SIMULATION, MODELLING AND ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE

The term "simulation" applies narrowly to molecular dynamics, molecular mechanics, and the Monte Carlo method, but more broadly also to virtual environments and to animation. Through simulation one can visualize concepts which are not obvious by using traditional methods; through modelling one can experiment with physical models to arrive at desired outcomes quickly, safely, and inexpensively. Related to this is the field of artificial intelligence, which is concerned with developing software that accomplishes tasks normally identified as requiring human intelligence, but are infeasible to accomplish in reasonable time using human effort. These fields have the potential to play a central role in the design of new materials and industrial processes and in advancing our understanding of physical and biological processes.

Complex natural systems may be modelled as dynamical systems. These models find many practical applications ranging from fluid dynamics to biology and social sciences. The goal of FUK's and CRAIG's research is the development of mathematical tools to help understand these dynamics. This will allow better prediction and control methods for complex systems, such as traffic flow, data networks, or growth and self-organization of semi-conduction surfaces.

Mobile cooperative robotic teams can be considered to be a kind of distributed computing system cooperating in execution of some common tasks, reacting dynamically to changes in their environment. This is a multidisciplinary topic involving wireless communication, mobile computing and robotics. Using simulation methods, BARCHANSKI will discover team performance in different circumstances, and moreover to find the robots' optimal communication range, optimal number of robots for different tasks, and the influence of robot learning algorithms on a team performance.

Antibodies are an important defense mechanism in the body. GORDON's research will contribute important knowledge for the successful engineering of novel antibodies for the purposes of medical diagnostics or clinical applications. Her goal is to better understand how the three-dimensional shape of antibodies contributes towards their ability to recognize, bind, and thus target antigens for destruction. She is doing this by using computer simulations to study how the inherent flexibility of the active site of the antibody, called the hypervariable loop region, influences the antibody's binding capabilities.

Photosynthesis provides the energy required for life on earth via the conversion of absorbed sunlight into chemical energy, a process called photochemistry. Although much of the mechanism of photosynthesis is understood, some of the important details of light capture and energy conversion are still missing. BRUCE is modelling one of the most important regulatory mechanisms in photosynthesis, the one responsible for determining the efficiency of photosynthetic energy conversion under natural conditions.

Multiprocessing and distributed computer systems are becoming increasingly common. Unfortunately, software intended for such systems is difficult to write, since multiprocessing systems are inherently complex to control. ROSS's research focuses on the application of an aspect of artificial intelligence technology, called genetic programming, to the complex domain of concurrent computation.

NONE of the known techniques in Artificial Intelligence or the whole Computer Science (like genetic learning, temporal difference learning, machine learning of any form, pattern matching, tree searching, parallel computing (even with say 10^6 computers), purpose build hardware,...) can offer any breakthrough, the problem of Computer Go. This demands the development of new methods and techniques. This is principally different from other games, like chess. WOLF's research has the objective of designing computer Go programs, which currently perform only at the beginners level, which overcome the challenges presented by this game

ROTHSTEIN is working in collaboration with GORDON on a novel approach to determining protein structures. By far the most time-consuming step in such research is generating the local minima by a technique such as simulated annealing. They are developing methodologies which from a given set of simulated annealing data is capable of generating new local minima structures without having recourse to doing further simulated annealing runs.