How to get computers to work together, cooperate, share resources, and avoid conflict are the major areas that the School of Engineering Computer Science's Artificial Intelligence Group is focusing on. As the first ones in the field who applied principles from game theory to model protocols for computer agent cooperation, the Group helped established a formal framework governing the high-level behavior of interacting heterogenous computer systems.

As more bodies of data come to light in biology research, it has become eminently clear that our understanding of many of life's processes will emerge as a result of developing novel computational approaches. At the School of Engineering & Computer Science's new Computational Biology Croup experts in molecular biology, bioinformatics, combinatorics, computer theory, machine learning, protein structure, drug design, biophysics, computational structural biology, and statistics form a powerful body of investigators into life's genetic and molecular make-up.

Representing and computing with geometric objects is of great scientific, technical and economic importance, and spans a broad spectrum of fields, such as Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing (CAD/CAM), Computer Vision, Robotics, and many applications.

Current research in Computational Geometry and Design includes:

In recent years digital images become more and more abundant due to the rapid advantaces in the production of digital cameras. This new reality introduces many new scientific problems and possible applications aiming to exploit this media. In our labs we work on developing novel algorithms for a wide range of purposes and use tools from statistics and physics. In the Computer Graphics Lab research is being conducted in a number of different areas, including: efficient algorithms for the generation of high-fidelity realistic images of three-dimensional objects and virtual worlds, interactive visualization and transmission over the Internet of complex virtual worlds and new medical visualization techniques.

Research activities in the Computer Systems laboratories span multiple areas: distributed systems, the future Internet, and performance evaluation. Work on distributed systems includes everything from theoretical foundations and distributed algorithms, through issues of reliability and availability, to the design and implementation of sensor networks and their protocols. We also perform research on near-term applications on mobile platforms such as cell phones, and long-range speculative research that will result in enhanced performance and optimal security for tomorrow's global information infrastructure. The hallmark of our work is a sound experimental approach, combining the collection of real-world data with careful measurements and workload analysis.

The members of the Data Base Group at the School of Engineering & Computer Science focus their research efforts on subjects of information retrieval and extraction, information exchange and integration. Emphasis is on the current semi-structured data models, such as XML, that is fast becoming a de-facto standard for data exchange and data integration

Computer-based numerical simulations are widely used in all branches of science and engineering. This allows to overcome the need for expensive experiments and allows to investigate hypothetical scenarios. Different types of equations require a different treatement specific to its unique nature. The art of deriving numerical scheme and algorithmic strategies in order to obtain a solution is the essence of scientific computing.

The mandate of Theoretical Computer Science is to explore the basic notion of computation, and discover its power and limitations, in a variety of models and settings. This research has revolutionized our understanding of computation and has deep scientific and philosophical consequences. Moreover, this research has been responsible for enormous technological progress.