Computer Science Research Groups

Advanced Computer Networking Research Group
Research in the Computer Networking Research Group focuses on communication protocols (particularly for multimedia servers, live multimedia, and multicast), quality of service issues including call admission, and performance modeling.

Architecture and Language Implementation
The Architecture and Language Implementation group has the goal of improving the performance of computer systems through the synergistic enhancement of the compiler, run-time environment, and architecture. Efforts include the Scale compiler and a wide range of optimizations for improving memory subsystem performance, Java virtual machines, garbage collection algorithms, microarchitectural support for advanced compiler and run-time optimizations, and parallel architectures.

Autonomous Learning Laboratory
The Autonomous Learning Laboratory (ALL), formerly the Adaptive NetWorks (ANW) Laboratory, focuses on both machine and biological learning. Areas of study include reinforcement learning, artificial neural networks, and biologically-inspired models of adaptive motor control.

Biologically Inspired Neural & Dynamical Systems Laboratory
The Biologically Inspired Neural & Dynamical Systems Laboratory aims to apply techniques developed in computer science to problems in biology and to turn insights gained from biological systems to construct better computational algorithms. A specific goal is to employ computational techniques from machine learning, such as clustering and Bayesian network modeling, to solve problems in functional genomics. Another goal of the lab is to build mathematical models of neural circuitries in the brain.

Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval
The National Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval (CIIR) is an NSF created S/IUCRC Center. The CIIR carries out basic research and technology transfer in the area of text-based and multimedia information systems. The research group investigates questions related to searching and browsing collections of documents.

Center for Knowledge Communication
The Center for Knowledge Communication (CKC) investigates knowledge-based educational systems, integrating theoretical principles into research systems for empirical evaluation and theoretical analysis.

Computational Biology Laboratory
The Computational Biology Laboratory uses a wide range of computational approaches to investigate fundamental biological problems in genetics, genomics, and structural molecular biology. These include regulatory network inference, the genetics of alternative splicing, protein structure prediction, and protein docking. We also work on technical improvements in variation detection and sequencing using DNA microarrays.

Computer Graphics Laboratory
The Computer Graphics (GFX) Laboratory focuses on modeling of the real world, and simulation of physically based illumination phenomena. Research topics include global illumination algorithms, real-time rendering, graphics hardware based rendering, and geometric acquisition of the real-world.

Computer Vision Research Laboratory
The Computer Vision Research Laboratory was established with the goal of investigating the scientific principles underlying the construction of integrated vision systems and the application of vision to problems of real-world importance.

Convergent Computing Systems Lab
CCSL research is aimed at supporting the creation and use of systems that incorporate components from different sources (e.g., written in different languages or imported from different Internet sites) into a synergistic whole. Current projects include JavaSPIN, a persistence extension for Java, and PolySPIN, an approach to automating seamless interoperability among Java, C++ and CLOS software modules.

Database and Information Management Laboratory
The Database and Information Management Laboratory (DBLab) focuses on the development of information infrastructures and data management systems for efficiently and securely managing large volumes of data. The research group is particularly interested in the challenges posed by emerging data types like XML and streaming data, and issues that arise in non-traditional architectures like embedded systems.

Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere
The NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) seeks to revolutionize the way we observe, detect, and predict atmospheric phenomena by creating distributed collaborative adaptive sensor networks that sample the atmosphere where and when end-users needs are greatest.

Information Extraction and Synthesis Laboratory
The Information Extraction and Synthesis Laboratory (IESL) specializes in the theoretical development and implementation of systems for extracting databases from unstructured text on the Web, and mining those databases to find patterns, predict the future, and provide decision support.

Knowledge Discovery Laboratory
KDL investigates how to find useful patterns in large and complex databases. We study the underlying principles of data mining algorithms, develop innovative techniques for knowledge discovery, and apply those techniques to practical tasks in areas such as fraud detection, scientific data analysis, and web mining.

Laboratory for Advanced Software Engineering Research
The Laboratory for Advanced Software Engineering Research (LASER) is investigating the issues surrounding the development of complex software, and the construction of software environments. LASER research emphasizes software analysis and software process.

Laboratory for Advanced System Software
The Laboratory for Advanced System Software (LASS) conducts research in the areas of file systems, operating systems, computer networks, and large-scale distributed systems, all with an emphasis on multimedia.

Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics
The Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics investigates planning and control methodologies for complex, multi-objective robotic systems, geometric reasoning for automated assembly planning, and robot learning. Research platforms include integrated hand/arm systems, mobile robots, legged systems, and articulated stereo heads.

Laboratory in Kine(ma)tics and Geometry (LinKaGe)
The Laboratory in Kine(ma)tics and Geometry's research belongs to computational geometry: the investigation of algorithmic problems with geometric content. Its focus is on rigidity, flexibility and motion for constrained structures like linkages or frameworks in mechanics or robotics. In an interdisciplinary spirit, LinKaGe also considers applications to computational biology, and investigates computational methods for motion generation in molecules (in particular, proteins).

Machine Learning Laboratory
The Machine Learning Laboratory studies computational methods that enable machines to learn from experience. Our focus is on the problem of learning the representations on which more widely studied learning algorithms depend. Currently, we are investigating methods for online simultaneous acquisition and organization of deep networks of building block predicates and functions. Older work includes the ITI incremental decision tree induction programs.

Multi-Agent Systems Laboratory
The Multi-Agent Systems Laboratory is concerned with the development and analysis of sophisticated AI problem-solving and control architectures for both single-agent and multiple-agent systems. Current research projects include cooperative information gathering, distributed situation assessment, distributed scheduling, auditory scene analysis, multi-agent learning of coordination strategies, multi-agent coordination and negotiation protocols.

PRivacy, Internetworking, Security, and Mobile Systems Laboratory
The PRivacy, Internetworking, Security, and Mobile Systems Laboratory (PRISMS) is concerned with the challenges of supporting enormous numbers of peers or devices, the unique opportunities of mobile and ubiquitous computing, and providing security and privacy in the presence of continued network and Internet threats.

Programming Languages And Systems at Massachusetts
The PLASMA group (Programming Languages And Systems at MAssachusetts) investigates issues spanning the areas of programming languages, run-time systems (especially memory management) and operating systems. The focus of the group is on cooperative system support for robust and high-performing computing in the context of modern programming languages.

Research in Presentation Production for Learning Electronically
The Research in Presentation Production for Learning Electronically (RIPPLES) project is investigating how to most effectively use the World Wide Web and CD/DVD-ROM to deliver lectures and course materials outside of the classroom. Our focus is on asynchronous learning environments in which students proceed at their own pace and are not assumed to be accessing the same material at the same time. Students can access lectures as digital audio or video, synchronized with slides, overheads or other materials.

Resource-Bounded Reasoning Research Group
The Resource-Bounded Reasoning Research Group studies the construction of intelligent systems that can operate in real-time environments under uncertainty and limited computational resources. The group conducts research in decision theory, real-time planning, autonomous agent architectures and reasoning under uncertainty.

Robotics and Biology Laboratory
The Robotics and Biology Laboratory develops algorithms and methods that enable robots to perform complex tasks in unstructured and dynamic environments, a research area referred to as Autonomous Mobile Manipulation. Our approaches require the integration of hardware, control, planning, manipulation, perception, learning, and reasoning. Some of the insights from our robotics research also apply to structural molecular biology, where we investigate algorithms for protein structure prediction and protein docking.

SENSORS: Wireless Sensor Networks Group
The wireless sensor networks research group conducts research on a variety of systems, networking and data managment issues in data-centric sensor networks. The group's focus is on building scalable energy-efficient sensor networks through the use of heterogeneous sensor modalities, sensor platforms and processors.

Systems at UMass Amherst (SUMA)
The Systems group at UMass Amherst (SUMA) has twenty faculty members and spans all major areas of systems research, including architecture, databases, distributed systems, mobile computing, networking, operating systems, privacy, programming languages, security, software engineering, and wireless sensor networks, as well as systems aspects of bioinformatics and information retrieval.

Theoretical Aspects of Parallel and Distributed Systems
Research in the TAPADS group focuses on theoretical aspects of the design and effective use of parallel and distributed computing systems and of communication networks. Issues currently being studied include load-balancing and scheduling of parallel computations, enhancing the computational power of parallel architectures using network emulations, emulating fault-free networks on possibly fault-laden ones, and efficient communication in interconnection networks and communication networks.

Theoretical Computer Science Group
Theoretical Computer Science is the quantitative and formal study of computing: which problems can be solved? what resources (for example, time or memory space) are required to solve them? The group's faculty specialize in a variety of areas, including the complexity of algebraic computations, the complexity of parallel computation, the descriptive complexity of computation, and the theory of parallel and distributed processing.