Our research

Research areas

The following areas represent ongoing research efforts by various academic members of staff within the department. For more information, research or collaboration proposals, please reach out to the contact person listed in each area.

 

  • Computational complexity and optimisation
  • Integrated risk reduction of information-based infrastructure systems
  • Model extraction (informal descriptions to formal representations)
  • Automation of formal programming syntax generation
  • Automation of project process estimation
  • High-level description language design
  • Distributed computing systems and architectures
  • Requirements engineering - methods, management and automation
  • System development including real-time scheduling, stochastic modelling, and Petri-nets
  • Software testing
  • Contact: Prof. Ernest Cachia for more details
  • Data integration and consolidation for data warehousing and cloud services
  • Database technology, data sharing issues and scalability performance
  • Processing of streaming data
  • Data analysis and pre-processing
  • Predictive modelling
  • Data warehousing and data mining: design, integration, and performance
  • Big data and analytics
  • Search and optimization
  • Business intelligence
  • Data modelling including spatial-temporal modelling
  • Distributed database systems
  • Missing data analysis
  • Information retrieval
  • Contact: Dr Joseph Vella or Mr Joseph Bonello for more details
  • Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
  • Understanding the User Experience (UX) through physiological and cognitive metrics
  • Human-to-instrumentation interaction in the aviation industry
  • User modelling in software engineering processes
  • Human-factors and ergonomics
  • Accessibility, universal design and accessible user agents
  • Advancing assistive technologies (multi-modal interaction)
  • Affordances and learned behaviour
  • The lived experience of information consumers
  • Information architecture
  • Human-information interaction and information anxiety
  • Contact: Dr Chris Porter for more details
  • Gene regulation ensemble effort for the knowledge commons
  • Automation of gene curation; gene ontology adaptation
  • Classification and effective application of curation tools
  • Pervasive electronic monitoring in healthcare
  • Health and social care modelling
  • Missing data in healthcare records
  • Neuroimaging
  • Metabolomics
  • Technology for an ageing population
  • Education, technology and cognitive disabilities (e.g. augmented reality)
  • Assistive technologies in the context of the elderly and individuals with sensory and motor impairments in institutional environments
  • Quality of life, independence and security - investigating the use of robotic vehicles, spoken dialogue systems, indoor positioning systems, smart wearables, mobile technology, data-driven systems, machine learning algorithms, optimisation and spatial analytic techniques
  • Contact: Mr Joseph Bonello or Dr Conrad Attard for more details
  • Applicative genetic algorithms and genetic programming
  • Latent semantic analysis and natural language processing
  • Heuristics and metaheuristics
  • Stochastic modelling & simulation
  • Semantic keyword-based search on structured data sources
  • Application of AI and machine learning to business and industry
  • Application of AI techniques for operational research, forecasting and the science of management
  • Application of AI techniques to detect anomalies in the European Electricity Grid
  • Knowledge discovery
  • Image Processing (deconvolution)
  • Image super-resolution using deep learning techniques
  • Optimization of manufacturing production lines using AI techniques
  • Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Tile Processing Module development
  • Spam detection using linear genetic programming and evolutionary computation
  • Scheduling/combinatorial optimisation
  • Traffic analysis and sustainable transportation
  • Automotive cyber-security
  • Contact: Dr Colin Layfield for more details
  • Automatic Stock Trading
  • Distributed Ledger Technologies
  • Contact: Prof. John Abela for more details

Ongoing and past projects 

What next?

 

Research at UM addresses current needs and opportunities, as well as those that may affect the country in the future. This is done in conjunction with Government and private industry, and also by participating in EU research programmes and funding.

 


https://www.um.edu.mt/ict/cis/ourresearch/