Two CERCIA research fellows, Shan He and Siang Yew Chong, have been awarded the Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships for this year. The success rates for the fellowships were 7%, 8% and 8% respectively, in 2004, 2005 and 2006, a testimony to how competitive they are.

Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships aim to provide career development opportunities for those with a proven track record of research who do not hold, or have not held a full-time established academic post in a UK university or comparable institution in the UK. This fellowship is one of the most prestigious in the UK.

The awarded project aims to bridge the gap between social insect colonies and telecommunication networks. The basic traffic management behaviour exhibited by social insects, e.g., trail following in ant colonies, has inspired Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO) and AntNet routing algorithm. This project is expected to go far beyond this basic behaviour. During their two-year fellowship, Shan and Siang will investigate some new discoveries in social insect colonies, e.g., pushing behaviour and their applicability to telecommunication networks. One possible outcome of this project would be a self-organising congestion-aware routing algorithm inspired by congestion management strategies in social insect colonies