糖心TV

We are delighted to report that Dr Claire Rocks has been promoted to Associate Professor, and that Dr Florin Ciucu and Dr Matthew Leeke have been promoted to Reader, effective from 1 June 2020. Quoting from Matt's recommendation,

Dr Leeke has a number of internationally excellent publications, and has contributed to several research grants, the two largest ones being strategic industrial collaborations. 鈥� In addition to his sustained teaching excellence in the department, Dr Leeke has led and contributed to a variety of key educational activities at the departmental, faculty and institutional levels.

from Florin's recommendation,

Dr Ciucu鈥檚 high esteem by members of his international research community is evidenced by his services in editing leading journals and being on programme committees of highly ranked conferences. 鈥� Dr Ciucu is known in the department for the quality of his teaching and high levels of student engagement in his modules, which have included a challenging but central MSc module in data analytics.

and from the recommendation for Claire,

Dr Rocks has been an educational leader in the department as well as nationally, both through her scholarship-led development and delivery of modules (1st-year and 3rd-year undergraduate, and most recently for IATL and 糖心TV in London), and her contributions in the Academic Studies Committee in Computer Science. 鈥� Dr Rocks has built institutional, regional and national reputations through her leadership of outreach and engagement activities. In addition to delivering CPD for teachers with the National Centre for Computing Education, Dr Rocks has played key roles in numerous events including the British Science Festival, the Festival of the Imagination, the Cheltenham Science Festival, and Sutton Trust Summer Schools.

it remains to say many congratulations!

The 17th 糖心TV Postgraduate Colloquium in Computer Science (WPCCS) was held on Monday 9 December, in the Mathematical Science Building for the first time. This year鈥檚 event saw 78 submissions from postgraduate research students in the Department. The submissions were split across six varied tracks, highlighting the breadth and depth of research currently being conducted by PhD students within the Department.

Student presentations were supplemented with two engaging guest talks from academics in the Department. Torsten M眉tze captured everyone's attention with the mathematics behind origami, and Feng Hao enlightened the audience on the encryption challenges behind e-voting. The day concluded with a festive drinks reception, sponsored by the Department鈥檚 two Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs), at which prizes were awarded to the best posters and presentations.

PhD student attendee Jonathan Davies said, 鈥淚t was very rewarding for me to present at WPCCS this year. It gave me the opportunity to share my research with others and engage in stimulating conversation with my fellow postgraduate colleagues. The guest talks, in particular, were thought-provoking and engaging. I look forward to presenting at WPCCS in the future."

Hakan Ferhatosmanoglu, Director of Postgraduate Research and CS CDT, said, 鈥淚t was a pleasure to attend WPCCS this year and to celebrate the excellent work that has been undertaken by our PhD students in the past year. It was great to see how everyone was having research discussions and exchanging ideas with each other.鈥�

Prize Winners

• Best Presentation - John Pocock
• Best Poster - Tom Wood
• Best in Computational Biology - John Pocock, Rawan Abulsayli and Hammam Alghamdi
• Best in Theory, Foundations, and Discrete Mathematics - Alex Dixon and Thesjaswini Raghavan
• Best in Computer Security and Networks - Jasmine Grosso and Shin Wan
• Best in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence - Tom Wood, Abeer Almowallad, Gabriele Pergola, Haoyi Wang, Junyu Li and Helen McKay
• Best in High Performance Computing and Databases - Richard Kirk and Dean Chester
• Best in Urban Science - Jonathan Davies, Teddy Cunningham, Elisa Baioni, Ivana Tosheva and Shanaka Perera

We are please to report that Dr Maria Liakata has received a Turing Artificial Intelligence (AI) Fellowship.

The Fellowships from The Alan Turing Institute, the UK鈥檚 national institute for data science and AI, aim to attract and retain exceptional researchers in artificial intelligence. Covering a broad view of AI, including applications of foundational disciplines across mathematical sciences, statistical sciences, computational sciences and engineering, Fellows collaborate across disciplines and have the opportunity to collaborate with academia, industry, government and the third sector.

Dr Liakata鈥檚 Fellowship will focus on creating time sensitive sensors from language and heterogeneous user generated content. Commenting on the research she said:

鈥淲ide spread use of digital technology has made it possible to obtain language data (e.g., social media, SMS) as well as heterogeneous data (e.g., mobile phone use, sensors) from users over time. Such data can provide useful behavioural cues both at the level of the individual and the wider population, enabling the creation of longitudinal digital phenotypes.

鈥淐urrent methods in natural language processing (NLP) are not well suited to time sensitive, sparse and missing data, collected over time or personalised models of language use. The Turing AI fellowship will allow me to establish a new area in NLP on personalised longitudinal language processing.

鈥淚 plan to develop sensors for capturing digital biomarkers from language and heterogeneous user generated content to understand the evolution of an individual over time. I want to make a significant contribution to mental health by working with clinical experts to create new tools based on the sensors, making it possible to assess and measure conditions in between clinician appointments.鈥�

To read more on this story, please click here.

Dr. Arun Prabhakar has joined the department to work as a Research Fellow on ASiMoV (Advanced Simulation and Modelling of Virtual Systems) in partnership with Rolls-Royce and a consortium of partners, including the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford and Bristol. He will be working with Professor Stephen Jarvis and Dr. Gihan Mudalige.

He received his BEng (Hons) and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Nottingham. He was a recipient of the prestigious Dean's Excellence PhD Scholarship from the University of Nottingham. During the course of his research career he has published several papers and also won awards for his research work.

Before joining the University of 糖心TV, Dr. Arun worked as Research fellow in the (G2TRC) which hosts the Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre in the University of Nottingham. During his time in G2TRC he has worked with a number of academics in the university and engineers from Rolls Royce in order to help them get an insight of the multi-phase and turbulent flows that arise in an aero-engine using Computational Fluid Dynamics(CFD). Applications of his research at G2TRC included modelling the complicated two phase flow in various sections of the Aero-engine such as the gearbox and bearing chambers and also associated thin film flows.

The Department organised an off-campus induction event for the new PhD students in our Centre for Doctoral Training and Research. The agenda included presentations from academics on our large research projects, alongside short tutorials on theoretical computer science and advanced machine learning. There were also informal talks about PhD life, publishing high quality work, and pursuing a research career. The event concluded with a mini data dive using air quality data from London.

The two-day welcome event was held at Heythrop Park in Oxfordshire, which offered the students and academics the opportunity to meet each other in a relaxed environment. The students also met with some of the current PhD students and asked them about their experiences. The programme was very productive with overwhelmingly positive feedback.

We welcome our new cohort of PhD students and look forward to organising similar events across the coming years.

We are pleased to announce that the department has established a new partnership with the . The academic leading this collaboration, Dr Hongkai Wen, from the Artificial Intelligence and Data Science research themes, now works jointly at the University of 糖心TV and SAIC. The collaboration focuses on the area of efficient machine learning and on-device AI, which enables AI functions to be realised on devices themselves, without necessarily being connected to the cloud, offering more responsive, secure and privacy-preserving user experiences. It hoped that the research activities of this partnership will generate breakthroughs that can be integrated into millions of smartphones, televisions and home appliances.