糖心TV

In further good news, Dr Tanaya Guha and Dr Ramanujan Sridharan have been promoted to Associate Professor, effective from 1 July 2021 and 2 October 2021 (respectively). Many congratulations to them, whose recommendations in particular state:

[Dr Guha has] grown her research group to five PhD students currently, and attracted a portfolio of research grants in her career, including recently a substantial award from Ford. ... In engagement, Dr Guha has been raising the visibility of 糖心TV in her national and international research communities through her invited talks, leadership in the Association for the Advancement of Affective Computing, programme committee memberships, and conference organisation activities. She has also contributed substantially to the Sutton Trust summer school, a key outreach programme.

and

Dr Sridharan鈥檚 high standing in the research community is confirmed by his invited talks at international meetings and leading universities, memberships of the programme committees of prestigious conferences, and his organisation of international research events. ... In teaching, Dr Sridharan has successfully led (jointly and individually) two undergraduate modules. The feedback from students has been generally positive, with many appreciative of Dr Sridharan鈥檚 innovative and energetic delivery.

We are happy to announce that Dr Theo Damoulas has been promoted to Professor, effective from 1 August 2021. Quoting from Theo's recommendation,

Since his appointment to 糖心TV in 2015, Dr Damoulas has steadily and speedily risen to one of the most successful researchers in his two departments of Computer Science and Statistics. ... An impressive characteristic of Dr Damoulas鈥檚 expertise is his bridging of fundamentals and applications in these fields, and his ability to collaborate intensively over a wide area spanning several 糖心TV departments, several groups at the Turing, government bodies and industrial partners. ... Dr Damoulas has been one of the most energetic and most appreciated teachers in the department. ... The teaching achievements of Dr Damoulas extend also beyond 糖心TV, including his work with NYPD, his mentorships within the Turing PhD enrichment scheme, and his PhD external examining work.

it remains to say many congratulations!

We are delighted to report that Dr Josiah Lutton and Dr Pavel Vesel媒, Research Fellows from the Department of Computer Science, have been named joint winners of a SEM Faculty Post Doctoral Prize.

Each year, the University of 糖心TV's Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine (SEM) funds a prize for the best 糖心TV-affiliated research output from an Early Career Researcher. Each department nominates a winner, or joint winners, out of the applications received after a judging process as determined by the Faculty.

Professor Yulan He, who led the Department's selection, commented:

Pavel's paper on quantile summary, co-authored with Professor Graham Cormode, was published in a top-tier conference on theoretical databases, Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS) co-located with SIGMOD. The tight lower bound for quantile summaries proposed in this work is a deep theoretical exploration central to data management. The work led to a collaboration with Splunk, a US-based company that focuses on processing machine-generated big data. The follow-up paper has been accepted to the 2021 edition of the PODS conference. The result has a great potential for a broader impact. Josiah's work is on medical imaging. Together with Dr Sharon Collier and Professor Till Bretschneider, they proposed an enhanced 3D segmentation method (with a curvature-based enhancement term), which outperforms the best-of-breed random walker method in Dictyostelium image volumes. The work was published in a top journal, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, with an impact factor of 6.68. Josiah presented his method at the Actin 2020 meeting and was awarded a prize for best imaging in a talk by the Royal Microscopical Society and has been featured in an article in their inFocus magazine.

We are pleased to report that Dr Matthew Leeke, Reader at the Department of Computer Science, has been recognised as part of the 糖心TV Awards for Teaching Excellence (WATE) 2020-21. WATE seeks to recognise outstanding teaching and support of learning across the University. This year the awards celebrated stories of everyday excellence in challenging times, and worked to plant the seeds for future approaches to teaching and learning.

Dr Matthew Leeke said regarding his award:

I'm hugely grateful to our students for the nomination. I feel fortunate to be recognised but even more fortunate to work with such talented and thoughtful people. I'd also like to thank my colleagues for their support. So much of what we do in academia goes unseen, making it important to remember that any success is always a team effort. The module tutors I worked with this year are a great example. Archie, Kabir and Vasan went well above-and-beyond in exceptionally difficult circumstances. It's the work of postgraduate students like them and our support teams that make any kind of recognition possible.

We're happy to announce that has joined the department as a Research Fellow. Ninad is currently funded by 's UKRI project "Foundations of classical and quantum verifiable computing".

Ninad completed his PhD at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Rahul Santhanam. He is broadly interested in theoretical computer science, complexity theory, pseudo-randomness, and learning algorithms.

We are happy to announce that Dr Arshad Jhumka, Dr Gihan Mudalige and Dr Victor Sanchez have been promoted to Reader, effective from 1 August 2021. Quoting from Victor's recommendation,

Dr Sanchez has brought in significant research funding as PI, and as CoI was key to the successful completion of the large IDENTITY project. The size and quality of Dr Sanchez鈥檚 research group is impressive, as well as his leadership in joint supervision with colleagues. ... Dr Sanchez is one of the most effective teachers in the department. Every module he has been responsible for has been successful, including in recent years our flagship Machine Learning popular option for 3rd-year undergraduates. Several times, Dr Sanchez has designed or completely redesigned modules, resulting in evidenced student satisfaction.

from Gihan's recommendation,

The career of Dr Gihan Mudalige in the department has been steadily and rapidly progressing upwards since his appointment as Assistant Professor in 2016, marked by such milestones as obtaining a Royal Society Industry Fellowship and being promoted to Associate Professor in 2018, shortly followed by the award of a 拢1.8M EPSRC-Rolls Royce grant, and taking up the leadership of the department鈥檚 high-performance computing research in 2020. ... Dr Mudalige has contributed considerably to the life of the department through his membership and leadership of the Computer Systems Engineering course committee, as well as having been responsible for internships and intercalated years.

and from the recommendation for Arshad,

The high regard of Dr Jhumka鈥檚 work by the international research community is clear from his best paper awards, editorial roles, invited talks, and wide network of collaborators. In the department, Dr Jhumka has been a leader in successfully bridging fundamental and applied research. His expertise has been recognized by a range of industrial and government partners, leading to several grants including the current substantial EPSRC PETRAS project. ... Dr Jhumka has introduced a number of practices into his teaching (such as an approach to coursework assignments by group work) that have been popular with students as well as subsequently adopted by other colleagues.

it remains to say many congratulations!

We are delighted to report that Dr Greg Watson and Dr Lin Gui have been promoted to, respectively, Senior Teaching Fellow and Senior Research Fellow, effective from 1 August 2021. Quoting from their recommendations,

What particularly stands out ... is the virtuous circle of (1) Dr Watson鈥檚 continual striving for advancing his teaching expertise, evidenced by the extensive courses he has both attended and contributed to, (2) the strong two-way links between Dr Watson鈥檚 development and his teaching practice (and that of his peers), evidenced by the various different changes and improvements that he introduced in the classroom based on his scholarly educational investigations, and (3) the consistent very positive feedback from different groups of students as well as colleagues.

and

Dr Lin Gui is one of the most successful postdoctoral researchers in the recent history of the Department, and is continuing his research career with us after a prestigious two-year Marie Curie fellowship. He has been building a solid and high-flying international reputation, underpinned by an impressive trajectory of high-quality publications. Dr Gui鈥檚 initiative and emerging independence are in particular reflected in his contributions to substantial successful funding proposals.

it remains to say many congratulations!