Laura Zavala

My research is based on the general concept of design diversity. The underlying informal idea is that better results can be obtained with the synergistic use of redundant and/or diverse resources than with the use of a single resource.

The application of the general notion of diversity to protect against mistakes and failures can range from an informal usage (for example, you can have someone else check your arithmetic in a complex calculation) to a more systematic use. Such is the case of engineered fault tolerant systems (both hardware and software), artificial intelligent applications (multiple heuristics for constraint solving, multiple classifiers in pattern recognition problems), and multiple sensor systems.

I have focused on the use of multiagent systems for software robustness through the use of diversity. More specifically on strategies for the adjudication of results from the individual agents, and the modeling of dependence among them. The application of my work, as well as exploration of relevant concerns, has led me to work also on other related fields that are of my interest: autonomic computing, semantic Web, ontologies, and Web services.