Computer Science and Informatics Research (UoA11)
Our Arjuna (now Narayana) transaction system software contributes to international transaction processing standards.
About us
UoA11 at Newcastle University is based in the School of Computing. The school is part of the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering. It has over 60 continuous years of computer science and informatics research at NU. Our return consists of 49.8 FTE and of this 32 are new appointees 10 of these new appointees were Early Career Researchers (ECRs).
Our vision for research and innovation is to be a world-leading centre for fundamental and rigorous computing science research. We aspire to produce work that is stimulated, informed and evaluated by application in areas of importance to industry and society.
The basis of our work is built on the pillars of excellence, creativity and impact. We are guided by the principles of working together:
- visible leadership
- freedom and opportunity to succeed
- response to current and future challenges
Research strength and themes
Our research are groups set their own research strategy. They are developed in agreement with and facilitated by the School.
The Advanced Model-Based Engineering and Reasoning (AMBER) group’s research aims to realise the potential of formal models, methods and tools in engineering challenging types of system. This includes those that are concurrent, asynchronous or cyber-physical.
The Interdisciplinary Computing and Complex BioSystems (ICOS) group is the premier computational biology group within a UK Computer Science department. They are the only ones to have both microbiology and nanotechnology wet labs, including an intelligent biofoundry.
The Networked and Ubiquitous Systems Engineering (NUSE) group was created in 2019 and is building a global reputation for leading research in distributed systems. They are working on emergent paradigms including IoT and Game Engineering.
The Open Lab group is an Interaction Design and Collaborative Technologies research group with specific expertise in Human-Centred Design and Ubiquitous Computing. The group has a world-leading reputation for pioneering and developing the subfield of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This area is known as Digital Civics.
The Scalable group is renowned for tackling research challenges in High Performance Systems, Data Science, and ML. The Secure and Resilient Systems (SRS) group is recognised internationally for its research contributions to creating:
- modern information systems
- networks and infrastructures that are dependable and secure
Amber groups work on asynchronous circuit design was implemented in Workcraft. It was adopted by Dialog Semiconductor, providing the basis of UoA_Workcraft ICS. Dialog Semiconductor is an exclusive supplier of power management integrated circuits for the Apple iPhone, iPad, and Watch.
Dialog funded 2 PhDs and 2 US patents. David Lloyd became a Visiting Professor of Practice in the School of Computing. He is a Senior Member of Technical Staff at Dialog.
The growth and high-quality output of ICOS is enabled by external funding. This includes a 7.4million EPSRC Programme Grant.
There is also £2M funding from NU for microbiology and DNA/RNA nanotechnology laboratory. The group also received:
- various Innovate UK KTPs
- H2020 projects
- a RAEng Chair in Emerging Technologies for Krasnogor (one of only two such awards in NU)
NUSE’s IoTSim-X technologies leverage CloudSim as the baseline simulation framework. CloudSim inventor, Ranjan, continues to maintain its codebase. It is one of the world’s most adopted Cloud Computing simulators, and has almost 3000 citations. A key publication on CloudSim is the fifth most cited of 78,864 papers. It features in Distributed Systems between 1960 and 2020).
Open Lab is supported, as lead, by a £16.6M portfolio of UKRI-funding. This includes:
- CDT in Digital Civics
- Digital Economy Research Centre (DERC)
- the Not Equal Network+
- EPSRC Next Stage Digital Economy Centre - the Centre for Digital Citizens (CDC) valued at over £8M
The Scalable group work with scalable data analytics. Their work led to NU being invited to apply to become a partner in the Alan Turing Institute (ATI) in 2018.
The SRS group has been awarded two ERC grants (Hao and Gross). They deal with the important challenges of online voting without central authorities and security assurance of evolving network topologies.
Integration into University structures
The School of Computing will lead work to establish two new NU Centres of Research Excellence (NUCoREs). These centres are Autonomous Systems and Cyber Security. They will target the NUAcT scheme with a discipline-oriented recruitment campaign.
To further encourage diversity in our PhD cohort, we will set up a new funding scheme. This will be for the best international students to complement the top-quality UK students recruited via CDTs. This means there will be collaborations crossing established boundaries. This is evidenced by our submitted research outputs which describe:
- collaborations with other disciplines. These include biology, electronic engineering, social sciences, medicine, and media
- international collaborations on over 61% of outputs
- collaborations with industry, e.g., GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Illumina Inc., Dialog Semiconductor, InlecomSystems, Thales E-Security, and Microsoft Research
Focuses of impact, innovation, engagement and knowledge exchange
Our strategic approach to impact aims to integrate impact systematically in all stages of research. The approach is:
- user-centric in that it encourages the development of deep relationships with key users
- open by encouraging commitment to open systems, platforms, tool development and standards
- collaborative using institutional vehicles to foster multidisciplinary research
- agile in supporting flexibility to pursue opportunities for impact
Our international academic research collaborations have included:
- Aabo Akademi
- Aarhus University
- AIST
- Australian National University
- Bonn University
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Chinese University of Geosciences
- CMU
- Concordia University
- CSIRO
- ENS Cachan
- ETH Zurich
- Georgia Tech
- Leiden University
- Luxembourg University
- McMaster University
- MIT, NICTA
- Sao Paolo University
- TU Wien
- Twente University
- University of Augsburg
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne
- University of Melbourne
- University of Messina
- University of Nantes
- University of New South Wales
- University of Queensland
- University of Sydney
- Wuhan University
Our national and international industry partners have included:
- Atom Bank
- Bang & Olufsen
- Bosch
- Hewlett Packard
- Komats
- Mozilla Foundation
- Microsoft Research
- SAP, Siemens
- Swiss Precision Diagnostics
- W3C
- over 30 other companies
The building was opened in September 2017 at Newcastle Helix. It is the new location for the School of Computing. It is a flagship development for urban sustainability. It hosts laboratories supporting collaborative research on digital aspects of:
- sustainability
- transport
- energy
We share the MindSphere Laboratory with Siemens. In our research on the IoT, we develop advanced data visualisation. This helps policymakers and other stakeholders plan and operate cities sustainably. This work is also carried out in the Decision Theatre. This is an interactive 3D facility linked to the Urban Observatory. It is the largest urban sensing network of its kind in the UK.
The National Innovation Centre for Data is part of the Catalyst building. It exists to build on our world-leading expertise in data science and its application developed over the past decade. It addresses the shortage of data skills in the UK. It transfers practical data skills developed by us into the workforce of private and public sector organisation. NICD has already attracted global leaders, including Red Hat and AkzoNobel. It provides a major opportunity for generating industry impact. This following our planned investment in data science. NICD has already engaged approx. 5000 representatives from 400 organisations resulting in 60 workshops and 40 collaborative projects.
The Microbiology and DNA/RNA Nanotechnology Laboratory host state-of-the-art equipment that includes:
- facilities to design and manufacture microfluidic devices
- an optimal tweezer
- DNA sequencing machines
- digitally controlled bioreactors
- an acoustic liquid handling robot
- video rate Atom Force Microscope
The Key building provides engagement and research space for data science. In particular, for the growing team in image informatics.
Interdisciplinarity
Our Open Lab group pursues the development of theory, methods and technologies which are highly interdisciplinary. This is both within the group and externally. The group work with a broad community of partners (over 30 on the latest funded project). This includes:
- government authorities
- NGOs
- charities (local and international)
- educational organisations
- health and social care services (including NHS X/Digital)
- media companies (BBC R&D)
- industry (Microsoft, Google, Mozilla)
- a broad network of international academics
An example of our interdisciplinary internal collaborations includes working with MoveLab (NU Institute of Cellular Medicine). In this project, we collaborated with Oxford University for the UK Biobank Study. OL and MoveLab expertise was employed to develop wrist-worn accelerometers. They were used as part of the largest ever population assessment of physical activity (100,000+ participants).
ICOS has helped to generate outputs in high-quality and highly interdisciplinary areas. These include:
- stem cells and tissue engineering to computer-driven neurological interventions
- synthetic biology
- DNA/RNA nanotechnology
Values and commitments
EDI is fully embedded into the operation of the School of Computing. An EDI committee reports to the School of Computing’s Executive Board and the Faculty EDI Board as standing items. It ensuring consistency with the NU’s Equality Strategy. It has membership covering all academic career stages and major operating committees. Diversity is celebrated throughout the School. Our members are recognised at the university level for their efforts (e.g., the Tech Women team in Open Lab won a NU EDI award). The School has an extensive list of EDI actions. It celebrates social activities such as LGBT history month and International Women’s Day.
The School of Computing is committed to solving societal problems and challenges. It hopes to increase both charity and industry funding to reflect its commitment to the societal impact of our research.
Our Arjuna (now Narayana) transaction system software contributes to international transaction processing standards. It also contributes to the middleware products by Red Hat.
Since 2014, our system has increased the scale of its impact. The breadth of its impact increases with each new Red Hat middleware product created.
After IBM’s acquisition of Red Hat in 2019, many of our Red Hat products ship in IBM’s CloudPak4Apps product. This significantly increases our customer base.
The growing global market for application infrastructure and middleware software drives our impact. These markets are worth an estimated at $30.6bn in 2020 and are projected to reach $45.7bn by 2027.
The underpinning research also continues to have an impact through economic benefit to the UK.
Red Hat has continued to invest in its European Middleware HQ based in Newcastle.
Pathogens that cause infectious diseases pose one of the gravest threats to human health. They are difficult to detect and when new strains emerge, the process of finding a new antibody can take months or even years.
Bacterial antibiotic resistance means it's harder to find new solutions. As a result, there is potential for outbreaks that spread.
Our Interdisciplinary Computing and Complex BioSystems research group focus on computing science and biological systems. We are creating the next generation of algorithms. They will provide innovative solutions to problems arising in natural complex systems.
We also provide solutions to synthetic systems too, deriving new knowledge from them.
Our Microbase software is able to analyse the complete genome sequences of all bacteria in the sequence databases. This allows us to predict physiological biomarkers unique to a given group of organisms. The new software will allow medical practitioners to:
- identify the causative organism in a shorter time
- design the required antibodies in a shorter time and with more accuracy
- stop its spread at an early stage
We released Microbase under an open-source license.
Newcastle University researchers designed a new framework for designing systems. It enhances power conversion abilities.
Their software tool Workcraft helps commercial electronic devices to become:
- more reliable
- faster
- less bulky
The findings from our research results include:
- improved productivity, performance and more efficient design
- electronic devices are now more reliable and have a quicker response to the changes in power demand
- Workcraft is open source and available to the public
Tricky signal designs weren't efficient. Now, they are more efficient and productive. A device such as your smartphone displays many of these benefits.
The development of station and network signalling for railways is a complex process. It involves various steps, often supported by the simulation tools. The processes rely a lot on manual work, which makes them prone to errors and expensive.
SafeCap is a family of tools incorporating our research on advancing methods of formal verification. The development and deployment assure the safety and consistency of railway signaling.
Researchers are currently working with Siemens Mobility, Network Rail and Systra to help improve the safety of rail operations in the UK.
A new small to medium enterprise called The Formal Route will expand this work. It will develop and deploy industry-strength tools for railway safety verification.
It is of absolute importance to trace the origins of data. We must track its movement between databases and any changes it undergoes.
There are prominent questions we need to ask of any dataset:
- what is the source?
- who collected it?
- has there been any modification?
- can we rely on it?
Build trust in information and news
Provenance is a key element in ensuring that the news and information we publish online is trustworthy. It answers the key questions we ask of any dataset, as above.
Reproducibility of science
Provenance helps scientists communicate by showing all the steps involved in the derivation of a result. Then scientists can reproduce this, and prior results can be safely re-used.
Accountability, transparency and compliance
We can use provenance to make sure that we use data in compliance with a prescribed process.
Official standard
Provenance is crucial, helping consumers make a judgment on whether to trust a piece of information. It provides a record of people, institutions, entities and activities involved.
This record also shows how the data was produced, influenced, or delivered.
Dr Missier at Newcastle University worked with a team to create 'W3C PROV', the World Wide Web’s first official standard for data provenance. Many organisations that wish to ensure data integrity now use this standard.
This standard is possible through years of academic research on provenance theory and practice. Some of which originated at Newcastle University.