Projects and scientific research

The current Development Strategy of the Faculty of Computer Science envisages further enhancement of research and scientific activity as one of the basic development priorities. On the basis of its achievements to date - the A category awarded to the department in the process of parameterization of scientific units in 2013, the implementation of the strategy for further development in this area is being continuously improved. Conducting scientific research at the highest level, cooperation with industry and effective acquisition of funds to finance research projects is inherent in the activities of all research and teaching staff teaching students at computer science.

Field of Study II. Methods of Artificial Intelligence and its Applications

Research in the area of artificial intelligence is a Polish specialty on a global scale. Continuous interest, as well as great achievements of the university's employees in this field, is summarized by the list of selected scientific issues:

1. Rule-based decision support systems using directed fuzzy numbers and meta-sets.
2. Automatic extraction of keywords from web documents.
3. Application of domain knowledge and TRSM (Tolerance Rough Set Model) to semantic document retrieval.

Field of study III. Research in parallel and network programming

Algorithms called parallel – experience shows that they are harder to implement than traditional sequential ones because concurrency introduces additional opportunities for various types of errors. This field is dynamically developing in the world, and the share of work conducted at the University in the area listed below is significant for its development.

1. Development of social networks using WebServices technology.
2. Development of a distributed platform and P2P middleware layer.
3. Development and analysis of a reputation system project for Wikipedia authors.
4. Software for anomaly and intrusion detection algorithms.
5. Energy-efficient protocols and sensor network management algorithms.

Field of study IV. Multimedia

Research in the area of processing, image recognition, sound and its synthesis, as well as 3D animation constitute an important segment of the department's activity. Selected topics of work are:

1. Construction of the Polish language model.
2. Labeling sound files in terms of musical material content.
3. Identification of component sounds in a multi-sound environment.
4. Identification of musical instruments in polyphonic recordings.
5. Color and light in the image, use of GPU-based raytracing techniques and CUDA parallel computing architecture for the fast photo-realistic stereoscopic rendering process.

Field of study V. Programming Languages

Programming languages are the foundation of computer science, but new applications often require continuous work on this subject. Research work in this area includes:
1. Analysis, construction, and application of new programming environments and techniques.
2. Analysis of the possibility of building and applying a domain-specific programming language (DSL) in the creation of "business mashup" applications.

Field of study VI. E-learning

The need to develop electronic teaching methods and the systematic expansion of the Edu system existing at the University requires the creation of efficient methods of teaching and controlling educational processes, as well as students' progress in assimilating knowledge. These needs are a source of inspiration for these considerations.

1. Creating dynamic learning paths using COLT theory.
2. Studying the impact of audiovisual elements used in e-learning resources on the quality of processes in e-courses.

Field of study VII. Social Informatics

Social Informatics (also known as Social Computing or Web Science) is a new branch of computer science that deals with the implementation of social goals and the application of social concepts in information systems, as well as the analysis of social phenomena based on data from virtual communities. This subject matter has been researched at the academy since 2009 in the following areas:

1. Research on user trust management in networks.
2. Reputation models for designing and improving recommender systems, internet auctions, and other e-commerce systems.
3. Research on supporting the credibility assessment of content on the web.

Field of study VIII. Motion capture, emotion recognition, and facial expression analysis

The research areas listed below are conducted at the Research and Development Center in Bytom. Research in the area of human motion analysis and motion capture is of interest to many centers worldwide. Similarly, interdisciplinary work at the intersection of computer science and psychology concerns the possibility of applying computer vision methods in the area of emotion recognition based on facial micro-expressions.

Selected research topics:

1. Multimodal acquisition of human motion using the Vicon system.
2. Micro-expression analysis in the context of revealing human emotions. 
3. Identification of human behavior and detection of hazardous situations.
4. 3D scene reconstruction based on video sequences.

Field of study IX. Intelligent Algorithms and Behavioral Robotics

The main research topics are:

1. Behavioral robotics for planning and navigation of mobile robots.
2. Knowledge engineering.

Field of study X. Distributed Computing

The development of distributed computing methodologies with new synchronization and communication patterns in programs is an important sector of research work. For the constantly developing hardware base of computer systems, new software and algorithmic methods are needed that will allow for a fuller utilization of the potential inherent in modern systems with multi-core processors. The main research topics are:

1. New methods for structuring distributed programs. 
2. A new synchronization paradigm in programs.

The presented research directions indicate a broad spectrum of research interests among the faculty staff. Many of the focus areas of scientific work require, in addition to dedicated staff, technologically advanced hardware and software.