As a PhD or MPhil student in Computing, you will join the department of Computer Science. The department houses multidisciplinary teams who are tackling a wide range of important and exciting research problems. The department builds on Exeter’s international reputation for Computer Science activities, especially within areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning and hydroinformatics. The department brings together Computer Scientists and Mathematicians working on a variety of modern-day, interdisciplinary topics including problems of knowledge representation, machine learning, optimisation, image and signal processing.
In the area of machine learning, pattern analysis and statistical computation, which incorporates close collaboration with the mathematical sciences, we research a range of techniques for learning from data, including statistical and nature-inspired methods. Current and recent projects in this area have focused around application areas ranging from bio-medical imaging, face and speech recognition to air-traffic control and safety-critical software design. A strong research theme in this area is shape-based computer vision and image processing, particularly for image retrieval and object classification.
Research on optimisation methods focuses on techniques for evolutionary optimisation, particularly multi-objective optimisation. This work is currently being exploited in areas such as hydroinformatics, credit-card fraud detections, mobile phone network turning and bioinformatics problems. Closely related to these is research into biologically inspired algorithms, such as neural networks, swarm intelligence and artificial life, together with applications to bioinformatics.
