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European Academy of Design Conference

14 August 2019

Our Cohort 2 research student, Matt Smith, attended the European Academy of Design Conference that was held in Dundee on the 8th-12th April 2019.  Matt provided us with a write up about his trip.

Purpose:

To attend the 13th European Academy of Design Conference to view the state of the art of more niche design research and to host a workshop that investigates the use of design methods to consider alternative forms of designing.

What I did:

As I was hosting a workshop, I was invited to a PhD gathering where I met fellow PhD students and had the opportunity to ask questions to leading Design Research academics. We took part in a number of activities, including attempting to draw out PhDs in a short space of time. We had to prepare a profile prior to the gathering. Mine, along side the others, can be found at:

https://issuu.com/snevay/docs/ead_phd_journal_june2019

Following on from this was the conference proper. It was a four-day event with a huge number of paper tracks and a number of workshops (including mine). My workshop was on the 11th, it was positively received, and participants found it intriguing and engaging. One participant even mentioned that they may us my methods.

Who I met:

I met a number of leading academics, including Rob Phillips from the RCA and Franaz Nickpour from Liverpool University who taught me during my undergrad. I hope to soon visit the RCA to discuss my work further. I also was in a group run by Claire Craig from Sheffield Hallam University who responded to questions and gave advice about undertaking a PhD.

Other activities:

There were a number of networking meals including a trip to a Scottish Castle for the conference dinner and ceilidh (I did not dance) and a visit to the only V&A outside of London. Dundee was also recently voted UNESCO city of design.

 

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Geographical Information Science Research UK

13 August 2019

Our Cohort 4 Reserach student, Matt Smith, attended the 27th Geographical Information Science Research UK conference in Newcastle from the 23rd-26th April 2019.  We asked Matt to provide a write up of his experience:

Purpose:

I attended the conference to view the state of GIS and understand where my PhD could fit in.

What I did:

I took part in a number of workshops that introduced elements of GIS, these were:

• Visualising our cities: Visualising urban digital twins.
• Accessing open data and using API's
• GIS in industry

I then sat in on a number of different tracks including:

• Neighbourhoods and demographics
• Exploring place
• Spatial modelling

Who I met:

I met several PhD students from varying backgrounds as well as members of my sponsor company who part sponsor the conference.

Other activities:

The conference also included a visit and meal at the St. James' Park and a visit to the Discovery Museum.

 

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Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

13 August 2019

Our Cohort 4 student, Matt Smith, attended the 37th Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) which took place from the 4th-9th May 2019 in Glasgow.

CHI is possibly the largest academic conference in its field with nearly 3000 submissions and over 3100 attendees. This was the first time the conference had come to the UK. The conference is world renown and a personal publishing target. The conference is sponsored by huge industry names such as Google and Microsoft.  Matt provided us with a write up about his experience at the conference.

What I did:

I took part in a workshop that explored how technology can misused/ used for evil means. The paper can be found here:

https://chi4evil.wordpress.com/accepted-workshop-papers/

Furthermore, I attended many of the huge number of tracks including:

• Dimensions of Interaction
• Designing for Public Spaces
• UX Methods

Finally, I took part in two training courses:

• Design for Wellbeing - Tools for Research, Practice and Ethics
• Intro to the Human Body: Wearability and Human Factors of Wearable Systems

Who I met:

I met several leading academics, such as Professor Mark Blythe, Professor Rafael Calvo, Dorian Peters, Assistant Professor Audrey Desjardins and, briefly, Professor Hiroshi Ishii (head of the MIT Media Lab), as well as many PhD students.

Other activities:

The conference also included a diversity lunch, a Birds of a Feather group lunch, a number of networking parties and meals, a trip to the Glasgow Science Centre and chance to try out technology demos.

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IEEE International Conference on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS2019)

12 August 2019

Our cohort 2 student, Melanie Zimmer, attended the joint IEEE International Conference on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS2019) and IEEE International Conference on Multisensor Fusion and Integration for Intelligent Systems (MFI2019) at the beginning of May to present part of her research work.

Melanie says:

“The conference was held over a total of four days and provided a nice balance between academia and industry. One of the main focuses of the conference was on how industrial cyber-physical systems and services can be designed and deployed by industry.

The event started with the IEEE International Industrial Summit on Robot Operating System (ROS) 2.0. During this summit, different keynote speakers from companies such as ADLINK Technology, NVIDIA, Microsoft and academic representatives from the National Taiwan University or Fraunhofer IPA covered aspects ranging from the future developments of ROS to industrial applications. One interesting announcement was the support for ROS on Windows and Visual Studio that has been officially released as this will open further possibilities for ROS developers. For the second and third day, additional industry-focused events had been organised for the first half of the respective day, discussing the topics of “AIOT and Robotics Activating Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems on Intelligent Manufacturing New Biz” and “Engineering Systems of Cyber-Physical Systems”. The remaining afternoon sessions on both days and the whole of Thursday were filled with conference presentations.

When presenting my own work, it was very encouraging to receive positive feedback from attendees, and importantly, to get told that the work I am currently focusing on is seen as having great potential to help operators on the shop floor with their processes.”

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MTC Conference on Digitalising Manufacturing

11 August 2019

Hazel Carlin, on of our cohort 5 research students, attended the The Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) Conference on Digitalising Manufacturing 2018 was held  at the MTC at Anstey Park, Coventry on the 29th-30th October 2018.  Hazel provided a write on her experience:

First of all, we gathered in the lecture theatre and heard various short presentations on Asset Utilisation and Future Business Models. Then we had the choice of different ‘technology presentations’ held in separate rooms upstairs.

Firstly I went to the Outsystems session. This is a company that provides ‘low-code’ which enables a user to create programs and apps without coding. Being relatively inexperienced in programming, I thought this looked like a good idea.

Then there were formal presentations on topics such as Meggitt’s Intelligent Workbench and the Digital Readiness Level tool. Before lunch there was another choice of technology sessions, so I attended the one by ATS Bus. This showed me the practicalities of how the Internet of Things can join different hardware items together.

Following lunch there was a choice of interactive workshops where industry leaders discussed their projects and we could ask questions. I chose the ‘Asset Utilisation’ strand, where Network Rail was represented, amongst others. There was a final wrap-up session before everyone departed.

I found it a really interesting conference that sparked my interest in various Internet of Things topics.

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The Transition Zone Training Ethos presented at the ASEE Conference

30 June 2019

The 126th edition of the Annual Conference and Exposition of the American Society for Engineering Education took place in Tampa, Florida from 16th to 19th June 2019.

The CDT-EI executive team was invited to attend and participate in the panel 'Non-traditional PhDs', a session dedicated to novel formulas and upcoming new ways of running PhDs, in particular with a strong industry-facing flavour. Other participants in the panel, moderated by Prof M Dyrenfurth, were academic leads of graduates programmes, were from Purdue U, John Hopkins U and Texas A&M U.

The CDT-EI Executive Director Dr Carmen Torres-Sánchez presented the Transition Zone ethos, which scaffolds the training component of the PhD done under the CDT-EI umbrella. The full paper can be found here:
https://www.asee.org/public/conferences/140/papers/27849/view

As an academic-led industry-informed PhD programme, the colleagues in the States found interesting the emphasis we put on preparing industry-ready graduates and the 'T-shape' approach to a scholarly piece of research coupled with the exposure to other disciplines so the PhD researchers are conversant with other disciplines other than their PhD topic, including business.

We look forward to continuing discussing with our colleagues on the other side of the Atlantic ideas and initiatives to shape the PhD degree of the future.

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Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) World Congress Experience

18 June 2019

Rhys Comissiong (Cohort 2) and Shaun Smith (Cohort 4) recently participated in SAE International World Congress Experience which was held from April 9th-11th at the Cobo Centre in Detroit, Michigan. The conference consists of a wide variety of technical sessions, keynote talks, leadership summits, seminars, networking opportunities and an exhibition where industry leaders such as Ford Nissan and Honda showcased their latest innovations.

From left to right – Rhys Comissiong, Shaun Smith, Dr Dezong Zhao & Dr James Knowles at Cobo Centre

Rhys presented in the Sensor Fusion technical session on “An Assessment of a Sensor Network Using Bayesian Analysis demonstrated on an Inlet Manifold”. The paper was co-authored with Dr Thomas Steffen (supervisor) and Dr Leo Shead, Technical Lead on the project from Caterpillar Inc. The work consisted of using Bayesian statistics to analyse sensor information to understand how different sensor configurations affect variable estimation. The methods were applied to charge mass flow estimation on an internal combustion engine but can be used on to help control engineers design sensor configurations for a range of applications including autonomous vehicles.

Shaun presented “A Bifurcation Analysis of an Open Loop Internal Combustion Engine”, co-authored by Dr James Knowles and Dr Byron Mason. The talk focused on how tools from nonlinear science could be applied to engine modelling to complement any analysis. The technique provides additional insight to the system by qualitatively describing the systems behavior for many possible inputs in an efficient way. The work is interdisciplinary, so having presented a similar version of talk to a mathematical audience at a previous conference on nonlinear science, SAE WCX provided an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the work to attendees from the automotive industry.

In addition to providing their talks, the pair took advantage of the several opportunities available. Rhys engaged with industry experts at the exhibition showing the latest technological developments, as well as attending talks in connected vehicles and machine learning. Shaun attended various technical talks on vehicle dynamics & stability, areas directly relevant to his research interests.

For more information on SAE WCX visit: https://www.sae.org/attend/wcx

For more information about Rhys’s paper;
https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/2019-01-0121/

For more information about Shaun’s paper;
https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/2019-01-0194/

Rhys presented in the Sensor Fusion technical session on “An Assessment of a Sensor Network Using Bayesian Analysis demonstrated on an Inlet Manifold”. The paper was co-authored with Dr Thomas Steffen (supervisor) and Dr Leo Shead, Technical Lead on the project from Caterpillar Inc. The work consisted of using Bayesian statistics to analyse sensor information to understand how different sensor configurations affect variable estimation. The methods were applied to charge mass flow estimation on an internal combustion engine but can be used on to help control engineers design sensor configurations for a range of applications including autonomous vehicles.

Shaun presented “A Bifurcation Analysis of an Open Loop Internal Combustion Engine”, co-authored by Dr James Knowles and Dr Byron Mason. The talk focused on how tools from nonlinear science could be applied to engine modelling to complement any analysis. The technique provides additional insight to the system by qualitatively describing the systems behavior for many possible inputs in an efficient way. The work is interdisciplinary, so having presented a similar version of talk to a mathematical audience at a previous conference on nonlinear science, SAE WCX provided an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the work to attendees from the automotive industry.

In addition to providing their talks, the pair took advantage of the several opportunities available. Rhys engaged with industry experts at the exhibition showing the latest technological developments, as well as attending talks in connected vehicles and machine learning.Shaun attended various technical talks on vehicle dynamics & stability, areas directly relevant to his research interests.

For more information on SAE WCX visit: https://www.sae.org/attend/wcx

For more information about Rhys’s paper;

https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/2019-01-0121/

For more information about Shaun’s paper;

https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/2019-01-01

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Cybersecurity: a sucessful Foresight Lecture

18 June 2019

On 22nd May Prof Awais Rashid, from Bristol U, visited us to deliver the 2019 CDT-EI Annual Foresight Lecture. This year the selected topic was cybersecurity, a very relevant and timely topic when it comes to protecting infrastructure and industrial resources, activities that rely heavily on automation and ICT. To a 100+ audience he discussed issues related to security decision-making, awareness raising, and human psicology when it comes to inform or predict behavioural patterns both of security experts as well as cyber attackers.

At the start of the Lecture the atendees visited the exhibition area where the most recent activity undertaken by our PhD students was displayed. The visitors could interact with our students to find out more about what our CDT PhD students do in the different areas of research in Embedded Intelligence.

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