Programme in Detail
At Lancaster, we have a unique blend of skills from wireless networking to innovative user interaction that means that our research spans all areas of the discipline from hardware to HCI. Our research facilities include a large experimental systems lab with state of the art communications and networking equipment together with an extensive range of interaction devices. We also have a separate hardware laboratory and a user-interface evaluation lab. We host a unique mobile IPv6 testbed, funded by Microsoft, Cisco and Orange. This supports a range of mobile networking projects including an implementation of mobile IPv6 for Windows Server 2003 CE that received a Microsoft academic excellence award and which is now deployed in a range of mobile devices. Recently we have been awarded £500,000 for an e-campus project to provide a ubiquitous information infrastructure around the University campus. Increasingly, our research cross-cuts a number of areas of computing and so we are not organised into rigid, research groupings. Rather, research work is organised around four overlapping themes described below.
Networked and Distributed Systems
Prof G Blair, Prof G Coulson, Prof D Hutchison, Prof S Pink, Dr C Edwards, Dr J Finney, Dr L Mathy, Dr A Mauthe, Dr N Race, Dr A Scott, Dr F Taïani, Dr U Roedig, Prof I Marshall.
Lancaster is a leading international player in networked and distributed systems and home to one of the largest research groups of its type in the world. The emphasis is on Internet and Web with multimedia and Quality of Service (QoS) as recurrent research themes. We have been pioneers in areas including multimedia content delivery across networks, mechanisms to assure QoS in networked systems, mobile IPv6 systems, advanced middleware, programmable networking, and applications in the tourism and health areas that make novel use of advanced networking technologies. We are central participants in the EU/IST funded ENEXT Network of Excellence in Emerging Network Technologies and Experiments,
Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing
Prof N Davies, Prof H Gellerson, Dr K Cheverst, Dr J Finney, Dr A Friday, Dr M Hazas, Dr E Rukzio, Dr G Kortuem.
Mobile computing is concerned with providing access to computers and associated computer services while on the move. Ubiquitous computing then complements this by surrounding users with very large numbers of computers but typically embedded in the physical environment (cf. the disappearing computer). At Lancaster we have a major initiative investigating the creation of practical, deployable mobile and ubiquitous systems. The emphasis of this work is on the creation of systems that extend beyond mere laboratory prototypes and are able to be used by real end-users. The work addresses core technical challenges in this area including issues of scalability, system evolution and management, security, privacy, interference and also associated economic factors. Perhaps the best known example is the Guide project that created a prototype mobile, context-aware tour guide and deployed it within the city of Lancaster for use by real tourists. The system is widely acknowledged as the most comprehensive research system of its type ever developed and received extensive coverage in both the academic and popular press.
Software Systems Engineering
Dr L Blair, Dr A Garcia, Dr G Kotonya, Dr S Lock, Prof J Whittle, Dr J Mariani, Dr P Sawyer, Prof A Rashid.
Software systems engineering is broadly concerned with techniques, processes, methods and tools that support the development of software and software-intensive systems. The principal focus of our research is on the four overlapping areas of system dependability, requirements engineering (RE), componentand service-based software engineering, and aspect-oriented software development (AOSD). Our research has made significant contributions to the state-of-the-art in each of these areas by, for example, pioneering new methods for dependable systems analysis, using aspects to model persistence, developing novel fault-tolerant software architectures and performing empirical validation of process improvement techniques. Although rooted in Computer Science, software systems engineering is interdisciplinary and we collaborate with researchers and practitioners from many other disciplines, notably the social sciences and linguistics. We are currently partners in a number of prestigious research projects including a nationally-funded Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration in Dependability (DIRC) and a European Integrated Project in Service-Centric Systems Engineering (SeCSE). We also lead a European Network of Excellence in AOSD (AOSD-Europe).
Cooperative and Interactive Systems
Prof A Dix, Prof H Gellerson, Dr A Friday, Dr M Hazas, Dr G Kortuem, Dr J Mariani, Dr C Paice, Dr P Rayson, Dr C Sas.
However good our technology is, it is worthless unless it can be used by real people in real situations. Therefore, we are exploring the way humans interact with computers and also the way human-human interactions are affected by technologies. As part of this, we have established a strong international reputation for our expertise in social and ethnographic analysis, particularly for investigating collaborative work. As well as investigating how people interact with and through technology, we also design and construct novel software and devices including interaction with virtual environments, wearable computers and even using physiological measurements. Very often these are deployed ‘in the wild’ – real use not just a demonstration in the laboratory. One example of this is the use of electronic doorplates for leaving digital post-it notes that was used in ten offices over a period of nearly two years giving invaluable insights into the way people use new technology. Another example of technology in action is work in statistical natural language processing based on information derived from large bodies of naturally-occurring text – ‘corpora’, which has been applied to industrial problems in areas as diverse as dictionary creation and speech processing.