AI and graph-based systems.
The BCL carries on active collaborations with other laboratories, both within the CSS Center for Integrated Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship (CITLS) and outside. These collaborations include:
We collaborate with the CSS Distributed Systems Laboratory (DSL, under the direction of Prof. Munehiro Fukuda) on the application of parallel and distributed systems and agents to biocomputing. Our current project is UWB BrainGrid: a distributed platform for neuroscience simulation.
An earlier project, the LOGOS system, was meant to serve as a medium for collaboration among geographically and temporally distributed investigators, and agent technology was a natural proxy for direct presence. Additionally, we envisioned the LOGOS data and knowledge bases being distributed across the world, encompassing new experimental data, simulation results, experimental and analytical methods, and domain knowledge in a dynamic manner as each participating investigator/laboratory generated them. The challenge in this was to provide each user transparent access to the entire data and knowledge base and to make computations that span the system efficient. The vision is that user actions will result in agents being dispatched to perform necessary tasks, either moving data/knowledge or performing tasks at remote sites (which may be a third site that serves as a computational resource). This will also allow incorporation of data security (local agents may only allow access to some data from agents dispatched by certain collaborators, for example) and qualitative judgment (agents can weight the quality of data they find based on a model of the user's evaluative criteria).
The natural intersection between our work and that of the CSS Scientific Computing Laboratory (SCL, directed by Prof. Charles Jackels) is simulation and data analysis. We share high-performance computing resources with the SCL, provide problems for collaborative algorithm development, and cooperate in the development and teaching of undergraduate and graduate courses.
The CSS Interdisciplinary Center for Multimedia Research (CMMR, headed by Prof. Kelvin Sung) focuses on applying computer graphics techniques to synthesizing artificial ``worlds'' from real video imagery. In the case of the BCL, such imagery can be generated from either simulations (in which case it can be very complete and detailed) or experiments (in which case it would include relatively few measurements, varied kinds of measurements, and measurements from different individuals). We are working with the CMMR to develop LOGOS capabilities to synthesize views of biological system operation by fusing these diverse data sources.
We have worked with the J-DSP project to adapt their online digital signal processing (DSP) laboratory for use by software students in our Introduction to Digital Multimedia course. We received an NSF grant (0443137) in support of this work.
We worked with the Biodynamics Laboratory in the Osaka University Department of Biophysical Engineering. This lab pursues both fundamental and applied research in information processing and dynamics of small neural circuits, neuronal coding, noise in sensory systems, rhythmic motor activity, homeodynamics, and EEG.
BCL members worked with the local life sciences industry and government under the aegis of the UWB BBTI. We coordinated this work with colleagues in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Program, under the leadership of Prof. Steven Collins, and the Business Program, led by Prof. Alan Leong.