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Why is a new type of mechanism needed?

• Although some UK universities produce world leading research

• The uptake of this by industry is generally poor

• There is a difference between curiosity-driven research

• And the research needed by industry

• The timescales are also different

• Industry wants results in months not years!www.acrc.com

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A new way•The ACRC will engage directly with industry

•Carrying out research and development projects to solve problems specified by industry

•The ACRC’s teams of researcher developers will deliver results on industry timescales to industry quality

•Commercial developments will also be carried out

•We need to develop a regular income stream through commercial and grant funding

www.acrc.com

Core themes• Big data – data and text analytics – building

business intelligence from disparate sources• Large-scale simulation and control of

complex systems – predicting social/economic behaviour in critical environments – e.g. transport infrastructure, complex organisations such as hospital A and E departments

• Software testing and quality assurance – ensuring software, apps and devices are fit for purpose – device library

• Funding model – industrial subscriptions, R&D contracts, EU and UK (eg. TSB) programmes

www.acrc.com 4

Testing and QA• Automated testing using a variety of techniques• Model-based testing - testing what you want• Reverse Engineering• ‘Discovery’ testing – building models of legacy systems -• -- recovering the modular structure of an

application• User testing – understanding the organizational context

of systems• App testing – on multiple platforms (device library)• Evolutionary testing of large codes • Automated code coverage• -- C, Java• Automated worst case performance testing:• -- speed• -- memory consumption• -- energy usage

www.acrc.com 5

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Text analytics• identification of connections between key entities • topic modelling  • document similarity • sentiment analysis • summarisation of multiple documents• knowledge discovery• machine translation

Information Retrieval• identification of interesting documents from large

collections (in both mono-lingual and multi-lingual settings) 

• exploratory search - alternatives to standard keyword-based search)

• visualisation of document collections• recommendation (providing recommendations of

interesting content from a collection)• analysis of social media (e.g. Facebook, twitter)• web log analysis 

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Very large-scale agent-based modelling of complex systems, and complex socio-technical systems

•Existing models and capabilities:• Social and economic systems• Crowd behaviours (social and cognitive)

in detailed architectural settings• Traffic simulation

•Biological systems (from molecular, cellular and tissue levels to sperm)

•Platforms• HPC simulation, • GPU simulation, • SaaS (simulation as a service)

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The Blood Brain Barrier is a mayor obstacle to effective neurological disease treatment

Simulation of blood flow through capillaries in the brain studying the behaviour of nano particles and key receptors and gap junctions

Agent-based modelling with HPC - biology

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Agent-based modelling with HPC - 2

• EURACE - the largest, most detailed and complete model of the European economy

• Integrates all the different markets together - labour, credit, financial, goods etc.

• Uses large numbers of complex agents - consumers/households; firms, banks, etc.

• Demonstrates much more accurate simulations than traditional ‘equilibrium’ models

• Used for policy modelling -

• eg. explains why QE does not lead to freer credit, etc.

• Invited presentations to:• Bank of England, • HM Treasury

Agent-based modelling with GPU

Pedestrian modelling in an airport context

www.acrc.com

P.Richmond et al10

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Other applications of FLAME• Investigation of oxygen respiration in E. coli (Green et al, PLOS Comp. Bio. (2014)

• Role of TILLR and actin in innate immune system (Qwarnstrom et al)

• MAPKinase cross talk and compartmentalisation effects (Kiss-Toth et al)

• Wound healing in epithelial cells (Walker et al)

• Foraging in social insects (Ratnieks et al)

• Social capital networks (Prell et al)

• Coevolutionary marketing strategies in retail economies (Kiran)

• Managing complex organisations (current commercial project)

• Management information system for dynamic public spaces (current commercial project)

New types of Management Decision Support Systems

• Complex systems involving people can lead to problems of overcrowding and overload

• Transport interchanges when overcrowded need effective interventions to relieve the load

• Systems such as hospital A and E can suffer large peaks in demand

• Detailed simulations can provide information about what is the best sort of intervention

• Software is being developed that will run multiple FLAME simulations faster than real time to provide best advice on which intervention to adopt under the precise current circumstances

• Transport interchanges need FLAME.gpu• Hospital systems use FLAME HPC

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