Clique is a Science Foundation Ireland funded (SFI) Strategic Research Cluster focussed on graph and network analysis and visualisation. Clique has worked with several Industry Partners since its inception and currently collaborates with Idiro Technologies, DataHug, Storyful and Accenture. Our academic partners are UCD and DERI at NUI Galway along with collaborating academics around the world.

As a result of €3.56 million research funding for Clique, which was announced by the Irish Tánaiste in 2009, Clique now staffs over twenty postdoctoral researchers and phd students. In 2011, Clique was independently reviewed by a external board of academic and industry experts. Their positive feedback resulted in continued funding from Science Funding Ireland (SFI). While our partner companies are providing matching funding and resources the total with industry and SFI funding is now in excess of €5 million.

Clique is based at the Complex and Adaptive Systems Laboratory (CASL), UCD, Dublin and at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), NUIG, Galway.

Graph & Network Analysis

Research in data analysis is being transformed by access to large-scale data resources. An area of particular importance in data analysis is the study of collections of entities and the links between them i.e. networks. Clique addresses the development of computational techniques for the analysis and visualisation of such network data.

Clique research is driven by the requirements of network analysis in social networks and biological networks. While these are two quite different application areas, at a data level the problems have similar structure and the practice of applying techniques developed in one area to the other is well established. In particular the transfer of techniques developed for social network analysis to biological networks has had a huge impact in recent years.

Clique addresses four of the core research challenges in network analysis and visualisation. These are; the identification of coherent communities, the identification of nodes that have pivotal roles, the identification of network structure that is remarkable or anomalous and the question of how to model and analyse information flow. Research into the above challenges continues with particular emphasis on dynamic network analysis and a focus on multi-attribute data.. The research addresses datasets that are; massive, multi-attribute and dynamic. These research challenges require diverse expertise and Clique brings together experts on three aspects of network analysis, i.e. experts on visualisation, matrixdecomposition techniques and probabilistic modelling. Our research agenda is driven by the requirements of companies operating in Ireland and the technology will be applied in internet services, fraud detection and bioinformatics.

The academic principal investigators involved in Clique are, Prof. Pádraig Cunningham, Prof. Denis Shields, Prof. Brendan Murphy, Dr. Neil Hurley and Dr. Conor Hayes. Regular industry representation comes from Idiro Technologies, DataHug, Storyful and Accenture. Our collaborating academic partners include, Prof Desmond Higgins, Prof. Stephen E. Fienberg, Prof. Adrian E. Raftery, Prof. Nial Friel and Dr Gerard Cagney.

Clique Research Program

The Clique Research Program can be broken into several workpages. A detailed review is present in the Research Program section of the site.

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 Note: Photograph taken from the 4th floor of the CASL building courtesy of Ben Arent