Theory and foundations

Our research covers a wide spectrum of computational and algorithmic principles, quantitative and symbolic techniques, models and mathematical techniques in computer science.

It provides the underpinning and deep understanding of computational behaviour, for example, correctness, termination properties, complexity and optimisation, of transition systems providing foundations for software and hardware systems, relationships between systems, of language design principles, of data relevant issues and so on.

In fact, every aspect of computer science has rich theory and computational foundations: program language semantics, modelling of software and hardware systems, databases, security and cryptography, all areas of artificial intelligence, including machines learning, knowledge representation and reasoning and natural language processing.

Across these areas our focus is both on theory from practice and development of techniques and tools with strong theoretical and computational foundations.

Areas of expertise

Our researchers focus their work in the following specialist areas:

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  Autonomy and verification

  The Autonomy and Verification Group focuses on autonomous systems and their development, verification, and analysis.

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  Formal methods

  We provide formal mathematical foundations for Computer Science, from verification of hardware, software and agent systems to cryptography and knowledge representation, reasoning and knowledge management.

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  Information management

  We design, develop and build state of the art data and knowledge management systems -- spanning from formal underpinnings in knowledge representation and logic, to challenging interdisciplinary work.

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  Systems and software security

  We develop state-of-the-art algorithms, methods and protocols to address security and privacy in networked and distributed system environments, and tools to build verifiable, trustworthy software systems.

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