Equipos y líneas de investigación Doctorado en Informática

Research Team nº 1.

The following are the lines of research and their associated lecturer and researchers that make up this research team.

Research line 1. REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING, AUDITING AND E-HEALTH SOFTWARE

Description of the line. This research line proposes the use of rigorous, repeatable, and systematic techniques provided by the discipline of Requirements Engineering to ensure the completeness, consistency, and relevance of the requirements in the development and audit of a software system, in any domain and especially in e-health and e-learning.

Research line 2. MODEL-DRIVEN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Description of the line. Application of Model Driven Engineering (MDE) to software modernisation. Integration of MDE with other technologies. Reuse and evolution of Domain Specific Languages (DSL). Testing based on models. MDE solutions and tools. Evolution of MDE solutions.

Research Team nº 2.

The following are the lines of research and their associated lecturer and researchers that make up this research team.

Research line 3. MANAGEMENT AND ACQUISITION OF CONTEXT, POSITIONING SYSTEMS, ROBOTICS AND VISION

Description of the line. This research line addresses the processes of acquiring contextual information carried out in an automated way. Application environments include robotics, geolocation, or image processing. More specifically, the possibilities offered by current mobile devices in developing such applications are of particular interest, due to their increasing computing capacity and their mobility.

Research line 4. IMPROVEMENT IN PERFORMANCE, RELIABILITY, ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND COST OF MULTI-CORE PROCESSING NODES AND THE SECONDARY STORAGE SUBSYSTEM OF A CLUSTER

Description of the line. It addresses the main design problems posed by multi-core processors with several dozen processing cores, related to the microarchitecture of each core, communication between cores and on-chip interconnection networks. This research line also studies the design of efficient file systems for clusters.

Research Team nº 3.

The following are the lines of research and their associated lecturer and researchers that make up this research team.

Research line 5. INTELLIGENT ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS FOR REAL ENVIRONMENTS THROUGH SOFT COMPUTING TECHNIQUES

Description of the line. This research line focuses on the definition and design of elements in the framework of Soft Computing for the construction of Intelligent Systems. To do so, useful knowledge is extracted from heterogeneous information, and Intelligent Data Analysis and Optimization techniques supporting heterogeneous information are designed/improved.

Research line 6. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: FOUNDATIONS AND APPLICATIONS IN LIFE SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING

Description of the line. This research line deals with both theoretical aspects of Artificial Intelligence, related to the proposal of new models and techniques, as well as with practical aspects focused on applying these models and techniques to real problems in the fields of medicine (diagnosis, classification, prognosis, pharmacovigilance, etc.), biology (chronobiology, analysis of microarrays, etc.) and engineering (maintenance of industrial plants, fault diagnosis, etc.). More particularly, we deal with those technologies related to intelligent data analysis, especially temporary data mining, case-based reasoning systems, and knowledge-based systems. Likewise, the most relevant theoretical problems will be considered in aspects of pure temporal and spatial reasoning, both at the level of link resolution and also at the level of logical reasoning, addressing issues of decidability, undecidability, and computational complexity.

Research Team nº 4.

The following are the lines of research and their associated lecturer and researchers that make up this research team.

Research line 7. HETEROGENEOUS ENERGY EFFICIENT SYSTEMS

Description of the line. This research line aims to develop different hardware and software techniques to improve the performance and energy efficiency of heterogeneous multi-core computing systems. To achieve this, we use different types of accelerators and assess our mechanisms in a series of multimedia or scientific applications that process extensive amounts of data, paying particular attention to different bioinformatic applications used to solve problems of great social importance.

Research line 8. HUMAN LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGIES

Description of the line. This research line addresses the application of language knowledge (techniques, methodologies, and resources) to the development of computer systems that can recognise, understand, interpret, and generate human language in all its forms. It encompasses topics of basic research in natural language processing technologies and application in specific domains where their use is reporting great benefits, in terms of information and knowledge management. In particular, research in this line is into the acquisition of knowledge from natural language text, monolingual, multilingual, and distributed information retrieval, opinion mining and analysis of feelings, interfaces in natural language, etc. Areas of special interest will be biomedicine, education, tourism and finance.

Research line 9. ONTOLOGIES, SEMANTIC WEB AND KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEMS

Description of the line. This research line encompasses basic research topics in semantic web technologies and of application in specific domains where applying it is paying great dividends in terms of information and knowledge management. Research topics include, among others, methodologies for designing, integrating, learning, enriching and evaluating the quality of ontologies, representation systems, search and processing of semantics on the web, semantic interoperability of information, the generation, integration and use of linked data repositories available on the web, socio-semantic recommendation systems, semantic models for training as well as knowledge acquisition and inference systems and knowledge-based organisational systems. Our areas of special interest are biomedicine, education, tourism and finance.

Research Team nº 5.

The following are the lines of research and their associated lecturer and researchers that make up this research team.

Research line 10. DEVELOPMENT, OPTIMISATION AND APPLICATION OF SOFTWARE IN ADVANCED COMPUTER SYSTEMS

Description of the line. We work in the development of efficient software for advanced computer systems, researching parallel code development and optimisation techniques for complex systems (shared memory, heterogeneous clusters, GPUs and CPU + GPU, mobile and distributed systems), and with application to scientific problems that have a high computational cost.

Research line 11. INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS AND ROBOTICS

Description of the line. The automation of equipment and systems involves choosing control systems, in which optimum adjustment of the controller supposes efficient operation of the plant with a minimum consumption of raw material and energy. In addition, the automation of production processes management is carried out through several levels, including supervision and control systems (SCADA) and MES. The research line of Industrial Informatics and Robotics focuses on the design of advanced computer control systems, at the different automation levels, with industrial applications in several areas: machinery control, process control, robotics, solar thermal energy systems, and network control systems.

Research line 12. CONTROL OF NON-LINEAR SYSTEMS AND HYBRID SYSTEMS

Description of the line. This research line has a more theoretical character, complemented by the more technological approach line Industrial Informatics and Robotics in which the same researchers participate. In general, it involves addressing open mathematical problems in the area of control systems, particularly in the area of robust and/or non-linear control systems, and in the area of hybrid control systems, which the team is vastly experienced in.

Research Team nº 6.

The following are the lines of research and their associated lecturer and researchers that make up this research team.

Research line 13. COMPUTATIONAL CELESTIAL MECHANICS. TOOLS AND APPLICATIONS

Description of the line. Both the continuous improvement of observations as well as the requirements of different space missions to small bodies in the solar system require the global study of roto-translational dynamics, including the main perturbations. The problems are treated in Hamiltonian form as perturbed resonant oscillators, with redundant variables, and in particular with quaternions. Along with the use of software available in the market, the development of more specific software will be essential for developing present and future research.

Research line 14. INTELLIGENT AND AUTONOMOUS DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

Description of the line. This research line deals with the role played by Artificial Intelligence (AI) in complex and decentralized software systems. Specifically, we focus on the role these software systems can play in the context of Environmental Intelligence in which the human is the central element, towards which all software design efforts are addressed. We focus mainly on software aspects based on AI techniques, whether simple or complex.

Research line 15. ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE DEPLOYMENT OF INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURES, MOBILITY AND REDUCED AREA NETWORKS

Description of the line. This line aims to research into several areas that cover the spectrum of efficient communication mechanisms in vehicular networks and context-based environments or supporting networks of sensors integrated in vehicular networks. Other topics of particular relevance to this research line include the use of the Internet of Things-based technologies as well as their application to Smart City environments, and particularly in transport, energy efficiency, and e-health solutions.

Research line 16. FUTURE INTERNET NETWORKS: INFRASTRUCTURES AND SECURITY

Description of the line. The objective of the line is to research into the design and implementation of new network architectures based on aspects such as ID/locator division, improved security properties, native support for heterogeneous access technologies and transparent mobility support for nodes and elements within the Internet of Things. The management of security both at communication level and at infrastructures and services level are also dealt with.

Involvement of International Experts.

It is important to underscore that international experts' participation in our doctoral programme is a factor that has been considered from the very beginning of the programme. Such participation comes as a consequence of the major internationalisation of our research teams; due to the large number of projects with international universities and institutions; and of joint publications with relevant researchers at international level.

The different research teams taking part in this Doctoral Programme have put several mechanisms for external collaboration into place. In general, we would like to highlight the following ones:

  1. Receiving visiting researchers to teach lectures, conferences, seminars or talks related to any of our research lines, thereby taking advantage of mobility aids for teaching staff to enable relevant researchers to participate in our Doctoral Programme.
  2. Visits, meetings and research stays by members of our research team and by visiting researchers to foster collaboration both with those groups that already have existing and stable relationships as well as with new ones where there may be a possibility of working in collaboration on related topics.
  3. To promote the mobility for researchers' training by means of exchanges and stays in collaborating research centres in the different research lines and to foster developing joint theses with researchers from foreign centres.
  4. Participation in coordinated research projects of the different regional, national and European plans with other research centres. As well as participation in national and international thematic research networks for the pooling of new developments, and possible collaboration agreements in new projects or contracts.

In any case, we would like to highlight Professor Alexey Lastovetsly's participation in our doctoral courses in recent years. Likewise, Professor Bora Ucar taught part of a postgraduate course. Professors Yves Robert, Leonel Sousa, Ravi Reddy and Emmanuel Jeannot all gave lectures aimed at PhD students.

In addition, the following international experts have also collaborated with us:

  1. Carlo Combi of the University of Verona (Italy)
  2. Valentin Goranko of the Technical University of Denmark
  3. Angelo Montanari of the University of Udine (Italy)
  4. Abdul Sattar of the University of Griffit (Australia)
  5. Ameen Abu-Hana of the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
  6. Bart Goethals University of Antwerp (Belgium)

In summary, the PhD Programme seeks to continue to count on foreign researchers and to collaborate with them as it has done up to now.