Introduction

Welcome to the website of the Danger Project. We are an interdisciplinary team of researchers exploring a new immunological paradigm - the Danger Theory and its implications for the human immune system and for artificial immune systems. The concept of self non-self discrimination performed by the immune system has been the cornerstone of immunology for the last half century. However, questions have been raised regarding the validity of the self non-self paradigm, due to its inability to explain a number of documented phenomenon. For example it cannot explain why autoimmune diseases can occur, or why we do not react to our changing body during pregnancy or food in our intestines. The Danger Theory offers an alternative: the immune system reacts when danger is detected, not non-self.

Our work looks at two aspects of the danger model. Our immunologists are examining how potential danger signals affect the cells of the immune system. In collaboration with the immunology team, the computer scientists are researching how the incorporation of the danger model can be used in the improvement of artificial immune systems which have formerly relied on inspiration based on self non-self principles, in order to build anomaly detection systems for computer networks.

If you'd like to find out more about our project, click here to read a summary from the EPSRC Newsline magazine. Alternatively, see what each of us does by clicking on the links of the individual researchers on the right of this page.

Project members

Computer Sciencetists

• Professor Uwe Aickelin - University of Nottingham, Principal Investigator
• Dr Steve Cayzer - HP Labs, Bristol
• Dr Peter Bentley - University College London
• Dr Julie Greensmith - University of Nottingham
• Dr Jungwon Kim - University College London
• Gianni Tedesco - Firestorm Intrusion Detection Systems, UK
• Dr Jamie Twycross - University of Nottingham

Immunologists

• Dr Julie McLeod - University of the West of England
• Dr Rachel Harry - University of the West of England
• Charlotte Williams - University of the West of England

Associated Researchers

• Qi Chen - University of Nottingham
• Feng Gu - University of Nottingham
• Robert Oates - University of Nottingham
• William Wilson - University of Nottingham

Useful Links

• SOFTWARE AND DATASETS - The software developed during the project and the related datasets that were used.
• AIS PUBLICATIONS DATABASE - A collection of publications involved in AIS community.
• New Scientist
• Science Magazine
• Computer Power User
• IET Engineering & Technology
• EPSRC Newsline Article (or click here for a summary)
• AIS Quarterly (or click here for a summary)