What is CIOP?

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 (Computational Intelligence, OPtimization and Data Mining) is an approved Research Center at the TH Köln - University of Applied Sciences. Computational Intelligence (CI) deals with optimization based on nature-inspired principles and methods: Evolutionary algorithms, neural nets and fuzzy logic. Data Mining (DM) uses these methods as well as other methods from machine learning for tasks like data analysis, classification, regression and forecasting.

Why is CIOP important for most areas in industry and economy? The increasing interconnectedness of industry sites and the ever-increasing, ubiquitous trend for data acquisition offers new possibilities but brings with it also the challenge to analyse vast amounts of more and more detailed data.  It is nevertheless important to do this analysis profoundly due to the necessity to steer optimally all kind of processes and to have good forecasts of future trends, on the coarse and on the detailed level. Therefore, most companies have already set up processes to perform this data analysis. It is the aim of CIOP to provide leading-edge solutions to companies and research institutions for optimization and automated, self-learning data mining.  We try to remain up-to-date with our national and international cooperations to leading research groups in the field.

CIOP is the umbrella for numerous research projects in the area of modelling, learning, tuning and optimization. The currecnt spectrum of methods in CIOP includes, but is not limited to:
 

 
  • Evolutionary algorithms3d
  • Neural nets
  • Fuzzy logic
  • Random forests (RF)
  • Support vector machines (SVM)
  • Radial basis functions
  • Genetic programming, RGP
  • Feature selection and feature learning
  • Slow Feature Analysis (SFA)
  • Time Series Analysis; Gesture recognition
  • Tuning of algorithms, SPOT
  • Tuned data mining
  • Experimental design
  • Hybrid combinations of the methods above

Please have a look at our research projects to see instructive examples for the current area of research in CIOP and where it can deliver interesting high-quality solutions to industry and economy.

If you prefer information in German, you may also have a look at our (however somewhat older) CIOP website in German