Professor Simon John Andrews BSc, PhD, FHEA
Professor of Conceptual Structures in Computer Science
- Department of Computing
- Communication and Computing Research Centre
- Culture and Creativity Research Institute
Summary
Simon Andrews is Professor of Conceptual Structures in Computer Science at Sheffield Hallam University. He is the Research Lead for the Department of Computing and Chair of the Computing Department Research Committee. Simon is the Unit of Assessment Co-ordinator for Computer Science and Informatics at Sheffield Hallam University for the Government’s Research Excellence Framework (REF). Simon is also the Research Ethics Lead for the Industry and Innovation Research Institute at Sheffield Hallam University. His research is in the area of Formal Concept Analysis, developing world-leading algorithms for computing formal concepts. His work has been applied in a number of major European research projects.
About
Simon began investigating the problem of computing formal concepts in 2008 and published his first algorithm, In-Close, for doing this in 2009 and presented it at the International Conference on Conceptual Structures in Moscow in the same year. In the following years, Simon has made a number of improvements and refinements to In-Close making it the world-leading (fastest) algorithm for computing formal concepts.
His publications in this area have received over 600 citations and his algorithm has been applied and adapted world-wide in many related areas of research. Simon has taken a leading role in a number of major European projects where his algorithm has been implemented to provide novel visualisations for business intelligence, provide corroborated reports of incidents in crisis situations and to provide corroborated reports of organised criminal activity to assist the investigations of law enforcement agencies.
Originating from my PhD, awarded in 1996, my first research interest was in writing and animating Z specifications. That work turned theoretical mathematics into a practical software development tool for software engineers in safety-critical systems. These interests led me to Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) and specifically to the problems of obtaining and scaling real-world data for FCA and of mining such data for formal concepts.
Originating from my PhD, awarded in 1996, my first research interest was in writing and animating Z specifications. That work turned theoretical mathematics into a practical software development tool for software engineers in safety-critical systems. These interests led me to Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) and specifically to the problems of obtain and scaling real-world data for FCA and of mining such data for formal concepts.
Teaching
College of Business, Technology and Engineering
CUBIST: Combining and Uniting Business Intelligence with Semantic Technology. http://www.cubist-project.eu/
ePOOLICE: Early Pursuit against Organised Crime using Environmental Scanning, the Law and Intelligence Systems. https://www.epoolice.eu/
ATHENA: Utilising social media communications and developing tools to enhance the ability of citizens and first responders in crisis situations. http://www.projectathena.eu/
CENTRIC: Centre of Excellence for Terrorism, Resilience, Intelligence and Organised Crime Research. http://research.shu.ac.uk/centric/#1
Software Engineering, Graphics and Multimedia
Research
I was Principal Investigator (PI) for a European Commission 7th Framework Programme project, called CUBIST 2010-2013), where I developed semantic tools and technologies for large-scale data analysis, including automated methods of appropriating data for FCA. Working with a range of public and private data sets, including those from biomedical research, satellite telemetry and human resources, I helped develop techniques and software to visualise meaning from data that is not accessible using traditional data analysis techniques.
I was also a lead researcher in two other FP7 Projects within CENTRIC that incorporate my FCA work: ePOOLICE and ATHENA. I was the PI for ePOOLICE (2012-2015), which was concerned with developing an environmental scanning system to detect and monitor organised crime. I was Technical Coordinator for ATHENA (2013-2016), where social media was being harnessed to facilitate the actions of citizens, first responders and Command and Control Centres in crisis situations.
I was also co-PI of a European Horizon 2020 project called REVEAL (started January 2017), which aimed to develop educational Virtual Reality applications for Cultural Heritage sites, for the new Sony PlayStation VR games console.
Publications
Journal articles
Andrews, S., Brewster, B., & Day, T. (2018). Organised crime and social media; a system for detecting, corroborating and visualising weak signals of organised crime online. Security Informatics, 7. http://doi.org/10.1186/s13388-018-0032-8
Domdouzis, K., Akhgar, B., Andrews, S., & Day, T. (2017). Identification of Critical Factors in Large Crisis Decision Making Processes using Computational Tools: The case of ATHENA. International Journal of Strategic Information Technology and Applications (IJSITA), 8 (2). http://doi.org/10.4018/IJSITA.2017040102
Domdouzis, K., Akhgar, B., Andrews, S., & Gibson, H. (2016). A social media and crowd-sourcing data mining system for crime prevention during and post-crisis situations. Journal of Systems and Information Technology, 18 (4), 364-382. http://doi.org/10.1108/JSIT-06-2016-0039
Andrews, S., Gibson, H., Domdouzis, K., & Akhgar, B. (2016). Creating corroborated crisis reports from social media data through formal concept analysis. Journal of Intelligent Information Systems, 47, 287-312. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10844-016-0404-9
Domdouzis, K., Andrews, S., & Akhgar, B. (2016). Application of a new service-oriented architecture (SOA) paradigm on the design of a crisis management distributed system. International Journal of Distributed Systems and Technologies, 7 (2), 1-17. http://doi.org/10.4018/IJDST.2016040101
Andrews, S. (2015). A ‘Best-of-Breed’ approach for designing a fast algorithm for computing fixpoints of GaloisConnections. Information Sciences, 295 (20), 633-649. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ins.2014.10.011
Brewster, B., Akhgar, B., Staniforth, A., Waddington, D., Andrews, S., & Johnson, K. (2014). Towards a model for the integration of knowledge management in law enforcement agencies. International journal of electronic security and digital forensics, 6 (1), 1-17. http://doi.org/10.1504/IJESDF.2014.060169
Polovina, S., Andrews, S., Akhgar, B., Staniforth, A., & Fortune, D. (2014). The EMPRISES pan-European Framework. International Journal of Conceptual Structures and Smart Applications, 2 (2), 76-87. http://doi.org/10.4018/IJCSSA.2014070105
Polovina, S., & Andrews, S. (2013). CGs to FCA Including Peirce's Cuts. International Journal of Conceptual Structures and Smart Applications, 1 (1), 90-103. http://doi.org/10.4018/ijcssa.2013010105
Andrews, S., & Orphanides, C. (2013). Discovering Knowledge in Data Using Formal Concept Analysis. International Journal of Distributed Systems and Technologies, 4 (2), 31-50. http://doi.org/10.4018/jdst.2013040103
Andrews, S. (2013). The CUBIST Project: Combining and Uniting Business Intelligence with Semantic Technologies. International journal of intelligent information technologies, 9 (4), 1-15. http://doi.org/10.4018/ijiit.2013100101
Andrews, S., & McLeod, K. (2013). Gene Co-Expression in Mouse Embryo Tissues. International Journal of Intelligent Information Technologies, 9 (4), 55-68. http://doi.org/10.4018/ijiit.2013100104
Andrews, S., & Orphanides, C. (2012). Knowledge discovery through creating formal contexts. International Journal of Space-Based and Situated Computing, 2 (2), 123-138. http://doi.org/10.1504/IJSSC.2012.047469
Conference papers
Andrews, S. (2020). Some Programming Optimizations for Computing Formal Concepts. Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, 12277 (12277), 59-73. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57855-8_5
Andrews, S. (2018). A new method for inheriting canonicity testfailures in Close-by-One type algorithms. In Ignatov, D.I., & Nourine, L. (Eds.) CLA 2018 : The 14th International Conference on Concept Lattices and Their Applications, proceedings, (pp. 255-266). Springer
Andrews, S., & McLeod, K. (2018). A visual analytics technique for exploring gene expression in the developing mouse embryo. In 23rd International Conference on Conceptual Structures, proceedings, (pp. 137-151). Springer
Andrews, S., & Polovina, S. (2018). Exploring, Reasoning with and Validating Directed Graphs by Applying Formal Concept Analysis to Conceptual Graphs. In Croitoru, M., Marquis, P., Rudolph, S., & Stapleton, G. (Eds.) Graph Structures for Knowledge Representation and Reasoning : 5th International Workshop, GKR 2017, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, August 21, 2017, Revised Selected Papers, (pp. 3-28). Springer: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78102-0
Polovina, S., & von Rosing, M. (2018). Using Conceptual Structures in Enterprise Architecture to Develop a New Way of Thinking and Working for Organisations. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 10872, 176-190. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91379-7_14
Andrews, S., & Polovina, S. (2017). Validating directed graphs by applying formalconcept analysis to conceptual graphs. In The IJCAI-17 Workshop on Graph Structures for Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (GKR 2017 @ IJCAI), Melbourne, Australia. http://www.lirmm.fr/~hecham/GKR/resources/Andrews.pdf
Andrews, S. (2017). Making Use of Empty Intersections to Improve the Performance of CbO-Type Algorithms. In International Conference on Formal Concept Analysis, Rennes France, 13 June 2017 - 17 June 2017 (pp. 56-71). Springer: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59271-8_4
Kodagoda, N., Andrews, S., & Pulasinghe, K. (2017). A parallel version of the in-close algorithm. In NCTM 2017 Proceedings of the 6th National Conference on Technology and Management (NCTM), (pp. 1-5). IEEE: http://doi.org/10.1109/NCTM.2017.7872818
Andrews, S., Brewster, B., & Day, T. (2016). Organised crime and social media: detecting and corroborating weak signals of human trafficking online. In Haemmerlé, O., Stapleton, G., & Faron-Zucker, C. (Eds.) Graph-based representation and reasoning, (pp. 137-150). Heidelberg: Springer: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40985-6_11
Hirsch, L., & Andrews, S. (2016). Visualising text co-occurrence networks. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 1637, 19-27. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1637/
Andrews, S., & Hirsch, L. (2016). A tool for creating and visualising formal concepttrees. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 1637, 1-9. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1637/
Andrews, S., & Polovina, S. (2016). CEUR Workshop Proceedings: Preface. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 1637.
Gibson, H., Andrews, S., Domdouzis, K., Hirsch, L., & Akhgar, B. (2014). Combining Big Social Media Data and FCA for Crisis Response. In 2014 IEEE/ACM 7th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing, (pp. 690-695). The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers: http://doi.org/10.1109/UCC.2014.112
Brewster, B., Andrews, S., Polovina, S., Hirsch, L., & Akhgar, B. (2014). Environmental Scanning and Knowledge Representation for the Detection of Organised Crime Threats. In Hernandez, N., Jäschke, R., & Croitoru, M. (Eds.) Graph-Based Representation and Reasoning, (pp. 275-280). Springer International Publishing: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08389-6_22
Brewster, B., Polovina, S., Rankin, G., & Andrews, S. (2014). Knowledge management and human trafficking: using conceptual knowledge representation, text analytics and open-source data to combat organized crime. In Hernandez, N., Jäschke, R., & Croitoru, M. (Eds.) Graph-Based Representation and Reasoning, (pp. 104-117). Springer International Publishing: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08389-6_10
Dau, F., & Andrews, S. (2014). Combining Business Intelligence with Semantic Technologies: The CUBIST Project. In Hernandez, N., Jäschke, R., & Croitoru, M. (Eds.) Graph-Based Representation and Reasoning, (pp. 281-286). Springer: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08389-6_23
Andrews, S. (2014). A Partial-Closure Canonicity Test to Increase the Efficiency of CbO-Type Algorithms. In Hernandez, N., Jäschke, R., & Croitoru, M. (Eds.) Graph-Based Representation and Reasoning, (pp. 37-50). Springer: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08389-6_5
Domdouzis, K., Andrews, S., Gibson, H., Akhgar, B., & Hirsch, L. (2014). Service-Oriented Design of a Command and ControlIntelligence Dashboard for Crisis Management. In Big Data, Intelligence Management and Analytics Workshop (BDIMA 2014), 7th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC 2014), London, 2014 - 2014. http://bdima2014.wix.com/shuworkshop
Andrews, S., Akhgar, B., Yates, S., Stedmon, A., & Hirsch, L. (2013). Using formal concept analysis to detect and monitor organised crime. In Larsen, H.L., Martin-Bautista, M.J., Vila, M.A., Andreasen, T., & Christiansen, H. (Eds.) Flexible Query Answering Systems, (pp. 124-133). Heidelberg: Springer: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40769-7_11
Watmough, M., Polovina, S., & Andrews, S. (2013). Designing Learning to Research the Formal Concept Analysis of Transactional Data. In Pfeiffer, H.D., Ignatov, D.I., Poelmans, J., & Gadiraju, N. (Eds.) Conceptual Structures for STEM Research and Education, (pp. 231-238). Berlin: Springer: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35786-2_16
Fallon, R., & Polovina, S. (2013). REA analysis of SAP HCM; some initial findings. In Andrews, S., & Dau, F. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 3rd CUBIST (Combining and Uniting Business Intelligence with Semantic Technologies) Workshop, (pp. 31-43). CEUR-WS.org
Melo, C., Orphanides, C., McLeod, K., Aufaire, M.-.A., Andrews, S., & Burger, A. (2013). A conceptual approach to gene expression analysis enhanced by visual analytics. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, (pp. 1314-1319). New York, NY, USA: ACM New York: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2480362.2480610
Orphanides, C., & Georgiou, G. (2013). FCAWarehouse, a prototype online data repository for FCA. In Andrews, S., & Dau, F. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 3rd CUBIST Workshop, (pp. 54-61). CEUR-WS: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1040/
Andrews, S., Polovina, S., Yates, S., & Akhgar, B. (2013). Tackling financial and economic crime through strategic intelligence: The EMPRISES Framework. In Arabnia, H.R., Deligiannidis, L., Hashemi, R., & Lu, J. (Eds.) Proceedings of The 2013 International Conference on Information and Knowledge Engineering (IKE 2013), (pp. 22-25). CSREA Press: http://doi.org/10.13140/2.1.4130.3042
Mardani, A., Akhgar, B., Andrews, S., Yates, S., & Hassanzadeh, M. (2012). Investigating the unofficial factors in Google ranking. In Arabnia, H.R., Deligiannidis,, L., & Hashemi, R.R. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Information and Knowledge Engineering (IKE 2012), (pp. 320-326). CSREA Press: http://worldcomp-proceedings.com/proc/proc2012/ike/contents.pdf
Andrews, S. (2011). Aligning the teaching of FCA with Existing Module Learning Outcomes. In Andrews, S., Polovina, S., Hill, R., & Akhgar, B. (Eds.) 2nd Int. Conceptual Structures - Learning, Teaching and Assessment Workshop (CS-LTA), 2011, Derby, (pp. 394-401). Springer
Andrews, S. (2011). In-Close2, a high performance formal concept miner. In Andrews, S., Polovina, S., Hill, R., & Akhgar, B. (Eds.) ICCS 2011: Conceptual Structures for Discovering Knowledge, Derby, (pp. 50-62). Springer
Launders, I. (2011). Evaluating the transaction graph through a financial trading case study. In Andrews, S. (Ed.) Conceptual Structures for Discovering Knowledge, (pp. 145-158). Berlin: Springer: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22688-5_11
Andrews, S., & Polovina, S. (2011). A mapping from conceptual graphs to formal concept analysis. In Andrews, S., Polovina, S., Hill, R., & Akhgar, B. (Eds.) Conceptual Structures for Discovering Knowledge (The 19th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS 2011, Derby, UK, (pp. 63-76). Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer: https://www.springer.com/gb/book/9783642226878
Andrews, S., & McLeod, K. (2011). Gene co-expression in mouse embryo tissues. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 753, 1-10. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-753/
Andrews, S., Orphanides, C., & Polovina, S. (2010). Visualising computational intelligence through converting data into formal concepts. In Xhafa, F., Barolli, L., Nishino, H., & Aleksy, M. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 2010 international conference on P2P, parallel, grid, cloud and internet computing (3GPCIC), (pp. 302-307). IEEE Computer Society: http://doi.org/10.1109/3PGCIC.2010.50
Andrews, S., & Orphanides, C. (2010). Analysis of large data sets using formal concept lattices. In Kryszkiewicz,, M., & Obiedkov, S. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Concept Lattices and Their Applications, (pp. 104-115). Seville: University of Seville
Andrews, S., & Orphanides, C. (2010). FcaBedrock, a formal context creator. In 18th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, Kuching, Malaysia, 26 July 2010 - 2010.
Andrews, S., & Orphanides, C. (2010). Knowledge discovery through creating formal contexts. In Xhafa, F., Abraham, A., Demetriadis, S., & Caballe, S. (Eds.) First international workshop on computational intelligence in networks and systems (CINS 2010), (pp. 455-460). IEEE Computer Society: http://doi.org/10.1109/INCOS.2010.53
Andrews, S. (2009). In-Close, a fast algorithm for computing formal concepts. In International Conference on Conceptual Structures (ICCS), Moscow, 2009. http://iccs09.hse.ru/index.html
Andrews, S., & Polovina, S. (2008). Operational specification for FCA using Z. In 16th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, Toulouse, France, 1 July 2008. http://www.inra.fr/iccs08/
Book chapters
Andrews, S. (2017). Best practices in the design of a citizen focused crisis management platform. In Akhgar, B., Staniforth, A., & Waddington, D. (Eds.) Application of social media in crisis management : advanced sciences and technologies for security applications. (pp. 59-75). Springer International Publishing: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52419-1_5
Andrews, S., Day, T., Domdouzis, K., Hirsch, L., Lefticaru, R.-.E., & Orphanides, C. (2017). Analyzing crowd-sourced information and social media for crisis management. In Akhgar, B., Staniforth, A., & Waddington, D. (Eds.) Application of social media in crisis management : advanced sciences and technologies for security applications. (pp. 77-96). Springer International Publishing: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52419-1_6
Andrews, S., Polovina, S., Akhgar, B., Staniforth, A., Fortune, D., & Stedman, A. (2015). Tackling financial and economic crime through strategic intelligence management. In Stedman, A., & Lawson, G. (Eds.) Hostile intent and counter-terrorism: human factors theory and application. (pp. 161-176). Ashgate: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781472402103
Andrews, S., Yates, S., Akhgar, B., & Fortune, D. (2013). The ATHENA Project: Using Formal Concept Analysis to Facilitate the Actions of Responders in a Crisis Situation. In Akhgar, B., & Yates, S. (Eds.) Strategic Intelligence Management. (pp. 167-180). Amsterdam: Elsevier: Butterworth-Heinemann
Polovina, S., & Andrews, S. (2013). A Transaction-Oriented Architecture for Structuring Unstructured Information in Enterprise Applications. In Enterprise Resource Planning. (pp. 299-313). IGI Global: http://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-4153-2.ch018
Andrews, S., Orphanides, C., & Polovina, S. (2011). Visualising Computational Intelligence through Converting Data into Formal Concepts. In Next Generation Data Technologies for Collective Computational Intelligence. (pp. 139-165). Springer Berlin Heidelberg: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20344-2_6
Polovina, S., & Andrews, S. (2011). A transaction-oriented architecture for structuring unstructured information in enterprise applications. In Sugumaran, V. (Ed.) Intelligent, Adaptive and Reasoning Technologies: New Developments and Applications. (pp. 285-299). IGI Global: http://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60960-595-7.ch016
Bridges, S., Schiffel, J., & Polovina, S. (2011). OpenSEA: A framework for semantic interoperation between enterprises. In Bessis, N., & Xhafa, F. (Eds.) Next generation data technologies for collective computational intelligence. (pp. 61-86). Springer: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20344-2
Andrews, S. (2010). Aligning the topic of FCA with existing modulelearning outcomes. In Polovina, S., Andrews, S., Hill, R., Scharfe, H., & Øhrstrøm, P. (Eds.) Proceedings of the International Workshop CS-LTA 2010 : The First Conceptual Structures – Learning, Teaching and Assessment Workshop. (pp. 1-12). Mimos Berhad: http://extra.shu.ac.uk/cetl/cpla/cslta2010/CS-LTA_FullProceedings.pdf
Andrews, S. (2010). Aligning the topic of FCA with existing modulelearning outcomes. In Polovina, S., Andrews, S., Hill, R., Scharfe, H., & Øhrstrøm, P. (Eds.) Proceedings of the International Workshop CS-LTA 2010 : The First Conceptual Structures – Learning, Teaching and Assessment Workshop. (pp. 1-12). Mimos Berhad: http://extra.shu.ac.uk/cetl/cpla/cslta2010/CS-LTA_FullProceedings.pdf
Andrews, S., & Norcliffe, A. (1990). A CASE tool for demonstrating Z specifications. In IEE Colloquium on Application of CASE Tools. (pp. 5/1-5/4). IET: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?tp=&arnumber=190002&queryText%3DA+CASE+tool+for+demonstrating+Z+specifications
Books
Andrews, S., Polovina, S., Hill, R., & Akhgar, B. (Eds.). (2011). Conceptual structures for discovering knowledge : Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Conceptual Structures (ICCS) 2011. Springer.
Andrews, S., Polovina, S., Hill, R., & Akhgar, B. (2011). Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics): Preface.
Andrews, S., Polovina, S., Hill, R., & Akhgar, B. (2011). Preface.
Polovina, S., Andrews, S., Hill, R., Scharfe, H., & Øhrstrøm, P. (Eds.). (2010). Proceedings of the first conceptual structures – learning,teaching and assessment workshop CS-LTA2010 held in conjunction with ICCS-2010 the 18th international conference on conceptual structures. Mimos Berhad. http://extra.shu.ac.uk/cetl/cpla/cslta2010/publication.html
Theses / Dissertations
Kodagoda, G.N. (2018). Parallelization of formal concept analysis algorithms. (Doctoral thesis). Supervised by Andrews, S. http://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00168
Chika, N.H. (2015). Dealing with inconsistent and incomplete data in a semantic technology setting. (Doctoral thesis). Supervised by Andrews, S., Polovina, S., & Orphanides, C.
Other publications
Andrews, S.J. (2009). Data conversion and interoperability for FCA.
Other activities
Editorial Board member for LNCS annual International Conference on Conceptual Structures
Reviewer for the International Journal of Information Sciences
Postgraduate supervision
Appropriating Data from Structured Sources for Formal Concept Analysis
Dealing with inconsistent and incomplete data in a semantic technology setting
Adapting FCA for detecting missing data values.
Dealing with inconsistent and incomplete data in a semantic technology setting