Matthew Huntbach

Department of Computer Science
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road
London E1 4NS
UK
email: mmh@dcs.qmul.ac.uk

Research

Interests

Current interest centres around general purpose abstract concurrent programming languages. This means programming language designed for general purpose use, which are based in the idea that computation should be naturally concurrent (several things happening at once rather than everything happening in sequence), and which are based on some underlying formal and simple model of computation. General idea - it is a matter of surprise that to many people "concurrent programming" still means the old-fashioned technology of threads and synchronisation mechanisms for accessing shared mutable variables. The question of what could succeed this still seem to be wide open, however.

Past interests include logic programming, multi-agent systems, algorithmic debugging, artifical life and artificial intelligence.

Publications

Agent-Oriented Programming

Some recent work in progress is documented in a few papers:

Justification for the new language, Aldwych
General description of Aldwych
The Aldwych programming model
The core language of Aldwych with slides here.
A start at an Aldwych tutorial can be found here.
Reference to further publications can be found in CiteSeer

Teaching

Current courses

Details of these are on intranet only

Algorithms and Data Structures in an Object Oriented Framework
Advanced Program Design
Artificial Intelligence temporarily covering part of this module 2008/9

Projects

Some suggestions for projects I am willing to supervise, either for final year BSc or for MSc can be found here.

Old courses

Listed below, courses I've taught in the past where there's significant notes I can make public. Disclaimer - the approach I took when I wrote these notes might not be the one I would take now, so take them as they come.

Algorithms and Data Structures Taught 2002-2006.
Introduction to Programming Taught 1998-2001.
Artificial Intelligence Taught 1995-1997.

Links pages

Pages of links gathered while preparing course material, and kept as additional "worldwide information". Disclaimer - I add to these and maintain them as and when I can find time. The first in particular, I tried for a long time to keep comprehensive and relevant, but have had to give up on it, so it's getting out of date.

Other teaching material

A local copy of Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in Java" available here
A collection of links to Prolog tutorials is available here.
Links to on-line books on Computer Science theory available here.

Administration

Formerly (until Sept 2005) Selector for Admissions to undergraduate courses through UCAS

How is "Huntbach" pronounced?

This often seems to cause confusion, but the simple answer is that it's an English name and is pronounced exactly as spelt in English: the "ch" is soft as in "church", "sandwich" and other English words. The surname originates in Staffordshire where it has been in use for as long as surnames have existed. So it is not a German name, and should not be pronounced as if it were.

Although most Huntbaches still come from the West Midlands, I come from a small branch of the family which moved to the south coast, and was brought up in Portslade near Brighton.

Other Interests

One of these days I might put together a few links to things of personal interest to me. The links below are kept from previous versions of this web page in case anyone relied on them to get elsewhere.

I am no longer a councillor for Downham ward (Liberal Democrat) London Borough of Lewisham, I did not stand in the 2006 elections as I have moved to another borough. I am still a member of the G.K.Chesterton society.