Projects

Technological advancements based on mixed reality (MR) offer various challenges for research and medical treatment. The project focuses on two objectives related to healthy subjects and hemiparetic patients after stroke. First, we will test the hypothesis whether cognitive training using appropriately designed MR environment will enhance perceptual and cognitive performance in healthy subjects. This will be tested by computerized psychological experiments as well as by measuring event-related potentials or ERPs. Second, we will test the hypothesis whether experience with training in MR (in combination with motor-imagery based brain-computer interface developed by us) will enhance oscillatory sensory-motor rhythms. This will be tested by measuring subject’s EEG activity before and after each training session, clinical testing, as well as by the questionnaires aiming to learn about human factors including mental fatigue, motivation, irritation or sleepiness due to training. In both objectives, we will design and implement a set of testing procedures, carry out a battery of dedicated experiments, and critically evaluate the results with the goal to validate MR designs.

The increasing development of information society and its globalization is growing proportionally with the need to appropriately secure information and communication technologies. In this context, in the area of computer security there is an increasing demand for highly qualified professionals, where the current demand exceeds the offers of the labor market. Such a disproportion exerts high requirements on education in the area of security of particular university study programs. In order to successfully handle such a task, it is necessary to consider specialized university courses within the educational process along with an arising need for a close relation between particular courses of the study program. It may be expected that the deepening of the mutual relation between Informatics courses and the computer and software engineering, regarding security issues of the ICT (Information and Communication Technologies), will result in the increased quality of student preparation of the Informatics program. This is why the strategic goal of this project is to search for new methods, forms and technologies to transfer knowledge from the area of security to courses of the other study programs, using a suitable platform towards strategic requirements of the labor market. The solution will be implemented regarding the main goals, namely the innovation of the study Informatics program at the DCCI FEEI TUKE towards the issues of the ICT security, technical ensuring of the new education form in selected courses, and the creation of guides and examples for a practical application of the security knowledge towards the other courses. Students will be able to implement pragmatic project tasks, defined by the corresponding course, with a practical usethe result. As expected by the research team, this will have a positive impact on the quality of the education in the Informatics study program.

Nature-inspired search and optimisation heuristics are easy to implement and apply to new problems. However, in order to achieve good performance it is usually necessary to adjust them to the problem at hand. Theoretical foundations for the understanding of such approaches have been built very successfully in the past 20 years but there is a huge disconnect between the theoretical basis and practical applications. The development of powerful analytical tools, significant insights in general limitations of different types of nature-inspired optimisation methods and the development of more practically relevant perspectives for theoretical analysis have brought impressive advances to the theory-side of the field. However, so far impact on the application-side has been limited and few people in the diverse potential application areas have benefitted from these advances.

The main objective of the COST Action is to bridge this gap and improve the applicability of all kinds of nature-inspired optimisation methods. It aims at making theoretical insights more accessible and practical by creating a platform where theoreticians and practitioners can meet and exchange insights, ideas and needs; by developing robust guidelines and practical support for application development based on theoretical insights; by developing theoretical frameworks driven by actual needs arising from practical applications; by training Early Career Investigators in a theory of nature-inspired optimisation methods that clearly aims at practical applications; by broadening participation in the ongoing research of how to develop and apply robust nature-inspired optimisation methods in different application areas.