DEPARTMENTAL SEMINAR (COMPUTER SCIENCE) 2004-05 TIME AND PLACE: Thursdays 4 p.m. Room UG40, Computer Science Building ORGANISER: Achim Jung and Sammy Snow (A.Jung@cs.bham.ac.uk, ext 44776, S.Snow@cs.bham.ac.uk, ext 44774) SPEAKERS and TITLES ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Spring 2004 8 Jan Ong Yew Soon Host: Thorsten 15 Jan Murray Shanahan Imperial College London Host: Jeremy 22 Jan David Supple University of Birmingham Host: Aaron 29 Jan Andrew Chan University of Birmingham Host: Georgios 5 Feb Harold Somers UMIST Host: Alan 12 Feb Don Sannella University of Edinburgh - TO BE CONFIRMED Host: Achim 19 Feb Adam Kilgarriff University of Brighton Host: Alan 26 Feb Gordon Blair Lancaster University Host: Tony Brown / Behzad 4 Mar Behzad Bordbar University of Birmingham - TO BE CONFIRMED Host: Achim 11 Mar Andrew Watson OMG Host: Behzad 18 Mar Ata Kaba University of Birmingham Host: Peter T 25 Mar Peter Willett University of Sheffield Host: Xin _____________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACTS _____________________________________________________________________________ Complex Engineering Design Problem Solving Environment Grid Portal Ong Yew Soon Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Abstract: Over the last decades, the process of design in engineering and science has been transformed by the introduction of massive computing power and advances in Internet technology, computational scicences and intelligence. There has been a move away from paper-based systems towards computer modeling and simulations that invove the use of highly sophistical computer-aided design packages,complex optimization tools and others. The move has led us to the development of increasingly advanced products such as the space telescope, large airliners and space shuttles.Nevertheless, this recent move towards computer modeling and simulations bring with it the need to access more complex and specialized software libraries, massive or rare data sets, and the unique contributions of their colleagues in other disciplines, locations, and organizations. Using grid computing technologies, the Grid portal will offer engineers and scientists with seamless access to the PSE's range of domain specific computational tools, information and resources acting as a single point of access to the Complex Engineering Design support environment. It effectively uses the grid as a vast and powerful computation engine that extends the engineers and scientist's desktop to heterogeneous resources. In particular, the focus on providing a standard computational workflow, seamless integration of CED tools and provide visualization tools to support the engineers and scientists throughout the entire CED design and analysis life cycle. _____________________________________________________________________________ Murray Shanahan Imperial College London This talk will discuss some ongoing work with an upper-torso humanoid robot at Imperial College. The first project involves using abductive reasoning to facilitate high-level active vision. The robot nudges an object in its workspace to obtain a new view of it, and uses the information gained to improve its set of hypotheses about what the object might be. The second project involves the use of analogical representations to predict the trajectories of moving objects in the robot's workspace, thus endowing it with a rudimentary visual imagination. _____________________________________________________________________________ David Supple University of Birmingham University of Birmingham Web Enabled Campus This talk will detail the trinity of web services - e-learning, e-research, and e-administration that are being developed to bring the web-enabled-campus to the University of Birmingham. It will focus on the specifics of the current Portal project at the University, how it will bring together many disparate applications and resources for a wide selection of user communities, and how the traditional web is going to develop around it over the coming years. _____________________________________________________________________________ Andrew Chan University of Birmingham Computational methods for Civil Engineering applications With the advance of computing technology, more and more computational methods are being applied in Civil Engineering with greater complexity and finer detail. The talk will focus on the algorithms used in some of these computations and the type of problem they can be applied to. Topics discussed will include 1. non-linear static and dynamic finite element analysis for single phase (such as concrete), two phase (such as soil and water) and multiple phase (such as porous media, water and oil) systems; 2. the implementation of the discrete element method on a field programmable gate array; 3. structural analysis in desktop a virtual reality environment. Bio: Dr Andrew Chan graduated with a first class B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from the University of Hong Kong in 1982. He undertook an M.Phil. in Civil Engineering at the University of Hong Kong from 1982-84 (awarded in 1985) with the Croucher Foundation (Hong Kong) Studentship under the supervision of Prof. YK Cheung and Dr. LG Tham. Having received the award of Croucher Foundation (Hong Kong) Scholarship, he obtained a PhD at the University of Swansea in finite element solution of static and dynamic problems in geomechanics from 1984-1988 (awarded in 1989) under the supervision of Prof. OC Zienkiewicz, FRS. After working as a postdoctoral research assistant under Prof. AN Schofield FRS for half a year in Cambridge University Engineering Department, he became a lecturer in Department of Civil Engineering, University of Glasgow. Since September 1995, he has been a reader in Computational Engineering at the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Birmingham. He is now also the Head of Engineering Computation Network, School of Engineering and member of the management committee of the e-Science centre for grid computing. Dr. Chan is author or co-author of 90 published technical papers and chapters of edited book. Some selected papers have been included. He also co-authored a book titled "Computational geomechanics with special reference to earthquake engineering" with Prof. O.C. Zienkiewicz and others published in Feb 1999. He is one of the world leading experts in the use of finite element method for static and dynamic fully coupled soil and pore-fluid interaction and the author of two comprehensive Finite Element packages for deformable porous media and pore fluid interaction. His current research interest includes: - Development and application of computer and numerical methods in Civil Engineering with particular interest in Finite Element method, Discrete Element Method, Dynamic problem and Geotechnical Engineering - Coupled fluid flow in deformable porous media under various time scales _____________________________________________________________________________ Harold Somers UMIST Language Engineering and Assistive Computing: the case of Patients with Limited English Immigrants, asylum seekers and other speakers of non-indigenous minority languages often have a level of English which is sufficient for their day-to-day needs, but is inadequate for more formal situations like a visit to the doctor. This talk will present a design of r a prototype of a computer-based system to support this need. The CAMELS (Computer Aids for Minority Language Speakers) system employs a variety of Language Engineering tools and methods in an integrated environment aimed, in this proof-of-concept prototype, at helping Somali or S speakers with respiratory problems. The s ystem operates in various situations: as a self-help tool for an initial enquiry, to conduct a computer-mediated interview to establish the patient's history, and as a desktop translation/interpretation assistant during the doctor-patient interview. At the heart of the system is multi-engine MT (example-based, rule-base and simple lexical look-up), but there are important issues of user-friendliness for more or less experienced computer users with languages using a non-Roman alphabet, not to mention the cultural, ethical, sociological and linguistic issues. This talk will explore these and other aspects of the project. _____________________________________________________________________________ Don Sannella University of Edinburgh _____________________________________________________________________________ Adam Kilgarriff University of Brighton _____________________________________________________________________________ Gordon Blair Lancaster University Grid Middleware: Dressing the Emperor! There has recently been a major investment in the UK and elsewhere in the computational Grid and e-Science generally. A part of this investment has been directed towards appropriate middleware for the Grid with current thinking favouring an application of the web services approach in this area. This seminar will discuss such developments and also associated developments in the greater middleware community (distributed objects, components, etc). It will be argued that the basic web services approach is insufficient to meet the needs of all classes of e-Science application. The talk will conclde by a short presentation of ongoing research addressing more open and flexible middleware architectures for Grid computing. _____________________________________________________________________________ Behzad Bordbar - TO BE CONFIRMED University of Birmingham _____________________________________________________________________________ Andrew Watson OMG _____________________________________________________________________________ Ata Kaban University of Birmingham _____________________________________________________________________________ Peter Willett University of Sheffield _____________________________________________________________________________