TEACHING

Student recruitment continues to be buoyant and, at 128, the number of first year honours students is higher than it has ever been. The continued success of the department in recruiting students is both a consequence of the new degree schemes we have mounted and a source of pressure to introduce more. A new scheme for a BSc in Internet Computing is currently under development.

At a time when the Welsh Funding Council is increasingly concerned with the employability of graduates, it is pleasing to be able to report the high levels of success achieved by our graduates in obtaining jobs. A major factor contributing to this is undoubtedly the fact that some 70% of our students spend a year working in industry between their second and third years in college. However, the efforts our students put in to career-related activities, as evinced by their performance in the student skills competition at the Careers Fair and their enthusiasm for the careers activities during the Aberdyfi weekends, are an equally important factor.

As befits a Computer Science department, we are actively seeking to understand the role of new technologies in improving the way we teach and in making it possible to teach increased numbers of students without any corresponding increase in the number of staff. In 1995, we developed the prototype of the Remote Advisory Service, which allows students at a workstation to obtain advice from an advisor in a central location. With the support of the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Funding Councils, this has now been developed into a fully operational system that is being distributed to universities across the UK.

We have recently introduced computer-based assessment in some of our programming courses. This has proved immensely popular with students, although there has been little change in pass rates or average marks, and it helps staff to cope with the ever increasing burden of assessment.

For some time, we have been seeking a technology that allows us the freedom of a whiteboard while, at the same time, allowing us to capture such material so that it can be made available to students as a revision aid. New technology is now appearing that makes such equipment available at an affordable price and we are now using it experimentally in some of our teaching.

The department is also investigating techniques for recording and digitising audio and visual coverage of lectures, to be made available to students over Web.

The MSc course taught in Singapore on a part-time basis continues to be successful in attracting students. The first student to graduate from the course was awarded an MSc with distinction.

Members of the department's academic staff continue to be in demand as external examiners for courses in other institutions. In 1999, they examined at the Open University and at the universities of Bournemouth, Huddersfield, Lancaster, Reading and Staffordshire.

Research

The department’s research groups have been remarkably successful in winning grants to improve the department’s infrastructure. Grants from the Wolfson Foundation, the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council, and the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, together with support from Sun Microsystems and the Ford Motor Company, will enable us to build up one of the largest concentrations of computing power in Wales, as well as refurbishing two research laboratories.

With the arrival of Dr Barnes, the Intelligent Robotics Group has started work on airborne robots (‘aerobots’). ALTAIR-1 (the Aberystwyth Lighter Than Air Intelligent Robot) has been designed as a first prototype of a robot for use on the possible European Space Agency Mars Lander mission in 2005. ALTAIR-1 and its successors are solar-powered, intelligent robots, which will fly across the Martian landscape and deploy scientific instruments much more flexibly than has been possible hitherto.

The work of the Advanced Reasoning Group on the use of model-based reasoning for design analysis has already resulted in one successful system, AutoSteve, which is now being successfully exploited commercially in the car industry. AutoSteve, however, is limited to single electrical systems; substantial financial support has now been received from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Ford Motor Company in the United States for research into a system that will be capable of handling all the circuitry of a car in an integrated fashion.

Our research in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology has continued to flourish, with researcg grants worth well over £1 million awarded during the year. The underlying theme of this work, in which Aberystwyth holds a leading position, is the development of machine learning techniques and their application in areas such as the analysis of gene function, and improved methods for drug design and development. The group enjoys close academic collaboration with complementary groups at UMIST and at the Universities of York and Oxford; industrial collaborators include Glaxo Wellcome and other major pharmaceutical companies. Members of the academic staff of the department have served as external examiners for research degrees in the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Southampton, Wollongong and York.

Training and Consultancy

The Welsh Funding Council is increasingly concerned to see that the technological expertise built up in Welsh universities is available to, and exploited by, Welsh industry. While the department can be proud of its record in this respect, the recent award of funding to support a part-time member of staff to market the department’s expertise to industry will, we hope, increase our activity in this area.

For almost 20 years, the department has provided specialised training courses for industry on newdevelopments in software technology; during the year, we developed a new course on the Unified Modelling Language for a large industrial customer.

The Telematics Group in the department continues to be very active in providing advice, assistance and training through its participation in several projects funded by the European Union and intended to encourage the use of modern telecommunications within rural Wales and elsewhere.

The group is particularly active in the field of Internet-based video-conferencing systems and ‘webcasting’ (that is, broadcasting using the Internet as the transmission medium). The lecture given by Dr Hartley on the occasion of his visit to the department was made available to a number of other universities in this way.

PUBLICATIONS

Albalooshi, F and Long F W. 1999. A multiple view environment supporting VDM and ADA. In: IEE Proc. – Software, 146(4), 203-219. ISSN: 1462-5970.

Alsberg, B K. 1999 Multiscale cluster analysis. Analytical chemistry, 71(15), 3092-3100. ISSN: 0003-2700.

Barnes, D P and Counsell, M S. 1999. Haptic communication for remote mobile manipulator robot operations. In: Proc. 8^th Topical Meeting on Robotics and Remote Systems. Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Session 16, ISBN: 0-89448-647-0.

Barnes, D P and Counsell, M S. 1999. Haptic communicaton for manipulator tooling operations in hazardous environments. In: Proc. SPIE, Telemanipulator and Telepresence Technologies VI. Boston, MA, USA. 3840, 222-233, ISBN: 0-8194-3433-7.

Barnes, D P and Wardle, J B. Robust gait generation for hexapodal robot locomotion. In: Proc. 3^rd Int. Conference on Autonomous Agents (Agents ’99), Seattle, WA. 382-383. ISBN: 1-58113-066-x

Barnes, D P and Ghanea-Hercock, R A. 1999. Disturbed behaviour in co-operating mobile robots. In: Proc. 3^rd Int. Conference on Autonomous Agents (Agents ’99). Seattle, WA, USA, 84-91. ISBN: 1-58113-066-x

Barnes, D P and Aylett, R S. 1999. Achieving complex tasks using co-operant agents. In: Dautenhahn, K (guest ed), Stamenov, M and Globus, G, Human Cognition and Social Agent Technology. Advances in Consciousness Research Series. John Benjamin Publishing Co. ISBN: 9027251398

Callaway, N and Lee, M H. 1999. A schema-based approach to lifelong learning. In: Proc. TIMR ’99, Towards Intelligent Mobile Robots, Bristol, 8-14.

Coghill, G M, Leitch, R R, Shen, Q and Chantler, M J. 1999. Choosing the right model. In: IEE Proc-Control Theory and Applications. 146(5), 435-449. ISSN: 1350-2379

Dehaspe, L, Toivonen, H and King, R D. 1999. Finding frequent substructures in chemical compounds. In: Gini, G C and Katrizky, A R. (eds), Predictive Toxicology of Chemical: Experiences and Impact of AI Tools (Papers from the 1999 AAAI Spring Symposium.) AAAI Press, Menlo Park, 78-81.

Featherstone, R. 1999. A divide-and-conquer articulated body algorithm for parallel O(log (n)) calculation of rigid body dynamics. Part 1: basic algorithm. Int. Journal of Robotics Research, 18(9), 867-875. ISSN: 0278-3649.

Featherstone, R. 1999. A divide-and-conquer articulated body algorithm for parallel O (log (n)) calculation of rigid body dynamics. Part 2: trees, loops and accuracy. Int. Journal of Robotics Research, 18(9), 876-892. ISSN: 0278-3649.

Featherstone, R, Sonck Thiebaut, S and Khatib, O. 1999. A general contact model for dynamically-decoupled force/motion control. In: Proc. IEEE Int. Conference, Robotics and Automation. Detroit, Michigan, USA, 3281-3286.

Featherstone, R and Fijany, A. 1999. A technique for analysing constrained rigid-body systems and its application to the constraint force algorithm. IEEE Trans. Robotics and Automation, 15(6), 1140-1144. ISSN: 1042-296x

Flasinski, M and Lee, M H. 1999. The use of graph grammars for model-based reasoning in diagnostic expert systems. In: Prace Informatyczne, Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego, 9, 147-165.

Garrett, S M and Lee, M H. 1999. A case-based approach to black-box control learning. In: Proc. Int. Conference on Computational Intelligence for Modelling, Control and Automation (CIMCA ’99), Vienna.

Hardy, N W and Ahmad, A. 1999. De-coupling for re-use in design and implementation using virtual sensors. Autonomous Robots, 6(3), 265-280. ISSN: 0929-5593.

Hardy, N W and Maroof, A A. 1999. ViSIAr – a virtual sensor integration architecture. Robotica. 17(6), 635-647. ISSN: 0263-5747.

Holstein, H, Schurholz, P, Starr, A J and Chakraborty, M. 1999. A comparison of gravimetric formulas for uniform polyhedra. Geophysics, 64, 1438-1446. ISSN: 0016-8033

Holstein, H, Huss, R A and O’Connor, J J. 1999. The effect of cartilage deformation on laxity of the knee joint. Journal of Engineering in Medicine, 213, 19-32. ISSN: 0954-4119

Hughes, H (ed) and Price, D E (contributing author). 1999. A study of networked video facilities in Welsh HEIs and FECs and proposals for a Welsh video network. Welsh Funding Councils. Ref: RT/VIDEO/WELSHVC/001.

Hughes, N, Chou, E, Price, C J and Lee, M H. 1999. Automating mechanical FMEA using functional models. In: Proc. 12^th Int. Florida AI Research Soc. Conference. (FLAIRS-99), AAAI Press, 394-398.

Lawrence, D, Sloane, A, Price, D E, Constable, G. 1999. Live internet broadcasting. In: Vince, J and Earnshaw, R (eds), Digital Convergence: The Information Revolution. Springer-Verlag, London. ISBN: 1-85233-140-2

Lee, M H and Nicholls, H R. 1999. Tactile sensing for mechatronics: a state of the art survey. Mechatronics, 9, 1-31. ISSN: 0957-4158.

Lee M H. 1999. On models, modeling and the distinctive nature of model-based reasoning. In: AI Communications, 12(3), 127-137. ISSN: 0921-7126.

Lee, M H. 1999. Qualitative circuit models in failure analysis reasoning. In: Artificial Intelligence, 111(1-2), 239-276. ISSN: 0004-3702.

Lee, M H. 1999. Characterising model-based reasoning. In: Proc. 10^th Int. Workshop on Principles of Diagnosis, (DX ’99), Loch Awe, Scotland, 140-146.

Lee, M H. 1999. Qualitative modeling of linear networks in ECAD applications. In: Proc. 13^th Int. Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning, (QR ’99), Loch Awe, Scotland, 146-152.

McManus, A G, Price, C J, Snooke, N and Joseph, R. 1999. Design verification of automotive electrical circuits. In: Proc. 13^th Int. Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning, QR ’99. Loch Awe, Scotland.

Mustapha, S M, Phillips, T N, Price, C J, Mosely, L G and Jones, T E. 1999. Viscometric flow interpretations using qualitative and quantitative techniques. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 1-18.

Neal, M, J, Timmis, J and Hunt, J. 1999. Data analysis with artificial immune systems, cluster analysis and kohonen networks: some comparisons. In: Proc. Int. Conference on Systems. Man and Cybernetics, Tokyo, Japan.

Neal, M, J, Timmis, J and Hunt, J. 1999. An artificial immune system for data analysis. BioSystems. 55 (1), 143-150.

Price, C J. 1999. Computer-based diagnostic systems. Springer-Verlag, pp 156. ISBN: 3-540-76198-5.

Price, C J, Mcmanus, A G and Snooke, N. 1999. Automated design verification of automotive electrical circuits. In: Proc. Vehicle Electronics Systems Conference, Coventry, UK.

Price, C J, Snooke, N and Ellis, D. 1999. Identifying design glitches through automated design analysis. In: Innovative CAE Track (invited paper), Proc. Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, Washington D.C.

Ratcliffe, M B, Davies, T, P and Price, G M. 1999. Remote advisory services: A NEAT approach. IEEE Multimedia, 6(1), 36-48. ISSN: 1070-986x

Shaw, A D, Kaderbhai, N, Jones, A, Woodward, A M, Goodacre, R, Rowland, J J and Kell, D B. 1999. Noninvasive, online monitoring of the biotransformation by yeast of glucose to ethanol using dispersive Raman spectroscopy and chemometrics. Applied Spectroscopy. 53(11), 1419-1428. ISSN: 0003-7028

Shaw, A D, Winson, M K, Woodward, A M, McGovern, A, Davey, H M, Kaderbhai, N, Broadhurst, D I, Gilbert, R J, Taylor, J, Timmis, E M, Alsberg, B K, Rowland, J J, Goodacre, R and Kell, D B. 1999 Rapid analysis of high-dimensional bioprocesses using multivariate spectroscopies and advanced chemometrics. In: Scheper, T H, (eds) Advances in Biochemical Engineering/Biotechnology, 66, 83-113. Berlin, Springer-Verlag.

Snooke, N and Price, C J. 1999. Hierarchical functional reasoning. Knowledge Based Systems, Elsevier Science, 11(5-6), 301-309. ISSN: 0950-7051.

Snooke, N. 1999. Simulating electrical devices with complex behaviour, AI Communications Special issue on model based reasoning, 12(1-2), 45-49. ISSN: 1121-0540.

Srinivasan, A and King, R D. 1999. Using inductive logic programming to construct structure-activity relationships. In: Gini, G C and Katrizky, A R. (eds), Predictive Toxicology of Chemical: Experiences and Impact of AI Tools (Papers from the 1999 AAAI Spring Symposium). AAAI Press, Menlo Park, 64-73.

Srinivasan, A and King, R D. 1999. Feature construction with inductive logic programming: a study of quantitative predictions of biological activity aided by structural attributes. Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Journal, 3, 37-57.

Srinivasan, A, King, R D and Bristol, D. 1999. An assessment of submissions made to the predictive toxicology challenge. In: Dean, T. (ed), Sixteenth Int. Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco CA, 270-275.

Tristram, D and Wilson, M. 1999. A classification of communicating agents. In: Nehmzow, U and Melhuish, C. Proc. TIMR ’99 – Towards Intelligent Mobile Robots.

MEMBERSHIP OF ADVISORY BODIES

Barnes, D P. Member of the Panel of Examiners for the British Computer Society Professional Examination Board. Co-ordinator for Engineering Science, Adjunct Scientists Committee. ‘Beagle 2’ 2003 ESA Mars Mission.

Bott, M F. Member of the British Computer Society Board of Moderators

Coghill, G M. Member of the programme committee of the 10^th Int. Workshop on the Principles of Diagnosis, Loch Awe, Scotland. Chairman of the MONET executive board.

Hardy, N W. Member of the programme committee for the IEEE International Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Robotics and Automation.

Lee, M H.. Member of CRIT-2, Research Cooperation in Information Technology with Prof. Mariusz Flasinski of the Artificial Intelligence Systems Dept., Institute of Computer Science, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland. Member of the International Programme Committee of Second Int. Workshop on European Scientific and Industrial Collaboration to Promote Advanced Technologies in Manufacturing.

Long, F W. Visiting Scientist at the Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. Member of the Software Engineering Environments Conference Steering Committee.

Price, C J. Member of the EPSRC Engineering Panel ‘E’.

Tedd, M D. Chairman of the Welsh Advisory Committee on Telecommunications. Chairman of OFTEL’s Consumer Panel. Vice Chairman of the Steering Group of the Llwybr/Pathway (Rural Wales Information Society) Project. Member of the Steering Committee of the Wales Information Society Project. Vice Chairman of the Governors of Penglais School.

MEMBERSHIP OF EDITORIAL BOARDS

Bott, M F. Member of the Editorial Board of the BCS/Springer Practitioner Series.

Lee, M H. Member of Editorial Board of Artificial Intelligence in Engineering, Elsevier Science.

Price, C P. Member of Editorial Board of Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence.

RESEARCH GRANTS AND CONTRACTS RECEIVED

Researchers J J Rowland, D P Barnes, R Featherstone, H Holstein, M Wilson

Sponsors: HEFCW Research Capital Initiative

Research Area: A Motion Tracking Facility for Robotics and Biomechanics

Financial Support: £100,000

Researchers: R D King and B K Alsberg

Sponsors: BBSRC

Research Area: Inductive Logic programming for 3-Dimensional Structure Based Drug Design

Financial Support: £146,664

Researchers: R D King, D B Kell, J J Rowland, B K Alsberg, G M Coghill et al.

Sponsors: Royal Society/ Wolfson Foundation

Research Area: Laboratory Refurbishment for Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics in Computer Science and Biological Sciences

Financial Support: £100,465

Researchers: R Goodacre, D B Kell and J J Rowland

Sponsors: BBSRC

Research Area: Characterisation of Intact Microorganisms using Electrospray Ionisation Mass Spectrometry

Financial Support: £205,640

Researchers: R D King, J J Rowland and D B Kell

Sponsors: BBSRC

Research Area: The Robot Scientist: Application to Functional Genomics

Financial Support: £313,380

Researchers: D B Kell, J J Rowland and B K Alsberg

Sponsors: BBSRC

Research Area: Making the most of a Genome Sequence: the Application of Transcriptome and Proteome Analysis to Streptomyces….

Financial Support: £232,980

Researchers: D B Kell and J J Rowland

Sponsors: BBSRC

Research Area: Functional Genomics via the Metabolome

Financial Support: £321,360

Researchers: M H Lee, et al

Sponsors: HEFCW

Research Area: JREI, MBS Research

Financial Support: £324,248

Researchers: M H Lee, et al

Sponsors: HEFCW

Research Area: Centre for Intelligent Systems.

Financial Support: £15,000

Researchers M H Lee

Sponsors: EU

Research Area MONET: The European Network of Excellence in Qualitative and Model-Based Reasoning

Financial Support: 675,000ecu

Researcher: C J Price

Sponsor: Ford (USA)

Research Area: FMEA Development

Financial Support: £212,360

Researchers: C J Price

Sponsors: EPSRC

Research Area: Whole Vehicle Whole Lifecycle Electrical Design Analysis.

Financial Support: £245,528

Researchers: D E Price, and A Vincentelli

Sponsors: UKERNA

Research Area: Piloting IP Videoconferencing

Financial Support: £9500

Acronym: PIPVIC

Researchers: D E Price and E Sherratt

Sponsors: UWA, Teaching Innovations Fund

Research Area: Supervision at a Distance

Financial Support: £1200

In addition, the following research work funded by outside institutions continued during 1999.

Researcher: J J Rowland

Sponsors: BBSRC

Research Area: ‘Teaching by Example’ for Flexible Automation in Food Product Assembly.

Financial Support: £163,904

Researcher: R D King

Sponsors: British-German Academic Research Collaboration Programme.

Research Area: Development of Intelligent Databases for Bioinformatics

Financial Support: £3,900

Researchers: R D King, G M Coghill and D B Kell

Sponsor: BBSRC

Research Area: Bioinformatic System Identification.

Financial Support: £160,696

Researcher: J J Rowland

Sponsor: Industrial Research Ltd (NZ)

Research Area: Advanced Manufacturing Systems and Technologies (Modular sensor based handling and processing)

Financial Support: £6,600

Researcher: M H Lee

Sponsor: CEC Esprit

Research Area: MONET: The European Network of Excellence in Qualitative and Model-Based Reasoning.

Financial Support: £179,880

Researchers: S Muggleton and R D King

Sponsor: EPSRC

Research Area: Closed Loop Machine Learning

Financial Support: Travel Expenses

Researchers: G M Coghill

Sponsor: EPSRC

Research Area: Model Switching in Diagnosis

Financial support: £52,738

Researcher: Mark Neal

Sponsor: EPSRC

Research Area: Machine Learning Mechanisms Based on the Immune system

Financial Support: £124,681

Researchers: C J Price and M S Wilson

Sponsor: EPSRC and Jaguar Cars Ltd

Research Area: Aquavit: Advancing Qualitative Analysis for Verification, Interaction, Analysis and Testing.

Financial Support: £215,703

Researcher: E D Sherratt

Sponsor: CEC Acts

Research Area: SCREEN

Financial Support: £375,610

Researchers: M B Ratcliffe and M D Tedd

Sponsor: JISC Technology Applications Programme

Research Area: NEAT: Networked, Expertise, Advice and Tuition.

Financial Support: £164, 738

Researcher: M D Tedd and D E price

Sponsor: Llwybr/Pathway

Research Area: Llwybr/Pathway Technical Support Centre

Financial Support: £111,815

Researchers: D B Kell and J J Rowland

Sponsors: EPSRC

Research Area: Explanatory Analysis of Complex Vibrational Spectra using Genetic Programming of Fuzzy Rules

Financial Support: £94,159

Researcher: R D King

Sponsor: EPSRC

Research Area: Deep Database mining

Financial Support: £53,117

Researcher: R D King

Sponsor: BBSRC

Research Area: Improved Protein Secondary Structure Prediction using Advanced Statistics and Machine Learning.

Financial Support: £140, 968

Researchers: D B Kell, G W Griffith and J J Rowland

Sponsor: BBSRC

Research Area: The Development of Histometrics

Financial Support: £90,544

Researcher: D B Kell and J J Rowland

Sponsor: BBSRC

Research Area: Functional Genomics via the metabolome

Financial Support: £321,360

LECTURES AND ADDRESSES TO LEARNED SOCIETIES AND CONFERENCES

Gautier, R J and Llewelyn, T. 1999. Use of XML in a distributed regional information service. UK Academy for Information Systems Conference.

Long, F W. Computer Security. STEP ’99 Workshop (Software Technology and Engineering Practice), Pittsburgh, USA, September 1999.

Long, F W, Hissam, S, Seacord, R C and Robert, J. 1999. Securing internet sessions with SORBET. IEEE 1999. Int. Conference on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems, Las Vegas.

Price, C J. Invited paper at the Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, Washington D.C.

Price, D E. 1999. IP video conferencing and its effect on network load. In: Welsh IT Support Staff Colloquium, Gregynog, Wales, UK.

Price, D E and Vincentelli, A. 1999. Internet based videoconferencing and its role in the support of language teaching. In: Teaching Innovations Forum Conference, University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Ratcliffe, M B. 1999. The NEAT project. In: teaching Innovations Forum Conference, University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIPS AND STUDENTSHIPS

EPSRC Research Studentships were awarded to Neil Taylor and Jon Timmis.

ORS Awards were awarded to Guofu Wu and Meng Qinggang

An MRC Studentship was awarded to Amanda Clare.

A BBSRC Studentship was awarded to David Ellis.

HIGHER DEGREES AWARDED

PhD

Williams, Tomos, Gwyn. On the Use of Force Sensing in Assembly Robot Behavioural Modules.

Neal, Marie-Therèse. Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Building Objects from Digital Vector Map Data.

MPhil

Price, Gillian. Hypermedia as a Tool for Diagnostic Radiography Education.

MSc

The Degree of MSc in Computer Science was awarded to 25 candidates.

CONFERENCES

Barnes, D P. Member of the Organising Committee of CLAWR ’99, Portsmouth.

Featherstone, R. Co-organiser of the Dynamics Symposium of the IEEE ICRA ‘2000 Conference.

Long, F W. Member of the programme committee for CoSET ’99 (Constructing Software Engineering Tools), an International Workshop co-located with ICSE (International Conference on Software Engineering).

Price, C J. Programme chair of 13th International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning, Loch Awe.

Introduction

Training and Consultancy

MEMBERSHIP OF ADVISORY BODIES

MEMBERSHIP OF EDITORIAL BOARDS

Price, C P. Member of Editorial Board of Eng­in­eering Applications of Artificial Intel­ligence.

Price, C P. Member of Editorial Board of Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence.