OUTPUT June 2006 Computer Science and Electronic Engineering Research News for Students and Staff Digital Music Accessing Sound Archives

Home , Martyn Ware

MarMartyntyn WWare:are: FrFromom Pop star to Prof star

Martyn Ware: from pop star to Prof star Martyn Ware, former member of the eighties bands Human League and Heaven 17 is joining the Centre for Digital Music (C4DM) in the Department of Electronic Engineering as a visiting professorial fellow.

Martyn was born in Sheffield. After leaving school, he worked in computers for three years. In 1978, he signed as a founding member of seminal electronic group The Human League. Subsequently, he signed to Virgin Records the same year, and The Human League became world famous. Martyn formed the production company/label British Electric Foundation in 1980, also producing the multimillion selling act Heaven 17.

During Martyn’s 25 year career, he has produced and featured as a performer on records that have had total sales of over 50 million, working with stars including Tina Turner, Terence Trent D’Arby, Chaka Khan, Erasure, Marc Almond and Mavis Staples. Martyn has also written, performed and produced two Human League and nine Heaven 17 albums (with a new album just released) and continues to tour with their live show.

In 2001, Martyn set up the Illustrious Co. Ltd with Vince Clarke to exploit the creative and commercial possibilities of their unique ‘Heightened Reality’ 3D sound technology and bespoke musical composition in collaboration with fine artists, the performing arts and corporate clients around the world. As a 3D sound installations specialist, he will provide an invaluable insight into how the Queen Mary Centre’s research developments are viewed by the professional music and sound industries. Martyn will be joining Visiting Professor Simon Davidmann (responsible for commercialisation advice) and Visiting Professorial Fellow Peter Langley (responsible for Intellectual Property advice) in C4DM.

Enabling access This is the motivation for the two-and-a-half needs identified previously by the digital year European project, “Enabling Access library community. The tools will also be to sound archives to Sound Archives through Integration, usable by anyone interested in accessing Many digital sound archives suffer from Enrichment and Retrieval” (EASAIER). archived material, both amateur and tremendous access problems. Materials The EASAIER project started on 1 May professional. It will provide a uniquely are often in different formats, with related 2006, and has a total budget of €2.1 enriched, friendly and interactive experience elements in separate collections. Information million, with over €0.5 million awarded accessing materials, allowing people to about the sound files (metadata) is often to the Centre for Digital Music in the experiment with the materials in exciting non-standard, specialist, incomplete or Department of Electronic Engineering. new ways. It will implement recent advances even wrong. This prevents users using in machine learning, music and speech the archived material to the full. Powerful Being able to search by processing, and information retrieval to multimedia mining techniques are needed, increase the effectiveness of sound archive in combination with tools to extract content speech or by musical access. from files, meaningful ways to describe the feature is rare. data, and tools for visualising it. Existing tools The EASAIER Consortium consists of also do not generally take into account the companies and academic institutions from specific kind of media content being The EASAIER system will be designed with Austria, France Hungary, Ireland, Israel and searched: being able to search by speech or libraries, museums, broadcast archives Scotland with strengths in both speech and by musical feature is rare. Existing retrieval and music schools in mind. Rather than music processing and retrieval. For further techniques are restricted and inflexible. ‘guessing’ at demands for new technology, information contact project coordinator Josh this project is focused on addressing the Reiss ([email protected]). Another issue is that of providing appropriate presentation of and interaction with material for those using the archive. Musicians and music students, for example, need to be able to manipulate or modify archive material when played back. Archives of recorded broadcasts need to emphasise appropriate ways to organise the material. Interactive speech recognition features are also critical. Finally, the ability to create tailored collections with customised material is very important. This will require appropriate metadata that can be automatically created without laborious human intervention.

First step to a music technology career The Department of Electronic Engineering has launched two new undergraduate degrees in the area of digital music: a BEng Audio Systems Engineering and MEng Digital Audio and Music System Engineering. The programmes are aimed at students who have a passion for music and audio, who wish to understand how technology is applied to them and who The music of the primes want a future career in this field, perhaps designing the next generation of equipment What is mathematics really about? Most people think it is mainly to do with numbers and and tools. that mathematicians are just people who can divide very large numbers in their heads. Most mathematicians would argue that maths is actually about patterns. Numbers are Students will be advised on their final just a way of describing things that can make the patterns more obvious. year project by a researcher from the Department of Electronic Engineering’s What comes next in each of the following four sequences? world leading Centre for Digital Music 2 4 6 8 …. (C4DM). Some projects may also be collaborations with musicians and creative b d f h … artists or one of our industrial partners, 1 3 6 10 15… such as Philips Research, Sun Microsystems or Yahoo. Our state-of-the a c f j o… -art 3D listening and performing space (commissioned in the summer of 2006) Numbers provide a way of spotting the patterns, and equations are just a way of may be used. expressing them. The above letter sequences are the same as the number sequences – mathematically they are equivalent but for most people it is easier to spot that ‘10’ comes The rapid advancements in the technology next in the first sequence than ‘j’ in the second for example. Both can be represented by and commerce of digital music and audio an equation expressing moving on two places, or adding two. means that employment options are broad. They will also be enhanced by the degree’s pending IEE Accreditation. Graduates could We should therefore make sure students learning maths are find jobs in conventional electronics and shown some of the greater works of mathematics to aspire to telecommunications companies or in the creative media industry.

If maths was just about learning by rote the rules we spend much of school maths lessons learning, then it wouldn’t have inspired so many great mathematicians over the decades. That is a bit like learning to play the piano without ever doing more than scales and arpeggios or realizing there was more to aspire to than that. Musicians are inspired to spend long hours practicing the basics because they can listen to and imagine being able one day to play greater works. Similarly there is more to maths than the basics. We should therefore make sure students learning maths are shown some of the greater works of mathematics to aspire to, even if all the details are still beyond their skills.

That was the argument of Marcus du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford who gave the Inaugural Drapers’ Annual Lecture on Learning and Teaching in March. He is particularly passionate about the prime numbers, numbers that for centuries were thought to contain no patterns at all! His lecture ranged over topics to do with the primes, from why David Beckham chose a prime number for his Real Madrid shirt, to how Gauss managed to see patterns by lateral thinking – asking a different question to everyone else – and from how prime numbers are used in nature by insects, to the reason why every time you buy anything over the Internet you are using the primes… and that last one is of course one reason why the primes are very important to computer scientists too. They provide the basis for encrypting messages sent over the Internet so that others cannot read them. In e-commerce, the messages represent money. The primes provide a way to do it without first having to pass a key to unlock the message being sent. Without this, e-commerce would be impractical. Why? Because it would be virtually impossible to exchange the keys in advance without snoopers having a way to intercept them and so steal the money. This is especially so in e-commerce where you are sending messages about purchases to people you have never met, who are possibly on a different continent. So next time you download an iTune, remember you are only listening thanks to the music of the primes.

Groundbreaking Digital sociology, and applies them to the analysis Martin Welton, Lecturer in the Department of interaction in varying contexts from virtual of English and Drama said: “Performance Performance degree chat rooms to video conferences. Students and interaction design share concerns for A new cross-disciplinary MSc that promotes will also be able to take advantage of the means by which technology – from its engagement between technology, social London’s unrivalled position as the leading simplest to its most hi-tech applications – science and the arts has been launched by international centre for live performance to transforms and affects the quality of human the School of English and Drama and the experience, critique and create a range of interactions, our physical and cultural Department of Computer Science. The joint events – key requirements of the course. capacities. The course offers a unique MA/MSc in Digital Performance – offered in opportunity to cut across traditional collaboration with EA Games and Microsoft The degree will meet the demands of a academic boundaries, bringing together – will see its first intake of students in rapidly growing industry in performing arts, creativity, critique and design.” September 2006. qualifying students for employment across the creative industries from digital The result of a unique collaboration, the performance art to computer games groundbreaking programme explores ways design and interactive multimedia in which digital media alters the potential of systems development. human interaction and performance, from multi-user computer games, through stage Pat Healey, Reader in Computer Science design to shopping malls. A core intellectual at Queen Mary, University of London said: concern is the nature of human “This is a very exciting initiative. Performance engagement – in all its forms – and how and interaction design have deep intellectual technology can be configured to enrich it. interconnections and common practical The programme draws on theories of concerns; both focus on the creation of communication and mutual engagement compelling and engaging environments from performance studies, psychology and for human action and interaction.”

From artist to techie Karen became so hooked on IT she Digital music eventually sold her art theory books on How do you get from painting giant Amazon and is now a Teaching Fellow in roadmap launch, wounded heads and writing about traumatic the Electronic Engineering Department. The Digital Music Research Network witnessing to investigating Artificial As she pointed out “In May I’m off to Workshop was held at Queen Mary in Intelligence and traffic engineering? Karen Beijing to teach Java on the BUPT joint December 2005. It marked the end of the Shoop did. She came to Queen Mary from program – that would never have EPSRC-funded phase of the network and Chelsea Art School, having swapped an art happened at art school!” the launch of a “Roadmap” for future theory MA for an MSc IT conversion course research (www.dmrn.org/roadmap). believing it would lead to a better part-time You don’t have to give up art to take up Information from workshops and surveys job to support her art. Somewhere in programming though. The combination is had been collated over the life of a network her first year though she got hooked as covered in the final year modules in the into a “UK Digital Music Research programming became more attractive than Department of Computer Science’s Snapshot” document. An away-day was painting and the challenge of an art theory undergraduate degrees – and of course then held in September 2005 with a Panel MA was dwarfed by the idea of doing an Performance Art is one of the basics of of five network members, including Mark Electronic Engineering PhD. Queen Mary’s new innovative MSc in Plumbley of Queen Mary, brainstorming the Digital Performance (see above). roadmap into a coherent structure. The Routing messages in a identified research goals concern machine listening; fertile environments for creativity; less than optimal way can music exploitation and distribution; musical actually lead to the innovation; high-level parametric control network as a whole and sound reproduction and recording. working better The workshop, which followed on from the “Live Algorithms for Music” workshop being held at Goldsmiths College, attracted some Her PhD investigated the use of agent 85 delegates. In addition to the launch, it technology for routing messages around included talks from Professor Mark Sandler networks. She introduced a novel “sub- of Queen Mary on “Interacting with Digital optimal” adaptation to the way data is Music” and Damien Cirotteau (Media routed. It turns out bizarrely that routing Innovation Unit – Firenze Tecnologia) with messages in a less than optimal way can an update on the “Sound to Sense, Sense actually lead to the network as a whole to Sound” European project, Eduardo working better. What appears to be a Miranda (Plymouth) on “Trans-disciplinary nonsensical strategy can be an efficient Routes to Innovation in Computer Music form of traffic engineering. Research”, and Carola Böhm (University of Glasgow) on Music Technology in Higher Education.

Advising the Library of Congress Professor Mark Sandler of the Department of Electronic Engineering, has been invited to join the Advisory Council of the Institute for Musical Research. It is part of the School for Advanced Study, one of the constituent institutions of the University of London (ie on a par with Queen Mary). Mark was also an invited expert to an “Engineers Round Table” held in Washington DC to advise the Library of Congress on Point, click preservation of audio materials. and Sodarace Following its successful ‘run’ at the Royal First years to On seeing the terrain of one team everyone Society summer exhibition Sodarace, the in the audience thought they were just online Olympics competition between the finish line messing about – their terrain looked like a human and machine creativity with a cult Sodarace has demonstrated its worth as an joke – a cavernous landscape with no way following has taken a new step forward. educational tool in a new way: developing to get from the start line (bottom left) to team-working, problem solving and lateral- the finish (top right) – no creature could A new consultation exercise has been thinking. Sodarace involves designing possibly climb the walls, whether on legs or launched that brings, along with easy to creatures that can move themselves around wheels … The race started and as expected use ‘point and click’ software, example in a 2D virtual world and also designing the the creatures sped or lurched into the wall lesson plans for UK schools. Students and landscape of that world. and battered themselves into submission. teachers throughout the world have used No hope of making the finish. The creature Sodarace for their school and university of Alifur Rahman, Hardeep Sehra, Hafuz projects; from art and design to physics, Their creature had one Kupa and Wojciech Witoszynski who had chemistry, maths and biology, the options last suprise designed the terrain however took everyone are limitless and its great fun. by surprise…it floated towards the ceiling – an even better joke but still not taking it The Sodarace team now want to hear from As part of the Computer Science 1st seriously surely. Their creature had one last teachers and students about how best year Core Skills course, students worked surprise though. As it hit their specially to make Sodarace useful in the school in teams over four weeks to create constructed ceiling it started crawling along curriculum. The consultation exercise also both Sodarace creatures and terrains. its underside straight across the line while gives the worldwide Sodarace community The project culminated in a competition the rest were stuck in their trap. They will the opportunity to help decide the elements pitting the students’ creatures against undoubtedly make great computer scientists of a UK wide Sodarace tour that will take each other in their hand- and algorithm- with such brilliant lateral thinking skills and place later next year. generated terrains. A lively race session creativity combined with a great sense of was attended by most of the first years performance! Professor Peter McOwan, one of the at the end of March. researchers behind Sodarace said: “This consultation exercise is at the heart of the Fast creatures on wheels left their Sodarace philosophy, our community know competitors in their wake, others slowly how they want Sodarace to develop, and ambled along on legs and weird triangles this is their chance to make their voice lurched around. One creature repeatedly heard. It’s a real example of digital almost made the finish line before jumping democracy.” backwards erratically. The teams came up with various landscapes too – each Ed Burton R&D Director at Soda Creative designed for their creature to excel on. Ltd. added: “With the future of Sodarace we want to give players more room to make the rules and break the rules; only by being free to play with AI will we construct mutual understanding about what AI is, and what AI isn’t.”

Professor Kathy Sykes, mentor to the project believes “The Sodarace team, in my view, is one of the most creative around. Here’s a great opportunity for teachers to help shape this fabulous resource into something they can use in science lessons.”

Alifur Rahman, Wojciech Witoszynski, Prof Peter McCowan and Hafuz Kupa

Student entrepreneurs that work using the Internet connecting to local wi-fi networks, to the all-woman teams The Queen Mary Entrepreneurship Industry whose ideas included self-heating clothes Day took place at the end of March. and fashionable personal alarms disguised It was jointly organised by the Department as jewellery. of Computer Science, the School of Business Management and Simfonec Ltd. Students in both departments take an fashionable personal IT entrepreneurship module and this alarms disguised as competition is its culmination. Twenty-nine teams, split between the departments jewellery took part, creating a business plan for an innovative product of their devising as the After a much longer than expected period coursework for the module. The best ten of deliberation by the judges, due to the teams, five from each department then closeness of the top teams, the £200 first presented their plans at the Industry day prize was awarded to a team from Business to a panel of Venture Capitalists and Patent Management. Their plan was for automated Attorneys (Richard Gourlay of Sussex Place vending machines for University campuses. Ventures, a specialist provider of investment The £100 second prize was won by the to entrepreneurs; Mark Walden of Sira; Computer Science team of Alex Ellis, Akhlak Andy Chisholm, Innovation Manager of the Hussain, Jay Shah and Ben Wong, for their London Development Agency and Rachel innovative “stuff tracker” – active sticky Wallis and Nick Wallin, Patent Attorneys labels that allowed the things they were from Withers and Rogers). Innovative attached to, to be easily found. products suggested ranged from wi-fi radios

Empowering Africa Internship at BT The first member Three students co-ordinated by Professor Intelligent Systems of the IET Peter McOwan, from the Department of Research Centre In March 2006, the Institution of Computer Science have redesigned the Engineering and Technology (IET) HEART charity website giving it a much Zekeng Liang, a first year PhD research was launched creating Europe’s largest needed boost. HEART, was set up to raise student in Electronic Engineering, is professional society for engineers. The funds to build centres in Africa to help currently doing a three-month internship new institution has been formed by the develop the skills of local people so that at the British Telecom Intelligent Systems Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) they can support themselves. The first Research Centre (ISRC) in Adastral Park, and the Institution of Incorporated centre is currently being built in the Ipswich. Zekeng’s work at BT is to develop Engineers and will have more than Democratic Republic of Congo. an Information Sharing Portal that will 150,000 members worldwide, and the improve collaboration efficiency and project first ever member of that Institution is Bushra Akhtar, Akbar Hussain and Lila monitoring at BT. It must be simple to Yao Na from the Department of Electronic Harrar worked on the website before use and provide efficient information Engineering at Queen Mary. starting their PhDs. With the HEART access control. Direct collaboration with website in dire need of an overhaul, the industry by students has clear benefits. Speaking at the launch, the Institution’s charity’s director, Claude Paul, found the As Zekeng tells us: “I have improved my President Sir John Chisholm said: “Our students’ input to be invaluable “The communication skills tremendously. My institution will commit itself to use the skills website was up and running, but we just organisational abilities have improved, and experience we have to promote the weren’t getting the hit rate we had hoped as I am basically responsible for the contribution engineering and technology for. The students’ help with the website whole project. I have also developed and makes to the well being of society. It helped has enabled us to get the right message improved my technical skills because of transform people’s lives in the last century across. The work speaks for itself and the need to use them.” and will do so again in this one.” after the redesign we had over 1,500 hits in under two weeks.” See Na Yao graduated in Computer Science www.heartinternational.org at North-Eastern University in China in 2002 and then came to Queen Mary to do an MSc in the Department of Electronic Engineering. She is now studying for her PhD, applying machine learning approaches to modern telecommunication systems under the supervision of Professor Laurie Cuthbert. She is also Assistant Director of Offshore Operations for the joint degree programmes between Queen Mary and BUPT (Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications), which is the first Sino-British joint programme.

Digital signal processing and it be a project I was genuinely can imagine the view outside the office interested in and that it would determine window! with a view of the beach the line of work I subsequently entered. Binod Bista is a Computer Engineering As I was specific about my objectives there “As a result of my placement at TI, I have Student at Queen Mary. Here he explains were only a handful of placements to match. gained an appreciation of Audio and why he wanted to do an industrial Video Signal Processing and would like placement and describes his experiences. “My Texas Instruments (TI) thirteen-month to investigate other applications of DSP in internship turned out to be ideal. It was the future. I have also started a final year “Accepting a thirteen-month industrial based at the European Product Information project based on the TI tools that I gained placement at Texas Instruments was one Centre (EPIC) in Freising, Germany. familiarity with whilst answering queries of the best decisions I have ever made. I was part of the TI European University there. The organisational and professional Programme team. My core responsibility skills I have gained have put me in a much “In 2001, I embarked on the four-year was to provide deep technical support better state of affairs than I was before the MEng course in Computer Engineering in to post-graduate students, lecturers, industrial placement. My outlook now is the Department of Electronic Engineering researchers and professors who were using really exciting.” at Queen Mary. The course has been both TI DSP in their projects and teaching. I also academically and personally challenging. occasionally found myself in other territories With the emphasis on digital electronics, like learning how data converters and other signal theory and software systems together analogue components make up the whole with yearly project-based work, the course signal chain solution. When I had more so far has left open many technical career demanding technical issues to deal with paths to explore. In my third year I was or wanted to know more about a particular introduced to digital signal processing subject, I was very grateful to the engineers (DSP). The subject was very mathematical and colleagues in the EPIC and the Data and it was a little obscure – hard to see Converter team who I worked alongside how DSP could be used to solve real throughout my placement. It was fascinating world problems. So I thought! to see how TI DSP tools were being used to implement DSP applications and solve “Although it wasn’t compulsory, I always problems in commodities we all take for wanted to do an industrial work placement granted today. to find out what type of engineering career would be worth pursuing. It was a wise “One of my major achievements at TI was career investment. Besides gaining establishing links with selected universities technical knowledge, my ideal placement in locations all over Europe. I visited the would develop my professional, TI Nice site in France to attend a team organisational and interpersonal skills. meeting, to meet colleagues and to discuss Ideally, I wanted to carry out a final-year the University Programme. The TI Nice project related to my industrial placement building is right next to the beach, so you Project demo day

Twenty-first century software Computer science is a glue subject, bringing other subjects together constantly reinventing itself as advances yield new technologies. Other subjects pass through computer science, coming out changed or as whole new disciplines. From biology and computer science comes Bioinformatics. From drama and computer science comes digital performance...

These were observations of Andrew Herbert, Director of Microsoft Research, UK launching Queen Mary’s new interdisciplinary consortium. The consortium brings together computer scientists, electronic engineers and mathematicians to tackle key problems that cross the boundaries of the disciplines.

Tying down the nature of computer science is difficult. In essence, it is about computation: whatever technology is used and whatever the purpose. It is a growing tree of concepts; over time some become less important while others gain prominence. It is a mental discipline - a way of thinking about problem solving that results in a set of tools and mental models for dealing with complexity. As other disciplines battle with the complexity arising in their subjects, computer science provides a general purpose computation tool set that Winning a job at Microsoft can help. Adam Kramer has been made a Microsoft What is the future of software? For much of the twentieth century, the role of software Most Valued student on the Microsoft was to overcome limitations in the hardware. The future promises an abundance of computer Student Partner programme. Adam came resources leaving old assumptions obsolete. As we move to computers with many processors to Queen Mary as the winner of the first on a chip, single threaded programs lose importance. Building the concurrent programs to BrainAcademy competition (see page 20). make use of such chips is hard though, so new languages and tools are needed. Part of his prize, in addition to the University place prize was to get a Low-level programming languages are also increasingly obsolete, as there are sufficient fast-track interview with Microsoft for their resources now for languages to do such things as automatic management of storage. In sought after summer intern programme. addition, virtual memory is no longer needed. Its role was to give the impression of more He has just been offered two placements, memory, but with plentiful real memory the overhead of managing it is counter-productive. so must choose between working in Like Professor Ursula Martin (see opposite) Herbert believes verification by testing alone Reading on Analysis in the Customer cannot continue. Finally he believes Hierarchical File Systems will disappear as they fail Services Department and the launch of to scale to the vast amounts of information being stored in effectively infinite storage. the corporate citizenship initiatives in their Information Retrieval research will be increasingly important, providing new ways of London office. managing and searching data.

Smallfoot: Separation already demonstrates simpler specifications Distefano and O’Hearn at Queen Mary and and verifications of notoriously tricky heap- Berdine and Byron Cook at Microsoft on Logic verification tool manipulating concurrent programs (ones “software model checking”, where the aim released. where multiple strands of the program is to automatically prove termination of execute at the same time) than is possible device driver programs that traverse pointer A team of researchers from the Department with any other tools. data structures; this follows on from both of Computer Science has released Smallfoot, Smallfoot and breakthrough model an experimental tool for checking properties Smallfoot’s main developers are Cristiano checking work done at Microsoft. of programs that use an evolving program Calcagno and Josh Berdine. Both were heap (computer memory that is allocated to PhD students and then Research More on Smallfoot can be found at a particular use as it is needed). The tool is Assistants at Queen Mary when they www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/research/logic/theory/ based on separation logic, a formalism started the Smallfoot project with O’Hearn. projects/smallfoot/index.html developed by Professor Peter O’Hearn Calcagno is now at Imperial College, where and on Separation logic (Queen Mary), John Reynolds (Carnegie he holds an EPSRC Advanced Fellowship, Mellon, Pittsburgh) and others as an attack and Berdine has recently taken up a www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/~ohearn/ on the longstanding open problem of position at Microsoft Research Cambridge. localreasoning.html specifying and proving programs that share memory and use pointers. Smallfoot This first version of Smallfoot was automatically proves certain properties of intentionally designed to stay close to the programs using separation logic. theory of separation logic. Calcagno and Philipppa Gardner at Imperial will be Smallfoot is part of an upsurge of interest collaborating with O’Hearn on a version of in the worldwide research community on Smallfoot for the C programming language, program verification. It is unique in its with the aim of automatically checking modular treatment of the program heap, safety properties of fundamental systems which has been a hurdle holding back programs that run close to the hardware verification for decades. Smallfoot is an without the protection of a supervisory experimental tool, and works for an operating system. Other work is going idealised programming language, but it forward in a collaboration between Dino

Envisioning the Queen Mary actively participating in INEX 2006 network (structured information retrieval) of which future of computing and Microsoft Mounia is an organiser. The vision Professor Ursula Martin, Queen Mary has had links with Microsoft for Vice-Principal of Science and Engineering several years now. This collaboration has Professor Sean Gong, who leads the Vision portrayed in her October Inaugural lecture, strengthened recently, with both industrial research group at Queen Mary, was also is a future where computer bugs and sponsorship programmes and research visiting scientist at MSR Asia Lab (Beijing) hardware flaws – where systems do not engagement. Logic and formal methods is during January to June 2001. Mike Lai, meet their specifications – have been the most prominent example of such ties in who obtained his PhD in Mathematics eradicated through the power of the research field, with Professor Sir Tony from Queen Mary, also works at Microsoft computational logic. This vision builds Hoare (Microsoft Research) being awarded in Redmond, Washington, where he is on the use of cutting-edge verification an Honorary Degree at Queen Mary in 2005 responsible for the security of Windows techniques in order to ensure the and Byron Cook (Microsoft Research) products. correctness of increasingly complex holding a Visiting Professorship at Queen Microsoft sponsors a whole raft of initiatives software and hardware systems. As testing Mary. Professor Peter O’Hearn of Queen of Queen Mary to encourage the study of of these systems becomes ever more Mary is currently a Microsoft Visiting computer science: the annual student impractical, mathematically-based Scientist and is engaged in work on Hoare’s prizes for academic excellence, contributing verification technologies look to hold the Grand Challenge project of a verifying towards the printing costs of the latest edition key to the future of software and hardware compiler. Microsoft Research has recently of our computer science for fun magazine development. Demonstrating the hired Josh Berdine, who obtained his PhD cs4fn (www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/cs4fn/) and significance of the problem, Professor from Queen Mary in 2004 and has been a consultancy work with us in developing Ursula Martin’s argument is backed by research assistant here. Microsoft is Microsoft schools page content. Microsoft is industry: sponsoring several students at Queen Mary, one of the members of our advisory Industrial the most recent addition being the award Panel and is now one of the sponsors of “Functional verification is the number of a prestigious Microsoft PhD studentship, European Conference on Information one bottleneck, consuming as much as one of only 30 in Europe, to Aziem Retrieval 2006, for which Professor Lalmas 70 per cent of the entire design cycle. Chawdhary to study with Peter O’Hearn. As design complexity increases simulator is a Programme Chair. Microsoft was a performance can no longer keep pace founding sponsor of our national computing with the growing verification gap.” Links include research, talent search BrianAcademy through – Intel Corp, 2001 membership of the judging panel and callaborations on logic sponsorship of cash prizes, software “Software verification has been the Holy and information retrieval and career options. Grail of computer science for many and public engagement decades, but now we are building tools Microsoft sponsors the women@CL initiative, that can do actual proof about the software projects to celebrate, inform and support women and how it works in order to guarantee its engaged in computing research: the project director is Professor Ursula Martin. reliability.” – Bill Gates, 2002 The research partnership is not limited to the Resource Logic group, as there are She also highlighted in her talk the roles Finally, Microsoft sponsors our new MSc in increasing connections with the Information Digital Performance through provision of of eminent women and men of computing Retrieval group. A visiting researcher whose work has paved the way to the equipment and software for the Augmented appointment of Professor Mounia Lalmas of Human Interaction Laboratory, a new future that is currently being built, including Queen Mary in 2005 to work with Stephen Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, David research facility looking at how technologies Robertson of Microsoft has resulted in support creativity and communication; core Hilbert, Alan Turing, Admiral Grace Murray members of the Microsoft research team Hopper, Sir Tony Hoare, Robin Milner and elements of our new MSc. Peter Landin.

The key theme throughout the talk was the importance of connecting science, engineering, innovation and people, and the fact that ultimately their linkage is a powerful way to truly make a difference.

Back row: Dino Distefano, Peter McOwan, Andrew Herbert, Adam Kramer, Adrian Smith Front row: Aziem Chawdhary, Ursula Martin, Faiha Siray, Mounia Lalmas, Paul Curzon

Outstanding research has been validating new models for software Tony Xiang defect prediction that were developed by Several of our recently completed grants members of the RADAR group and Tony Xiang were assessed as outstanding by EPSRC, implemented in the AgenaRisk software who their highest rating, determined by external toolkit. The results, in a wide range of previously assessments of the work. Professor Sean projects, have shown 95 per cent worked on Gong and the Vision Group’s ICONS correlation between predicted and actual research (Incident Recognition for Surveillance and defects found. This is a great improvement projects in the Security) project was judged ‘Outstanding’ on other defect prediction approaches and Department overall. The quality of the research and its enables organisations like Philips to have of Computer potential scientific impact were also rated much greater confidence about when Science’s ‘Internationally Leading’. The research was software is ready for release. Vision Group in collaboration with industrial partners has been Safehouse Technologies, Heritage made a Protection, the British Airport Authority and lecturer. He worked on the ICONS BTexaCT Research. Professor Gong’s team (Incident Recognition for Surveillance and developed algorithms used to help process, Security) (see the article on the left) and interpret and manage the vast quantities of INSIGHT (Video Analysis and Selective visual information captured by live CCTV Zooming using Semantic Models of Human cameras. In particular the project was Presence and Absence) projects. He is concerned with Zero Motion Detection, such currently working on topics such as video- as detecting changes in a scene that could based behaviour analysis and model order indicate the deployment of a bomb or theft Another ‘Outstanding’ EPSRC project was selection for Dynamic Bayesian Networks. of a bag and the recognition of undesirable the recently completed Automatic Music behaviour such as trespassing and violence. Transcription project in the Centre for Digital Music, led by Mark Plumbley. Automatic music transcription, the task Modularity and of automatically extracting the notes in a resource separation The quality of the piece of music, is particularly difficult for research and its potential polyphonic music, where more than one Peter O’Hearn and Max Kanovich have scientific impact were also note is played at a time. In the project, been awarded a grant worth over £266,000 Mark Plumbley and Samer Abdallah by EPSRC. The grant is on the topic of rated ‘Internationally developed a new method for automatic modularity and resource separation: Leading’ music transcription based on new an area in which the Department of techniques such as independent Computer Science is internationally leading. component analysis (ICA) and sparse Similarly, both the RADAR research group’s coding. They found that notes were typically Modularity is a key concept that projects IMPRESS and SCORE (Sensing represented by groups of a handful of programmers wield in their struggle against Change in Organisational Risk Exposure) vectors, each representing the way the the complexity of software systems. When a were assessed as ‘Outstanding’. IMPRESS frequency spectrum of the note changed as program is divided into distinct modules or (in collaboration with Philips and Agena) the note sounded. In the future, techniques components, each of which uses separate developed improved methods for risk like this could be used to analyse the internal resources (such as storage), the assessment in software projects. Martin content of the huge collections of music in effort required for understanding the Neil’s SCORE project (in collaboration with digital formats like MP3. Using this analysis, program is decomposed into separate, Liverpool University, National Air Traffic it would be possible to search through hopefully manageable, parts. The purpose Services (NATS), ERA, CAA and Agena) personal or commercial collections of music of this project is to bring a kind of logic developed novel methods for quantifying just as easily as an internet search engine known as separation logic to bear on organisational risk. The quality of the can be used today. modularity. It gives an elegant way to research and its potential scientific impact reason about the way programs use were also rated ‘Internationally Leading’. resources. The project pioneered the use of Bayesian Networks as a means to measure This project will make a major contribution operational risk exposure in high stakes to the problems of reasoning about environments such as operational risk programs and protection of resources in finance and safety-critical systems. from outside tampering in a way that scales Additionally new algorithms were developed to larger programs. In particular, it will to support temporal reasoning about risk address the problem of how to do this using Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBNs) reasoning in the presence of practical and to implement complex and large scale programming features such as pointers that hybrid models containing mixtures of have previously been seen as barriers to continuous and discrete variables. technically precise accounts of modularity. Impressive results were achieved on defect prediction with the consumer electronics giant Philips. Since January 2005, Philips

Review of research funded in 2005 StoryBank: sharing stories Twenty-six externally funded research grants awarded to the departments of Computer across digital divides Science and Electronic Engineering started in 2005, with over £2 million bought in by Professor Mounia Lalmas of the EE staff. Department of Computer Science’s Information Retrieval Group is involved in Lead a project working with researchers around Project Dept. Funded by £000’s Investigator the UK that will allow village communities N Bryan- in the developing world to create and share Mobile Jamming CS EPSRC 33 Kinns audio-visual information easily. The project, run by David Frohlich of the Digital World Audio Detection & Classification of Events A Cavallaro EE Visiowave 23 Research Centre, University of Surrey, is the outcome of an EPSRC ‘IDEAS factory’ CASE for new Academics A Cavallaro EE EPSRC/BT 82 on ‘Bridging the Digital Divide’. The shared information could be very practical; Multi-Model Object Tracking A Cavallaro EE EPSRC 126 containing health advice or school exercise for example, or it could be more personal Knowledge Transfer Partnership X Chen EE E2V 91 such as requesting help with a particular issue. Camera phones and digital library software will be used to support the capture Galileo Advanced Concepts X Chen EE EU 207 and sharing of this information as short audiovisual ‘stories’: spoken language Gigabit Powerline Communications X Chen EE EPSRC 286 reports illustrated with images. This will give people who cannot read and write a Sparse Representations for Signal M Davies EE EPSRC 283 Processing & Coding stronger voice. By setting up a repository, such information can be stored and eXdecide: Quantified Risk Analysis and N Fenton CS EPSRC/ Agena 201 Decision Support for Agile Software Projects accessed repeatedly by different people sharing the same camera phone or Signal Flow Graphs H Gottliebsen CS Nuffield 5 television on a temporary basis. As it will be connected to the Internet, non-locals Royal Society Travel Grant P Hao CS RS 1 will be able to see how the authors live. This could be useful for distant engineers and designers to understand the needs of Electromagnetic Crystal Structures Y Hao EE EPSRC 296 people from a different culture, and create more appropriate products for them. New Microwave Metamaterials Y Hao EE Leverhulme 234 The system will be developed initially for a single local community in India. Engineers Program Analysis and Pi-calculus K Honda CS EPSRC 91 and designers in the UK will be challenged to design products for this community COST Action 292: Semantic Multimodal E Izquierdo EE ESF 58 Analysis of Digital Media using information in the library.

Quantative Information Flow P Malacaria CS EPSRC 94

Royal Society sponsorship P McOwan CS EPSRC 2

Sodatrack: Sodarace Live P McOwan CS EPSRC 101

Topology & Congestion Invariants R Mondragon EE EPSRC 195

Microsoft Studentship P O'Hearn CS Microsoft 60

NETWORK: Blind Source Separation M Plumbley EE EPSRC 62

Estimation of Melody from Audio using M Plumbley EE RS 3 Harmonic and Rhythmic Information

Understanding the Information Dynamics M Plumbley EE EPSRC 185 of Music

Referencing and plagiarism in Computer J Reid CS HEA 3 Science

Grant from Information Processing Society CK Toh EE IPSJ 5 of Japan

Novelty Detection for Interactive A Tombros CS Nuffield 5 Information Flow

New professor to lead Smart antennas in Macau Pakistan initiatives The Information Systems Research Centre (ISRC), a joint venture between Macao Polytechnic Institute (MPI) and QMUL, has been awarded a research grant worth over £150,000 per year for developing collaborative smart antennas. Professor Laurie Cuthbert is the Director of the ISRC and Athen Ma will be running the project.

This project is to implement a network management tool for wireless networks that uses co-operative smart antennas for managing the radio resources in order to minimise the effects of congestion and to provide Quality of Service.

This work builds on previous research that has led to novel approaches for changing radio patterns from a mobile base station or wireless LAN access point in real time in a cooperative manner by applying the technology to real geographical layouts, in this case Macao. Recent research at Queen Mary has shown that this adaptive shaping has the potential to simplify network planning to cater to non-uniform demand, which is the norm in practice. This work will extend that network planning to realistic geographical environments, something that has not been done before. There are currently three Queen Mary Research staff working on the project in Macao.

The first public seminar of the ISRC also took place in February. John Bigham with other QMUL research staff delivered a series of technical talks. The seminar attracted a large audience, including members of the local telecommunications governing body. The Department of Electronic Engineering is very pleased to announce that Ian Dufour has been appointed an Honorary Professor. Ian will lead the Department initiatives in Pakistan.

Ian joined BT as an apprentice. He then held a range of engineering posts, working on digital transmission systems, switching systems, external plant and cables, optical fibres, computerised planning systems and local-loop planning. In 1991 he moved to Adastral Park in Martlesham, Suffolk, where he set up an integration testing facility and subsequently headed various Departments. After a period as Chief Designer of BT Exact, he ultimately had responsibility for determining the strategy for BT representation at all International standards bodies. 46PaQ Miscommunication For over ten years, Ian was the senior BT manager responsible for an in-house MSc EPSRC has recently funded the The Interaction, Media and Communication in Telecommunications Engineering run Department of Computer Science’s 46PaQ group of the Department of Computer through a contract with a consortium of project. This is the first of several projects Science hosted a workshop on four colleges of the University of London. transferred to the embryonic Network Miscommunication in January. Speakers During this time he implemented distance Research Laboratory following Andrew included key researchers in the field: Herb delivery to BT’s partner in India. Moore’s recent appointment to the Clark, Luc Steels, Susan Brennan, Pat department. 46PaQ will explore the Healey (of Queen Mary), Jonathan Before Easter, Ian toured Pakistan with performance and behaviour of new Ginzburg, Paul Drew, Staffan Larsson, William Marsh of Computer Science with network-control and network-management Ruth Kempson and Amanda Stent. the aim of building research links between mechanisms in a high-speed (1-10Gbps) The aims were to explore: how concepts Queen Mary and the institutions there, as environment, such as that employed within of miscommunication influence theories well as exploring ways to encourage more the GRID/e-Science community. The of meaning and representation, empirical Pakistani students to study at Queen Mary project is a collaboration with UCL and has analyses of miscommunication and related for Masters and PhDs. additional industrial support from Cisco and phenomena, and the possible role of Sun Microsystems. miscommunication in the development of semantic co-ordination.

A Year out networking Sarfaraj Usman, an undergraduate student in the Department of Engineering, has taken a year out working as a Network Integration and Testing Engineer at BT Exact. Taking such a year out is built into several QMUL programmes. He tells us about his experience:

“I was first allocated a placement within the Broadband group in the Network Engineering area. My work mostly involved dealing with Cisco routers and switches and using IP based technologies. Currently I am working on a Broadband Network upgrade Project for Cable & Wireless Guernsey. This is a group project and I am involved in the design stage and systems integration testing activities. A significant aspect of this work is to upgrade specific network elements, so that they can support connectivity using the latest Cisco equipment. I had to learn how to use NetViz, which is a simulation tool for designing network architectures. Subsequently, I used this software tool to design network architectures for BT global services and presented this at one of the twenty-first Century Network conferences. As a part of my previous project I also had to learn a program called Chariot, which is used to automate equipment testing.

“Most of the networking knowledge from my degree was really useful… so many thanks to Chris Phillips and the other lecturers in the department. From my experience I’ve suggested that the Electronic Engineering department introduce modules on for example network security because it is one of the hottest topics in the Networking and Telecom world at the moment and also SQL and Linux that are important for Industry.

The working environment here at BT is good. People are very helpful and the working hours are very flexible, so I am truly enjoying the experience.”

Queen Mary researchers at the House of Commons The House of Commons reception is an annual event where Britain’s younger researchers present leading-edge science, engineering, medicine and technology research at Westminster, and compete for prestigious national awards and prizes. The 2006 event was held in March, and the lunchtime reception hosted around 160 top researchers, selected from applicants from all over the UK. This included Pavel Belov (Research Assistant – Antennas) and Vindya Amaradasa (a second year PhD student – Networks) from Electronic Engineering.

The event aimed to encourage a unique contribution by Britain’s younger researchers to the 2006 UK Science Week, and also to celebrate UK scientific endeavour, prowess and achievement. It fosters greater interaction and networking between younger researchers, especially between those from different backgrounds networks. As the population at large is material science and medical backgrounds, encouraging them to present and debate increasingly relying on packet networks so it was a good way to learn how to explain scientific research, not only with peers but such as the Internet, it is essential that my research to peers from different also with non-experts such as the judges researchers acquire a good understanding disciplines, and also answer their questions. and MPs. of these networks, and large-scale Most importantly, it was an opportunity to simulation is vital for this. Mr Galloway appreciate the research carried out in other Vindya Amaradasa, who presented her described my research as ‘stunning’, and fields. For instance, I learnt about research research poster to MPs including local MP also expressed his interest in visiting our ranging from statistics to cancer research George Galloway, explained “My research labs and learning about other research and even strange areas like unlocking the is about developing new techniques for the we’re involved in. Overall, the event was a secrets of giant viruses under the sea. acceleration of network simulations to highly valuable experience for me. The It was quite interesting to witness so many enable realistic modelling of large-scale majority of the presenters were from different fields at one time and place.”

Fine measurement and climate change Many great scientific discoveries from medicine to astronomy have been the result of painstaking attention to detail and careful measurement. Classic examples of these have been the discovery of the double helix of DNA by Crick and Watson that critically depended on the careful x-ray analysis of the DNA molecule by Wilkins and Franklin. But for the want of such high-quality measurements, the famous chemist Linus Pauling would likely have determined the correct solution earlier. Similarly, the discovery of Pluto was the result of careful attention to fine detail in the slight perturbations that were observed in the orbit of its neighbour, Neptune.

Rob Donnan from the Department of Electronic Engineering has been awarded an EPSRC grant worth £126,456 over three years that will help future scientists make the increasingly accurate measurements needed to predict climate change. The project focuses on the need for making measurements of high accuracy, and thereby understanding and controlling sources of error. The particular error of concern is the distortion that a cm or mm wavelength radio signal beam suffers when it travels through a box that can have many flat or focusing mirrors or other flat components, as occurs for example in remote-sensing equipment.

Such components can ‘condition’ a signal, by for example, either splitting the beam into different paths, or joining many signal beams of differing wavelength into one path. The mirror components in the box that focus or shape the beams have been well studied, and their distorting effects are well understood. The flat components that can perform a wide variety of signal conditioning functions have not been so well studied. Their effects to distort a radio signal beam need careful measurement. The importance for measuring and controlling their effects in misshaping a beam stems from their wide and vital use in instruments that are used for remote sensing. They allow electromagnetic waves to be guided with little loss, just as visible light can be with mirrors.

Remote sensing has a vital role to play gathering data used, for example, in monitoring global weather patterns. Specifically, a radiometer operating from 90-200 GHz can detect the natural emission from the upper atmosphere, and, after processing, give information about the water vapour content. This is vital for accurate weather prediction. With higher quality data, achieved by having better-performing components in the measuring Remote sensing has a instrument, more reliable models can be made for instance in understanding and verifying global warming, or plotting the growth of the holes in the Earth’s ozone layer at its poles. vital role to play gathering Quasi-optical systems have many current and potential applications in areas ranging from data used, for example, in medical diagnostics to security. monitoring global weather On this project Rob will build a facility that will enable accurate measurements of beam patterns distortion caused by these lesser-studied, but indispensable components.

Formally verifying air DiET: dialogue experimentation toolkit research funded traffic control applications People first encounter, learn and use language in dialogue. Although a lot of progress has been made in understanding the way our brains process language, research on dialogue Hanne Gottliebsen, who worked for NASA has been limited by the practical problems involved in studying it. It is especially hard before joining the Department of Computer because it is such an inherently interactive process that depends greatly on the context Science has received an EPSRC in which it takes place. ‘Cooperative Awards in Science and Engineering’ (CASE) award of £59,464 EPSRC have therefore awarded Pat Healey a three year, £170,000 research grant for the to support a PhD student. The project is “DiET: Dialogue Experimentation Toolkit” project, continuing his collaboration with Jonathan a collaboration with National Air Traffic Ginzburg at Kings. The goal is to provide powerful new tools for studying dialogue. Services Ltd (NATS). The student will work They will do this by building on the opportunities created by the popularity of text-based on the formal verification of an air traffic communication, such as SMS, instant messaging and chat rooms, and the development control issue, to be determined with NATS. of software that can now process human language in real-time. The level of precision and Hanne also received a Nuffield Foundation experimental control this will provide is unprecedented in dialogue research. It will allow award last year to support her work on the them to analyse the mechanisms that underpin shared understanding at a much greater verification of control signals based on level of detail than has been possible before. signal flow graphs.

Now you see it… now you don’t Video cameras are appearing everywhere. It’s hard to move in major cities without being in sight of one. They are embedded in computers and even in cricket stumps. They have proved invaluable to crime investigators tracking the motion of suspects. The ability to automatically track moving objects has much wider use though – for example keeping a camera automatically focused on a lecturer to allow distance learning students to watch from the other side of the world, or for tracking fast moving objects such as formula one cars at Silverstone, tennis balls at Wimbledon or cricket balls at Hedingley. A major problem that must be overcome to improve automatic tracking in real world situations is discriminating between objects in the scene. This is something animals do naturally but is actually very hard for computers. Another problem is that of keeping track of the object as it moves in and out of the fields of view of different cameras. One solution is to make use of sound as well as vision in an integrated way to track the objects.

This is the approach Andrea Cavallaro from the Department of Electronic Engineering has just been awarded an EPSRC grant worth £125,526 to investigate. He will develop a unified scheme for a network of multiple sensors to cooperate in tracking objects. The multi-sensor network will be composed of stereo microphones coupled with omni-directional and pan-tilt- zoom cameras. Tracking systems do exist that use either just sound or just vision and there are some using sound and vision, but major issues remain to allow the technology to be used for real.

Among these issues, three important inter-related problems will be tackled in this project. Firstly the definition of a generic and flexible way of representing features for a target being tracked is needed. Secondly, a reliable mechanism to update the description of the target based on incoming observations must be developed. Finally a robust strategy for handing over from one sensor to another is also required.

Identifying people from CCTV Bioinformatics images based on both face and gait Queen Mary’s new MSc The Royal Society and National Science Bioinformatics Foundation of China has awarded an course starting International Joint research grant to the in September Department of Computer Science, the 2006 is a result Beijing University of Aeronautics and of a unique Astronautics and the National Lab of Pattern collaboration Recognition Centre for Biometrics and between the Security, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Department of The project led by Professor Sean Gong in Computer the Department of Computer Science will Science, the develop leading-edge imaging technology School of Biological and Chemical that enables accurate identification of people Sciences, and the School of Medicine and the detection of abnormal behaviour in and Dentistry. The course will address the public spaces captured in low-resolution growing need for qualified bioinformatics CCTV video even under poor or variable specialists in the biotechnology and lighting conditions. pharmaceutical industries. With the huge growth in biological data, driven by the Current state-of-the-art face recognition high-throughput experimental methods, algorithms cannot cope with CCTV data. This Image courtesy of Safehouse Technologies Ltd such as those in the human genome is not surprising as facial information alone is project, bioinformatics has become rather ambiguous for accurate identification. Variations in viewing conditions such as pose an important and fast developing and lighting can cause far more changes in facial appearance than variation between interdisciplinary field, combining different people. The ability of the human vision system to recognise unfamiliar faces is biomedical and computer sciences. also very poor. Students on the course will benefit from the highly practical-oriented programme On the other hand, human walking gait provides perhaps a unique form of non-intrusive and gain industrially relevant skills using information that can be readily captured and synchronised in the same CCTV images with a broad range of cutting-edge methods the facial data. However, gait alone is highly unreliable and perhaps the least for the analysis of biological data. Students discriminative among all visually based biometrics. This joint project will develop novel will also be able to participate in real algorithms to correlate facial image identification with both typical and abnormal human bioinformatics projects working at the gait behaviour patterns. School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Graduation: a family affair Detecting plagiarism When Zhen Bob Chew graduated in December Jane Reid of Computer Science has been 2005, his father did too! Ir. Su Lip Chew had awarded a £3,000 grant by the Higher returned home to Malaysia as soon as he had Education Academy to investigate issues completed his Queen Mary BSc in Mechanical surrounding the topic of plagiarism. Engineering in 1976, and was unable to attend The grant is with Stephen Rose (Head of his graduation ceremony, which took place at Registry Services) and Alan Evison (Director the Royal Albert Hall. The College agreed to of English Language and Study Skills). help father and son graduate together. Bob is now a research student in Electronic The work will focus on three specific Engineering, so we caught up with him areas of concern: to find out what has he been up to. 1 Whether students in the fields of “Life as a PhD student is really different compared to my previous experience. There is no computing and IT are particularly one hollering at you to get work done. It is all about my motivation to do the work. I certainly vulnerable to the temptation of have to be a lot more independent and self-reliant than before. Apart from doing research, plagiarism, since they are particularly I am also an Assistant Tutor for the Professional Applications course and do tours for school well-versed in web searching, which students thinking of applying to the department. These duties add value to my PhD and makes the “copy-and-paste” type of I gain extra experience in handling people. plagiarism very simple;

“Currently I am looking at what is known as semantic security in computer applications. 2 Whether distance-learning students are My supervisor is John Bigham. I like to think that conventional security such as encryption more vulnerable than campus-based provides a level of security similar to using locks on a door. The stronger the encryption, the students, since they have a reduced bigger the lock is. However, there is always the possibility that the intruder ignores the lock level of direct supervision from staff; all together and gets in by another route, rendering it useless. I am creating methods to reliably detect such intrusions as they occur. Following identification, appropriate actions 3 How international students perceive can be taken. A particularly novel aspect about my research is that the mechanisms I plagiarism, compared to home students. propose can also be applied to detect attacks from within an organisation, ie behind the Although the number of detected firewall. This is a difficult and increasingly important problem, especially for protecting plagiarism cases is higher among critical infrastructure. Conventional security techniques like intrusion detection systems are international students, this may simply unable to solve this problem as they are unaware of what applications are allowed or trying be due to easier detection through to do.” anomalies in writing style. A referencing and plagiarism workshop has already been piloted with campus-based Encouraging innovation Professor Isaac Khabaza: students in all developmental years, and a and creativity founding Head of the website to provide equivalent online resources for distance learning students is Ann Light, a Visiting Research Fellow in Department of Computer currently under development. The the Department of Computer Science, has Science workshop is based around a series of small, been selected as one of 30 scientists and individual and group-based practical Professor Isaac Khabaza died in September engineers from around the country to exercises, and focuses on supporting the after a short illness. He was Head of receive a CRUCIBLE award this year from students in exploring and practising the Computing Services at Queen Mary and, NESTA (www.nesta.org.uk), the National conventions of referencing, defining and in the early 1970’s, the founding head of Endowment for Science, Technology and discussing plagiarism, and understanding Computer Science, one of the earliest the Arts. It aims to encourage innovation the principles of automatic plagiarism computer science departments in the and creativity and to this end supports detection (eg the JISC Plagiarism Detection country. He had a great influence on both people of exceptional talent and Service at www.submit.ac.uk). imagination from a variety of backgrounds the College and the development of his from inventors and engineers to filmmakers subject, and is fondly remembered by and musicians. CRUCIBLE is a year long colleagues. programme that aims to enhance and inform the creativity of scientists from across science, technology, engineering, Video surveillance patent medicine and science policy by A patent application has been filed on encouraging them to think about their work ‘Video Signal Analysis’ that covers a system in relation to society, the media, politics, for the detection of events in video globalisation and creativity. Queen Mary surveillance footage. It is a result of Andrea has been very successful with NESTA; Cavallaro’s 2004/2005 Research Fellowship Yang Hao of Electronic Engineering with British Telecom. was a CRUCIBLE awardee in 2005.

Student prizes BT Penultimate Year Prize Microsoft prize for top student in 3rd year Xenia Economidou Naina Jagwani Each year the college and individual departments award prizes for exceptional College Drapers Prize Microsoft prize for top student in 2nd year BEng/BSc Penultimate year Aziez Chawdhary performance by students. The following Hassan Mahmood Malik undergraduate prizes were awarded in Microsoft prize for top student in 1st year 2005. College Drapers Prize Faiha Siraj MEng Penultimate year Electronic Engineering Morapedi Pius Inambo Departmental prizes for first year students Electronic Engineering IEE Prize Faiha Siraj most outstanding final year student Team Award Sayed Mohsen Azarbadegan Navin Kerai Best Demonstrated Daniel Fiegenschuh “Design and Build” Project IEEE Telecommunications Prize Andrew Derek Ainscow Drapers Company Undergraduate Prize best final year telecommunications project Shoaib Monib Richard Man Jamil Alam Emad Rajabalipor Neil Rajgor Kastriot Shala Aziez Chawdhary BT Final Year Prize Oliver Michael Shepherd Aarti Makwana The Westfield Trust Prize Computer Science Bushra Akhtar Top MSci Finalist Omar Farouk El-Aziz Memorial Prize Agena prize for best overall performance Naina Jagwani Top Finalist BSc CompSci best student in scholarship and character in Software Risk Assessment and Maths Daniel Phillip Crane Reena Sareen Lois Hatton Prize for the best 1st year female College Drapers Prize: finalist Agena prize for best overall performance student in the Faculty Ketanbhai Lad in Software Engineering Faiha Siraj Alan Vidyasakar Edward Fergus Benedict Wood Shane Jenkinson Agena prize for best software College Drapers Prize: Outstanding Project engineering group Usman Naeem Syed Muiz Rahman Neil Rajgor Anthony Williams Memorial Prize Odili Augustine Esumai best first year student Anthony Gareth Domenico Lucibello Tomoko Hatori Mitul Daya

IEEE Second year Undergraduate Prize Microsoft prize for top student in best second year student 3rd year MSci Oliver Michael Shepherd Robert Dann

Providing an e-learning Recording lectures room, it is not economically feasible. To overcome this problem with a cost effective experience as interactive To improve e-learning we can make use of solution, Andrea Cavallero has been as if you were there advances in technology, such as broadband awarded a college grant. Andrea will adapt access from home and the availability of state-of-the-art research results to automate Athen Ma has large storage space on personal computers. the video capturing process by automatically been awarded This has enabled the delivery of lectures in controlling the camera to pursue the £8,000 from forms that were not possible a few years lecturer as would normally happen in a the HEFCE ago. For example, Electronic Engineering television studio but without the need e-learning provides live recordings of traditional of a cameraman. grant to lectures. These recordings display the develop PowerPoint slides of the lecture interactive synchronised with the lecturer’s voice. conferencing Although this form of e-learning delivery is to support cost effective and gets positive feedback, distance it does not allow the students to see the learning. lecturer. It is well known that visual information, in the form of gestures and Distance Learning in Electronic Engineering facial expressions, has a major impact on aims to provide students with a virtual the listener. The opportunity to capture a learning environment, as if they were video of the lecturers in addition to hearing studying on the campus. Distance Learning their voice, to be displayed in parallel to the students report that the programme is PowerPoint slides would improve students’ unique, high in quality, and more e-learning experience. However, because importantly, they never feel that this requires a cameraman for each lecture they are on their own.

The number of Distance Learning students has been rising, particularly in the UK Designing the future human “earner-learner” market. Together with the A team from Sir George Monoux and Leyton Sixth Form Colleges (Sigrid, Jasmine, Rae and Department’s international Distance Sohaib) were winners of the Queen Mary, Winter School 2005 Team competition with their Learning operations in Portugal, Macao, Future Human Design (www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/cs4fn/futurehuman/winterhuman.php) Their Brazil, India (via BT MSc) and Hong Kong, task was to predict how the human of 50 years from now will look, communicate, work, this rising population makes it vital for us to play and live. This had to all link in with current developments in computer science. They consider how best to provide interactivity. decided to demonstrate this by following the day of one person 50 years from now and came up with Jim Bob, a moon-surfing instructor who undergoes routine arm-replacement Athen will: surgery after an accident, and gets a speeding ticket on his way to the hospital. We also • investigate technologies that maintain launched a similar open competition for National Science Week with prizes for schools. and enhance our high quality tutorial As we go to press the judging is in progress. and interaction with Distance Learning students, especially with the rising demand; • implement an infrastructure that will enable interaction not only outside lectures, but during the lectures, allowing Distance Learning students to take part via a direct link; and • consider how this implementation may be made portable so that it can be taken to any lecture room.

First overseas graduation The first graduation of Open and Distance Learning Computer Science Degree students was held in Kowloon, Hong Kong in November. These students are the first graduates of the College who learnt overseas and the graduation ceremony was the first one to be performed by the College overseas. The programme is in partnership with the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education.

MESH – Generating news The news industry is key to education, business and our personal lives. News services also generate massive revenues for European business, with resulting employment benefits. With the addition of Internet news services to traditional ones, there is a now a huge amount of multimedia news material available. Unfortunately, most of this content is not actually usable and ultimately lost because there is just too much to deal with. Also the costs associated with news production and distribution often prevents the content of small producers reaching global markets.

Electronic Engineering’s MESH project is using advanced multimedia techniques to overcome these problems, creating personalized summaries of news stories. Multimedia analysis and reasoning tools, network agents and content management techniques can be used to extract, compare and combine meaning from different multimedia sources producing personalized multimedia summaries. MESH is a European project funded by the EU and coordinated by Professor Ebroul Izquierdo. It links 12 relevant institutions across Europe with over £700,000 to fund Queen Mary’s role.

The main objective of MESH is personalised access to news, from major international stories down to specialised local interest material. The aim is to radically change users’ access to and enjoyment of news services, by providing tools and services that enable individuals to obtain personalised multimedia summaries created from multiple multimedia sources. MESH will also create novel mobile news services for professionals on the move.

Using active cs4fn ACM programming competition e-learning to bridge the The regional ACM programming competition (sponsored by IBM) took place in November school-university jump at the Royal Institute of Technology at Stockholm, Sweden. Over 40 teams from North- Western European universities took part in the competition, from which only two teams Students take qualified for the world final. Although the ACM competition has a 30 years history, for the computer science first time our Department of Computer Science joined the competition. The students taking degrees with a wide part (Christopher McDonald, Keldon Alleyne and Mohsen Azarbadegan) really enjoyed the range of subject experience, and are extremely motivated for training for next year already! The team was backgrounds. It can coached by Paulo Oliva, who himself previously took part in competitions reaching the also be difficult to world finals in 1999 after obtaining a 2nd place in the South American heat. Students know, when at interested in training for future programming competitions please contact Paulo Oliva school, what the ([email protected]) for further information. The competitions are open to both different university undergraduate and graduate students. subjects involve. Paul Curzon together with Peter McOwan and Gabriella Kazai have been awarded a Queen Mary e-learning grant to help support students in this way. Machines learning in an ever-changing world My PhD thesis was about Co-evolution in Reinforcement Learning. Reinforcement learning The project will develop educational, is a type of machine learning where the computer learns from the consequences of its accessible, and fun active e-introductions actions, rather than by being explicitly taught. Typically, interesting problems in the real to core topics of first year computer science world can be in a large numbers of states. Many modules. The material developed will interesting real world problems are also interactive. improve understanding of the subject and Reinforcement learning must deal with this help bridge the gulf between school and interactivity and that is where co-evolution comes in university first year. It will support both – as the system learns, so does the environment it face-to-face and distance learning students. is interacting with. The challenge is to be able to The project will build on the success of the both shrink the number of possible states to a small cs4fn webzine (www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/cs4fn) enough number to deal with and to be able to make and magazine that covers computer useful generalisations in an ever-changing science related topics in a fun and environment. I invented a fuzzy logic based accessible way. cs4fn is increasingly algorithm and investigated how good it was in both popular with students and teachers alike: stationary and changing environments. Early in my “I very much enjoyed the magazine. part-time PhD research, I accepted a full time Refreshing and spot on for students!” being lectureship in the Electronic Engineering a typical comment from teachers. The grant Department. Now that I have finished my studies, I will allow us to create more interactive am staying at Queen Mary, further developing my material for the cs4fn site whilst at the PhD research and lecturing both here and on the same time adding a gateway that brings the Joint Program in Beijing. material together as a fun introduction to a typical university first year. Laurissa Tokarchuk 19

BrainAcademy postgraduate is open not computer science graduates, and ARM only to UK postgraduate students, but enthusiastically supports programmes for the first time, overseas postgraduate like BrainAcademy to encourage the next students as well. Cash prizes will help the generation of great minds in this growing winners study for one of Queen Mary’s field.” innovative MScs, and the winner will have the opportunity to kick-start a career with Kevin McDaniel, Academic Group Manager sponsors ARM, who are offering winners an of Microsoft Ltd added: “Microsoft is interview with the industry-leading company. delighted to be again working with Queen Mary, University of London and BrainAcademy undergraduate is looking supporting its annual computer science for UK talent to win prizes, which include bursary competition. Encouraging and Let Computer Science a tuition fees-paid place at Queen Mary enabling young technology enthusiasts entertain you: and a fast-track to a career with sponsors and students to realise their full potential Microsoft. As well as a student exchange with technology is a common goal that BrainAcademy is back year abroad at another leading international both Microsoft and Queen Mary share.” The Department of Computer Science’s university, and a summer work experience BrainAcademy competition is back for 2006 placement with top Internet publishers The BrainAcademy 2006 closes on with the theme of Computer Science and the ZDNet, winners are also in line for Microsoft 14 September 2006. The challenging Entertainment Industry. BrainAcademy is a software, laptops, textbooks and cash prizes. competition involves an online research fun way to find and inspire the most talented quiz to qualify for the Computer Science students and give them the life-changing BrainAcademy the next generation, is a new creativity challenge, followed by a tough opportunity of a university education, category this year, sponsored by ARM, and interview for the finalists competing for together with great career options. The is looking for future talents in UK schools. the University places. competition is sponsored by the information Prizes on offer include iPod Nanos donated The 2003 winner, Adam Kramer, is currently technology industry including Microsoft, by ARM, and the chance to spend an at the end of his second year of his BSc ARM, BAFTA winners Soda Creative Ltd, afternoon in Queen Mary’s state-of-the-art Computer Science course prize. He will high-tech PR marketing consultancy Augmented Human Interaction Research be starting his Microsoft internship in the Omarketing, Internet publishers ZDNet and Laboratory. summer. Simon Kinsey, winner in 2005 by the British Computer Society Human William Hohl, University Relations Manager will be returning to study at Queen Mary Computer Interaction Group. This year there at ARM said: “Most people don’t realise how as a mature student on the MSc Advanced are three categories to the competition: ubiquitous embedded microprocessors have Methods in Computer Science course. become – in their cars, cell phones, portable This year there are prizes media players, televisions, cameras – they Visit www.brainacademy.qmul.ac.uk for younger entrants too are everywhere! With this pervasive to enter. technology comes a demand for new

Strong growth in need for IT professionals A recent CNN.com article puts Computer Science and Electronic Engineering careers at the top of the ‘fastest-growing’ salaries league. In terms of salary, the following are all in the top 10:

- Computer systems software engineer - Computer applications software engineer - Computer systems analyst - Database administrator - Network systems and data communication analyst

They are also all in the US Bureau of Labour Statistics’ list of the 30 fastest-growing jobs up to 2014. Another recent survey, this time by e-skills UK, also suggests there is continued strong growth in the need for IT Professionals with 10 per cent of firms recruiting ICT staff reporting difficulty finding applicants with the level of skills/knowledge/experience (such as Java and SQL) needed. Fears of skills being lost to offshoring are unfounded.

Editorial team: Computer Science: Paul Curzon (pc/[email protected]), Gabriella Kazai

Electronic Engineering: Janine Lajudie ([email protected]), Athen Ma ([email protected])