With strong encouragement from the College, the department has been steadily increasing its first year intake, with the result that we have almost 100 first year honours students and a total of nearly 250 ftes all told. This means that the department has more than doubled in size in the past six years. One might wish that this increase had been matched by a comparable increase in teaching staff but, in a world of efficiency gains and a declining unit of resource, this cannot be. Nevertheless, our success in winning substantial support from the Welsh Funding Council's Research Quality Initiative has cushioned the effect of this massive increase in student numbers and has even allowed us to increase the level of our research activity.
We were sorry to say goodbye to Dr Andrew Ormsby, who has spent all but three of the last 16 years in the department, first as an undergraduate and then, after a spell in industry, as a research associate and then lecturer. While his reasons for leaving were personal and domestic rather than academic, his success in being appointed to a lectureship at Sussex, a grade five research department, reflects well both on him and on this department.
Our regular success in the Welsh Development Agency's competition for the best final year projects continued in 1995; we congratulate Brian Seymour on being awarded one of the six prizes - as well as being the first student to graduate from the department with a BEng in Software Engineering.
October 1995 saw the first cohort of students, eight in total, enter the final year of the MEng degree scheme in Software Engineering. Many of our most able students have elected to follow this degree scheme so the effect in 1995 was to cut both the number of students graduating and the proportion of good degrees; this will be balanced by a corresponding increase in 1996. Nevertheless, we were pleased to be able to award a first to Adrian Murray.
The past year has also seen the first students graduating with a BSc in Business Information Systems. This is a three way collaboration, under the aegis of the University of Wales Validation Unit, involving Informatics College in Singapore, and the Computer Science departments in Aberystwyth and Swansea. This department and the Swansea department each teach a final year course in Singapore and the students come to Aberystwyth or Swansea for six weeks to complete their project and, if they wish, to graduate in the ceremony here. Eleven students from the courses graduated in Aberystwyth last year.
It is now 20 years since the first students went from the department to spend a year working in industry before returning to College for their final year. At that stage it was completely voluntary; it is now a requirement for the degree schemes in Software Engineering and in Computer Science with a European Language, while remaining an option for all other schemes. This year a record total of 53 students are spending a year out. Many companies take students from us year after year and profess themselves very satisfied with the quality of the students and the education they receive.
Members of staff are external examiners for taught courses at the Open University and in the universities of Bournemouth, Bristol and York.
The department's list of publications for 1995 again shows the wide range of areas to which our research is applied, from aluminium die casting to fault diagnosis in the automotive industry, from photosynthesis to telecommunications. The interdisciplinary research undertaken by Jem Rowland in collaboration with Douglas Kell of the Institute of Biological Sciences has continued to attract substantial funding from both the BBSRC and industry. And we are starting to develop research in a field loosely known as 'professional issues', that is, the interaction between technological developments in computing and the social, legal, financial and commercial context in which they operate. It is particularly pleasing that one paper in this area, the paper by Rowland and Rowland on professional competence in safety-related software engineering, has been nominated for the Charles Babbage Premium of the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
In order to recognise the considerable debt that the department's research owes to its PhD students, we have established two prizes to be awarded annually, one for the best thesis submitted and approved for the award of the PhD and one for the best thesis proposal. These prizes are funded in part by the royalties from a new book edited by Mark Lee and Jem Rowland. The book documents the ten years of pioneering research into automated small batch assembly systems, carried out in the department. Eight past and present members of the department have contributed chapters to the book and have agreed to donate all royalties to the prize fund.
The department has always regarded technology transfer as an important part of its mission; we are keen that the results of our research work should be used in industry. In this respect, 1995 has been a particularly good year with industry recognising the relevance of our work by contributing significant sums of money - some £130,000 in all - to further our research and to develop it into a form that is readily usable in industry.
A rather different approach to technology transfer was shown by the two day workshop on Internet protocols run by the Telematics group in September for several local organisations including Powys Telecentres, Powys County Council, and the Wales Information Network.
Some half a dozen members of the academic staff have contributed new or revised definitions for the forthcoming fourth edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Computing. Members of the department have acted as external examiners for research degrees in Heriot Watt University and the Open University, and in the universities of Birmingham, Southampton and York.
Barnes, D.P. and Hardy, N.W. 'Knowledge-based Robot Supervision.' In: Lee, M H and Rowland, J J (eds), Intelligent Assembly Systems. World Scientific, 1995. pp1-43
Bott, M F, Coleman, J A, Eaton, J,and Rowland, D, Professional Issues in Software Engineering, 2nd edition. Pitman, 1995. pp xvi+304.
Cooke, D E, and Hunt J E, Modelling photosynthesis using a qualitative reasoning system for plants. In: Proceedings International Conference on Information Processing in Cells and Tissues. September, 1995.
Cooke, D E, and Hunt J E, Recognising promoter sequences using an artificial immune system. In:Proceedings Intelligent Systems in Molecular Biology ISMB'95. AAAI Press.
Fuell, H A, and Tedd, M D, An Experimental Analysis of JANET web servers. In: Proceedings of JANET Networkshop 23, pp226-237. Atlas Centre, Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 0QX: UKERNA, for The JNT Association, 1995.
Gautier, R J, Loftus, C W, Sherratt, E M, and Thomas, L A, Tool integration: experiences and directions. In: Proceedings 17th International Conference on Software Engineering ICSE-17. 1995
Gautier, R J, Loftus, C W, Sherratt, E M, and Thomas, L A, Tool integration : Experiences from the BOOST project. In:Proceedings of Software Engineering Environments '95 (SEE '95), pp171-183. IEEE, Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, 1995.
Hardy, N W, Rowland, J J and Nicholls, H R, Supervisory and Sensing Software for an Integrated Flexible Assembly Machine. In: Lee, M H and Rowland, J J (eds), Intelligent Assembly Systems, pp181-207. World Scientific, 1995.
Harris, T H, King, C M, Price, D E and Tedd, M D, The implications of ISDN for network security. In: Proceedings of the UK UNIX Users Group Winter Conference 1995.
Hunt, J E, Case memory and retrieval based on the immune system. In:Proceedings of the First International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning, 1995.
Hunt, J E, Evolutionary case-based design. In: Proceedings 1st UK Case-Based Reasoning Workshop, 1995.
Hunt, J E, MACE : A system for the construction of functional models using CBR. Expert Systems With Applications, 9(4), 1995.
Hunt, J E, Testing Control Software using a Genetic Algorithm. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 8(6), 1995.
Hunt, J E, Toward an intelligent architectural design assistant. Expert Systems Journal, 12(3), 1995.
Hunt, J E and Cooke, D E, An adaptive, distributed learning system, based on the immune system. In: Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics 1995.
Hunt, J E, Pugh, D R and Price, C J, Failure mode effects analysis: A practical application of functional modelling. Applied Artificial Intelligence, 9(1), pp33-44, 1995.
Joseph, R M and Rowland, J J, Fusing Diverse Sensor Data by Processing Abstract Images. In: Rembold, U., Dillmann, R., Hertzberger, L. O. and Kanade, T. (eds), Proc. 4th International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems, Karlsruhe, Germany. IOS Press, Amsterdam, pp254-261, 1995.
Khodadadeh, S, Cooke, J R and Holstein, H, Ascending and descending a step by Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Patients. In: Proceedings of Second International Symposium on Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomechanical Engineering, 1995.
King, C M and Pyle, I C, An architecture for the modelling and measurement of service provision in distributed systems. In: Proceedings of 11th UK Performance Engineering Workshop. Liverpool John Moores University, 1995.
King, C M and Pyle, I C, Using interposition to improve reliability and flexibility of operating system services. In: Proceedings of 1st Fault Tolerant Systems Conference, 1995.
Lee, M H and Rowland, J J(eds), Intelligent Assembly Systems. World Scientific Series in Robotics and Intelligent Systems, vol. 12. World Scientific, 1995. pp xxii+239.
Li, Y F and Lee, M H,. Robotic food handling with vision guidance. IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, 2(4). 1995.
Loftus, C W, Richards, M, Sherratt, E M and Tedd, M D, Active intelligent deployment of advanced communications services. In:Proceedings of Broadband Islands '95: global broadband and beyond, pp439-446. European Commission, 1995.
Loftus, C W, Sherratt, E M, Gautier, R J, Grandi, P A M, Price, D E and Tedd, M D,Distributed Software Engineering. BCS Practitioner Series. Prentice-Hall,1995. pp xiii+260.
Nakata, K, 'Prediction and explanation from a single causal representation.' In: Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Conference of the Japanese Society for Artificial intelligence, pp21-24. July, 1995.
Nakata, K, Lee, M H, Barry, G, Ormsby, A R T and Olivier, P L, 'Modelling electromechanical systems from multiple perspectives.' In:Proceedings of AIENG'95 10th International Conference on Applications of AI. July, 1995.
Nicholls, H R and Rowland, J J, 'Integrated Manufacturing in New Zealand.' Report number 453, Industrial Research Limited, Christchurch, New Zealand, 1995, pp36, ISBN 0-909040-16-8.
Olivier, P L, Ormsby, A R T and Nakata, K, 'Occupancy array-based kinematic reasoning.' In: Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning QR-95.
Price, C J 'Qualitative Reasoning for Diagnosis of Mechanical Systems.' In: Lee, M.H.and Rowland, J.J. (eds), Intelligent Assembly Systems. World Scientific. pp83-127
Price, C J and Pegler, I S, 'Deciding parameter values with case-based reasoning.' In: Proc 1st UK Workshop on Case Based Reasoning. January,1995.
Price, C J and Pegler, I S, 'Wayland: efficiency improvements in aluminium die casting.' In: Proceedings IEE Colloquium on Case-Based Reasoning: Prospects for Applications. March, 1995.
Price, C J and Pegler, I S, 'Wayland: efficiency improvements in aluminium die casting.' In: Proceedings of the British Castings Industry Research Association Conference. April, 1995.
Price, C J, Pugh, D R and Hunt, J E, 'Development of a multiple model design analysis system.' In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Advances in Functional Modeling of Complex Technical Systems. July, 1995.
Price, C J, Pugh, D R, Wilson, M S and Snooke, N, 'The Flame system: automating electrical failure modes and effects analysis.' In: Proceedings of the IEEE Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, pp90-95. 1995.
Pugh, D R, Price, C J and Snooke, N, 'Practical applications of multiple models - the need for simplicity and reusability.' In: Proceedings of Expert Systems '95.
Pyle, I C and Long, F W, 'Verifiable Ada Packages.' Ada User Journal, vol. 16. pp103-109. 1995.
Ratcliffe, M B, (ed), Ada Yearbook 1995. IOS Press, 1995. pp xiv+452.
Ratcliffe, M B, Parker, G R B and King, C M, 'Innovation in software engineering teaching: activity weekends.' In:Proceedings of 3rd Annual Conference on the Teaching of Computing. September, 1995.
Ratcliffe, M B, Parker, G R B and King, C M, Meeting the needs of the employer : An innovative course in software engineering. In: Proceedings of 4th World Conference on Engineering Education, pp 39 - 42. October,1995.
Rodrigues, M A, Li, Y F, Lee, M H and Rowland, J J, 'Robotic Grasping of Complex Shapes: Is full geometrical knowledge of the shape really necessary?' Robotica, 13(5), 499-506. 1995.
Rodrigues, M A, Li, Y F, Lee, M H, Rowland, J J and King, C M, 'Robotic Grasping of Complex Shapes without full geometrical knowledge of the shape.' In: Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation, Nagoya, Japan, pp 737-742. 1995.
Rowland, J J and Nicholls, H R, 'Sensing and actuation for flexible assembly.' In: Lee, M. H. and Rowland, J. J. (eds), Intelligent Assembly Systems. World Scientific, 1995, pp 165-180.
Rowland, J J and Nicholls, H R, 'A virtual sensor implementation for a flexible assembly machine.' Robotica, 13(2), pp195-199, 1995.
Rowland, J J and Rowland, D, 'Professional competence in safety-related software engineering.' Software Engineering Journal, 10(2), pp43-48, 1995.
Tuck, D L, Spooner, N R and Rowland, J J, 'Machine condition diagnostics for decision support in sawmilling - a preliminary study.' In: Proc. 6th Intl. Conf.on Manufacturing Engineering, Melbourne, Australia. Inst. of Engineers, Australia. November/December, 1995.
Wilson, M S, King, C M and Hunt, J E, 'Evolving behaviours for a robotic sheep dog.' In: Proceedings of ECAL 1995.
Bott, M F Accreditation Panel and Board of Examiners of the British Computer Society. Qualifications and Standards Working Group of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. University of Wales representative on Boards of Study at Gwent College of Higher Education, and the Universitas Nebrissensis, Madrid. Referee for the Software Engineering Journal and the Computer Journal. Director of Ada Language UK Limited.
Hunt, J E Coordinator for the 1st International Workshop on Applications of Qualitative Reasoning Systems to be held in conjunction with ECAI 96. Programme committee for the Computational Engineering in Systems Applications 1996 conference. Referee for the BCS Expert Systems conference, the Intelligent Systems Journal, the Expert Systems Journal and the Computing and Control Engineering Journal.
Lee, M H International Scientific Advisory Committee for Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Engineering. Referee for the Public Good Science Fund of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, New Zealand. Invited expert for SERC-CDP and MRC-JCI project review panels. Reviewer of advanced courses for CDP and IT Committees of EPSRC. Member of the EPSRC peer review college for Computing. Reviewer for EPSRC Advanced Fellowships. Member of the Conference Advisory Board for the Fourth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Design, AID'96, to be held at Stanford University in 1996.
Long, F W Visiting Scientist at the Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University Member of the Software Engineering Environments Conferences Steering Committee and of the programme committees of PCTE '96 and SEE '97
Price, D E Invited expert contributor to the European Commission's ORA dissemination activity.
Pyle, I C Chief Examiner in Software Systems Engineering for the Engineering Council examination. Accreditation Committee of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. Management Committee for the Modular Master's Degree in Software Engineering.
Ratcliffe, M B Board of Examiners of the British Computer Society.
Tedd, M D SERC/DTI Systems Engineering Committee. Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education Funding Councils(JISC). Advisory Committee on Networking (ACN). Follett Implementation Group for IT (FIGIT). Business Strategy Forum of DISC, the British Standards Institute's IT standards organisation. Chairman of the Welsh Advisory Committee on Telecommunications, of the ACN Monitoring Subcommittee, and of the JISC Standards Working Group. Parent governor of Penglais School
MEMBERSHIP OF EDITORIAL BOARDS
Bott, M F Ada Year Book (Chairman). BCS/Prentice Hall Practitioner Series.
Hunt, J E Expert Systems Journal (also Book Review Editor)
Lee, M H Artificial Intelligence in Engineering, Journal of Systems Engineering.
Pyle, I C Series editor for the Wiley Series on software-based systems. IEE Computing and Control Engineering Journal. Guest editor for a special issue of the Software Engineering Journal.
Price, C J Engineering Applications of AI (also Book Review Editor).
Tedd, M D PCTE News.
RESEARCH GRANTS
AND CONTRACTS RECEIVED
Researchers: J E Hunt
Sponsors: EPSRCResearch Area: Machine learning systems based on the immune system
Financial Support: £124,681
Researchers: C J Price and M B RatcliffeSponsors: EPSRC/Kaye (Presteigne)Research Area: QPAC: Intelligent reuse of process FMEA information
Financial Support: £167,854
Researchers: D E PriceSponsors: UKERNAResearch Area: Support for Welsh MICE-NSC
Financial Support: £43,598
Researchers: M H LeeSponsors: HEFCWResearchers: M H LeeResearch Area: Research initiative for intelligent systems
Financial Support: £25,000
Sponsors: European Commission (Liaison Committee of Rectors - scheme for co-operation with China)Research Area: Visit of Dr Chengdong Wu
Financial Support: £4,727
Researchers: P L OlivierSponsors: Nuffield FoundationResearch Area: Representation and processing issues in kinematic reasoning
Financial Support: £1,000
Researchers: D B Kell (Biological Sciences) and J J RowlandSponsors: BBSRCResearch Area: Rapid analysis of multiple determinands using ultrasensitive, dispersive Raman spectroscopy and supervised learning
Financial Support: £474,536
Researchers: D B Kell (Biological Sciences) and J J RowlandSponsors: BBSRC/GlaxoResearch Area: ANFT-IR-Based metabolic microscope for biotechnology
Financial Support: £406,865
Researchers: J E HuntSponsors: UWA Research FundResearch Area: Exploiting Biological Metaphors in Learning Computer Systems
Financial Support: £5,552
Researchers: C J PriceSponsors: UWA Research FundResearch Area: Automating electrical design analysis
Financial Support: £2,000
Researchers: K NakataSponsors: UWA Research FundResearch Area: Robot manipulation using occupancy array based image matching
Financial Support: £1,976
Researchers: J E HuntSponsors: Royal SocietyResearch Area: Travel grant to support attendance at IEEE Systems Man and Cybernetics conference in Vancouver, Canada.
Financial Support: £600
LECTURES AND ADDRESSES TO LEARNED SOCIETIES AND CONFERENCES
Bott, M F Chairman, Welsh Office Seminar on the ESSI programme, Wales Relay Centre, April 1995.
Hunt, J E Seminar on the Artificial Immune System presented to the European Bioinformatics Institute.
Hunt, J E Panel member at Expert Systems '95.
Hunt, J E and Price, C J Tutorial on Effective Diagnosis Systems at the BCS Expert Systems Conference.
Lee, M H 'Reasoning Tools for Engineering Design.' Presented to the IEE Regional Meeting in Bangor, March 1995.
Lee, M H 'Technology Transfer of Intelligent Systems'. Presented at the launch of the WDA Centres of Expertise, Newport, September 1995.
Lee, M H 'Benefits of Expert Systems'. Presented at the Welsh Office Expert Systems Seminars at Wrexham and Newtown, March 1995.
Olivier, P L Workshop on Representation and Processing of Spatial Expressions, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Montreal, 1995.
Pyle, I C 'Does TickIT assure quality software.' Presented to the Newcastle branch of the British Computer Society, April 1995.
Pyle, I C 'The DTI's TickIT initiative for software quality management.' Seminar given at the University of Newcastle, April 1995.
Pyle, I C 'Performance Considerations in Complement.' Presented at the Workshop on Effective Practice in Performance Engineering, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA, June 1995.
Pyle, I C 'Software failure modes and effects.' Seminar given at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, September 1995.
POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIPS AND STUDENTSHIPS
EPSRC Research Studenships were awarded to Jon King, Pierre Perrott and John Woodbury
College Research Studentships were awarded to Richard Huss and Philip Reiser.
Research Studentships in the Centre for Intelligent Systems were awarded to Anne Harris and Darren Boyce.
Ph.D.
Jones, A Computational Aspects of Non-Linear Biological Dielectric Spectroscopy
Price, C J Model Reuse in Diverse Problem Solvers
Snooke, N Medical Image Communication - Wavelet-Based Compression
Thomas, L Notation for Object-Oriented Design
Whittle, B Component Interface Description for Software Reuse
M.Phil.
Chemij, V Parallel Computer Technology
Georgallas, G A Graphical User Interface for the PCTE Shell
Ioannides, I Data Management for Assembly Supervision
Pegler, I Case-Based Reasoning in the Foundry Industry
The degree of M.Sc. in Computer Science was awarded to 26 candidates.