ÌÇÐÄTV

Dr. Tanaya Guha (PI) has been awarded a research grant by Ford Motor Company through their Global University Research Program to develop the project "Multimodal Learning for In-Car Driver's Activity Monitoring". This 2-year project aims at developing an AI system that can monitor driver's and passengers' safety through audiovisual scene analysis integrated with short-term driving patterns. For example, by creating alerts when a driver is distracted. The project will be developed in collaboration with Ford's AI research at Michigan.

Congratulations to third-year Computer Science student Hengrui Zhang, who has had an abstract accepted at the (BCUR 2021). Hengrui’s abstract, titled "Emotional Adjusted Chinese Sentiment Analysis", proposes a new and enhanced sentiment analysis model, SETCM, which combines the advantages of sentiment lexicon, emoji and neural computing technology. The proposed method overcomes the shortcomings of existing sentiment analysis on Chinese-language text. It is based on the work that Hengrui has completed as part of his third-year project, supervised by Dr Greg Watson.

Congratulations to Samuel Ward, one of our third year Discrete Mathematics students, who has received a silver award as part of the ’ (WCIT) Charity University IT Awards 2021. The awards, which were first held in 2015, seek to recognize outstanding undergraduate and postgraduate IT students within the UK. Applicants are judged based on their academic excellence, ability to overcome adversity, entrepreneurial skills, and contribution to charity or community.

The ÌÇÐÄTV International Higher Education Academy (WIHEA) has announced that Jackie Pinks has been selected as a Fellow for the next three years. Jackie has been a crucial part of the team in the Department of Computer Science responsible for managing our taught courses.

The Academy aims to develop and embed outstanding learning and teaching at ÌÇÐÄTV, in line with the distinctive nature of the University and the excellent reputation we have for academic achievement, both in research and teaching. The Academy also works to increase the recognition and reward of outstanding achievements in learning and teaching for individuals, teams and the institution as a whole.

Jackie said about her appointment:

Over the last 15 years I have worked in a range of student-facing and teaching and learning support roles and worked alongside senior teaching leads on various strategic projects. I’m keen to learn from, and help develop, best practice in teaching and learning across the University from a Professional Services perspective.

The ÌÇÐÄTV Institute of Engagement has announced that Dr. Claire Rocks has been chosen as one of 38 Foundation Fellows. The ÌÇÐÄTV Institute of Engagement is a new group within the University of ÌÇÐÄTV that aims to champion the future of high quality public engagement. It brings together ÌÇÐÄTV’s extensive practical engagement expertise with pioneering academic research.

Dr. Claire Rocks has been a vital part of the Department of Computer Science's outreach team, having organised and run many successful events in the past few years with the aim to raise the profile of Computer Science and introduce it to new demographics. Claire is currently a Co-I on the project which brings Computer Science and the Arts together to teach computing in a creative and playful way.

Dr. Claire Rocks said about her appointment,

I’m delighted to be one of the Foundation Fellow of the ÌÇÐÄTV Institute of Engagement and look forward to working with both staff and students to champion high quality public engagement with the fantastic work that we do.

More information on the Department's outreach activities is available.

Technical Manager Dr. Roger Packwood is retiring from the Department of Computer Science. Roger has been a part of the department longer than most of the buildings have been on campus, including the current Department of Computer Science. Roger provided invaluable support for staff and students in the department and his presence will be very much missed.

Prof. Graham Cormode of the Department of Computer Science has been named among the 2020 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellows, for contributions to computer science. The ACM is the world's leading learned society for computer science. Prof. Cormode is recognised for his contributions to data summarisation and privacy enabling data management and analysis. His work on data streams and sketching has been widely implemented in many high tech companies and organisations.