Research overview

“Operations Research” is a scientific method employed to solve decision making problems involving the use of scarce or valuable resources. Following an interdisciplinary approach, it employs data analysis, statistics, mathematical modelling, optimization and computing to assist decision making in organizations, industry, and many sectors of society. Examples include aircrew scheduling, electricity marketing policy and optimal ambulance system configurations.

Problems studied under the general heading of “Mechanics” include: modelling geothermal systems, petroleum reservoirs, tidal flows, sediment transport, the design of wind farms, blood flows, analyzing and designing manufacturing processes for composite materials and the development of improved models of soil behaviour and the associated geotechnical design procedures, improving earthquake detection procedures.

In addition several departmental academics are engaged with biomedical engineering (BME) research activities that incorporate aspects of mathematical modelling, bioinstrumentation and experimentation. An overall theme is to improve the basic understanding of integrative biological function from the scale of molecular proteins to that of organ systems. The novel techniques developed and knowledge gained target a variety of biomedical applications including device design, disease diagnosis and therapy.