Birkbeck academic receives grant of £594,000 for pioneering research in computer science
Dr Hubie Chen has been awarded the grant by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
The Department of Computer Science and Information Systems’ Dr Hubie Chen has received a grant of £594,000 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to conduct a research project in query evaluation, the process of identifying solutions to complex computational problems.
The project aims to address the fact that many problems of interest in computer science are unlikely to be tractable, that is, easy to solve, using computational methods.
The research team will study query evaluation by seeking examples of computationally tractable problems in the hope of better understanding the factors that determine whether a problem can be solved using computational methods. The study will aim to develop complexity measures for formulas that will allow for the identification of tractability results for query evaluation.
Findings from the research will support a much deeper and richer understanding of database query evaluation and will crucially focus on efficiency, reducing costs and allowing for higher capabilities in the industry.
Dr Geoff Walters, Executive Dean of the School of Business, Economics and Informatics, said: “I would like to congratulate Dr Chen on receipt of this grant from the EPSRC. The Department of Computer Science and Information Systems has considerable expertise in computational logic, query languages and data management and this research will strengthen knowledge and understanding in this area for the benefit of industry and future research.”