in teaching and research. The department has about 350 full time equivalent students, including 20 research students, and some 40 teaching, research and support staff. The department continues to grow steadily and provides a lively working environment. It has strong links with industry both in the UK and on continental Europe. BSc, BEng, MEng and MSc (conversion) schemes are offered, over a range of options.

The department’s commitment to research is reflected in low teaching loads, averaging between six and seven contact hours per week, including project supervision. The overheads from the department’s substantial research grant income allow it to provide excellent support, both administrative and financial, to its academic staff.

Research

The research strength of the department is indicated by our attainment of 4A in the recent research assessment exercise. Almost all of the department's research is carried out in collaboration with industry. In recognition of the quality and industrial relevance of our work we are designated a 'Centre of Expertise' by the Welsh Development Agency, who promote our work as the "Centre for Advanced Software and Intelligent Systems", to reflect a theme that underlies most of our research. Members of the department hold current research grants, some of which are held jointly with collaborating departments, totalling around £2m. The main research activities are represented currently by three groups: The Model Based Systems Group is primarily concerned with the development and use of Model Based Reasoning but also has an interest in Case Based Reasoning. As well as an extensive portfolio of externally funded project-based work, the group coordinates the European Network of Excellence in Model Based Systems and Qualitative Reasoning (MONET). Theoretical issues that underpin the group’s work include: properties of models, mixing models in a single domain, methodologies for model-based diagnosis, and model switching. Much of the group’s work is undertaken in collaboration with leading automotive manufacturers and covers the full spectrum from innovative research through to the delivery of software systems for industrial use. The group has a world lead in qualitative reasoning for the analysis of electrical designs for automotive applications.

The Computational Biology Group is concerned with developing computing and artificial intelligence techniques for application to important biological problems and seeks to do innovative research in both computer and biological science. An essential component of our success in this multidisciplinary field is our close collaboration with the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, and with others in academia, particularly Prof. Douglas Kell's Quantitative Biology and Analytical Biotechnology Group in the Institute of Biological Sciences (IBS) here at Aberystwyth and the ILP Group at the University of Oxford. Main interests are machine learning and chemometrics for data mining and data interpretation using techniques that include Inductive Logic Programming (ILP), model based reasoning, evolutionary computing, artificial neural networks and multivariate statistics. Applications of the work include drug design, protein secondary structure prediction, functional genomics, along with spectral interpretation for process monitoring, titre improvement, and organism identification. The group has pioneered important techniques in these areas and is a leader in the application of data mining to functional genomics.

The Intelligent Robotics Group concentrates on intelligent software techniques for solving problems relevant to autonomous robotics for industrial and scientific applications.  Important contributions have also been made in the areas of sensing technology and software architectures. Current areas of activity are in autonomous operation in mobile robots, aerial robots for planetary exploration, autonomous grasping for product handling and novel high-efficiency algorithms for robot dynamics. Much of the current work draws some inspiration from the ‘behaviour-based’ approach to robotics system design that can achieve autonomous synthesis of complex tasks.  In autonomous grasping the aim is to remove the need for explicit programming in the use of robots for handling previously unseen product types and for accommodating natural variation between product items in food-related industries.

Apart from the normal routes for obtaining project funding, U.W. Aberystwyth operates a research fund of some £100,000 per annum. Staff can apply for grants from this fund to support small projects or as pump-priming to support the development of a full scale research proposal. The department has been very successful in obtaining funding from this source and two of its major research projects have their origins in pump-priming finance obtained in this way.

Department Computing Facilities

The department’s computing facilities consist of  a cluster of central servers, including a 20-processor Sun 6500 Enterprise Server funded under the JREI research equipment initiative, over 150 Sun workstations, 70 PCs and Macintoshes.  A parallel processing Linux-based Beowulf cluster with 65 nodes provides specialist power for machine learning research.  Teaching facilities are provided in three laboratories equipped with Suns and PCsthat are used only by undergraduates taking honours in the department, and by our taught postgraduates. Aberystwyth has high bandwidth connection to JANET and Internet access from virtually all machines.  A comprehensive portfolio of software supports teaching and research.  A well equipped Digital Systems Laboratory supports hardware teaching and hardware-oriented research.

The Computer Science Department enjoys good relations with the University’s Information Services, with whose computing section it shares a building. The section runs a campus network, to which the Computer Science network is connected, with a large number of public work stations rooms equipped with modern PCs and a cluster of servers at the centre.

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Jem Rowland.  9 March 2000