Objectives

In recent years there has been growing interest in the distributed systems community in the application of object-based infrastructures for industrial concerns. Aspects of workflow management, distributed artificial intelligence, network management and agent-based applications have all become dependent on the establishment of a viable underlying systems infrastructure. Bodies such as the OMG are forging ahead with standardisation in this area. This has led to a significant increase in applied research opportunities in this field including major initiatives from the UK Government (DTI) and the European Community. The Center for Complex Cooperative Communicating Systems has been highly successful in applied research in this area, and has been involved in the generation of first-of-kind applications for both research and industrial domains.

The Centre for Complex Cooperative Communicating Systems is a research group within the Department of Computing in the CSM Faculty at the University of the West of England. The Centre exists to conduct basic and applied research into the provision of computing infrastructures for applications in the distributed systems arena.

The Centre aims to undertake both collaborative software applications research with partners (normally in an applied research context) and basic, strategic research using knowledge and experience gained from many successful research projects already completed throughout the Faculty. Much of the research is conducted in joint research projects either internally with other UWE based Research Centres, or externally with research institutes or industrial collaborators.

The Center is funded through research grants tied to specific research projects. For example Motorola is currently a major sponsor, providing equipment and financing accomodation for post-graduate research students. The Department of Trade and Industry support a number of applied research projects, and the EPSRC fund a CASE studentship. Two of our researchers have also been awarded Royal Academy of Engineering Fellowships which fund secondments to collaborating organisations.