In order to achieve our mission to become one of the best research universities of Pakistan, the CS department has created a research culture in LUMS and has initiated many research projects. These project are not only funded and supported through departmental research grants but have also attracted many external funding bodies. The research projects described below were funded by external grants. For a list of LUMS funded projects please look at the Projects page.

Investigating Wavelet Based Video Coding in Video Conferencing Applications

Principal Investigator: Shahid Masud and Nadeem A. Khan
Project Duration: April 2008 - 2010
Funded by ICT R&D Fund ( Rs. 7.0 million )

The main objective of this research would be to explore the usage of open source DWT based codec within some appropriate video conferencing system (e.g. SIP) for conferencing purposes. Based on the analysis of these techniques, a new algorithm and implementation will be developed that would aim to improve the coding efficiency and computational complexity in wavelet based video compression and real-time video communication. One main objective is to have a scalable video codec to cater different resolutions and frame rate.

Reliable Failure Recovery in Self-managing Systems

Principal Investigator: Naveed Arshad
Project Duration: October 2007 - 2010
Funded by Higher Education Commission (HEC) ( Rs. 1.1 million )

With the increase in the number of computing devices dependable management of these devices is becoming an important research problem. To address this a new generation of systems commonly known as self-managing systems is coming into existence. Among other properties, an important property of self-managing systems is to detect and recover automatically from faults and failures with minimum human involvement. However, many existing failure recovery techniques are manual. Manual failure recovery takes a considerable time causing a significant business impact in terms of opportunity loss, administrative loss and loss of ongoing business. There is a need not just to reduce the downtime in the failure recovery process but also to automate it to a significant degree both to avoid errors that are caused by manual failure recovery techniques and to recover more rapidly. Furthermore, automated failure recovery requires reliability. Since the goal is to put minimum burden on the human the automated recovery process must be dependable.

The work in this project will explore new dimensions in the reliable failure recovery in self-managing systems. We will use intelligent techniques such as AI planning and optimization theory to develop novel failure recovery techniques. Moreover, to add dependability to the recovery process we will develop various automated mechanisms to test the dependability of a system.

A Low Cost Ultrasound Training Simulator

Principal Investigator: Naveed Arshad
Co-Investigators: Sohaib Khan (LUMS ) and Durr-e-Sabih (MINAR)
Project Duration: September 2007 - 2010
Funded by National ICT R&D Fund ( Rs. 15 million )

Ultrasound is a powerful diagnostic tool and is often the first modality used to image the patient. Its popularity with the medical community stems from its low cost, portability and noninvasiveness. It is now among the single most asked for procedure and there is a huge installed base of ultrasound units; in Pakistan alone it is estimated that there are around twenty thousand ultrasound units.

Ultrasound, despite its strengths is very operator dependent and has a long learning curve that involves not only the assimilation of facts but also mastering complex hand-eye coordination and acquiring motor skills that enable the user to acquire the relevant "section". Hundreds of cases need to be examined to achieve a level of competency.

The current training strategies include classroom teaching supplemented by hands-on sessions on normal subjects and patients. Hands-on sessions form the most important component of training but this is a situation that has several ethical and technical limitations. These problems can be overcome by developing a device that simulates various ultrasound scenarios in real-time or near real-time. An ultrasound simulator will provide hands-on training experience to medical students, obviating the need of having patients to practice on.

In this project we are going to develop an ultrasound simulator to augment ultrasound training and do away the necessity of hands-on sessions with patients.

For details regarding the project please visit http://uts.lums.edu.pk.

Mentor Graphics Chair of Embedded Systems

Focal Person: Dr. Shahid Masud
Project Duration: August 2007 - July 2010
Funded by Mentor Graphics ( US$ 108,000 )

Virtual Class room over Internet

Investigator: Dr. Shahid Masud
Project Duration: February 2007 – February 2008
Funded by PITB ( Rs. 1.66 million )

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