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Honours units are subject to approval and are available only if there are enough students attending. You will normally take units from the postgraduate program, and up to one third-year unit. Only if you cannot find a suitable combination of units from above you may contact Diego Molla (Honours Convenor) for advice re availability of a particular honours unit.

First Half

COMP401/COMP901 Research Methods and Communication (Dr Diego Molla-Aliod and others)

This unit is a generic skills unit to prepare you for academic writing (as in your thesis) and presentations (of which you will have to make at least three over the course of the year), as well as other issues in conducting research, such as reviewing and ethics.

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COMP429 Introduction to Multiagent Systems (Assoc Prof Mehmet Orgun, Dr Abhaya Nayak)
Intelligent Systems Group (ISG)

Multiagent systems have emerged as one of the most important areas of research and development in information technology in the 1990s. A multiagent system is one composed of multiple interacting software components known as agents, which are typically capable of cooperating to solve problems that are beyond the abilities of any individual member. Multiagent systems are important primarily because they have been found to have very wide applicability, in areas as diverse as industrial process control and electronic commerce. This unit will begin by introducing the student to the notion of an agent, and will lead them to an understanding of what an agent is, how they can be constructed, and how agents can be made to cooperate effectively with one-another to solve problems.

Study Guide

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COMP473 Advanced Algorithms (Assoc Prof Mark Dras)

Many problems are impossible to solve exactly in a computationally tractable manner: NP-complete problems such as the vertex cover of a graph fall into this category, which has relevance to real-world applications. Possible solutions are to use approximation methods or to use heuristic approaches; of the latter there are many alternatives, such as neural networks, simulated annealing, and so on.

This unit will cover issues of computational complexity related to these types of problems, different types of methods for devising algorithms to solve computationally difficult problems---approximation methods, heuristic approaches such as genetic programming or ant colony optimisation, and probabilitistic approaches---and also how these are applied to real-world problems, such as network routing or mobile keyboard design.

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COMP474 Advanced Topics in Programming Languages (Assoc Prof Tony Sloane, Assoc Prof Dom Verity)
Programming Languages Research Group

Unit outline.

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Second Half

COMP401/COMP901 Research Methods and Communication (Dr Diego Mollá Aliod and others)

This unit is a generic skills unit to prepare you for academic writing (as in your thesis) and presentations (of which you will have to make at least three over the course of the year), as well as other issues in conducting research, such as reviewing and ethics.

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COMP443 Arithmetic and Algebraic Algorithms (Dr Scott McCallum)

In this unit we shall study efficient algorithms for computations with (potentially big) integers and polynomials. Topics include data structures for the representation of (big) integers and polynomials, fast multiplication, Chinese remainder algorithms, and algorithms for polynomial factorization. Such algorithms have numerous applications. One interesting application area we shall glimpse in this unit concerns the development of decision methods for elementary real algebra and geometry. For this purpose we shall also need to consider algorithms for polynomial real root isolation and algorithms for handling real algebraic numbers. While primarily a theoretical unit, students will have some opportunity to work with a powerful computer arithmetic/algebra package called SACLIB.

Further detail

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COMP448 Advanced Topics in Natural Language Processing (Dr Rolf Schwitter, Dr Diego Molla Aliod)
Centre for Language Technology

This is the core Language Technology unit at honours level.

In the first half of the unit, Rolf Schwitter will focus on computer-processable controlled natural languages and the integration of controlled natural languages with automated reasoning services. We will build a controlled language processor and explore how controlled natural languages are related to formal languages and how these controlled natural languages can be used as knowledge representation languages and as high-level interface languages to automated reasoning engines. In the second half of the unit, Diego Molla-Aliod will focus on the NLP technology for the medical domain. We will survey the domain, current approaches, and explore current and possible future trends. Special emphasis will be given to methods for the search of medical evidence, summarisation and presentation to the user.

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COMP467 Computer Games Design and Implementation (Dr Manolya Kavakli)
Virtual and Interactive Simulations of Reality

This subject provides the student with an overview of the history of games, game genres, genre breaking games, focusing on the game development and design process. The subject also develops skills in game architecture and engineering presenting an introduction to games technology. Upon completion of this subject, students will be able to:

• understand the development of the present state of the games industry;
• understand the game development process;
• write design documents of a computer game;
• use a game engine to develop a computer game; and
• present a game proposal.

The unit has online documentation and uses WEB-CT for the presentation of the text material, lecture slides, assignments, etc.

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