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Staff Profile

Professor Daniel Coca

Head of School

Background

Daniel is Professor of Nonlinear and Complex Systems with over 25 years’ experience in the field of engineering and higher education. Before joining Newcastle he was Head of the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering at the University of Sheffield, a post he held for eight years.  

Daniel has extensive expertise in system identification and control of complex systems as well as signal processing, data analytics and machine learning using reconfigurable and GPU computing platforms. He has developed theory, methodology and algorithms to analyse, model and control fluid flows, reaction-diffusion systems, crystal growth processes and stem cell differentiation and pioneered the application of high-performance FPGA-based reconfigurable computers for real-time peptide mass fingerprinting, protein identification and quantitation. Funded by BBSRC and NSF in the US, he jointly led the development of the “Fruit Fly Brain Observatory”, a GPU-enabled platform for data analysis, modelling, simulation and visualisation of the fruit fly brain, which won the first phase of the Open Science Prize in 2016 and was included in the BBSRC Impact Showcase 2020. 

He is member of the executive board of the Data and Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure (DAFNI) and Co-Director of the Urban Flows Observatory, which he helped establish as part of a £10 million investment from the UK Collaboratorium for Research on Infrastructure and Cities (UKCRIC). 

Daniel has won research grants with a value of over £50 million from EPSRC, BBSRC, MRC, US National Science Foundation and the Human Frontiers Science Program. 

Research

MODELLING, ANALYSIS AND CONTROL OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS

  • Nonlinear Systems Identification and Analysis in the Time and Frequency Domains
  • Identification and control of infinite dimensional systems described by partial differential equations, coupled map lattice and cellular automata models

SIGNAL PROCESSING AND MACHINE LEARNING

  • Theoretical foundations and new learning paradigms for Liquid State Machines and Echo-State Networks
  • Time Encoding and Decoding Machines - Theory and Algorithms
  • Matrix Completion
  • Adversarial attacks on Black-Box Agents
  • Inverse Problems Theory and Application to Diffuse Optical Tomography

APPLICATION OF SYSTEMS AND CONTROL ENGINEERING IN BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE

  • Modelling and Control of Heterogeneity and Differentiation in human Embryonic Stem Cells
  • Molecular Mechanisms Driving Chronic Macrophage Dysfunction in Aging 
  • Reverse Engineering Neural Circuits in the Early Visual System of Drosophila
  • Quantitative Assessment and Characterisation of Endothelial Function Using Diffuse Optical Tomography
  • System Biology  for Novel Therapeutic Strategies for Polycystic Kidney Disease

GPU/FPGA ACCELERATION FOR HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING

  • GPU Acceleration of Large-Scale Neural Networks - see the Fruit Fly Brain Observatory
  • FPGA Acceleration of Protein Identification and Quantitation Algorithms 


RESEARCH GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS

CURRENT GRANT SUPPORT

EPSRC (2022-2025), Sustainable Microwave Manufacturing of Functional Inorganic Materials (SUMMA) (Co-I) 

EPSRC (2021-2023),  DAFNI-ROSE (Co-I)

CMMI-EPSRC (2021-2024), Right First Time Manufacture of Pharmaceuticals (Co-I)

MRC/DTP (2018-2023), Artificial Intelligence Technology for Cell Therapy Manufacturing (PI)


COMPLETED PROJECTS

EPSRC (2019-2022) The Active Building Centre (Co-I)

EPSRC (2018-2020), CORONA: City Observatory Research platfOrm for iNnovation and Analytics

BBSRC/NSF (2015-2018), The Digital Fruit Fly Brain (PI)

EPSRC (2017-2021), Urban Observatories (Co-I)

BBSRC (2013-2016), Understanding Neural Excitation and Inhibition: Implications for the Interpretation of Extracellular Field Potentials and Neurovascular Coupling (Co-I)

Human Frontiers Science Program (2012-2015), Stem Cell Dynamics in Time and Space (Co-I)

BBSRC (2010-2013), Reverse Engineering Drosophila Retinal Networks (PI)

MRC Fellowship (2009-2010),  Stem Cell Dynamics: Exploration of the Stem Cell Attractor Landscape

EPSRC (2009-2014), System Identification and Information Processing for Complex Systems (Co-I)

EPSRC (2009-2012), System Identification and Model Validation for Spatio-Temporal Dynamical Systems (Co-I)

BBSRC (2008-2011), FPGA Supercomputing Technology for High-throughput Identification and Quantitation in Proteomics (PI)

BBSRC (2008-2009), Hardware Accelerated Pipeline for Proteomics (PI)

EPSRC (2006-2009), System Identification and Signal Processing for Neuroimaging Data Analysis (Co-I)

EPSRC (2006-2009), System Identification and Signal Processing for Compl;ex Systems (Co-I)

BBSRC (2004-2007), Application of Field Programmable Gate Arrays to Eliminate Bottlenecks in Near-instrument Proteomics (Co-I)

EPSRC (2004-2007), Adaptive Control of Infinite Dimensional Systems using Reconfigurable Computers (PI)

Royal Society (2004-2005), Optimal Control and Stabilisation of Parabolic-like Equations (PI)

International Space Science Institute (2004-2005), Observable Features of Avalanching Systems (Co-I)




Publications