Manchester Centre to Study Complexity of Real Life

Sackville Street Building of the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences (photo courtesy: University of Manchester)

The Centre for Interdisciplinary Computational and Dynamical Analysis (CICADA) of the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Manchester is developing a £3m research centre to provide cutting-edge research on complex, real-life systems such as car safety systems, flight controllers, power stations and the human body. The first projects are due to begin in October.

Existing programs break down when analysing these systems, as they cannot cope with the complexity of continuous change. Unfortunately, many safety devices, such as electronic stability control in cars, have to rely on such systems, where failure could result in loss of life. The centre aims to bring biologists, mathematicians and engineers together to help understand problems that combine both discrete and continuous data. It is hoped the research will help to unlock the potential of existing, technologically advanced systems, that haven’t been integrated successfully into real-life situations because we cannot predict their behaviour accurately enough.

The research could also provide insights into biology, where continuous changes in chemical concentrations result in discrete changes in cells. Discrete state changes in the brain and cells are triggered by continuous changes in chemical concentrations. In biological systems there are generally many of these processes interacting in large complex science networks and these are hard to analyse using mathematical or computer science approaches that currently exist.

CICADA aims to attract internationally renowned scientists and create a focus for research activity and training for the next generation. A feature of the Centre will be its operating model. It will focus on fostering a strong interaction between industry - where many of the hard problems are brought into sharpest focus - and academia, which has a wide range of new mathematical and computational techniques that can be applied.