Nick's research interests lie within the following three areas:

• Wireless Mesh Networks, specifically the associated technical platforms and management infrastructure. More recently the focus has been on issues relating to security, developing intrusion/anomaly detection techniques and appropriate remediation strategies (e.g. OpenLIDS presented at MobiCom 2009).
• P2P and Content Distribution Networks, with particular emphasis on the design of overlay networks to support heterogeneity (as exemplified within our work on Stealth DHTs and Swarm -- see selected publications).
• Mobile Devices as Pervasive User Interfaces and Interaction Devices, more specifically the use of visual coding systems to provide access to object-related information (our uLEARN and CANVIS initiatives in this area highlights experimental systems research with real deployment and end-user trials -- see selected publications)

I am the principle investigator at Lancaster of P2P-Next, a €19 million pan-European project consisting of 21 industrial partners, media content providers and research institutions. The project aims to identify the potential uses of peer-to-peer (P2P) technology for Internet Television of the future (see http://www.p2p-next.org).

Dr. Nicholas Race is a Senior Lecturer within the Computing Department at Lancaster University, and works jointly with Information Systems Service (ISS) under the umbrella of the Network Research and Special Projects Unit (NRSP). The group was established in 2003 to enhance research partnerships and conduct innovative, yet practical-based research. He has published over 30 refereed papers in the areas of autonomic (or cognitive) wireless mesh networks, mobile and ubiquitous computing, and modern approaches to the delivery of multimedia content (including the use of caching techniques, content delivery networks, QoS and P2P solutions). He is a technical programme committee member for many international conferences and workshops, including IDMS, MIPS, MMNS, ICETE, WINSYS, GridNets, GOBS and MCCSIS. He has received both the University's Commercialisation Prize (for overseeing the development of the IPv6 protocol stack with Microsoft) and the Community Prize (for the ongoing work in Wray).

Hugelshofer, F., Smith, P., Hutchison, D., Race, N.J.P., OpenLIDS: A Lightweight Intrusion Detection System for Wireless Mesh Networks, Proceedings of the 15th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom 2009), September 2009. OpenLids Website

Brampton, A., MacQuire, A., Fry, M., Rai, I.A., Race, N.J.P., Mathy, L., Characterising and Exploiting Workloads of Highly Interactive Video-on-Demand, Multimedia Systems Journal, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 3-17, February 2009.

Ishmael, J., Race, N.J.P., Wireless Mesh Networks, In B. Garbinato, H. Miranda, L. Rodrigues (Eds.), Middleware for Network Eccentric and Mobile Applications (pp. 149-168), Springer, 2009.

Bury, S., Ishmael, J., Race, N.J.P., Smith, P., Rouncefield, M., Towards an Understanding of Security Concerns within Communities, Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE International Conference on Wireless & Mobile Computing, Networking & Communication (WIMOB 2008), October 2008.

Ishmael, J., Bury, S., Pezaros, D., and Race, N., Deploying Rural Community Wireless Mesh Networks, IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 22-29, Jul/Aug 2008. Wray Website

MacQuire, A., Brampton, A., Rai, I.A., Race, N.J.P., Mathy, L., Authentication in Stealth Distributed Hash Tables, Journal of Systems Architecture, vol. 54, no. 6, pp. 607-618, February 2008, ISSN 1383-7621.

Taylor, N., Cheverst, K., Fitton, D., Race, N.J.P., Rouncefield, M. and Graham, C., Probing Communities: Study of a Village Photo Display, Proceedings of OzCHI 2007, pp. 17-24, ISBN 978-1-59593-872-5, November 2007, Adelaide, Australia.

Brampton, A., MacQuire, A., Rai, I.A., Race N.J.P., Mathy, L., Fry, M., Characterising User Interactivity for Sports Video-on-Demand, 17th International workshop on Network and Operating Systems Support for Digital Audio & Video (NOSSDAV’07), June 2007, Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA.

Brampton, A., MacQuire, A., Rai, I.A., Race, N.J.P., Mathy, L., Stealth Distributed Hash Table: A Robust and Flexible Super-Peered DHT, 2nd Conference on Future Networking Technologies (CoNEXT’06), 4-7th December 2006, Lisbon, Portugal.

Mitchell, K., Race, N.J.P., McCaffery, D., Bryson., M., Cai., Z., Unified and Personalised Messaging to Support E-Learning, Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Wireless, Mobile and Ubiquitous Technologies in Education (WMUTE’06), November 16-17, 2006, Athens, Greece.

Mitchell, K., Race, N.J.P., uLearn: Facilitating Ubiquitous Learning through Camera Equipped Mobile Phones, Proceedings of the IEEE International Workshop on Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education (WMTE ‘05), November 2005, Tokushima, Japan.

Brampton, A., MacQuire, A., Rai, I., Race, N.J.P. and Mathy, L., Stealth Distributed Hash Table: Unleashing the Real Potential of Peer-to-Peer, Proceedings of the 2005 ACM Conference on Emerging Network Experiments and Technology, CoNEXT 2005, October, 2005, Toulouse, France, ACM Press, New York.

Mitchell, K., Race, N.J.P. and Clarke, M., CANVIS: Context-Aware Network Visualisation using Smartphones, Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2005), 19-22 September, 2005, University of Salzburg, Austria.

Denney, J.C. and Race, N.J.P., Swarm: A Multimedia Delivery Network for Highly Dynamic Networking Environments, Proceedings of the ACM 12th Annual Multimedia Computing and Networking (MMCN'05), January 2005, San Jose, California.