DTeA: Distributed Technology and e-Activity Research group

Rapid advancement in Distributed and Mobile technology is constantly changing the way we conduct our everyday life. Usual activities such as paying bills, managing bank accounts, or last minute shopping are nowadays mostly done electronically at the most convenient time and from the most convenient location. Moreover, healthcare, education and other commercial or non commercial services are now accessible to wider audience. E.g. online courses opened the doors to those who could not in the past physically attend university courses. However, development and utilization of the technology that support e-activities is very challenging and would not be achieved without a collaborative work between academics and industrial partners.

The members of DTeA research group are actively engaged with cutting edge research in relevant areas of Distributed Systems, e-Government, Educational Software, use of VLEs and Web 2.0 as a tool for teaching and learning and are open to interesting collaborative ideas.

DTeA Research Group Members

Dr Mark Anderson

Dr Mark Anderson's research builds on earlier work investigating the overlap between Virtual Organisations and teleworking through focussing on the technical solutions that may be adopted to support virtual communities either in the workplace or as a means of supporting communities of learners in Higher Education. The concept of virtual communities has much in common with the notion of Virtual Organisations that form a central component in the theoretical underpinning of Grid Computing.

This work has moved to address the same issues within Cloud Computing, rapidly emerging as the next-generation platform for business computing. The scope of the research has been extended to also examine the generic needs of distance learners to explore the similarities between teleworkers and distance learners in relation to supporting their activities through service-oriented computer. Mark is looking at finding technical solutions which may be adopted to support virtual communities either as a means of in the workplace, or as a means of supporting communities of learners in Higher Education.

His previous work investigated the overlap between Virtual Organisations and teleworking, looking at the development of a framework to support agile services that could reconfigure themselves to adapt to the needs of the teleworking community that they were servicing. Recently, the scope of the research has been extended to also examine the generic needs of distance learners to explore the similarities between teleworkers and distance learners in relation to supporting their activities through service-oriented computer systems.

Dr Ella Pereira

Dr Ella Pereira’s current research project is on developing multi-agent systems with self-* properties. Ella has been carrying out distributed and autonomic computing research for a number of years and has published papers in national and international conferences and journals. As a result of her past and current research activities Ella has developed considerable experience and expertise in developing architectures for distributed self-healing systems, including analyses of distributed middleware services. Previous projects include developing methods of designing and implementing systems with self-healing properties (OSAD) and performance evaluation of self-healing applications.

Mark Liptrott

Mark Liptrott is developing a Policy Model for the Digital Age. Mark is member of the International Advisory Board for the International Conference on eGovernment and eGovernance. Mark is close to completing his PhD looking at Diffusion of Electronic Voting.

Besim Mustafa

Besim Mustafa’s research interest is concentrating on the development and evaluation of effective software-based teaching/learning tools, mainly software simulators in the areas such as Computer Architecture and Computer Networks. Besim has been using and evaluating the software he developed during his tutorials. Besim was recently supported by a HE Academy "General Development Fund" for the evaluation and dissemination of this work (http://www.teach-sim.com).

Gillian Rawlings

Gillian Rawlings has been researching ways of effective use of VLEs. Her current project is on using the second Life as a tool for teaching and learning. This project is done in collaboration with Barnfiled South Academy. She has previously attracted funding from the Leverhulme Trust and her paper on Innovative Collaboration received the best paper award at the international conference i-society’07.

Peter Alston

Peter Alston has recently completed a Masters Degree in Web Computing at Liverpool John Moores University (Thesis title: Web 2.0 Technologies in Higher Education) where he achieved a distinction mark. Pete is an early career researcher whose interests include Web 2.0, and its use in Higher Education, XHTML & CSS Standards, Web Systems/Interface Design and Development, Hypermedia and Digital Audio.

PhD Students within the DTeA group

Kate Wood

Kate Wood is investigating Configuration challenges within the grid networks. The aim of this research is to seek more effective means of monitoring and configuration of remote applications to establish a more efficient and secure platform. The objective is to recommend a form of configuration or configuration strategies that will limit the chance of security threats affecting a grid network whilst retaining its dynamic and flexible operation and in the absence of standardised policies and processors. In order to provide an industry-friendly recommendation, this research is undertaking a scientific experimental route, developing a prototype application and engaging in a testing regime focused on several associated grid security threats using each type of configuration typically used in grid systems.

Peter Matthew

Peter Matthew is looking at implementing a framework for the incorporation of biometric systems into autonomous and pervasive computing.

Recent publications by the group members

Refereed Publications

B. Mustafa. "Simulating CPU Pipelining for Computer Architecture Teaching and Learning Support". IEE IV 2009 Conference, November 5-6, Freiburg, Germany (accepted for publication)
B. Mustafa. "An Integrated Approach to Effective Computer Architecture Learning by Simulation". E-ALT2009 Conference, June 22-24, 2009, Seville, Spain.
B. Mustafa. " Evaluating a System Simulator for Computer Architecture Teaching and Learning Support". The Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Information and Computer Science's 10th Annual Conference, August 25-27, 2009, Canterbury, UK.
E.Pereira, R.Pereira. "Multi-agent Framework for Self* Systems", Proceedings of the IASK international Conference. E-ALT and InterTIC, Seville, Spain, 2009
G. Rawlings, P. Alston, D. Walsh. "e-Learning - Fantasy or Reality?" proceedings of the 14th Annual UKAIS Conference, St Anne's College, University of Oxford, March 2009.
B. Mustafa. "YASS: A System Simulator for Operating System and Computer Architecture Teaching and Learning". Proceedings of the Frontiers in Science Education Research Conference, March 22-24, 2009, Famagusta, North Cyprus.
M. Liptrott. "UK E Voting Paradox: The influence of agency on the diffusion of an innovation", International Conference on eGovernment and eGovernance, March, Ankara, Turkey. 2009
M.Liptrott. "Same Pilots, Same Problems, Different Agendas". Electronic Journal of E-Government Volume 5, Issue 2, Page 205
M. Liptrott. "A Policy Model for the Digital Age: A Revision of the UK Public Policy Model "The 8th European Conference on e-Government Ecole Polytechnique, Lausanne, Switzerland.10-11 July 2008.
E. Pereira, R. Pereira "Packet size variability in Real Time transmission of smoothed MPEG-4 streams", The IEEE 22nd International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications, Okinawa, Japan, March 2008
G. Rawlings. "Innovative Collaboration", International Conference on i-society 2007, Calumet in Hammond, Indiana. October 7th - 11th, 2007
M.Liptrott "E-voting same pilots Same councils" proceedings of 7th European Conference of E Government, Haagse Hogeschool, Den Haag, The Netherlands, 21-22 June 2007
M.Liptrott "E-Voting: Hidden Fraud" in Government Computing News Magazine May, 2007 Word
M. Liptrott "E-Voting Is a Revised Diffusion Strategy the answer for UK Local Government. International Conference of methodologies, technologies and Tool Enabling e-Government. Camerino Italy 27-28th September 2007, P73. Published Halley Editrice, ISBN 978-88-7589-300-2
M.Liptrott "E-voting in the UK: A work in progress" Electronic Journal of E-Government. Volume 4 Issue 2 December 2006
E. Grishikashvili Pereira, R. Pereira, "Fault Monitoring and Detection of Distributed Services over Local and Wide Area Networks" , Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Performance Modelling in Wired, Wireless, Mobile Networking and Computing (PMWMNC-2006), with IEEE International Conference on Parallel and Distributed systems, Minneapolis, USA, July 12-15, 2006.
E. Grishikashvili Pereira, R. Pereira and A. Taleb-Bendiab, "Performance evaluation for self-healing distributed services and fault detection mechanisms". Journal of Computer and Systems Science, ELSEVIER, March 2006.

DTeA: Distributed Technology and e-Activity Research group