University of Manchester

The University of Manchester Department of Computer Science has a long and distinguished research record dating back as far as 1948 when they developed the worlds first stored program digital computer. Currently, the department has a strong reputation for research across a wide area of Computer Science and in particular in the area of information management.

The Information Management Group (IMG) carries out research in different aspects of data intensive application development. Current research seeks to extend the functionality of database systems, to exploit description logics in advanced applications, and to make advanced information management systems easier to use. IMG is one of the leading international centres for research in the theory and practical application of description logics (DLs), having been responsible both for the implementation of THE state of the art DL reasoner (FaCT) and its use in a range of innovative applications.

Members of IMG have wide experience in national and international projects in areas such as Managing Semi-Structured Information (DWQ, CAMELOT, STARCH, COHSE), Object Data bases (ODESSA, DOQL, POLAR) and User Interfaces to Data Intensive Systems (TEALLACH, KALEIDOQUERY, INFOLENS). IMG maintains close links at Manchester University with the Bioinformatics Group and also has a range of projects in this area (TAMBIS, GIMS, RASH, IRBANE). IMG also benefits from close links with the Formal Methods Group, the Medical Informatics Group and the Advanced Interfaces Group.

Ian Horrocks is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science. He graduated in Computer Science from Manchester in 1982, winning the departmental prize for most outstanding graduate. After two years research in DTP and parallel computing, he spent 11 years in industry, returning to Manchester to complete a PhD in 1997. His PhD was a watershed in the optimisation of tableaux-based decision procedures for Description Logics, winning the annual departmental prize. He is the lead researcher on the CAMELOT project and was a leading researcher on the DWQ project.  Despite a short research career he has already published widely in leading journals and conferences, winning the best paper prize at KR'98, and is the author of a chapter in the forthcoming "Handbook of Description Logics". He is a member of the programme committees of several international conferences and workshops including KR2000, AAAI2000 TABLEAUX2000, and DL2000, is a member of the ETAI (Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence) editorial committee for the area of "Concept-based Knowledge Representation", and also reviews for several other international journals including IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, Journal of Logic and Computation, Journal of Automated Reasoning and Artificial Intelligence Journal. His current interests include knowledge representation, automated reasoning (in particular decision procedures for description and modal Logics), optimising reasoning systems, ontological engineering and large knowledge bases, and testing and evaluating reasoning systems.

Carole Goble is a Professor in Computer Science, and co-leads the Information Management Group. She has been on the faculty since 1985, and has worked in the Multimedia and Medical Informatics groups.  She was/is an investigator on a number of projects using Description Logics as modelling and retrieval languages for: medical information systems (PEN&PAD, GALEN), semantic hypermedia systems (COHSE), picture archives (STARCH), mediating disparate bioinformatic information sources (TAMBIS, TAMBIS-II), and improved protein function prediction using ontologies (Irbane). She is co-investigator in a basic research project on Description Logic-based ontology servers (CAMELOT).  She has over 40 publications in the area and has served on many conference committees on databases and multimedia. Her current interests lie in conceptual modelling, the use of ontologies and thesauri in a range of metadata and data-intensive applications, including multimedia, hypermedia, medical informatics and bioinformatics.

Sean Bechhofer is a Research Fellow. He graduated in Mathematics from the University of Bristol in 1988 and has been a research in the Department of Computer Science since 1992, working initially with the Medical Informatics Group on the GALEN project. He has also been involved with the TAMBIS, STARCH and COHSE projects within the IMG. His research interests are centered around infrastructure and tools for the Semantic Web, in particular the application of description logics and reasoning to support the use of ontologies.