Tackling the challenge of large data sets

Jacek Brodzki, Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Southampton, is heading the research team that also involves academics from Electronics and Computer Science at the University, a professor from Durham University, three postdocs and a PhD student.

“The current trend is to develop intelligent, customer-led, interactive, real-time systems and these need to be able to handle and interpret vast amounts of data efficiently, quickly and as accurately as possible,” said Jacek.

The research project, funded by a grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), will extend recent important theoretic results to create geometric and topological tools that can be applied to the analysis of large data sets.

The team aims to develop methods that will be flexible, efficient and can be adapted depending on the margins of the search request.

“If you are looking through a large number of digital photographs for general pictures of people then that requires a different resolution than if you were trying to identify a specific person,” said Jacek.

“The central theme of our proposal is to meet this challenge and be able to study the geometric properties of large data sets at various scales.

“This project is a new challenge for Mathematics at the University of Southampton and builds on the substantial experience of the Pure Mathematics group in coarse geometry. It offers a very exciting opportunity to develop current results in pure mathematics to a point where they can be applied to important, difficult and timely practical problems and applications,” he added.

The research team includes Professor Joerg Fliege , Professor Jon Forster and Dr Ben MacArthur , from Mathematics at the University of Southampton; Professor Nigel Shadbolt and Dr Les Carr from Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton; and Professor Janusz Bialek from Durham University.