Infocomm R&D Centre -ICT-R&D

Infocomm R&D Centre -ICT-R&D
The Services & Applications Division applies fundamental computer science to solving problems focused on enhancing the quality of life. We have wide experience and deep know-how in the science and the technologies which underlie the digital future, including cryptography, system and network security, bioinformatics, data mining, data integration, context-aware systems and information quality. Our team of dedicated and passionate researchers uses these technologies in diverse domains such as immunomics, endocrinology informatics, decision support systems, resilient & secure IT systems, smart home and context & information personalization. The three departments in this division are Infocomm Security , Knowledge Discovery and Context-Aware Systems .

The Infocomm Security Department actively contributes to security standards, develops information security solutions for industry and keeps other security groups honest. The Knowledge Discovery Department provides technical leadership in the computational analysis of clinical and pre-clinical medical data. The Context-Aware Systems Department has a long term goal to build an integrated environment for personalized ad-hoc sensing, understanding and actuation within the home.

There is broad opportunity in integrating biotechnology, nanotechnology, electronics and information technology to deliver novel consumer applications that will monitor health, enable a safer and better working environment and improve the quality of life. The Services & Applications division is positioned to leverage on its cross-disciplinary strength and proven synergy with complementary groups to realise these pay-offs.

Infocomm Security
The department is a respected security and cryptographic group which has analyzed many published security solutions and broken over 60 such systems (and still counting) and contributes actively to JPSEC and IETF security standards. We have also developed many secure IT systems which have been deployed with industry. This includes resilient cryptographic solutions which achieve the same functionality at much lower risk as well as privacy and trust solutions which provide secure information access in outsourced data scenarios. Our research labs are:

Cryptography Lab
The Cryptography Lab focuses on developing cryptographic techniques for privacy protection, high-speed encryption, group digital signatures and new public key infrastructure.In 2004 alone, we have defeated more than 20 cryptosystems, including the Microsoft Office encryption scheme that was reported on Cnet.We also serve actively as general chairs, organizers and initiators of major international security conferences or workshops.

Information Security Lab
The Information Security Lab focuses on techniques for privacy protection, peer-to-peer system security and media security. We currently have three standardization efforts in the JPSEC Final Committee Draft stage. In addition, we clinched the prestigious local Tan Kah Kee Young Inventor's Silver Award for our work in secure JPEG2000 codestream.

Internet Security Lab
The Internet Security Lab focuses on techniques for mobile network security, intrusion detection and technology to trace attackers. We are active in standardization, and have submitted two drafts to IETF. We find security flaws in internet systems or protocols, for example, in the IETF standard (RFC 3775) we have proposed two solutions to fix its security binding protocol. We also serve actively as program chairs, steering committee members or initiators of major international security conferences or workshops.

Knowledge Discovery
This department aims to enable better understanding of gene behaviour leading to new targets for gene-controlling drugs; help Pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines faster and cheaper; and enable cheaper and better methods to detection of cancer. Our research labs are:

Knowledge Extraction Lab
The Knowledge Extraction Lab focuses on data fusion and knowledge extraction technologies, with applications in endocrinology informatics and gene regulatory networks. In the first-ever benchmark of human genome promoter prediction systems, our Dragon Gene Start Finder consistently produced the highest accuracy. Our works have also been consistently featured in top biology related journals like Bioinformatics and Nuclei Acids Research.

Data Mining Lab
The Data Mining Lab focuses on solving traditionally difficult data-related problems especially (but not limited) to bioinformatics. We achieved, for example, a benchmark in-silico diagnosis rate for childhood leukemia disease which can push cure rates up by 10 times. This, incidentally, garnered the FEER Gold Asia Innovation Award in 2003. Our fundamental data mining technologies were also used for other bioinformatics problems such as cancer prognosis, protein interactions, and genomic sequence annotation.

Discovery Systems Lab
The Discovery Systems Lab focuses on applying computing in research that benefits the biology community. Our fundamental data cleansing, data warehousing, modeling and knowledge management technologies have contributed useful systems over the years to the biological research community especially in the areas of immunoinformatics and venominformatics. International recognition of our work includes an NIH grant, an NIH contract and the prestigious Zuckerkandel Prize in Journal of Molecular Evolution.Context-Aware Systems This department focuses on context-aware computing R&D to enable ad-hoc sensors, devices and services to automatically integrate into the environment; to develop the infrastructure to understand intrinsic and extrinsic context to support service triggering, adaptation and actuation; as well as enable automated processes to ensure data quality and estimate information authority. Our research groups are:

Context-Aware Infrastructure Group
The Context Aware Infrastructure Group focuses on context aware computing infrastructure for context representation, aggregation, reasoning, distribution, discovery, query and adaptation. Our achievements include providing the reference design for the first OSGi-compliant residential gateway.

Information Quality Group
The Information Quality Group focuses on techniques to deal with data incompleteness and inconsistency issues in context aware systems. We have also worked closely with industry partners like Siemens to develop a policy based network supporting end to end Quality of Service, of which significant modules have been incorporated into their 3G product lines.

Context-Aware Applications Group
The Context-Aware Applications Group focuses on applications in enterprises, homes and labs that exploit context information. In particular, we aim to improve the quality of life for the disabled, the aging population, as well as ordinary people. Our achievements include building a residential gateway reference design for National Semiconductor, USA as well as working with the local Alexandra Hospital to develop a monitoring system for dementia patients.

For more information

Please contact:

p.dir@iird.org

Programme Director for ICT-R&D
IIRD