The School of Computer Science and Software Engineering covers a broad range of activities, mainly at the technical and scientific end of the computing spectrum. It conducts cutting-edge research and excellent education programs in the science of computing, information processing and communications, the underlying software and hardware of computing systems and software engineering. The undergraduate degree programs target both applied industry needs and formal computer science.
The school maintains modern teaching and research facilities and hosts a
number of leading-edge demonstrator projects in its research laboratories. It
forms the Melbourne node of the Cooperative Research Centre for Distributed
Systems Technology.
It enjoys a close partnership in research, development and research training
with a number of IT&T companies, and a large number of R&D projects
funded by government funding bodies and commercial organisations such as the
Australian Research Council, Australian Telecommunications and Electronic
Board, Microsoft, Telstra and BHP.
In 2002, the school has 90 academic and research staff including six professors, one adjunct professor, one reader, seven associate professors, 17 senior lecturers, 37 lecturers and research fellows, and 22 assistant lecturers and research assistants. Many of our academic and research staff are internationally known and leading experts in their field of research and study. Representatives of the work are highlighted in research as can be seen from the publications by the staff and research students of the school in well-known international journals and conferences.
There are five major research groups at present in the school focusing on audiovisual information processing and digital communications, computing education, distributed systems and software engineering, optimisation and constraint-solving, and reasoning under uncertainty.
The Audiovisual Information Processing and Digital Communications Group (AVIPAC), staffed by 13 academic and research personnel of the school, researches the underlying principles and enabling technologies for representing, storing and processing audiovisual information and the effective telecommunication of audio, visual and computer data. Applications are in telecommunications, digital television, interactive computing, multimedia communications, tele-medicine and the entertainment industry. There are four focused research areas covered currently by AVIPAC, ie, digital signal processing: theory and applications, telecommunications and computer networking, information and network security, and image processing, computer graphics and visual communications. These research activities are supported by facilities provided in our research laboratories, which include the Digital Signal Processing Research Laboratory, Digital Communications Research Laboratory, Laboratory for Intelligent Algorithms in Communications, Image Processing and Computer Graphics Laboratory, Digital Image/ Video Quality Assessment Laboratory and Advanced Digital Design Laboratory - Ultrasonic Imaging.
The Computing Education Research Group (CERG) focuses on contemporary educational issues in computing and seeks to provide a vision for the pedagogical future of computing. The group studies and develops innovative technology in teaching and different approaches to teaching computing topics are investigated and evaluated with the aim of determining their effectiveness and efficiency in improving the processes of human learning. CERG is a member of CSERGI (Computer Science Education Research Groups International).
The Centre for Distributed Systems and Software Engineering (DSSE), staffed by 15 academic and research personnel of the school, focuses on methods and tools for modelling, analysing, constructing and maintaining large distributed software systems. Areas of particular interest are component technology, software architecture, mobile systems, distributed databases and image retrieval, parallel and distributed systems, particularly, cluster computing and network technology. The centre is the conduit for Monash's partnership in the Cooperative Research Centre for Enterprise Distributed Systems Technology. The CDSSE research facility includes wireless local area networks equipment and gear and a mobility library, a number of servers and workstations for experimenting with mobility-related research issues. The facility is supported by Telstra Wireless Data network with a donation of wireless modems and free airtime. With the school, DSSE owns two PC clusters which can be operated as a single Parametric Modelling Engine and run Linux, Windows NT and SUN Solaris.
The Optimisation and Constraint Solving Research Group (O&CS), staffed by seven academic and research personnel of the school (and a further 10 from other schools in the faculty), is devoted to solving difficult optimisation and constraint satisfaction problems such as scheduling, timetabling and graph and document layout. The group is interested in new techniques for solving these problems, developing software tools which facilitate their solution, and cooperating with business and government to solve difficult constraint problems occurring in industrially important application areas. The group is best known for its work in constraint programming languages, meta-heuristic optimisation techniques, constraint-based graphics, graph layout, simulation and business applications.
The Reasoning Under Uncertainty Group (RUUG) is staffed by 11 academic and research personnel of the school. The group focuses on the development and use of artificial intelligence techniques for quantitatively reasoning about situations in which uncertainty is a significant factor. The methods employed are varied and include Bayesian networks, information theory, stochastic simulation, neural networks, decision theory and fuzzy logic. These methods are applied in diverse application areas including machine learning, data mining, bioinformatics, natural language processing, pattern recognition and image processing. The main areas of research by the group include minimum message length (MML) inference, machine learning, planning and plan recognition under uncertainty, natural language processing and argument generation, bioinformatics, pattern recognition and image processing, and fuzzy logic.
In addition to the aforementioned research activities, academic and research
staff of the school also conduct research in digital systems hardware and
architecture including embedded systems; logic and theory including logic
programming, algorithms and computational complexity, combinatorial structures
used in computing, theory of inductive inference, extracting (correct) programs
from mathematical proofs; electronic media art with emphasis on the creative
meshing of art, science and technology, including computer graphics, rule-based
modelling, sound synthesis, information design and electro-acoustic
composition, production and publishing of works and literature concerning
new-media art and computer-based lexicography.
Further information is available from our website at
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/research/.
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