Cyber Technology Institute areas of expertise

The Cyber Technology Institute (CTI) is headed by Professor Eerke Boiten. The CTI is a collaborative research hub which focuses on the development of knowledge and technologies to ensure a smart, safe and secure cyberspace. 

It brings together the expertise of three research groups: the Cyber Security Centre (CSC); the Software Technology Research Laboratory (STRL) and the Context Intelligence and Interaction Research Group (CIIRG).

Cyber Security Centre (CSC)

The CSC has a proven track record of delivering research with significant impact for industry – for example, through its specialisation in Industrial Control Systems, it has been recognised as an Airbus Centre for Excellence in SCADA cyber security and forensics.

The CSC’s research incorporates areas such as privacy, cryptography, intrusion/anomaly detection and malware mitigation, software and application security, hardware security, digital forensics and human factors of security.  

Funding has successfully been secured from publicly funded research bodies and commercial contracts to advance the creation of safe, smart, secure technologies both individually and as members of national/international consortia.  For shorter term projects we also offer a range of consultancy services by research active members of staff. 

For more information about CSC, please contact Dr Richard Smith, Associate Professor of Cyber Security at rgs@dmu.ac.uk

Software Technology Research Laboratory (STRL)

The STRL has a long history of developing and delivering high quality research and teaching in the field of software engineering. With high levels of expertise in the development of provably correct computer systems methods and tools, the STRL is dedicated to delivering research that has a positive impact on the real world.

STRL consists of four key research themes:

  • Provably correct systems
  • Theory and computational paradigms;
  • Requirement and knowledge engineering;
  • Semantic web and service-orientated computing;

Work undertaken by the STRL aims to study, analyse and advance formal approaches to the specification, design and the evolution of computing systems, with emphasis being placed on those that are used in critical applications.

For more information about STRL, please contact Dr Francois Siewe, Reader in Computer Science at fsiewe@dmu.ac.uk

Context Intelligence and Interaction Research Group (CIIRG)

CIIRG undertakes interdisciplinary research through integration, synergy and innovation to address diverse problems closely related to the society and economy. These include, for example, enabling personalised healthcare systems to cope with demographic change, or engineering resilient and sustainable cyber physical smart infrastructure, or supporting smart transport and efficient energy for future smart cities, which all involve to build and analyse complex smart systems comprising sensing devices, interacting agents, including people and other organisms, embedded systems, robots and autonomous software agents within open, pervasive environments. 

CIIRG is centred on the following three broad research themes:

  • Context modelling and inference, context-aware systems, activity modelling and recognition, computational behaviour analysis, pattern recognition.
  • Cognitive modelling (speech acts), semantic /knowledge based intelligent processing, autonomy and learning, e.g. agents and robots, data analytics, emergent intelligence.
  • Multi-modal human machine interactions (e.g. touch screen, gesture, speech), personalisation, adaptation, user-centred design

For more information about CIIRG, please contact Dr Feng Chen, Senior Lecturer at fengchen@dmu.ac.uk