Director: Professor Markus Stumptner
The Knowledge and Software Engineering Lab studies high level descriptions of programming and problem solving tasks, with the goal of more effective and less maintenance effective software development for specific domains. The Lab’s research expertise ranges from knowledge representation and reasoning methods over applied Artificial Intelligence techniques to formal methods in software engineering.
Applications such database integration and complex business process engineering address maintenance and continued interoperability of integrated systems within and between organisations. Through analysis and representation of design and manufacturing processes, the Lab aims at leading the way to future intelligent engineering applications. Integrating heterogeneous software systems within an organisation is being investigated to support continuous monitoring and maintenance of essential infrastructure and other corporate assets.
Research in advanced knowledge technologies is applied to automate mass customisation of products, configuration of software and hardware systems, as well as intelligent composition and reconfiguration of process descriptions and software components within the service-oriented architecture paradigm. To ensure interoperability between diverse systems, reasoning about concepts (”Ontologies”) extended with more expressive knowledge representation formalisms constitutes an essential research direction in the lab.
Model-based reasoning and its application to intelligent diagnosis, monitoring and repair of complex systems is another central research foundations within the lab. Research in formal methods and reasoning approaches for software systems has led to an intelligent tool to aid the development and maintenance of (embedded) software systems.
The Knowledge and Software Engineering Laboratory is supported by many industry partners including the Australian Nuclear Science Technology Organisation (ANSTO), the Defence Science Technology Organisation (DSTO), General Motors Holden, the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (VPAC), Siemens, SunWater, PetroChina, the Collaborative Research Centre for Integrated Engineering Asset Management (CIEAM) and the Australian Research Council (ARC).
Current Research Topics
- Model-Based Reasoning
- Model-based Software Debugging
- Advanced Knowledge Technologies/Ontologies
- Behavior Oriented Business Process Integration
- Automated Support for Service Composition
- CIEAM Project - Improved OPAL Monitoring and Management System
- AutoCRC Project - Ontology-based Design Environment Integration
Researchers
PhD Students
- Catherine Howard
- Peter Killisperger
- Franz Maier
- Rajesh Thiagarajan