Intelligent Model Checking. Real-world systems are typically so complex that software engineers require specialised CAD tools to debug and verify a design. Model checking is a formal method that is used extensively for this purpose, particularly for mission-critical systems. In this work, a new kind of verifying tool, based on model checking, is developed. This new model checker is intelligent because a heuristic search is integrated into the underlying formalism. It is not exhaustive, and is mo ....Intelligent Model Checking. Real-world systems are typically so complex that software engineers require specialised CAD tools to debug and verify a design. Model checking is a formal method that is used extensively for this purpose, particularly for mission-critical systems. In this work, a new kind of verifying tool, based on model checking, is developed. This new model checker is intelligent because a heuristic search is integrated into the underlying formalism. It is not exhaustive, and is more efficient than a traditional model checker during the design phase because it does only a minimum amount of work in its search for a fault.Read moreRead less
Enhancing information credibility using mathematical prediction. The aim of this project is to develop theory, techniques, mathematical tools and practical algorithms for rumor detection and forecast in social media to enhance credibility of news, especially in time-sensitive situations and trending events. This project will significantly advance human knowledge of rumor formation, detection, and forecast, which will enable timely and efficient counter attacks. The outcomes from this project wil ....Enhancing information credibility using mathematical prediction. The aim of this project is to develop theory, techniques, mathematical tools and practical algorithms for rumor detection and forecast in social media to enhance credibility of news, especially in time-sensitive situations and trending events. This project will significantly advance human knowledge of rumor formation, detection, and forecast, which will enable timely and efficient counter attacks. The outcomes from this project will offer a reliable information environment for our society.Read moreRead less
Cloud Security: Techniques for Securing Cloud Data and Services. Fundamental challenges in security and trust arise in cloud data storage and service provision. This project will achieve conceptual advances by proposing new security and trust models to secure cloud data and services. It will develop novel techniques to achieve efficient and secure cloud data management, propose new access control schemes for cloud services and develop new mechanisms for detecting sophisticated cyber threats. Thi ....Cloud Security: Techniques for Securing Cloud Data and Services. Fundamental challenges in security and trust arise in cloud data storage and service provision. This project will achieve conceptual advances by proposing new security and trust models to secure cloud data and services. It will develop novel techniques to achieve efficient and secure cloud data management, propose new access control schemes for cloud services and develop new mechanisms for detecting sophisticated cyber threats. This project will also propose a novel integrated trust enhanced cloud security architecture, enabling the design of adaptive secure systems which will be more resilient to dynamic cyber security attacks. It will demonstrate the proposed models and architecture using a practical cloud based online application.Read moreRead less
THE DEVELOPMENT OF MECHANISTIC MODELS FOR BUBBLY FLOWS WITH HEAT AND MASS TRANSFER. Commercially available CFD computer codes are currently widely used in many Australian industrial sectors. It is clearly recognised that the state-of-the-art models for dealing with complex bubbly flows with/without heat and mass transfer in these computer codes require further developments and improvements. This research project will address the prevalent deficiency in many of these computer codes. It is antici ....THE DEVELOPMENT OF MECHANISTIC MODELS FOR BUBBLY FLOWS WITH HEAT AND MASS TRANSFER. Commercially available CFD computer codes are currently widely used in many Australian industrial sectors. It is clearly recognised that the state-of-the-art models for dealing with complex bubbly flows with/without heat and mass transfer in these computer codes require further developments and improvements. This research project will address the prevalent deficiency in many of these computer codes. It is anticipated that through this major development of new models capable of predicting a wide range of industrial bubbly flow problems and implementation thereafter in these computer codes, industries will experience significant benefits especially reduce time and costs in their design and production.Read moreRead less
An Integrative and Interactive Approach for Co-estimation of Multiple Sequence Alignment and Phylogeny Reconstruction. In this project innovative IT methods will be developed to assist biologists to solve complex and important biological problems. Many important applications in computational biology need very accurate and reliable tools for multiple sequence alignment and phylogeny reconstruction. Unfortunately, current existing tools are unreliable and are prone to serious errors when applied t ....An Integrative and Interactive Approach for Co-estimation of Multiple Sequence Alignment and Phylogeny Reconstruction. In this project innovative IT methods will be developed to assist biologists to solve complex and important biological problems. Many important applications in computational biology need very accurate and reliable tools for multiple sequence alignment and phylogeny reconstruction. Unfortunately, current existing tools are unreliable and are prone to serious errors when applied to large and divergent biological sequences. The success of this project will not only make significant contribution to the relevant research fields, but also help achieve goals in certain real-life biological research projects which are unique and important to Australia.Read moreRead less
Soundness-guided security analysis for android applications. This project aims to develop a soundness-guided programme analysis to mitigate security threats caused by reflection and dynamic class loading in Android apps, without compromising precision and scalability. Both dynamic code update techniques are widely used in benign and malware apps, but state-of-the-art malware analysis tools ignore or mishandle them, missing security threats and vulnerabilities. The resulting open-source security ....Soundness-guided security analysis for android applications. This project aims to develop a soundness-guided programme analysis to mitigate security threats caused by reflection and dynamic class loading in Android apps, without compromising precision and scalability. Both dynamic code update techniques are widely used in benign and malware apps, but state-of-the-art malware analysis tools ignore or mishandle them, missing security threats and vulnerabilities. The resulting open-source security analysis tool will allow software industries and enterprises (from national security, finance, banking to healthcare, retail, telecommunications) to test their mobile software effectively for code defects or security threats early at software development time at significantly reduced cost.Read moreRead less
Refinement of Temporal and Epistemic Specifications in Asynchronous Systems. Designing distributed systems is a complex activity requiring rigorous mathematical models of designs and specifications. It is desirable for the mathematical notations to be as close as possible to intuitive notions used by designers. One such notion is the idea that components in a distributed system have states of knowledge. Previous work has developed a calculus enabling derivation of systems with global clock by s ....Refinement of Temporal and Epistemic Specifications in Asynchronous Systems. Designing distributed systems is a complex activity requiring rigorous mathematical models of designs and specifications. It is desirable for the mathematical notations to be as close as possible to intuitive notions used by designers. One such notion is the idea that components in a distributed system have states of knowledge. Previous work has developed a calculus enabling derivation of systems with global clock by series of correctness-preserving transformations from a knowledge-based specification. This project will generalize this work to a calculus for systems that lack a global clock, and implement a tool providing automated support for use of the calculus.Read moreRead less
Redesigning Typesetting for the Digital Age: Multilingual Layout on Multiple Media. We propose to create and develop a new model for character-level automatic typesetting, much more flexible than existing approaches. This model will support quality typesetting of all of the modern - and many ancient - languages and scripts, on media such as paper, computer screen, paper maps and online maps, for regular and safety-critical applications.
The fundamental innovations in this proposal are the us ....Redesigning Typesetting for the Digital Age: Multilingual Layout on Multiple Media. We propose to create and develop a new model for character-level automatic typesetting, much more flexible than existing approaches. This model will support quality typesetting of all of the modern - and many ancient - languages and scripts, on media such as paper, computer screen, paper maps and online maps, for regular and safety-critical applications.
The fundamental innovations in this proposal are the use of a tree-structured parameter space (generalization of Unix environment variables) and a multiple-pass approach to typesetting (as used in compilers). These innovative techniques will be integrated into computer software used worldwide.Read moreRead less
Micro Compilers: An Extensible Compiler Architecture for Increased Flexibility and Safety. Programming languages specialised to a particular application domain can cut software development costs and reduce programming errors. Unfortunately, most application domains cannot sustain the costly development and maintenance of the specialised compilers required to implement specialised languages. We address this problem by introducing a novel customisable compiler architecture that can be adapted to ....Micro Compilers: An Extensible Compiler Architecture for Increased Flexibility and Safety. Programming languages specialised to a particular application domain can cut software development costs and reduce programming errors. Unfortunately, most application domains cannot sustain the costly development and maintenance of the specialised compilers required to implement specialised languages. We address this problem by introducing a novel customisable compiler architecture that can be adapted to specialised languages and other special-purpose compiler requirements. Customisable compilers are especially important to a country like Australia that has only limited resources for special purpose developments. Moreover, we will train students at undergraduate and postgraduate level in the area of programming languages and compilers.Read moreRead less
Design-Driven Requirements for Internet-Enabled System Development. The nature of Web system development is significantly different from conventional, software and IT development. Amongst other factors, there is substantial uncertainty in both clients' understanding of their needs and developers' understanding of the systems domain. We will develop an uncertainty model relevant to the development model relevant to the development of internet-enabled systems, and then use this model to adapt th ....Design-Driven Requirements for Internet-Enabled System Development. The nature of Web system development is significantly different from conventional, software and IT development. Amongst other factors, there is substantial uncertainty in both clients' understanding of their needs and developers' understanding of the systems domain. We will develop an uncertainty model relevant to the development model relevant to the development of internet-enabled systems, and then use this model to adapt the design process to support elicitation of requirements, as well as developing support for this adapted process. This will facilitate the development of systems that more accurately reflect clients' needs, and result in an understanding of what would be involved in reducing development costs.Read moreRead less