Computer Science - People in the Department -

Departmental Seminars

Date: Wednesday, 7th March 2012, N112, Haslegrave Building @ 3.00pm
Speaker(s): Dr Andrew Dann, Research Associate, Aeronautical & Automotove Engineering, Loughborough University
Title: Scramjets - the world's fastest air-breathing engines
Abstract: On November 16, 2004, NASA's X-43A experimental hypersonic aircraft set a new speed record for air-breathing engines of 12,144km/h (7.546 mph), or Mach 9.8. The first successful flight demonstration of a scramjet was however achieved by The University of Queensland's Hyshot program at the Woomera Rocket Range in South Australia on 30 July, 2002. This talk will give an overview of the scramjet concept and the Hyshot program and discuss the ground-based research initiatives at The Univesity of Queensland's Centre for Hypersonics that continue to provide data for on-going scramjet research. These initiatives include the development and testing of hypersonic inpulse facilities such as shock tunnels and expansion tubes. Such facilities allow the production of hypersonic flows for scramjet component and full engine testing.

Date: Wednesday, 22nd February 2012, N112, Haslegrave Building @ 3.00pm
Speaker(s): Professor Jon Crowcroft, Marconi Professor of Communication Systems, University of Cambridge
Title: Opportunity is the Mother of Invention - how Delay Tolerant Networking by way of social networking necessitated Data Centric Networking
Abstract: In this talk, I'm going to tell the story of how a group of european researchers arrived at a design for communications software that seems rather well suited to the new "Data Center Networking" paradigm. The tale starts with moving from UCL Cambridge and choosing to learn about ad hoc networks, and then with Intel research lablet trying out a few disruptive ideas and stumbled on the notion for Haggle ("Haggle" comes from the phrase Ad Hoc Google, now really known as Opportunistic Networking) combining results from Grossglauser & Tse's work on capacity of multi-hop networks with Kevin Fall's work on Delay Tolerant Networks.
In the process of building various testbeds in the Haggle project (and three complete versions for native Java phones C# on Windows Mobile, and native Android&iPhone versions), as well as measuring various aspects of human society, we ended up with a system that appears to be rather more general than expected. Most recently, for example, it was used to build a P2P secure, disconnect tolerant version of Dropbox, as well as to track a Flu epidemic.

Date: Wednesday, 8th February 2012, N112, Haslegrave Building @ 3.00pm
Speaker(s): Dr Dhammike Wickramanayake, Research Associate, Computer Science, LU
Title: Advanced transmission protocol for delivery of multimedia content
Abstract: AllCast - UK Technology Strategy Board and EPSRC funded project that brought together two UK companies Apical Imaging Ltd and BskyB, and Ditial Imaging Research Group, Department of Computer Science, Loughborough University to development of an advanced transmission protocol for delivery of multimedia content to any mobile display device which is capable of maintaining viewing quality over the the full range of possible viewing conditions.
This seminar will present a general overview of the project followed by a discussion of a number of video coding algorithms that were designed, developed and implemented by the DIRG team with collaboration with Apical Imaging Ltd. The presentation will be backed by demonstrations.

Date: Wednesday, 25th January 2012, A234, Schofield Building @ 3.00pm
Speaker(s): Professor Amanda Spink, Professor of Information Science, Department of Information Science, Loughborough University
Title: Interacting with Knowledge, Interacting with People: Web Searching in Early Childhood
Abstract: The presentation explores new and emerging dimensions in our understanding of information behaviour and Web searching abilities in early childhood. Spink (2010) proposed that information behaviour is shaped by both instinctive and environmental dimensions, and emerges in early childhood. The presentation explores what we currently know about the development of Web searching abilities in young children. We report results from an ongoing study of Web searching by four and five year old children who were video-and audio-taped Google Web searching in a preschool classroom (Spink, et al., 2010). An initial study found that young children engage in complex Web searches and information behaviours, including keyword searching and browsing, query formulation and reformulation, relevance judgments, successive related Web searches overtime, information multitasking (multiple topics in single Web search sessions) and collaborative behaviours. The next research phase is a large Australian Research Council (ARC) funded study investigating the extent of young children's Web searching in classrooms and home environments, what they access and in what social contexts. Findings will inform educators, Web designers and families about young childrens' Web use for socially interactive learning and knowledge-building.

Date: Wednesday, 11th January 2012, N112, Haslegrave Building @ 3.00pm
Speaker(s): Dr Helmut Bez, Reader, Department of Computer Science, Loughborough University
Title: Towards environment and object independent shadow detection algorithms
Abstract: Shadow detection is a challenging problem in image processing. It has applications in computer vision and digital photography - including image segmentation, object recognition and image enhancement. Current algorithms: (i) require the input of environment and/or object data or (ii) require training. This seminar presents a simple, physically-based, local affine model for shadow that leads to efficient detection algorithms, in the pixel and transform domains, that need no environment/object data to be input and require no training.

Date: Wednesday, 30th November 2011, CC013, James France at 3.00pm
Speaker(s): Ms Raeeka Yassaie, Imagination Technologies Ltd
Title: PowerVR Graphics Architecture - Inside Modern Mobile Graphics Hardware Title
Abstract: This lecture provides an overview of the PowerVR Series 5 (SGX & SGX-MP) graphics hardware architecture and how it compares to other possible solutions. It highlights why some rendering approaches make such a significant difference to graphics rendering performance and provides information outlining the purpose of each model in the hardware.
The PowerVR Series 5 architecture is covered by a broad portfolio of patents and is the result of more than 15 years of research and development by Imagination. More than 500m devices incorporating PowerVR graphics have been shipped (as of July 2011) and hundreds of thousands of applications are running on PowerVR graphics-powered platforms across every major operating system and CPU architecture.

Date: Wednesday, 2nd November 2011, A234, Schofield Building at 3.00pm
Speaker(s): Ms Cornelia Denk, Realtime Technology AG, Germany
Title: At the verge of change - How High-end Visualisation drives industrial decision-making
Abstract: Beyond the film and gaming industry, High Performance Graphics has found it's way into industrial decision-making processes on a broad scale - from the first design up to the point of sale.
These industry applications, however, come with a different set of challenges:
- Where to draw the line between high performance visualisation and simulation?
- How to digitise and render real, physical samples efficiently
- How to find the balance between required process optimisation and freedom of creativity?
- How to combine different specialised algorithms to meet divergent requirements?
- Which new data models and asset standards have to be developed as a result?
I will give you insight on how to solve these challenges and share our vision about opportunities to take high performance visualization to the next level of enterprise applications.

Date: Friday, 28th October 2011, Room N225, Haslegrave at 3.00pm.
Speaker(s): Dr Francho Melendez, Research Associate, Department of Computer Science, Loughborough University
Title: 3D Reconstruction of Buildings From Photographs
Abstract: Aquisition of realistic and relightable 3D models of large outdoor objects, such as buildings, requires the modelling of detailed geometry and visual appearance. Recovering these material characteristics can be very time consuming and requires specially dedicated equipment. Alternatively, surface detail is conveyed by textures recovered from images, whose appearance is only valid under the originally photographed viewing and lighting conditions. Methods to easily capture local detailed surface, such as cracks in stone walls, and visual appearance, require control of lighting conditions, which restricts them to small portions of the surface captured at close range. This work investigates the acquisition high-quality models from images, using simple photographic equipment and modest user intervention.
We propose a complete image-based process that facilitates recovery of both gross scale geometry and local surface structure to create highly detailed 3D models of building façades from photographs. We approximate both albedo and sufficient local geometric structure to compute complex self-shadowing effects, and fuse this with a gross scale 3D model. Our approach yields a perceptually high-quality model, imparting the illusion of measured reflectance.
The requirements of our approach are that image capture must be performed under diffuse lighting and surfaces in the images must be predominantly Lambertian. Exemplars of materials are obtained through surface depth hallucination and our novel method matches these with multi-view image sequences that are also used to automatically recover 3D geometry.

Date: Wednesday, 12th October 2011, Room A234, Schofield Building at 3.00pm
Speaker(s): Dr Sandy Brownlee, Research Associate, Department of Civil & Building, Loughborough University
Title: Markov Networks and Fitness Modelling in Evolutionary Algorithms
Abstract: A well-known paradigm for optimation is the genetic or evolutionary algorithm (EA). An EA maintains a population of possible solutions to a problem, and converges on a global optimum using biologically-inspired selection and reproduction operators. These algorithms have been shown to perform well on a variety of hard optimisation and search problems.
A recent development in evolutionary computation is the Estimation of Distribution Algorithm (EDA) which replaces the traditional genetic reproduction operators (crossover and mutation) with the construction and sampling of a probabilistic model. While this can often represent a significant computational expense, a benefit is that the model contains explicit information about the fitness function which can aid problem solving. This talk will look at one approach using a Markov network to model the distribution of fitness within the population. It will go on to explain how the resulting model can be used to reveal underlying dynamics of the problem and investigate how factors such as selection and population size affect the quality of the model.

Date: Friday, 23rd September 2011, Room A234, Schofield Building at 3.00pm.
Speaker(s): Professor José Luiz Fiadeiro, University of Leicester
Title: A Formal Approach to Service-Oriented Modelling
Abstract: This talk provides an overview of a formal approach that we have developed within the FP6-IST-FET Integrated Project SENSORIA (www.sensoria-ist.eu), which aimed at providing formal support for modelling service-oriented systems in a way that is independent of the languages in which services are programmed and the platforms over which they run. We discuss the semantic primitives that are provided in the SENSORIA Reference Modelling Language (SRML) for modelling composite services, ie. services who business logic involves a number of interactions among more elementary service components as well the invocation of services provided by external parties. This includes a logic for specifying stateful, conversational interactions, a language and semantic model for the orchestration of such interactions, and an algebraic framework supporting service discovery, selection and dynamic assembly.

Date: Monday, 9th May 2011, Room N225, Haslegrave at 3.00pm
Speaker(s): Professor Dev Chakraborty, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Title: Proposed Directions in Observer Performance Research
Abstract: Observer performance studies are widely used in medical imaging to assess imaging systems. The purpose of this talk is to suggest some directions for research in this area. The current paradigms, namely the receiver operating characteristic (ROC), the free-response ROC (FROC), the location ROC (LROC) and the region of interest (ROI), will be reviewed. All paradigms represent laboratory studies and there is a need for methodology to assess the clinical relevance of each paradigm - this would address the problem that a laboratory simulation of a clinical task cannot duplicate all factors affecting clinical interpretations. There is a need for realistic data simulators for each paradigm - this would allow simulation based assessment of proposed methods of analyzing the data. There is a need to study the correlation of eye-position and observer performance data derived quantities - this would serve to validate the observer models on which the data simulators are based, and lead to better models of human vision in detection tasks. Preliminary progress in some of the areas will be reviewed.

Date: Wednesday, 13th April 2011, Room N225, Haslegrave at 2.30pm
Speaker(s): Dr Patrick Dickinson & Dr Chunmei Qing, University of Lincoln
Title: Autonomous Monitoring of Nesting Seabirds Using Computer Vision
Abstract: Seabird populations are an important and accessible indicator of the health of marine environments: variations have been linked with climate change, pollution levels, and changes in fish-stock levels. Manual monitoring is currently used to monitor the development of important colonies, but is necessarily labour-intensive and error-prone. The use of computer vision based surveillance offers the potential to automate the collection of population-level data on a scale not currently possible using manual methods. We are working with the Centre for Computational Ecology and Environmental Science group at Microsoft Research Cambridge on developing a vision-based system to monitor a population of Common Guillemots nesting on Skomer Island, West Wales. Our work focuses on the robust detection and localisation of Guillemots in high-definition images and videos of cliff nesting areas. The challenges in this work are highly contextualised, and include camouflage of birds, crowding and image quality. The approaches we have developed include a region-based background model used with a MRF pixel classifier, and a feature-based head and body detector based on a combination of Histograms of Oriented Gradients (HOG) and Local Binary Pattern (LBP) features, to capture characteristic local edge/shape and texture signatures. We present our feature-based detector in details, and discuss ongoing and future research directions, and applications.

Date: Friday, 8th April 2011, Room N225, Haslegrave at 3.00pm
Speaker(s): Professor Chris Taylor, FREng, OBE, University of Manchester
Title: Learning to See
Abstract: Shape and appearance learning has proved a powerful approach in computer vision. The ability to model the common characteristics and systematic variation in a group of images if often important in its own right, whilst exploiting such prior knowledge to achieve robust interpretation of unseen images has ' moved the goal posts' in terms of what is practically achievable. The talk will review some of the basic ideas and discuss the current state-of-the-art - illustrated with practical applications, and highlighting the limitations as well as the strengths of the approach. There are classes of problem that cannot currently be addressed properly in the standard framework - an important generic example will be posed as an open issue.

Date: Friday, 18th March 2011, Room N225, Haslegrave Building at 3.00pm
Speaker(s): Dr Rami Qahwaji, Reader in Visual Computing, University of Bradford
Title: Applied Imaging Research: a Multidisciplinary Perspective
Abstract: In this presentation I will introduce our research in the fields of image processing, machine learning and automated systems design and the different applications associated with them from space imaging to medical imaging. Of particular interest to us is the processing of multi-dimensional and multi-wavelength data and their association to provide higher level of image understanding. This presentation will cover the state-of-the-art in the investigated topics and will identify open research problems that need to be resolved along with some future research directions.

Date: Wednesday, 9th March 2011, Room N225, Haslegrave Building at 3.00pm
Speaker(s): Professor Neil Lawrence, University of Sheffield
Title: Probabilistic Dimensional Reduction with the Gaussian Process Latent Variable Model
Abstract: Density modelling in high dimensions is a very difficult problem. Traditional approaches, such as mixtures of Gaussians, typically fail to capture the structure of data sets in high dimensional spaces. In this talk we will argue that for many data sets of interest, the data can be represented as a lower dimensional manifold immersed in the higher dimensional space. We will then present the Gaussian Process Latent Variable Model (GP-LVM), a non-linear probabilistic variant of principal component analysis (PCA) which implicitly assumes that the data lies on a lower dimensional space.
Having introduced the GP-LVM we will review extensions to the algorithm. Given time we will review dynamical extensions, Bayesian approaches to dimensionality determination, learning of large data sets. We will demonstrate the application of the model and its extensions to a range of data sets, including human motion data, speech data and video.

Date: Friday, 18th February 2011, N225, Haslegrave Building @ 3.00pm
Speaker(s): Dr Iffat Zafar, Research Associate, Department of Computer Science,Loughborough University & Dr Min Jiang, Research Assistant, Department of Computer Science, Swansea University
Title: CrimeVis - A Tool for Video Forensics
Abstract: CrimeVis is a UK Technology Strategy Board funded project (£1M) that brought together a number of UK companies (Visimetrics, OmniPerception, PERA Innovations), the UK CCTV user group and Digital Imaging Research Group, Department of Computer Science, Loughborough University to design and build a forensic tool for CCTV video surveillance. The need for such a tool was severely felt after the London bombings furing which the Metropolitan Police utilised the services of 30 police CCTV analysts for a month before they could locate the suspected bombers. If a computer based tool is able to pre-annotate a video in a hierarchical manner it would be possible to perform as many complicated forensic searches as required, in almost no time. The aim of CrimeVis project was to meet this need.
This seminar will present a general overview of the project followed by a discussion of a number of computer vision algorithms tht were designed, developed and implemented by the DIRG team for the CrimeVis forensic tool. The presenation will be backed by demos. The seminar will also provide an insight into how this demanding project was managed by the two Research Associates, Dr Iffat Zafar and Dr Min Jiang, obtaining valuable help from a number of MSc project students who have sinced joined the department as PhD students.

Date: Friday, 28th January 2011, Room N225, Haslegrave Building @ 2.30pm
Speaker(s): Dr Zhiming Liu, United Nations University, Macao
Title: rCOS: Model-driven method for component software
Abstract: This talk will reflect on the ongoing development of the rCOS method of component-based and model-driven software development. Instead of going into technical details, the discussion will focus on what it is, the main ideas behind it, and where it is heading. The theme of rCOS is "harnassing theories for tool and application development;" it is part of a global quest for making software engineering more predictable and reliable. The objective is to integrate different formal techniques and their tool support in software design process.

Date: Wednesday, 12th January 2011, Room N225, Haslegrave Building @ 2.30pm
Speaker(s): Professor Ron Perrott, Queen's University, Belfast
Title: e-Science in the Clouds
Abstract: In 2000 e-Science/grid computing became a major research funding initiative within the UK affecting all academic disciplines. This concept has now evolved through grids, peer computing etc into cloud computing and has been taken up by industry and commerce. The Belfast e-Science Centre was one of the first UK centres established to develop and promote e-Science. The Centre through its technology developments and its practice-based research has pioneered many e-Research technologies and applications areas. In particular, dynamic service-based technologies and infrastructures; novel applications outside of the traditional e-Research domain of computational science; and long term abstract programming models for e-Research applications. In this talk I review the different way we view our projects today when compared to the early days of e-science and examine the changing influences on applications, infrastructure and users.

Date: Monday, 20th December 2010, Room N225, Haslegrave Building @ 10.00am
Speaker(s): Associate Professor Tomoharu Nakashima, Osaka Prefecture University, Japan
Title: Fuzzy Systems for Autonomous Game Agents
Abstract: Fuzzy systems based on fuzzy if-then rules have been shown to be effective especially in the field of control and classification. Fuzzy systems can be constructed by various modes of learning such as supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning.
Games are one of the recently developing fields for computational intelligence. Developing autonomous controllers of agents (ie. players in the context of games) in the games is also of great interest for the research of learning.
In this talk, fuzzy systems are applied to develop autonomous agent in three different games by different learning methods. First, a supervised learning method is applied to construct a fuzzy system for a point-to-point car racing game. Second, an adaptive learning method is shown to develop a simulated soccer robot. Finally it is shown that the developed fuzzy systems after adaptive learning can be converted to experise of the problem domain for human decision support.

Date: Friday, 10th December 2010, Room N225, Haslegrave Building @ 3.30pm
Speaker(s): Professor Anthony Finkelstein
Title: Learning from Difference: contrasting experience in developing a software product and a software service
Abstract: This talk will reflect my experience in developing a commercial software product and a commercial 'cloud' software service. It will compare and contrast these experiences. It will examine the technical issues and the business issues that have arisen and how they have been addressed. The talk will set out a research agenda that will identify long, medium and short-term challenges that need to be tackled.

Date: Wednesday, 8th December 2010, Room N225, Haslegrave Building @ 5.00pm
Speaker(s): Professor Christopher Hinde
Title: Contradiction, Machine Learning and Evolution
Abstract: Fuzzy sets are useful for modelling vague concepts, in 1983 Atanassov introduced Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets based on membership and non-membership values. The evidence supporting these is in the form of elimination of possibiliteis as used in fuzzy sets and also the support for non-possibilities to derive the non-membership function. There is the possibility of contraction arising from these two functions and a logic for processing contradictory fuzzy sets is developed. The existence of contradiction and inconsitency is usually regarded as something to be avoided but both can be used to derive knowledge about the world on the assumption that the real world is neither contradictory not inconsistent.
The talk finishes with some recent results on evolution of train timetables, where evolutionary systems with multi-objective fitness functions are extended to enhance convergence and to better reflect the constraints on rail timetabling.

Date: Wednesday, 8th December 2010, Room N225, Haslegrave @ 4.00pm
Speaker(s): Dr Christian Dawson
Title: Neurohydrology - what is it, and what are we doing with it
Abstract: Artificial neural networks have been applied to hydrological modelling problems for nearly twenty years - primarily in the field of rainfall-runoff modelling and flood forecasting (neurohydrology). Investigations into the practical use and operational benefits of neural solutions has also expanded to address a number of methodological issues and counter potential criticisms - including a pressing need for scientists and stakeholders to understand the nature and internal behaviour of different solutions, as well as the largely untested relationship that exists between trained networks and empirical, conceptual or process-based models. Limited reserach has been undertaken on the use of neural network models for predicting flood events in ungauged catchments and findings are restricted to a handful of studies that were carried out in a few regions worldwide.
In this presentation we explore the evolution of neurohydrology over the years. We also examine current research trends in the field and identify future developments. It is now well established that such models are able to model, quite accurately, runoff and floods in rivers using antecedent conditions. Current research is therefore moving towards deeper understanding and meaning from such models - their internal behaviour, sensitivity to antecedent conditions and adaptability.

Date: Wednesday, 8th December 2010, Room N225, Haslegrave Building @ 3.00pm
Speaker(s): Professor Paul Chung
Title: Can a robot learn to dance and the computer learn to box?
Abstract: In this talk I will give a very brief overview of the various research areas that I am involved in and then focus on two projects that considers machine learning. The first investigates how a robot can create dance movements and then gradually improve on its performance. The other looks at how a computer can learn to mimic different players in fighting games like boxing.

Date: Wednesday, 8th December 2010, Room N225, Haslegrave Building @ 2.30pm
Speaker(s): Mr Firat Batmaz
Title: A Multi-Touch ER Diagram Editor to Capture Students' Design Rationale
Abstract: The increased presence of diagram-type student work in higher education has recently attracted researchers to look into the automation of diagram marking. Research into the semi-automatic diagram assessment at Loughbrough University has identified the requirements of a diagram editor in order to capture the students' design rationale. To fulfill these requiremetns, several experimental diagram editors have been developed. This talk will introduce an ER diagram editor, which uses multi touch technology. It will describe the initial experiments and findings for the editor.

Date: Wednesday, 8th December 2010, Room N225, Haslegrave Building @ 2.00pm
Speaker(s): Professor James Alty
Title: How do Composers write music which can be remembered
Abstract: Music is curious. People can remember very accurately large chunks of music (eg. a symphony) and know if a mistake is made. This is quite different from Visual Memory which at best is approximate. Why is some music memorable and other music uninteresting? Why does music evoke emotion? How does a composer approach composition.

Date: Friday, 19th November 2010, Room N225, Haslegrave Building @ 3.00pm
Speaker(s): Professor Steve Furber, Professor of Computing Engineering, University of Manchester
Title: Biologically-Inspired Massively-Parallel Architectures - computing beyond a million processors
Abstract: The SpiNNaker project aims to develop parallel computer systems with more than a million embedded processors. The goal of the project is to support large-scale simulations of systems of spiking neurons in biological real time, an application that is highly parallet but also places very high loads on the communication infrastructure due to the very high connectivity of biological application it is intended to support, which has a lot to teach us about how we might build more efficient, fault-tolerant parallel computers in the future.

Date: Wednesday, 17th November 2010, Room N225, Haslegrave Building @ 3.00pm
Speaker(s): Dr Paulo Oliva, Queen Mary University of London
Title: Sequential Games and Optimal Strategies
Abstract: Modern Game Theory as we know today as born in the 1930s through a series of papers by John von Neumann and his 1944 book. Although originally motivated by a formal mathematical analysis of economic behaviour, Game Theory found applications in areas as diverse as computer science, philospophy and biology.
In this talk we present a notion of sequential game which generalises the usual notion used in game theory, as well as encompasses problems from topology, fixed point theory, and proof theory. Moreover, we describe an algorithm for the computation of optimal strategies which computes Nash equilibria in the usual games, but does much more in the other fields described above.
This is based on recent joint work with Martín Escardó (University of Birmingham).

Date: Wednesday, 10th November 2010, Room N225, Haslegrave Building @ 3.00pm.
Speaker(s): Professor Peter Johnson, University of Bath
Title: Unravelling the Complexity of Creative Collaboration
Abstract: Many of the complex problems that face us appear to have no obvious solution, with many people having diverse views about both the nature of the problems and the nature of the solutions. However, in both animal and human groups we see evidence of highly successful and creative colutions to complex problems emerging from their interactions. With the development and advancement of communication and computing technologies it is now possible for people to interact together over greater distances, in large number and through richer media. However, much of the interactions that occur through social networking and media sharing technologies appears to be focused on the individual rather than the collective power of the group. A better understanding of how creative collaborations come about is developed from considering the nature of large group collaboration and investigating how technologies can be used to support creative collaborations.

Date: Wednesday, 3rd November 2010, Room N225, Haslegrave Building @ 3.00pm
Speaker(s): Professor Ross D King, Aberystwyth University
Title: Automating Science using Robot Scientists
Abstract: A Robot Scientist is a physically implemetned robotic system that applies techniques from artificial intelligence to execute cycles of automated scientific experimentation. A Robot Scientist can automatically execute cycles of: hypothesis formation, selection of efficient experiments to discriminate between hypotheses, execution of experiments using laboratory automation equipment, and analysis of results. We have developed the Robot Scientist "Adam" to investigate yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) functional genomics. Adam has automomously identified genes encoding locally "orphan" enzymes in yeast. This is the first time a machine has discovered novel scientific knowledge. To describe Adam's research we have developed an ontology and logical language. Use of these produced a formal arguement involving over 10,000 different research units that relates Adam's 6.6 million biomass measurements to its conclusions. We are now developing the Robot Scientist "Eve" to automate drug screening and QSAR development.

Date: Wednesday, 22nd September 2010, FH Boardroom, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park @ 4.00pm.
Speaker(s): Professor Sergey Yurish
Title: Smart Sensor Systems Integration; New Challenges
Abstract: This presentation describes modern developments and trends in the field of smart sensor systems and digital sensors design. Its background is based on programmable parameter-to-frequency (time) converters as a smart sensor's core and structural-algorithmic methods for data extraction in order to move from a traditional analog-to-digital conversion to alternative frequency (period, duty-cycle, time interval)-to-digital conversion. Working in the frequency-time signal domain simplifies design, and obviates some technical and technological problems, due to the properties of frequency as informative parameter of sensors and transducers. The proposed design approach and technological platform for integration compatible with MEMS, system-on-chip (SoC) and system-in-package (Sip) implementation. It is based on the novel integrated circuits such as the Series of Universal Frequency-to-Digital Converters, Universal Sensors and Transducers Interface, and can overcome current hurdles to truly widespread deployment of smart sensors and sytems. Some examples of sensors systems will be given and discussed.

Date: Friday, 2nd July 2010, FH Boardroom, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park @ 3.00pm.
Speaker(s): Professor Paul Chung, Associate Dean (Research) & Director, Research School of Informatics
Title: Getting a PhD - A Journey of Discovery
Abstract: In this talk I will highlight some of the lessons that I have learned from my own journey as a PhD student, a PhD student supervisor, and as an examiner. I have learned that doing a PhD is not just about discovering knowledge; one may learn something about oneself too. Plenty of opportunities will be given to students to ask questions.

Date: Friday, 11th June 2010, Room N225, Haslegrave @ 11.00am.
Speaker(s): Professor Sonia Fahmy, Department of Computer Science, Purdue University, Indiana, USA
Title: Cost of Network Inference Mechanism'
Abstract: A number of network path delay, loss, or bandwidth inference mechanisms have been proposed over the past decade. Concurrently, several network measurement services have been deployed over the Internet and intranets. We consider inference mechanisms that use $(n)$ end-to-end measurements to predict the $(nˆ2)$ end-to-end pairwise measurements among $n$ nodes, and investigate {\em when) it is beneficial to use them in measurement services. In particular, we address the following questions: (1) For which measurement request patterns would using an inference mechanism be advantageous? (2) How does a measurement service determine the set of hosts that should utlilize inference mechanisms, as opposed to those that are better served using direct end-to-end measurements? We explore three solutions that identify groups of hosts which are likely to benefit from interence. We compare these solutions in terms of effectiveness and algorithmic complexity. Results with synthetic datasets and datasets from a popular peer-to-peer system demonstrate that our techniques accurately identify host subsets that benefit from inference, in significantly less time than an algorithm that identifies optimal subsets. The measurement savings are large when measurement request patterns exhibit small-world characteristics, which is often the case.

Date: Wednesday, 5th May 2010
Speaker(s): Dr Gavin Brown, Manchester University
Title: A Novel Perspective on Feature Selection with Mutual Information'
Abstract: Feature Selection is an essential aspect of many fields - from computer vision, to data mining, to probabilistic modelling. The principle is to elimate irrelevant or redundant variables from a dataset, given the requirement to predict a target. This has the dual advantage of reducing computation time, and increasing interpretability.

Datasets with thousands to millions of variables require fast methods for selection - these are known as 'filters'. The last 15 years has seen a huge publication surge of candidate filter methods, with no common way to relate/understand them. We focus on filters based on mutual information. This talk will give an overview of information theoretic methods, and present a unifying perspective on the various techniques. We show that numerous proposed measures from 1992- 2009 correspond to single points within a continous space of possible algorithms, derived from a single parametric form. This allows us to see how 'close' two techniques are to each other, and see in some cases that filter methods are equivalent.

Date: Wednesday, 3rd February 2010, Room N225a, Haslegrave Building @ 4.00pm
Speaker(s): Dr Ian Newman
Title: Can Secure, Reliable, East-to-Use and Bug-Resistanct, Distributed Information Management Systems be produced Quickly and Cheaply by taking a Systems Approach?'
Abstract: This seminar will argue that the answer to the question is 'yes'.

The starting points will be: an examination of the meaning of the terms included in the challenge; and; a brief review of some relevant history; and; a brief explanation of the sytems ideas that are being applied.
The design principles for an information management system which would have the required properties will then be explained and the implementation of an actual system will be discussed.
The ideas being presented in the seminar are based on work on the design and implementation of more effective information management systems (from operating systems via parallel processing systems, distributed information retrieval systems, database management systems and management information systems to user interface management systems) which has been 'in progress' for many years. The 'breakthrough' was not, however, achieved until the relevance of systems engineering ideas was appreciated.

Date: Wednesday, 3rd February 2010, Room N225a, Haslegrave Building @ 11.00am
Speaker(s): Professor Flavio Soares Correa da Silva
Title: The JamSession Project'
Abstract: The JamSession Project is a research project under development at the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil). In this seminar, after a brief informal presentation about the University of Sao Paulo and the Laboratory of Interactivity and Digital Entertainment Technology (which hosts JamSession), we shall introduce the general ideas and motivations of this project and a conceptual tool that is under development for design and implementation of intelligent interactive environments.

Date: Tuesday, 2nd February 2010, SEIC Seminar Room 2 @ 11.00am
Speaker(s): Professor Erol Gelenbe (Professor in the Dennis Gabor Chiar, Imperial College, London)
Title: Product Form Solutions for Stochastic Networks: Discovery or Inventione'
Abstract: Since the late 1960's, it has been shown that many practical systems that arise in operations research, chemistry, genetics, neuroscience, economics, etc. can be effectively and realistically represented by stochastic systems which have provable "product forms" in which the joint distribution of system state at equilibrium is the product of the marginal sub-system distributions. Examples include diverse but important examples including neuronal networks, the Internet, systems of chemical reactions, service systems in operations research and networked economic auctions. This lecture will summarise some of these results and try to motivate research on why we need to discover how product form solutions come about.

Date: Monday, 11th January 2010
Speaker(s): Professor Jianmin Jiang, Professor of Digital Media, School of Computing, Informatics and Media, Bradford University
Title: Intelligent Imaging'
Abstract: In this talk, I will report my research activities carried out in China during the Summer of 2009 by focusing on the theme of "Intelligent Imaging". Our on-going approaches can be highlighted by three research directions, which are: (i) pattern recognition approaches to exploit well researched results and techniques in the area of computer vision; (ii) machine learning approaches to exploit the techniques and algorithms developed in the area of artificial intelligence; and (iii) domain-specific apprach to exploit some domain-specific knowledge for intelligent video and image content analysis. To illustrate how these three directions are pursued, I will also report a number of specific research ideas, which are currently under investigation by researchers of my team in Southwest University, China.

Date: Friday, 27th November 2009, FH Boardroom, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park @ 3.30pm
Speaker(s): Dr John H Connolly, Computer Science Visiting Fellow
Title: Modelling Communication in Science and Technology - A Semiotic Approach'
Abstract: Communication plays an essential role in the establishment and dissemination of knowledge in science and technology. However, communication is a highly complex phenomenon. In order to cope with this complexity, various analytical models of the communication process have been put forward, in the hope of developing a systematic understanding of this area.

The communcation models concerned can be classified into two main types: 'process models' (which focus on the transmission of messages and the flow of information) and 'semiotic models' (which are principally concerned with the meanings communicated). In the age of digital multimedia, the multmodal nature of technical communciation is more evident than ever, and this multimodality represents a challenge to either type of model.

The aim of the presentation is to subject both types of model to a critical review. First al all, various process models will be considered, and their shortcomings exposed. Attention will then be turned to models of the semiotic type. It will be argued that, although in need of further development, semiotic modelling represents a promising approach to the analysis and understanding of multmodal communciation in science and technology.

Date: Wednesday, 26th August 2009, FH Boardroom, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park, 3.00pm - 3.30pm.
Speaker(s): Rafat Alshorman (PhD Student).
Title: Using temporal logics to Specify and verify multi-step transactions in a mobile environment'
Abstract: Most verification and model checking procedures assume the model operation will terminate and thus use finite numbers of transactions, whicn in practice does not occur. The starting point for this research is to model a continuing process where the stream of transactions may not terminate. In particular, this is useful in modeling systems such as mobile and web technologies. For example Skype had an outage problem with a large number of requests and took some time to recover. The methods outlined here are aimed at reducing such incidents or at least mollifying their effects.

Date: Wednesday, 26th August 2009, FH Boardroom, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park, 2.30pm - 3.00pm.
Speaker(s): Douglas Wong & Dr Chris Hinde.
Title: Predicting the stock market'
Abstract: Focuses on evolving new attributes to be used to produce a decision tree able to generate sell/hold signals for stock market trading. The extended trees show a significant increase in predictive power using only the data from one days trading but including a large variety of stock.

Date: Wednesday, 26th August 2009, FH Boardroom, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park, 2.00pm - 2.30pm.
Speaker(s): Dr Chris Hinde
Title: The statement is contracdictory'
Abstract: Focuses on paraconsistent logics where contradictory evidence is present and the reasoning system needs to reason about the contradiction rather than with it. The transfer of inconsistency addressed in an earlier paper used compositional operators to perform the transition. The contradiction cannot be addressed in that manner. Two modal like operators are introduced, which perform this transformation. They are analysed in the context of other operations, in particular negation.

Date: Tuesday, 16th June 2009, N225, Haslegrave Building at 11.00am.
Speaker(s): Stuart Munro (PhD Student).
Title: Virtualisation Management - The Grid'
Abstract: Virtualisation is a mechanism for implementing multiple logical serviers on a single physical piece of hardware. The seminar will describe tools and techniques for managing a set of logical servers over a geographically distributed physical insfrastructure. the benefits of such arranges are in fast scalability, energy use reduction, improved redundancy and reductions in TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).

Date: Monday, 8th June 2009, FH Boardroom, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park at 2.30pm.
Speaker(s): Mr Jeff Fry.
Title: How a process simulator and a rule-based system contribute to virtual reality application for process safety
Abstract: The VIRTHUALIS project aims to develop a number of virtual reality applications for improving safety in the process industries. The applications allow human factors experts to study how operators interact with plant, and provide a safe environment in which new safety actions can be tried and tested. Safety applications are built on the SafeVR technology platform, a distributed client-server virtual reality system. This talk describes how two external modules - a process simulator and a rule-based system - are interfaced to the platform and the benefits they provide both seperately and together. The two modules communicate with the platform's server by exchanging messages, conforming to a simple syntax. pSimProxy provides a generic interface to an external process simulator, which in turn delivers the realistic plant behaviour. It handles bidirectional data exchange with and control of the external simulator. It can be configured at run time to use whichever available mechanisms are supported by the actual process simulator that models the plant being simulated.
ClipsClient is an expert or rule-based system, based on NASA's CLIPS expert system software, that can make inferences about the information contained in the messages. It consists of a set of facts, a number of rules and an inference engine. It can be provided with a number of rules that monitor how operators are running the plant, and react in useful ways to these events. The simulator notifies the server of changes in process parameters through a message. The values may be displayed, for example as gauge readings, in the virtual environment. As operators control the plant, their actions, say opening a valve, are also reported by messages via the server to the process simulation. Messages can also be read by the rule-based system, allowing it to maintain its own representation of the plant. This in turn permits automated expert reasoning on the state of the plant and the actions of its operators which can cause futher message to to be sent to the server. The rule-based system is therefore, a powerful mechanism for rapidly reconfiguring the application and general rules can be written that only require new facts at run-time to change the behaviour of the entire virtual environment.

The message syntaxes, the system architecture and the interfacing of the external modules are described along with examples showing their individual and joint benefits.

Date: Monday, 8th June 2009, FH Boardroom, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park at 2.00pm.
Speaker(s): Ms Ginny Franklin.
Title: E-books: what's that all about?'
Abstract: E-journals are a well-established part of academic life, but e-books have been somewhat slow to take off. Did you know that you have access to over 1700 electonic books? This brief presentation will take a question and answer format covering key points such as:
1) How do I view e-books?
2) How can I download e-books?
3) Can I copy and print from them?
4)How can I suggest an e-book for purchase?
5)How can I keep up to date with e-books?
6) How do I reference (cite) an e-book?

Date: Friday, 3rd April 2009 @ 2.30pm, Boardroom, Area FH, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park.
Speaker(s): Dr Richard Forsyth.
Title: What is a Four-Letter Word: Using Key Terms to Detect Offensive Language'
Abstract: This talk describes some of the findings of Project ICECOM (Intelligent Content Evaluation of Communication). One of the goals of the ICECOM project is to devise a function that gives each email body-text a score representing its degree of expressed hostility. This software is intended to allow administrators to pick out suspicious messages for further inspection from a large archive without having to read huge numbers of mails or guess what words or phrases to provide to a conventional search interface.

Of the several approaches that have been tested on this task, the most promising appears to be a nearly-linear scoring system based on the extraction of key terms using an extension of the notion of "keyness" popularized by Scott (1997) in linguistics. This method will be described with illustrative examples, and its application to "stylochronometry" (Forsyth, 1999), i.e. the automatic dating of literary texts will also be discussed.

Date: Friday, 23rd January 2009 @ 3.30pm, Boardroom, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park, Coffee and biscuits are available from 3.00pm.
Speaker(s): Mr Ray Dawson.
Title: Structuring a PhD Thesis'
Abstract: Whether you are at the beginning or nearing the end of your PhD it is always a good idea to consider how you will write up your research to make it into a cohesive thesis. I will be looking at the considerations you will need to take into account to achieve this. This seminar/tutorial will be one of a number that will be put on from time to time to help PhD and EngD students with their research. ALL research students are advised to attend, regardless of which department or research group they belong to, and regardless of how far into your PhD you are now. Staff are welcome to come along and contribute too. Also, if anyone has recently finished their PhD, please come along and contribute your ideas and experiences - I will welcome contributions from the audience!

Date: Friday, 19th December 2008 @ 4.00pm, Boardroom, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park.
Speaker(s): Dr Mark Withall.
Title: Doctor Beeching's Guide to Simplifying Rail Data Management'
Abstract: The types of data required for rail timetabling can be classified into three main areas:

*Infrastructure data - the track, stations, etc;
*Constraint data - restrictions on the use of the infrastructure;
*Timetable data - the specified running of the trains on the infrastructure
All three types of data need to be generated, maintained and used. The current approaches to this problem are aimed more towards human use of the data, rather than computer use. However, as more automated tools are being developed in the area of rail timetabling it is becoming necessary to find ways of representing and interfacing with the data that are suitable for both humans and computers. In this talk, some of the problems with current approaches, and possible solutions, will be discussed. In addition, some of the tools in development as part of a KTP project with RWA Rail Ltd will be presented.

Date: Friday, 19th December 2008 @ 3.30pm, Boardroom, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park.
Speaker(s): Steve Smith.
Title: Semantic Technologies and Ontology'
Abstract: Modern business is all too familiar with the concept of information overload and the difficulties associated with finding the relevant people and information within an organisation. In collaboration with SAP's Centre of Excellance in Germany, Steve's research has looked at a number of ways to improve the retrieval of information. Solutions range from lightweight systems like tagging to heavier weight ontologies. This talk shall discuss a number of the findings and show case some of the systems created to help combat issues involved.

Date: Wednesday, 10th December 2008 at 3.00pm, SEIC Seminar Room 1, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park.
Speaker(s): Dr Yiannis Papadopoulos - Dept of Computer Science, University of Hull.
Title: Model-based safety analysis and evolutionary - optimisation of safety critical engineering systems
Abstract: To simplify the safety analysis of new engineering systems, the University of Hull has been developing novel analysis methods and computerised tools that integrate design and safety analysis and simplify the overall process by partly automating aspects of safety assessment and design optimisation.

The first such tool largely automates system safety, reliability and availability analysis by generating system Fault Trees and Failure Modes and Effects Analyses from reusable specifications of component failure behaviour. This is achieved by interpreting such specifications in the context of a topological model of the system which identifies components and material energy and data transactions among components. The analysis is largely automated and therefore reduces the effort required to examine system safety, and assess the effect of design modifications on safety, while the underlying algorithms are fast and scale up to large and complex systems.

The second tool extends the above concept to solve design optimisation problems such as the safety/reliability versus cost optimisation via optimal selection and replication of components in a system. In a typical desgn, the options for component selection and replication are too many to consider exhaustively, so designers rely on experience and evaluate only a few such options. This, however, means that non-optimal solutions are often adopted and opportunities for reducing costs are lost. I will show that it is possible to rationalize and automate this process by using Genetic Algorithms to progressively "evolve" initial non-optimal designs that do not meet requirements to designs where components and sub-architectures have been selected and fault tolerant schemes have been allocated in a way that achieves safety and reliability requirements with minimal costs.

Those tools have been developed in a number of EPSRC and EU funded projects with the technical collaboration of the European transport industry, most notably Volvo, Daimler/Chrysler and Germanischer Lloyd. In the ATESST and ATESS-2 FP7 projects, together with Volvo, Daimler/Chrysler, VolksWagen, Fiat, Delphi, Siemens and Continental, we look at harmonisation and integration of this approach with EAST-ADL, an architectural description language developed by the consortium as a standard for the automotive industry.

Date: Friday, 21st November 2008 at 3.30pm, N225, Haslegrave Building.
Speaker(s): Dr John Connolly.
Title: Modelling the Communication of Scientific Knowledge'
Abstract: When academics communicate their work to others, they usually do so through the medium of technical publications and presentations directed at an audience of fellow experts. However, in recent years, scientists and technologists have been encouraged to communicate with the broader public as well, in order to improve general awareness of science and technology and to inform public opinion in relation to the scientific/technologicl agenda.

The communication of scientific knowledge for the benefit of the broader public is itself a subject that has attracted a good deal of academic discussion, and different models of the process have been put forward. However, these models of communication carry a baggage of unresolved problems. The purpose of this seminar-presentation is to address those problems and to propose solutions."

Date: Wednesday, 19th November 2008 at 4.00pm, Boardroom, Area FH, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park
Speaker(s): Mr Jose Rodriguez-Serrano.
Title: Object detection and matching in Documents (object detection, statistical pattern recognition, and sequence modelling)'
Abstract: Object detection and matching are important applications in computer vision and pattern recognition. In the domain of document images, the detection and matching of objects are know as "word spotting". In this talk I will explain the main contributions to the hand written word spotting domain, achieved during my PhD at the Xerox Research Centre Europe. Starting from a baseline where objects are described as sequences and matched with hidden Markov models (HMM), several improvements to the state-of-the-art are introduced: (i) a feature extraction scheme inspired in the SIFT approach; (ii) modelling "a priori" knowledge using visual vocabularies; and (iii) a method to transfer knowledge between scenarios applied to writer style adaptation. This talk may be of interest to those concerned with object detection, statistical pattern recognition, and sequence modelling.

Date: Friday, 10th October 2008 at 2.00pm, RSI Boardroom, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park.
Speaker(s): Darren Clowes, Matthew Atkinson and Ray Dawson.
Title: What problem are we trying to solve? A case study of a failed knowledge management initiative", "Pilot studies in using the semantic knowledge of information in large technical documents to aid navigation" and "Making Accessibility Accessible'
Abstract: In recent years, the need for adaptive design in information systems has come to the fore. Both industry and academia have begun to respond to these problems. There now exists recognised baseline standards for content accessibility and assistive technologies (ATs) are available on many platforms. Many exemplary research projects have found powerful and sometimes highly adaptive solutions to a range of accessibility problems. However, there are significant difficulties with the current state of accessibility as a whole. For current ATs to be of most use, there is a responsibility on the user to be aware of their access limitations and implement the most appropriate accessibility solution for these needs - indeed, many accessible design guidelines for ICT developers are predicted on the user having the most appropriate access solution for their needs. However, it cannot be assumed that a user will have the most appropriate access technology, or even be aware that they need one, given the gradual rate of acquisition of an impairment, the dynamic nature of the impact of the impairment, or - more likely - impairments, allied with a lack of awareness of available technical solutions.
Other issues include: content and software developers seeing accessibility as a niche and therefore, prohibitively expensive to implement given the expected gain in market share. Also, most research projects - though providing technically adept solutions to these problems - may not be possible for developers to use due to the wide variety of technical requirements of these disparate solutions. In this paper, we discuss these problems in the context of current literature and make high-level proposals as to how these problems may be addressed.

Date: Monday, 8th September 2008 at 4.00pm in the RSI Boardroom, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park.
Speaker(s): Jonathan Hansford and Dr Chris Hinde.
Title: The extension of SysML based HAZOP system to include experience'
Abstract: This paper considers an new SysML based hazard analysis (HAZOP) system that allows for domain knowledge and experience to be applied to the models. The paper discusses the background to this area, and uses case studies completed with a team of domain experts to provide motivation. Using this approach and applying knowledge from previous incidents and analyses will assist a HAZOP team in focusing their study. Therefore, HAZOP study times should decrease and although human experience is always vital in these studies, a wider availability of stored experience can be applied to new problems to at least prompt more substantial and accurate analysis.

Date: Monday, 8th September 2008 at 4.00pm in the RSI Boardroom, Garendon Wing. Holywell Park.
Speaker(s): Parkpoom Lekhavat & Dr Chris Hinde.
Title: 2_Layer Fuzzy reasoning for an Opening stage of Go
Abstract: Go is a board game with pretty simple rules. However, the game strategy can be very complicated. An ability to analyse the game situation is required before players make any decision. This work has implemented a Fuzzy system to imitate the human player way of reasoning.

Date: Monday, 8th September 2008 at 4.00pm in the RSI Boardroom, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park.
Speaker(s): Firat Batmaz and Dr Chris Hinde
Title: A Method for Controlling the Scenario Writing for the Assessment of Conceptual Database Model'
Abstract: This paper proposes a method for semantically controlling scenario text writing in natural language. The scenario text is used for semi-automatic assessment of student translation of those scenarios into database diagrams. These scenarios increase the automation of the marking process and enable the scenario texts to be categorised in difficulty levels. An experimental tool has been implemented for this method. The initial experiments and findings for the interface are described in the paper.

Date: Tuesday, 12th August 2008 at 2.00pm in the RSI Boardroom, Garendon Wing, Holywell Park.
Speaker(s): Dr Waltenegus Dargie.
Title: Wireless Sensor Network For Toxic Gas Detection'
Abstract: Several applications have been proposed Wireless sensor networks; these include habitat monitoring, structural health monitoring, pipeline (gas, water and oil) monitoring, precision agriculture, active volcano monitoring, and many more. These proposals were backed by prototypes and deployment in real-world environments. Interestingly, even though each prototypes was developed for a specific sensing task, most of the wireless sensor networks share several characteristics in common. Some of these are: The need for time synchronisation, high sampling rate of short duration, multi-hop routing, periodical sampling and sleeping, and the need to share a common transmission channel. Whereas there are a plethora of existing and proposed protocols to address these issues, each prototype chooses to provide a proprietary solution to all or some of these problems. The lack of reuse practice poses a generalisation problem. The talk motivates toxic gas detection during oil exploration and refinery. A demonstration will be provided on how existing or proposed protocols can be employed to establish a fully operational network. Moreover, a comprehensive energy model to evaluate the network lifetime will be provided and consequences will be discussed.

Date: Friday, 4th July 2008 at 3.30pm in N.2.25, Haslegrave Building.
Speaker(s): Dr Ana Sălăgean & Miss Alexandra Alecu.
Title: (1) An Algorithm for Computing Minimal Bidirectional Linear Recurrence Relations and (2) An Approximation Algorithm for Computing the k-Error Linear Complexity of Sequences Using the Discrete Fourier Transform'
Abstract: (1) We consider the problem of computing a liner recurrence relation (or equivalently a Linear Feedback Shift Register) of minimum order for a finite sequence over a field, with the additional requirement that not only the highest but also the lowest coefficient of the recurrence is non-zero. Such a recurrence relation can then be used to generate the sequence in both directions (increasing or decreasing order of indices), so we will call it bi-directional. For solving the above problem we propose an algorithm similar to the Berlekamp-Massey algorithm and prove its correctness. We also describe the set of all solutions to this problem. (2) The k-error linear complexity of a periodic sequence is an important concept which can be used as a measure of cryptographic strength for sequences. We present an algorithm using the DFT (Discrete Fourier Transform) and Blahut's Theorem. This leads to a natural generalisation called the extension field k-error linear complexity. We then give an approximation algorithm of polynomial complexity for the problem by restricting the search space to error sequences whose DFT have period up to k. The algorithm was implemented in GAP and the results on a series of sequences are discussed.

Date: Friday, 23rd May 2008 at 3.30pm, RSI Boardroom, Holywell Park.
Speaker(s): Miss Lezan Hawizy.
Title: My First PhD'
Abstract: Lezan Hawizy is a recent PhD graduate from Loughborough University. She will talk mainly about the PhD viva but she will also briefly go over all the PhD process. This should be a useful insight from someone who has been through the whole PhD process with a successful outcome. To find out more about the highs and lows; the good parts and the pitfalls in Lezan's experience, then come to this seminar. There will be a chance to ask questions and discuss problems at the end.

Date: Wednesday, 14th May 2008 at 1.00pm, BE1.50 (Business School).
Speaker(s): Mr Ray Dawson.
Title: Knowledge Management Implementation Problems and How to Overcome Them'
Abstract: The seminar will start with a brief explanation of how the nature of knowledge management means that many knowledge management initiatives end in failure with a lack of acceptance by the users and no visible return for management. This has led to many considering knowledge management to be just another fad that will soon be forgotten. Drawing on his experience of working with industry and public organisations, Ray Dawson identifies some critical questions that must be asked about any knowledge management initiative before proceeding with implementation. Based on a wide range of case studies in industry a ten step methodology is proposed to overcome the various barriers and implement a successful knowledge management system.

Date: Friday, 25th April 2008 at 3.00pm, N225, Haslegrave Building.
Speaker(s): Professor Keith Clark.
Title: A multi-threaded architecture for cognitive robotics'
Abstract: We describe a multi-threaded architecture combining elements of Belief, Desires, Intentions (BDI) agent architecture with the goal directed reactive control of Nilsson's Teleo Reactive (TR) programs. TR programs are a rule based programming notation influenced by process control concepts of continuous monitoring and action, but they have parameterized procedures and actions can be TR procedure calls, even recursive calls. A TR procedure is also typically goal directed, the actions of its rules being oriented towards achieving a state of the environment that can be determined by some test of sensor readings. They are thus well suited to implementing robotic control where action routines are selected on the basis of the computational analysis of sensor readings. TR computation comprises nested threads of execution, each thread being the execution of a TR procedure called from its parent thread. The TR procedures of the higher threads can be programmed to monitor beliefs, inferred from sensor readings and a model of the environment, rather than percepts. But to retain reactivity, the lower level threads can still directly test percepts computed from sensor readings. This makes it also suitable for programming hybrid deliberative/reactive robots. Finally, a topmost control thread, which decides which high level TR procedure to invoke based on significant events, such as belief updates or new goals, can be added borrowing from BDI agent architectures. This allows the robot to switch tasks based on message events or sensor reading events that leading to significant changes in the robots higher level beliefs. This is the control architecture currently being used at Imperial both for Multi-agent systems and co-operative robotics applications.

Date: Friday, 18th April 2008 at 3.30pm, RSI Boardroom, Holywell Park.
Speaker(s): Matthew Atkinson & Dr Mark Withall.
Title: What Matthew and Mark do in LaTeX'
Abstract: Have you ever wondered if Word really is the best word processing software to write a thesis or even a paper? Have you ever heard of people doing things in LaTeX but were not sure what it really means? Have you wanted to try LaTeX yourself but were too shy to ask?

Date: Seminar-date
Speaker(s): Speaker's name
Title: Seminar Title
Abstract: Seminar Abstract

Departmental Seminars

Navigation

Departmental Seminars