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Advanced Model-Based Engineering and Reasoning (AMBER)

We build abstract models of computing systems to help us design better systems.

Building better systems

Modern computing systems are mobile, networked, and concurrent. This makes their development risky and complex - particularly when we trust these systems with our money, resources, businesses or lives.

By building abstract models of computing systems, we can design better systems. Models allow us to thoroughly test designs and explore alternatives.

Our aims

Our work aims to help contain risk. We equip engineers with methods and tools to explore, verify and refine the properties of such complex systems.

We do this through models with well-founded semantics. This model-based engineering can permit detection of optimal and defective designs long before the (sometimes expensive) commitment to implementations on real hardware.

Our current focus is on applying model-based methods to develop and manage several of the most demanding types of computing system. These include:

  • systems rich in concurrency
  • systems that combine computing (cyber), physical and human elements
  • biological systems
  • 'systems of systems', composed of independent, autonomous systems
Collaboration

We maintain extensive international academic collaborations, several on a strategic basis, leading to joint publications and projects, notably with Leiden and Aarhus Universities (between them contributing over 40 research outputs since 2014). We also maintained collaboration with industry, including Siemens (MindSphere), analysing systems interdependencies using a digital twin (Centre for Digital Built Britain), Digital Twins for Resilient Geo-Infrastructure, DECIDe for Rail Systems and Safety Board, and Royston Company on new AI techniques in maritime context.

AMBER’s focus on the “pipeline” from foundations to industry practice has been vindicated through several advances including:

  • Work on asynchronous circuit design implemented in Workcraft was adopted by Dialog Semiconductor (exclusive supplier of power management integrated circuits for the Apple iPhone, iPad, and Watch), providing the basis of UoA_Workcraft ICS. Dialog funded 2 PhDs and 2 US patents, and David Lloyd, a Senior Member of Technical Staff at Dialog, became a Visiting Professor of Practice in the School of Computing to provide close and regular contact with AMBER.
  • The recently established spinout ScubaTx resulting from collaborative efforts with NU’s medical researchers and Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust leverages AMBER’s expertise in verified software design to commercialise persufflation - a proven but unexploited organ preservation technique.
  • Work on CPS, including probabilistic and stochastic aspects, e.g., simulation of big bleed trauma emergencies with Royal London Hospital, NIDUS (dialysis machine capable of infant dialysis) achieving CE marking and commercialisation with Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI), and EMV2 security analysis of EMV contactless credit and debit cards.
Future Plans

Over the next 5 years, the group plans to develop its international profile in formal model-based methods for asynchronous and cyber-physical systems. It will continue to focus on foundational work that has impact through tools and methods, using this to attract and retain expertise in stochastic and hybrid systems modelling and verification. It will focus on novel technologies for design of asynchronous circuits and development of well-founded tool chains for the engineering of digital twins for CPS. Applications under active development include methodologies and tools for supporting criminal investigations based on causality, and on the opportunities created by the rise of model-based engineering in infrastructure and the built environment.

Our people
Undergraduate
Postgraduate taught
Postgraduate research