Mackay computer scientist and lecturer at Central Queensland University (CQU) Mackay, Associate Professor Victor Korotkikh and his wife Dr Galina Korotkikh have received international recognition for their work which could help solve some important problems such as the one the country faces today in dealing with infrastructure capacity constraints to lift coal output and ease inflationary pressures.

Victor and his wife Dr Galina Korotkikh have just returned from the US. They were invited by the founder of Fuzzy logic, Lofti Zadeh to present their latest ideas on information processing at the University of California, Berkeley, at the Lawrence National Berkeley Laboratory and International Conference on Complex Systems held in Boston.

To understand their work, it is necessary to understand that computers have advanced dramatically over the decades. Traditionally computers were found to have rigid logic and a mechanical vision on reality, disabling us from solving many complex problems efficiently.

Fuzzy logic technology took into account how the human brain might process information and applied it to computer processors. In the 90's the idea of a Quantum Computer was proved to be possible someday.

Since it is unknown when quantum computers will be completed, alternatives continue to be developed. Enter, Victor and Galina.

"Complex problems in the world are that way because of the many parts of the problem that interact and affect one another. Try to obtain greater throughput in the Bowen Basin coal supply chain and you have one," said Victor.

Victor and Galina have shown that for a given problem, self-organization processes of prime integer relations could be used to efficiently build a computing system in processing information demonstrating the optimal performance for the problem.

Their work might open a way to a new type of information processing for efficient management of complex systems and a way forward in dealing with complex problems.