Association of Commonwealth Universities

This project deals with the mathematics of risk modeling and resource management. Using mathematical and statistical methods, the team develops new tools to help the financial services industry make better decisions about when to trade and at what price based on the available financial data. During the past year, the team focused on the development of statistical methods for measuring volatility and assessing asset pricing models in financial markets.

This project will explore new ways of customizing and translating the mass of daily information produced by Environment Canada (EC). This information in digital format is later transformed into weather and environmental forecasts, warnings and alerts that must be broadcast in real-time in at least two languages, in many different formats and in a way that takes location into account.

The surveys being developed by government, health and social science organizations have increased in complexity and as a result, the data that is collected is similarly more complicated. Thus, this project focuses on developing new tools to address issues which arise during the analysis of this complex data including longitudinal data, information which is based on a set of repeated observations of an individual, or group of individuals, over time.

Computer algebra systems such as Maple compute using mathematical formulae as well as numbers, mechanizing the mathematics used in education and research labs. This project focuses on the design and implementation of algorithms for these systems. Emphasis is placed on efficiency that allows large and complex problems of the type encountered in industrial settings to be solved. In the past year the team has made major advances in the core tools that are needed to solve these complex problems.

Due to the explosive growth in the technology for manufacturing integrated circuits, modern chips contain millions of transistors. Using sophisticated optimization algorithms, it is possible to achieve notable increases in the performance of the chips, reduce the manufacturing costs, and produce faster, cheaper computing for society. Thus, the objective of this project is to enhance the solution of large-scale optimization problems arising in these applications.

The development of the Internet and the World Wide Web has changed the way in which we gather information. No longer is information only available as in a library, with items catalogued in an orderly manner. More and more often, information is presented as it is in the World Wide Web: as a mass of items with interconnecting links. This research team aims to extract information from such web-like collections by considering both the content of the items and the link structure that connects them, and the interaction of both components.