Education: PhD Research

2006-to date: University College Dublin, studying for my Ph.D. in computer science. As a member of the Systems Research Group and the LERO CSET I have the opportunity to work with researchers from the University of Limerick, Dublin City University, and Trinity College Dublin. Central to my research is preventing complex systems from entering unwanted states. This work makes extensive use of mathematical analysis.

A central issue for computing is the increasing level of complexity found in computer systems, particular the control systems that are tasked with management of other systems. These systems have become so complex that altering the control on one area of a system can affect an entirely different aspect of the system in a manner that is seemingly random. As such autonomic systems are being developed that can control and manage systems without human intervention. These systems are given bounds within which they must keep the system. This in itself can lead to issues such as oscillations where the system is being controlled back and forth between multiple states. My research aims to tackle this by performing Dynamical Systems Analysis and determining these oscillation states, and determining how to alter the control of the system to prevent them from occurring.

The final aim is a framework that allows for these complex systems to be analysed compositionally, i.e. adding a new level of complexity to the system only requires computing the analysis for the new input and not for the entire system as a whole.