Research
Research Carried out / Ongoing

• Phd Student (from January 2001) Ms Saba Sharifi studying "Applications of Fractional Derivative Models in Finance."
• Basic Research Grant Scheme Proposal on financial analysis submitted to Enterprise Ireland but not funded.
• Advanced Technologies Research Programme Project Proposal "PLATFORM" on the use of eigenvalues and eigenvectors in financial analysis (submitted with Heather Ruskin and others to Enterprise Ireland, well received but not funded).
• NICB Project Proposal on applications of computational models in biology with Heather Ruskin submitted and still being processed.

• IPSSI (Improving Professional Software Skills in Industry) research project, funded by ESSI under the EU Fourth Framework Programme. Developing, testing and disseminating a process improvement framework for use by individual software engineers.

• Formal specification and verification of security protocols

• Formal specification and verification of security protocols. (Collaboration with the DCU/NUI Maynooth formal methods group, funded by Enterprise Ireland Strategic Research Grant), on-going.
• Automating verification of distributed reactive systems. (Collaboration with D. Méry, Université de Henri Poincaré, Nancy, France), on-going.
• Models of program security (with B. Aziz, PhD full-time student), on-going.
• Transformation of functional programs, on-going.
• Optimisation of object-oriented programs (with B. Power, MSc part-time student), on-going.

• Sampling Finite Populations and Model-Assisted Survey Sampling. Monetary-Unit Sampling (with Bimpeh Y. and Dr. W. Yancey, Dallas, Texas).
• Runtime Profiling of Java Programs (with James Power NUIM).
• Measuring Association and Dissimilarity with Independent Raters (with M. Ryan).
• Learning Technology (with C. Daly).

• Set up new "World-Wide-Mind" research group (2 staff and 2 other members).
• Set up portal site w2mind.org
• Staff research seminar on the "World-Wide-Mind" 2001.
• Sub-symbolic Society of Mind models based on Reinforcement Learning.
• AI and the World-Wide-Mind. Research student: Ciaran O'Leary.
• Sub-symbolic memory structure in a Society of Mind model. Research student: Steven Harford.
• Evolution of Language. Research student: Ray Walshe.
• Natural Language interface to 3D world. Research student: John Kelleher.
• Artificial Life. Seminars with DCU Elec. Eng. Artificial Life group.

• Theories-of-action of experienced IS/IT Project Managers. An empirical study of the 'recipes' IS/IT project managers use to cope with different sorts of project risk. Leading, hopefully, to a book to be published in 2002.O'Connor, R. - Improving Professional Software Skills in Industry (IPSSI) - with H Duncan. Project (Funded by EU Fourth Framework Programme, ESSI).
• Specification of architectural models for multi-agent knowledge-based assistant systems (Collaboration with Middlesex University, London).
• Light Software Processes (Collaboration with Dundalk Institute of Technology )Pahl C
• Infrastructures for teaching and learning environments - focus on interactivity and evaluation.
• Foundations of component-based systems - a formal framework for evolution and change
• Analysis of security systems - a refinement-based approach to interference analysis

• The IOMPAR Project (funded by Enterprise Ireland ST/2000/091). Internet Object Management: Privacy ARchitecture. Development of a secure federated database.
• Generic object-oriented database protocols with Prof. K. Subieta, Polish Academy of Sciences.
• XML Transaction Languages for Federated Information Systems with Dr. W. Hasselbring, University of Oldenburg.
• Federated View Languages with Prof. J. Kennedy, Napier University, Edinburgh.

• Computational Models for Immune Response under viral invasion: HIV Leader (H Ruskin); Funding by Enterprise Ireland Basic Research grant (awarded 1999 for 3 years).
• International collaboration with Prof. R. B. Pandey, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Univ. Southern Mississippi, USA. 1-2 postgraduate students. Further development; collaborative project on other immuno-suppressive disorders, with Biotechnology colleagues under auspices of NICB, with Biocomputation projects in collaboration with colleague, M. Crane (School of C. A.) as part of the current PRTLI bid; (expected result Nov. 2001).
• Simulation Models for Cellular Networks; 2-D/3-D Froth. School - funded postgraduate and external collaboration with Y. Feng, Novell Ireland Ltd. International collaboration with Prof. Duarte and colleagues, Porto University - in particular on Monte Carlo techniques for froth modelling and, latterly, microscopic models in finance.
• Microsimulation models; - for Traffic Flow; specialised geometries and heterogeneous units. (Postgraduate student funding - School of CA); - for other socio-economic systems, including collaboration on modelling volatility in financial data, with colleagues G.Keogh and M. Crane (School of C.A.) - subject of EI BRGS and ATRP grant proposals - 2001 (unsuccessful), subject of future bid under EI BRGS (2001/2002).
• Statistical models applied to natural and related sciences; current projects include Time Series analyses of Migrant series (with colleague G. Keogh) and analysis techniques for an application in Educational Technology (with postgraduate - self-funded).

• Adding temporal reasoning to Linear Logic.
• Distributed systems verification.
• Design Methodologies and Toolsets for Hybrid Systems.
• Verification using Linear Logic.Collaborative with J. Power (NUIM).
• Protocol Specification and Verification; with Gray, D. (DCU), Hamilton, G. (DCU) and Power, J. (NUIM).
• Verification of Public Key Infrastructures (the IMPROVE project); with Gray, D. (DCU), Hamilton, G. (DCU) and Power, J. (NUIM).
• Collaborative agents in strategic games; with Haran, A.
• Verification of Cryptographic Protocols; with Oehl, F.

• Work on UDRC Centre for Digital Video Processing including research funding from Enterprise Ireland under the Informatics 2000 programme. Smeaton, A.F. and Sutherland, A. with Murphy, N. Marlow, S. and O'Connor, N. (School of Electronic Engineering). - Irish Script on Screen (ISOS). A project part-funded by DCU Educational trust and DIAS to create digital images of Old Irish manuscripts and make them available on the WWW. Smeaton, A.F. with the School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and the Library, Trinity College Dublin.

• Working on hierarchical multi-resolution models and efficient algorithms for matching them to data.
• Working on analogies between pattern matching and thermodynamics.
• Hand-gesture recognition from real-time video, using eigenspace and manifold techniques to model the change in the image of the hand as it changes its pose and position in 3D space; with Wu, H. and Shamaie A.
• Modelling airline reservations using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. Sponsored by Kuwait Airways; with Al-Sayer, F.
• Applied hierarchical eigenspace techniques to hand-written character data; with Feral, M.
• Analysis of facial images of medical patients suffering from rosacea; with Wu, H.

• Modeling radiative transfer, including use of symbolic computation.
• Benefits, and effective application of software engineering standards.

• Development of Unified models for testing of object oriented software.
• Examining patterns within redeveloped legacy systems; with John Butler.

• Compiling Linguistic Resources from Treebanks collaborative research with: Louisa Sadler, University of Essex, U.K., Andy Way, Dublin City University, Ireland, Anette Frank, DFKI, Saarbr"cken, Germany.
• Linear Logic and Natural Language Semantics collaborative research with: Dick Crouch, Xerox PARC, CA, USA. Anette Frank, DFKI, Saarbr"cken, Germany

• founder of Interactive Learning Research Group;
• co-founder of the World Wide Mind Research Group;
• developer on World Wide Mind Project
• Ph.D. Research into Artificial Language Evolution;

• CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning)
• XML technologies
• Endangered Languages , Nawat (with Dr Lemus, El Salvador)

• Completion of PhD at the Dept. Language & Linguistics, University of Essex. Thesis Title: "LFG-DOT: A Hybrid Architecture for Robust MT", April, 2001.
• HPSG, MT & Semantics (ongoing, postgraduate collaboration with D. Carr, CA, DCU, & J. Van Genabith).
• Supervised Gerard Cleary, MSc in Computer Applications for Education, Dublin City University ("Classroom of the Future").

Research visits / Travel

• Awarded grant from Teaching and Learning committee to attend 2nd International Conference on "Technology in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education" in Samos, June 2001.
• Attended European Educational Technology Forum hosted by UCD, September 2001.

• Awarded Grant from Teaching and Learning Committee to present at Conference on Technology in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Samos, 2001.

• DCU conference travel grant, £500 for Third Scottish Functional Programming Workshop, Stirling, Scotland, August 2001.
• Research visit, Centre de Recherche en Informatique de Nancy, France, March 2001.

• Research Travel Award from Research Advisory Panel.

• Awarded ODTL Funding, DCU 2001 to present a paper at the 6th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, England June 2001.

• Travel Grant, DCU Teaching and Learning Fund. IEEE Symposium on Applications and the Internet. San Diego, California, US. January 2001.
• Travel Grant, DCU Research Committee, Symposium Formal Methods Europe, Berlin. Germany, March 2001.
• Travel Grant, DCU Teaching and Learning Fund. International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, Madison, Wisconsin, US. April 2001.

• Awarded Enterprise Ireland Collaboration Grant (IC/2001/063) to work with colleagues in University of Oldenburg.

• Research Visit, preliminary work on microscopic models for finance, (basis for previous /future grant applications under EI, ATRP 2001/2002). Porto University, Portugal, May 2001.

• Research visit to El Salvador (Nawat CALL courseware development)
• Research visit to El Salvador (Nawat CALL courseware hand-over)
• Linguistic symposium on Endangered Languages, Finland, 29 August - 1 September 2001.

• Award from European Commission under Socrates programme to administer ACL student exchange, October 2000.
• Award from Dublin City University Research Committee to present paper at 6th International Conference on Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG-2001), Hong Kong, April 2001.
• Award from Dublin City University Teaching & Learning Committee to attend EACL-01 Workshop in Educational Resources for Computational Linguistics, Toulouse, France.
• Award from Dublin City University Teaching & Learning Committee to present paper at MT-Summit Workshop on Teaching Machine Translation, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.