Research

Current Research

Our current research can be grouped into the Themes below. These have been applied in a wide range of domains including engineering, e-science, social science, business, health, technology-enhanced learning, and transport; nationally and internationally.

Theme 1 Architecture, Security and Dependability: This involves architecting and developing dependable and secure large-scale distributed systems. For examples, fault-tolerance, transactions, access control and dependable storage, with a focus on real-world cloud computing systems.

Theme 2 Performance and Quality of Service: This focuses on quality of Cloud/Edge-based services to enable organisations to efficiently manage their high-end computing resources. Balancing QoS and performance is essential for cloud providers to meet service level agreements (SLAs) and maintain trust with users.

Theme 3 Collaboration in Distributed Environments: This builds on the semantic web which provides an additional layer of intelligence and interoperability for systems over the Internet. For examples, techniques to transit from requirements to semantics, models of collaborative working, and use of provenance as a means to reinforce trust.

Theme 4 Self-management of decentralized networked systems: This focuses on designing decentralized and self-managed techno-socio-economic systems, self-regulated supply-demand data sharing systems, and decentralized optimization and collective learning over crowd-sourced computational resources of citizens, enabling a new generation of artificial intelligence for socio-technical systems equipped with socially responsible self-management capabilities applied on emerging application domains of Smart Grids, Smart Cities and their sharing economies.

Theme 5 Machine Learning in software development: This focuses on Program optimisation and analysis, Software testing and software reliability, Accelerate large-scale deep learning models, and Applied machine learning, with the aim of making software development easier and more accessible so that every programmer can easily write, maintain and optimise software.

Theme 6 Scheduling and optimisation in distributed computing: This focuses on Deterministic scheduling theory, scheduling with controllable parameters, and application of optimisation techniques in distributed computing.

Current projects

The Communications Hub for Empowering Distributed Cloud Computing Applications and Research (CHEDDAR). EPSRC

Trust and legitimation in the digital democracy. Investigators at Leeds: Prof. Evangelos Pournaras, 77 National Research Programme.

Digitally-assisted Collective Governance of Smart City Commons-ARTIO. 1 September 2022 - 31 August 2026, UKRI, £1.5M, Primary investigator: Professor Evangelos Pournaras.

H2OforAll: protecting and treating drinking water (H2OforAll), Investigators at Leeds: Prof. Evangelos Pournaras, Supported through a Horizon Europe guarantee grant.

Previous projects

“Algorithmic Support for Massive Scale Distributed Systems” (2020-24)

“Quality of Service Provision for Grid Applications via Intelligent Scheduling” (2009-13)

“Submodular Optimisation Techniques for Scheduling with Controllable Parameters” (2013-14)

EU Horizon SANCUS: including 15 partners among 8 European countries, where I was responsible for the problem formulation and optimization of the joint Security-vs-QoS trade-off for Intrusion Detection and Response Systems and led two of the engines.

GAUChO: a 3-year project funded by the Italian research minister, which involved 4 Italian universities. The project focused on designing and employing methodologies for a distributed and heterogeneous architecture to integrate fog computing and networking functionalities.

EDS Recommissioning, NERC

EDGNESS: Energy Efficiency, Edge and Serverless Computing (NGI Pointer 2 / EU)

System Architectures for Future Supercomputing, Fujitsu

PSI - Programme for Simulation Innovation (2013-2017). Investigators at Leeds: Jie Xu. Funding: Jaguar Land Rover and EPSRC. (£10m)

TANGO - Transparent heterogeneous hardware Architecture deployment for eNergy Gain in Operation. (2016-2018). Investigators at Leeds: Karim Djemame, Richard Kavanagh, James Dyer, Vasilis Kelefouras, David Duke. Funding: EU H2020-ICT-04-2015. (€3.19m)

ASCETiC - Adaptive Service lifeCycle towards EffcienT Clouds (2013-2016). Investigators at Leeds: Karim Djemame, Django Armstrong, Richard Kavanagh. Funding: EU FP7 Call 10. (€4.4m)

AWESOME - Academic Writing Empowered by Social Online Mediated Environments (2008-2009). Investigators at Leeds: Vania Dimitrova, Lydia Lau, Rebecca O'Rourke (Education), Aisha Walker (Education). Funding: JISC.

AssessGrid - Advanced Risk Assessment and Management for Trustable Grids.

BROADEN - Business Resource Optimisation for Aftermarket & Design on Engineering Networks.

COLAB - Collaboration with Beihang University in China to develop the dependable Grid middleware CROWN-C.

DAME - Distributed Aircraft Maintenance Environment.

Dicode - Mastering Data-Intensive Collaboration and Decision Making (2010-2013). Investigators at Leeds: Lydia Lau, Vania Dimitrova. Funding: EU FP7 - 4.3: Intelligent Information Management(€3.5m).

e-Demand - A Demand-Led Service-Based Architecture for Dependable e-Science Applications (April 2002 - April 2005) - (Grant No.: THBB/C008/00112C) - The EPSRC/DTI e-Science Core Programme

EKT-SLA - Enterprise Knowledge Transfer - Service Level Agreements Investigators at Leeds: Adriano Galati, Karim Djemame Funding: University of Leeds / Cybula.

ELN - Electronic Laboratory Notebook for the community in EUROCHAMP-2 - European Simulation Chambers for Investigating Atmospheric Processes 2010-2012. Investigators at Leeds: Zulkifly Mohd Zaki, Mohammed Haji, Lydia Lau, Peter Dew, Jennifer Young (Chemistry), Andrew Rickard (Chemistry), Mike Pilling (Chemistry).

GENESIS - Generative e-Social Science.

Grid PPT - Grid Applications Performance Prediction Tool (2008-2009) Funding:DTI.

IBHIS - Provision of an integrated broker that enables coherent use of a set of distributed, heterogeneous data sources in the UK Health and Social care domain, whilst ensuring trustworthiness and audit.

ImREAL - Immersive Reflective Experience-based Adaptive Learning (2010-2013). Investigators at Leeds: Vania Dimitrova, Lydia Lau, David Allen (LUBS), Alistair Norman (LUBS). Funding: EU FP7 - 4.2: Technology Enhanced Learning(€4.2m).

ISQoS - Intelligent Scheduling for Quality of Service (2009-2013). Investigators at Leeds: Karim Djemame, Richard Kavanagh, Natasha Shakhlevich, Anastasia Grekioti. Funding: EPSRC.

NECTISE - Network Enabled Capability Through Innovative Systems Engineering (April 2005 - April 2009) - (Grant No.: EP/D505461/1)

OPTIMIS - Optimized Infrastructure Services (2010-2013). Investigators at Leeds: Karim Djemame, Ming Jiang, Tom Kirkham, Django Armstrong. Funding: EU FP7-ICT (€10.5m).

STRAPP - Trusted Digital Spaces through Timely Reliable and Personalised Provenance (2011-2014). Investigators at Leeds: Jie Xu, Lydia Lau, Karim Djemame, Vania Dimitrova. Funding: Rolls Royce Plc, Technology Strategy Board (£1.37M).