The Intelligent Modelling & Analysis Research Group (IMA)

The IMA group has been established to focus a growing area of interest in the School. The group currently has five permanent academics, two support staff, seven research fellows and over 30 Marie Curie Fellows and PhD students. Members of the IMA group currently hold some £5m in external research funding as Principal Investigators and over a further £25m as Co-Investigators.

The IMA group undertakes research into intelligent modelling and data analysis techniques to enable deeper and clearer understanding of complex physical and physiological problems. A particular strength of the group lies in the bio-medical and security fields where extremely large data volumes have to be analysed in (near) real-time to very high levels of accuracy.

Typical techniques used by the IMA group include: AI based Data Mining, Artificial Immune Systems, Computational Modelling, Discrete and Agent-Based Simulation, Fuzzy Methodologies, Image Analysis and Multi-Sensor Data Fusion.

IMA's main research objectives are to:

  • Conduct inter-disciplinary research to investigate novel and adventurous real-world problems
  • Focus on modelling, representation and transformation techniques to enable better decisions
  • Support the integration of emerging methodologies with more traditional approaches
  • Explore the applicability of Complexity Science to real-world challenges
IMA