Publications

My publications are available from the Computer Science department publications repository.

Research Interests

I belong to the following research groups:

• Computing Education Group
• Computational Intelligence Group

My research activities fall into three broad areas. Firstly, I am interested in how we can use computational and mathematical ideas to support research and practice in biology, medicine and healthcare. Secondly, I am interested in how we can take ideas from the natural sciences and use these as metaphors for new ways of doing computing and understanding and managing complexity in various contexts. Finally I am interested in applications of computing in music and media technologies.

Computing and mathematics in medicine and biology

In terms of applications to biology, I work closely with a number of research groups in the biosciences department at Kent and elsewhere on simulations of biological systems, particularly at the cellular level. I am also interested in developing novel ways to understand the vast amounts of data generated by modern biological research.

A particular interest at present is in studying what we can learn by considering simulations as computer programs. Clearly we can run such programs; however modern theories of program analysis give us many more formal tools by which we can deduce properties of such programs. Might these techniques be able to generate information which is relevant to biological research?

Link to more details about my research into computational and mathematical biomedicine.

Natural science as metaphor

My other main area of work is in what might broadly be called computational intelligence or soft computing, i.e. the application of computers to use "intelligent" strategies to find (often approximate) solutions to hard problems. Examples of such techniques are evolutionary algorithms, neural networks, swarm intelligence methods, artificial immune systems, et cetera.

Within soft computing I have a particular interest in automatic programming techniques such as genetic programming. The aim of these methods is to create software from descriptions of required functionality rather than by stating exactly what programs should do. At present I am interested in how ideas from software engineering (such as specification and modularity) and program analysis methods (such as model checking) can be combined with automatic programming techniques to produce rigorous programs in an automatic fashion. I am also interested in how different soft computing techniques (such as artificial immune systems) can be used for genetic programming.

As well as being interested in the theoretical background to computational intelligence, I am also interested in the application of these techniques. I have been involved in projects applying these ideas to data analysis, music technology, pure mathematics, robotics, multimodal optimization, and bioinformatics.

Link to more details about my research into nature-inspired computing.

Music and media technologies

I am also interested in computer graphics and music technologies, and I have combined these interests with the above in e.g. developing novel swarm-based interfaces for computer sound synthesis systems and using visualization techniques in bioinformatics.

Link to more details about my research into music and media technologies.

News

• My new EPSRC project, Refactoring and Neutrality in Genetic Programming, with Simon Thompson and Alex Freitas will be starting in February. Fernando Otero will be working as the postdoc on the project.
• New papers: Geometric Generalization of the Nelder-Mead Algorithm (with Alberto Moraglio) accepted for the 10th European Conference on Evolutionary Computation in Istanbul in April. Positional Effect of Crossover and Mutation in Grammatical Evolution (with Tom Castle), accepted for the European Conference on Genetic Programming, Istanbul, April.
• Geometric Generalization of the Nelder-Mead Algorithm shortlisted for the EvoCOP best-paper award.

Some Resources

Here is a collection of software that I have written and released under various open-source licences.

Research Team

Current research team: Ben Pateman (MSc Student) Andrew Ross, Patrick De Vries, Tom Castle, Ahmed Okasha, Phil Cattani (PhD Students), Alberto Moraglio (postdoc).

I am always interested to hear from people who might be interested in working in our group as a PhD student or postdoc. Please email me to discuss ideas.

Background

I was a student at the University of York, where I studied mathematics. After graduating I worked at Napier University in Edinburgh and the University of Exeter, before coming to Kent in 1999.