George Milne's Home Page This page has been updated.  Please go to: http://smr.csse.uwa.edu.au/index.html   Contact School of Computer Science & Software Engineering The University of Western Australia M002 / 35 Stirling Highway Crawley WA 6009 Australia Phone: +61 8 6488 2281 Fax: +61 8 6488 1089 Email: milne@csse.uwa.edu.au   Research My research is focused on concurrency, a commonly occurring phenomena found in computing, electronics, in the physical sciences and in the world around us. Specifically, I perform research in bushfire and disease spread dynamics; modelling highly concurrent systems; in the formal specification and verification of concurrent systems; and in exploiting the inherent concurrency of digital logic with FPGA-based reconfigurable computers. Research Projects Modelling Complex Systems We utilise cellular automata and process algebraic formalisms to model complex, possibly chaotic systems, constructed out of many, simple, locally connected components. This approach has been applied to urban traffic flow modelling and simulation with success being judged by benchmarking our simulations against data sampled from the physical world. Current projects in this area include bushfire/wildfire, disease spread epidemics and crowd dynamics modelling and simulation. Significantly, models are created in the Circal process algebra, a process algebra originally developed to describe and analyse the behaviour of digital logic. The applicability of Circal as a powerful descriptive medium for distinct classes of concurrent systems has been demonstrated by its application to a wide variety of application domains, including fluid flow and cardiac timing models. Simulation of Plant Disease Dynamics A plant disease simulation platform will enable various sources of plant health data and emergent pathogen or pest (EPP) biology to be utilised in a manner that will allow timely and cost-effective decisions to be made by BioSecurity managers and scientists from first detection and as the incursion evolves. At present most existing epidemic models utilise differential equations to predict outcomes and do not take into account spatial factors such as landscape effects, variable population density and explicit movement of the EPP. These models assume populations are closed and well mixed; that is, host numbers are constant and individuals are free to move wherever they wish. For the development of realistic landscape-influenced models any project must incorporate spatial information to reflect the heterogeneous environment found in the incursion zone. An alternative to using deterministic differential equations is to use a two-dimensional grid of interacting automata with each automaton modelling a sub-population at a given location. Automata interact, capturing the dynamics of an EPPs mobility. Appropriate spatio-temporal modelling techniques and simulation software will be developed to permit prediction of EPP spread over the landscape through time. This technology will build on methods developed to simulate the spread of human and animal diseases (pandemic influenza, foot and mouth disease, classical swine fever) and determine the efficacy of applying alternative eradication, containment and control strategies. PhD SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE Plant BioSecurity PhD and Honours Scholarships are available in the area of Computational Epidemiology and Disease Spread Modelling and Simulation within the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Western Australia, under the guidance of Professor G J Milne. For further Information please email Professor Milne via milne-pa@csse.uwa.edu.au. List of Publications Recent publications " A heat transfer simulation model for wildfire spread." P. Johnston, G. Milne, & J.Kelso. To appear in Forest Ecology and Management, 2006. " Modelling Dynamically Changing Hardware Structure", G. Milne. Proceedings of Algebraic Process Calculi 2005. In Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science 162 (2006) pp. 249-254, Elsevier 2006. " Properties as Processes: Their Specification and Verification" (with J Kelso). Proceedings of the 25th IFIP WG 6.1 International Conference of Formal Techniques for Networked and Distributed Systems (FORTE 2005), Taipei, Taiwan, October 2-5, 2005. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3731, pp. 503-517, Springer, 2005. " Programming Paradigms for Reconfigurable Computing", G. Lee and George Milne. Microprocessors and Microsystems, Vol. 29, No. 10, pp. 435-450. 2005. " Property Verification of Asynchronous Systems", Antonio Cerone and George J. Milne. Innovations in Systems and Software Engineering, Vol. 1, No. 1, April 2005, pp. 25-40. Springer-Verlag London Ltd, 2005. Click here for full list