If you would like to discuss how to get involved with the research group, please contact the Research Co-ordinator by email or phone (+44 (0)121 204 3652) or speak directly with a member of staff with relevant interests.

Research Areas

• Biomedical Information Engineering. This area combines the industrially funded Cardionetics Institute of Bioinformatics (with a recent half million pound donation), the Neurophysiology Applications Group, and ongoing work in bioinformatics for Pfizer Central Research. The growth of this group has been supported by new staff moving from highly regarded institutes such as the Montreal Neurological Institute and Bristol University. The general information engineering activity has also been supported by a prestigious Royal Society/Wolfson Foundation grant for a bioinformatics laboratory for information analysis.  EPSRC-supported research in MEG is also complemented with other industrial support on EEG analysis by British Aerospace.  The strength and focus of the biomedical work is in the analysis and extraction of information from the nonlinear and noise-dominated multivariate data characteristic of neurophysiological and biological systems, usually requiring novel approaches to signal and pattern processing, the extension of which is a key part of the future plans of the group.


• Statistical Physics, Learning and Information Theory. The NCRG work in the application of statistical mechanics techniques to complex interacting systems resulted in several significant contributions, in areas linked to the theory of learning, information theory and cryptography. Several theoretical frameworks analysing learning in neural networks, support vector machines and Gaussian processes have been devised and are considered as the main typical-case analyses in these areas. New activities linking statistical physics and information theory improved existing bounds on coding theory and provided insight that led to the development of new state-of-the-art error-correcting codes which nearly saturate Shannon's coding bound. The insight gained also facilitated the design of a new efficient and robust public key cryptosystem.  Two patent applications have been filed directly as a result of this research.


• Signal Processing. This activity involves mathematical frameworks and methods for signal representation outside the traditional orthogonal basis approach, complementing existing work in algorithms for high dimensional signal processing and the use of Wigner functions and Wavelets. Previous work emphasised the nonlinear dynamical systems approach to signal analysis.  Current developments include a novel approach to signal analysis and prediction by combining subspace modelling with the embedding framework. This strengthens a related NCRG research activity in the area of geographic information systems, focussing on the analysis of data obtained via remote sensing techniques.

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