InspiredResearch Winter 2015 Issue 7 News from the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford Resistance is Futile New computational model helps find innovative ways to tackle antibiotic resistance in bacteria – p8 Let’s get physical: embedded systems Royal Society Fellowship to study security issues around the interface between the physical world and embedded systems – p4 Railworker safety: the TrackSafe project Developing magneto-inductive positioning to protect lives on the railways – p16 Organic ‘computers’ made of DNA Processing data inside our bodies – p18 CompSciOxford DepartmentOfComputerScienceUniversityOfOxford Inspired Research is a twice-yearly newsletter published Letter from the by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford. Head of Department If you would like to learn more As I scan through the articles to appear in this edition of Inspired about anything you read in these Research, I find myself struggling with an embarrassment of riches. pages, please get in touch:
[email protected] In this issue, you will read about how our research is helping to keep To subscribe to future issues, workers safe on railways, and how it helps to deal with the problem e-mail:
[email protected] of bacterial resistance to antibiotics; you will read about how our To download previous issues, visit researchers are helping to build safer buildings, by embedding www.cs.ox.ac.uk/inspiredresearch sensors into structures to monitor them for bending or twisting; you will read about how our security researchers are helping governments to construct IT systems that are safe against malicious attacks, and Editorial board how social media can be managed to prevent digital wildfires… Suzanna Marsh (Editor) What I find remarkable about all this is, apart from the sheer diversity, Kiri Walden (Sub-Editor) how clearly it demonstrates the ever-increasing role that computing Suvarna Designs (Designer) plays in our lives.