School of Computer Science, The University of Nottingham, Wollaton Road, Nottingham NG8 1BB, UK Tel.: +44 (0)115 84 67279 E-mail:

• I am Professor and Director of Internationalisation in the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham, UK . From 2007 to 2010 I was seconded as Director of the School of Computer Science at our Malaysia Campus. Prior to this I was Professor (1996-2007), Reader (1992-1996) and Senior Lecturer (1984-1992) at the Nottingham Trent University, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Durham (1981-1984) and Lecturer (1978-1981) at the Silesian Technical University, Gliwice, Poland.
• External appointments include:
  • Visiting Professorships at the University of Alberta (Canada), Helsinki University of Technology (Finland), Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan) and Cracow University of Technology (Poland).
  • President of the European Council for Modelling and Simulation, (2002-06, 2010-)
  • Special Visiting Research Fellow at Konan University, Japan, (2005 - ).
  • Foreign Member of the Decision Support Section of the Polish Academy of Sciences (2004-06).
  • Titular Professorship conferred by the President of Poland in October 2005.
  • Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part-A, (2008 - ).
  • Associate Editor of the Information Sciences, (2009 - ).
  • Member of the EPSRC Peer Review College (2006-).

Granular Computing A. Bargiela and W. Pedrycz Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, Dordrecht, London, 2002 This monograph is written to meet the needs of a professional audience composed of researchers and graduate level students in computer science and engineering.		Archives of Control Sciences Special Issue: Granular Computing A. Bargiela and W. Pedrycz (Eds.) PolSl. Publishing House, Gliwice, 2002 This Special Issue explores the interface between Granular Computing and the established ACM domain of decision support systems, knowledge modelling and uncertainty processing.
Introduction to FAN in CI K. Hirota, A. Bargiela, H. Takahashi, SOFT, Tokyo, Japan 2005 This textbook is aimed at research students undertaking their MPhil/PhD study in the area of Computational Intelligence. The book has earned the Best 2005 Book Award by the Japan Society for Fuzzy Theory and Systems.		Computer Simulation and Modelling Series A. Bargiela - Series Editor John Wiley, 2003- This series is intended to serve as a reference series for the state-of-the-art developments in systems modelling and computer simulation.
Human-Centric Information Processing through Granular Modelling Studies in Computational Intelligence 182 A. Bargiela and W. Pedrycz (Eds.) Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, 2009 This volume is intended to document the milestone contributions to human-centric information processing research and to demonstrate computational methods that arose from these research insights.		Simulation in Challenging Times Proceedings of the 23rd European Conference on Modelling and Simulation J. Otamendi, A. Bargiela, J.L. Montes, L.M.D. Pedrera (Eds.), ECMS Press, Madrid, 2009 The ECMS'2009, run at the time of global recession, has highlighted the relevance of simulation-based decision support methodologies.
Simulation Meets Global Challenges Proceedings of the 24th European Conference on Modelling and Simulation A. Bargiela, S.A. Ali, D. Crowley, E. Kerckhoffs (Eds.), ECMS Press, Kuala Lumpur, 2010 The ECMS'2010 focus on global challenges of food supply, energy supply, environmental sustainability and globalisation of the economy has been accentuated by bringing the traditionally European conference to Asia.

My research interests fall under the general heading of Computational Intelligence and involve the following:

• Foundations of Granular Computing - methodology of information abstraction, granular algorithms and theoretical framework of Granular Computing (see: a41, a36, a31, a30, a27, a25, a22, a21, b3)
• Human-centred information processing - semantical transformation of data and verification of information abstractions (see: a44, a42, a38, a37, a36, a33, b5)
• Fuzzy sets and systems - mathematical foundations and algorithms (see: a43, a40, a39, a34, a29, a23, a20, a18, a16)
• Fault-tolerant distributed computing - software environment for dependable computing (see: a28, a19) a14, a9)
• Neural networks based state estimation - algorithms for ultra-fast approximate computations using analog neural networks (see: a18, a15, a10)
• Confidence Limits Analysis methodology - systems modelling with explicit representation of uncertainty (see: a11, a8, a7, a6)
• Operations Research - algorithms and applications (see: a46, a45, a18, a17, a16, a15, a13, a12, a11, a8, a7, a6, a4, a3, a2, a1)

Reasoning in Complex and Uncertain Systems:
A Framework for Human-centred Information Processing

The synergy of research insights from complex systems modelling, uncertain information processing and information abstraction has motivated our research into a unifying framework of Granular Computing. Granular Computing arose as a response to the urgent need for intelligent processing of empirical data, that are now commonly available in vast quantities, into a humanly manageable knowledge represented as domain models at different levels of abstraction. In this sense, granular computing offers a landmark change from the machine-centric to human-centric processing of information and knowledge.

In other words, we move from heuristics (representing approximate methods of solving detailed problems) to granular computing ( representing detailed solutions to approximated problems).

The theoretical foundations of granular computing are very sound and involve set theory (interval mathematics), fuzzy sets, rough sets and random sets utilised for the representation of uncertainty and information abstractions. There has been a tremendous increase in the research interest in Granular Computing duting the last decade (Granular Computing: An Introduction, Kluwer, 2002). An important reason behind this has been a realisation that the real world does not lend itself to a manageable description/modelling using numerical data only. The vast quantities of raw data that are now available, need to be processed through intelligent abstraction, into higher-level entities, i.e. information granules. Such an approach mirrors what humans do when faced with the task of processing complex information. We argue that the development of human-centric computer technologies, aiming at overcoming the limitations of the current machine-centric approaches, represents one of the most important challenges of computer science.

The research agenda of human centricity has certainly gained visibility and prominence in the last 10 years. It is quite remarkable that the spectrum of application and research areas that have adopted information granulation as a successful strategy for dealing with information complexity covers such diverse fields as bioinformatics, image understanding, environmental monitoring, urban sustainability, to mention few most visible in the literature. In our recent book (Human-centric information processing through granular modelling, Springer, 2009) we document milestone contributions to human-centric information processing research and demonstrate the emerging computational methods and the processing environments that arose from these research efforts.

However, more research is needed to understand the mechanisms of human information abstraction. In this sense the interaction between the research into granular computing and the psychology, biological, physical and medical sciences needs to be enhanced to the benefit of all collaborating parties. Also the spectrum of applications of granular computing needs to be broadened to include not only the science domain applications but also applications from arts and humanities. It seems that the improvement of understanding of the higher-level information processing that occurs in social interactions and in arts could offer a valuable guidance regarding the computer-based information granulation. In short, granular computing promises to be a fruitful area for interdisciplinary research and we believe that it will underpin much of the scientific progress in the 21-st century.