SE News Autumn 2011

SE

The Science and Engineering Newsletter • Queen Mary, University of London • Autumn 2011

makING an impact How to communicate your research to the public page 18

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Two of Science and Engineering’s longest standing homes undergo a makeover page 3

www.qmul.ac.uk

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Students take on the ‘real world’ in industrial placements page 12

QApps: bringing research to smartphone users page 6

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KILBURN’S

COLUMN

The new Faculty came into being just over a year ago and we have set out an ambitious strategy to raise its performance and profile and establish it as a leading centre for science and engineering.

High quality research (some fantastic examples are on pages 4 to 11) is crucial to our future success, but so is ensuring an outstanding student experience – even more so as we enter a new era of high student fees and increased competition for the top students. Success in league tables and student satisfaction will be an essential part in recruiting the best students to Queen Mary (see page 2).

The Faculty has a fantastic reputation for its outreach work and many colleagues are working to showcase the Faculty’s best research and teaching across the wider community through events such as the British Science Festival and the Royal Society’s Summer Exhibition.

Outreach activities such as these are great ways to engage with the public, and the Communications Office has also offered some valuable advice (on page 18) on how to take your research out to the masses through the media.

As part of our future plan we also announced, earlier in the year, a significant investment in new staff.

I want to welcome our new recruits to the Faculty (turn to page 20) and look forward to describing their new achievements in future editions of SE News.

Jeremy Kilburn, Vice Principal, Science and Engineering

ImpactQM nominated for Times Higher Award 2011 ImpactQM has been nominated for the ‘Outstanding Support for Early Career Researchers’ award in this year’s Times Higher Awards.

ImpactQM is a ground-breaking knowledge transfer project whose aim is to create a new generation of science and engineering professionals, equally at home in academia and industry. It supports early career researchers in a variety of ways including information events, PhD student internships and by jointly co-funding knowledge transfer projects with industry.

Professor Ursula Martin, Director of ImpactQM commented: “We are delighted to be short-listed in this category, which reflects the hard work of Professor Alice Sullivan and the team, and our commitment to broadening students’ understanding of the context and impact of research.”

ImpactQM is pleased to announce the formal call for applications for the 2011-2012 ImpactQM Scholarships for Postgraduate Students. This scheme is open to all current PhD students in Science and Engineering.

For further information and the application pack, please visit the ImpactQM website at www.qmul.ac.uk/impactqm. 

Student satisfaction up in S&E Student satisfaction at Queen Mary is five percentage points above the national average, and there are particular improvements across the Science and Engineering Faculty, according to a nationwide survey of final year students.

The 2011 National Student Survey (NSS) results revealed Queen Mary is the best amongst the large London universities after it questioned UK undergraduates on various aspects of their student experience.

Queen Mary’s students’ satisfaction score has risen from 86 per cent in 2010 to 88 per cent in 2011. The University is now ranked 29th out of 184 higher education institutions for overall satisfaction, up 11 places from 2010.

The School of Engineering and Materials Science has seen particular

improvement in the ratings. Materials is ranked top in its sector, with overall satisfaction at 93 per cent - 20 percentage points above the national average.

Aerospace Engineering is placed second in its field and Mechanical Engineering equal fifth.

In other areas of the Science and Engineering Faculty, Biology has jumped up 17 places, whilst Chemistry is up 14 places, rated 95 per cent for student satisfaction and now ranking 10th in the country.

Professor Susan Dilly, QM’s VicePrincipal for Teaching and Learning, said: “This year’s NSS results are Queen Mary’s best yet, with improvements not just in overall satisfaction, but also teaching, assessment and feedback, organisation and management, learning resources and personal development.”

SE News is written and compiled by Siân Halkyard and Bridget Dempsey.

If you have any comments or ideas please email s.halkyard@qmul.ac.uk

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news

A makeover for FOGG and MATHS The summer saw a great deal of activity in the western edge of campus, as two of Science and Engineering’s longeststanding homes underwent a makeover.

The G.E. Fogg and Mathematical Sciences Buildings date back to the 1960s and 1970s and are a prominent landmark on the Mile End Road. The Maths building has suffered from a lack of space for undergraduate students to come together for many years, and the Fogg Building had become uneconomic to heat and many rooms suffered from solar glare.

With the Queen Mary campus now boasting several award-winning new builds, enhancing the identity of the two buildings was as important as addressing more practical considerations. The College worked with two award-winning architects to bring the buildings back to life.

Fraser Brown MacKenna Architects were engaged to develop a cladding scheme for the Fogg Building that prevented the concrete structure from further carbonation and corrosion, improved the thermal performance of the building, reduced maintenance costs and upgraded its dated image with a contemporary style.

The £4m project uses a striking new colour palette, which relates to the living organisms and plants which are studied in the building.

Viviana Vivanco, Associate at Fraser Brown MacKenna, explained: “By enhancing the building envelope and replacing the glazing we have extended the life of the building, improved user comfort and significantly reduced energy bills.”

Wilkinson Eyre Architects (who also designed the new Arts2 Building) worked on creating a new entrance lobby and social/study space for the School of Maths, along with the refurbishment of the Maths lecture theatre.

The single storey pavilion is clad with glass rainscreen panels, which wrap around the base of the existing building.

The shape of the panels has been inspired by a Penrose tiling pattern.

Sir Roger Penrose is a visiting professor in the School of Maths. His renowned tiling pattern is the first to exhibit fivefold rotational symmetry, and has applications in physics and chemistry.

The pavilion is now complete and the striking pattern has had a big visual impact on the Mile End road.

Further work is planned for the Maths Building, including improvements to the infrastructure of the building (heating and ventilation are first on the list), and in time, further refurbishment to enhance the working environment for staff and postgraduate students. 

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research news

Sexual orientation and gender conforming traits in women are genetic Sexual orientation and ‘gender conformity’ in women are both genetic traits, according to research from the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences.

It is well recognised that there are consistent differences in the psychological characteristics of boys and girls; for example, boys engage in more ‘rough and tumble’ play than girls do.

Studies also show that children who become gay or lesbian adults differ in such traits from those who become heterosexual – so-called gender nonconformity. Research which follows these children to adulthood shows that between 50 to 80 per cent of gender nonconforming boys become gay, and about one third of such girls become lesbian.

dr qazi rahman

Writing in the journal PLoS One, Dr Andrea Burri and Dr Qazi Rahman report that a shared set of genes and shared set of random environmental factors is partially responsible both for gender nonconformity and female sexual orientation.

The team followed a group of 4,000 British women who were one of a pair of twins. They were asked questions about their sexual attractions and behaviour, and a series of follow up questions about their gender nonconformity. In line with previous research, the team found modest genetic influences on sexual

orientation (25 per cent) and childhood gender nonconformity (31 per cent).

Dr Qazi Rahman, co-author of the study, explains: “We found that there is a connection between these mental traits and how sexual orientation develops. One idea is that there is an association between these psychological traits and sexual orientation because they all develop under common biological drivers; like the development of brain regions under the influence of genes and sex hormones.

“We think environmental factors and genetics drive other mechanisms, like exposure to sex hormones in the womb, to shape differences in gender nonconformity and sexuality simultaneously.” 

Newly discovered molecule essential to resetting ‘body clocks’ Research has shown that light is the key to getting our ‘body clocks’ back in sync and now a study exploring the resynchronisation mechanism in insects has discovered a molecule essential to the process.

Researchers from the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences looked at the impact of light on the circadian clocks (commonly known as ‘body clocks’) of fruit flies. They identified a novel molecule, QUASIMODO (QSM), which was intrinsically involved in relaying light-information to the flies’ inner clocks.

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Professor of Neurobiology Ralf Stanewsky, who led the research, explained: “Circadian clocks regulate rhythmic biological processes in many organisms. A famous example is our sleep/wake cycle.

“It is regulated by our internal clock, which tells us when to go to bed and when to wake up. If you bring your clock out of sync with the external time, for example when you fly from London to New York, your internal clock still sends you to sleep according to London time.

“This shows that we indeed have a timer in us and that this timer needs to be reset like a normal wrist watch when you move to a different time zone or if you’re a shift worker and need to adjust your sleep/wake cycles accordingly.”

The research was published in the journal Current Biology. 

research news

Kepler Listens to an Orchestra of Solar-Type Stars An international team measuring the properties of stars across the universe has been able to listen to sounds from 500 stars similar to the Sun, using data from the NASA Kepler Mission. in addition to its search for extrasolar planets, the nasa kepler mission is studying stars like our own sun through observations of gentle oscillations of the stars, the field of asteroseismology. these oscillations are the visible manifestation of sound waves trapped in the stellar interiors. photo g.perez, iac, smm

The team, which involves Dr Graham Verner from the School of Mathematical Sciences, used the data to measure the stars’ properties and will now be able to compare their findings with predictions based on models of the Milky Way galaxy.

The Kepler spacecraft is monitoring the brightness of more than 150,000 stars in the Cygner-Lyrae constellations of our galaxy.

Its data are being used to search for planets and also to monitor the natural oscillations of the stars, the field

of asteroseismology. The oscillations lead to miniscule changes or pulses in brightness, and are caused by sound trapped inside the stars.

Dr Verner said: “It’s been incredible to be able to measure and weigh the stars through the sounds they make – all from the data produced by the Kepler Mission. We will now be able to create a much more accurate picture of the stars in our galaxy.”

The team, which is part of one of the biggest international collaborations in astronomy, the Kepler Asteroseismic

Science Consortium (KASC), found 500 stars that ring like the Sun. Dr Hans Kjeldsen from Aarhus, who coordinates KASC, said: “Before Kepler we had asteroseismic data on only about 20 such stars. We now have an orchestra of stars to play with, and this opens up huge possibilities for probing stellar evolution and obtaining a clearer picture of the past and future of our own Sun and how our galaxy, and others like it, has evolved over time.”

The research was published in the journal Science. 

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research news

Dynamic duo research the calls of nature Goats’ vocal chords and deer mating habits are two of the major research publications from Dr Alan McElligott and Dr Elodie Briefer in the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences over the past few months.

The dynamic duo revealed that mother and kid goats recognise each other’s calls soon after the mothers give birth, in a paper published in Animal Cognition.

The research, carried out at White Post Farm in Nottinghamshire, found that mother and kid goats react more to the calls from their own kids and mothers than they do from other goats they know.

Dr Briefer said: “Goats in the wild have an antipredator strategy called ‘hiding’ where the young stay hidden in vegetation during the first week after being born to avoid being detected by predators.

“As hiders are isolated, they don’t move around a lot and are mostly silent to avoid detection from predators, we thought kid calls would not necessarily be individualised and therefore not easy to recognise.”

Dr Briefer and Dr McElligott measured the individuality of calls and the vocal recognition during this ‘hiding’ phase (one week old) and later on after they had joined the social group, at five weeks old. “We were surprised when we found that even at one week, both mothers and kids react more to calls from their own kids and mothers than those from other familiar goats,” Dr Briefer said.

A month earlier Dr Briefer and Dr McElligott confirmed female deer do not always choose the bigger and dominant males to mate with, in a study published in PLoS ONE. The research, in collaboration with scientists at Hartpury College, was conducted in Dublin’s Phoenix Park on a herd of fallow deer and focussed on

females who chose not to mate with the ‘top’ males.

The study found that yearling females tended to mate with a higher proportion of younger, lower ranking males while older females actively avoided mating with them.

Dr McElligott, co-author on the study, said: “The findings of this study have important implications for assessing the effects of sexual selection on evolution.

“In the past, studies very much focussed on the ‘big’ males in these types of species and why the vast majority of females mated with them.

We focussed instead on matings from the female perspective.”

Scientists demonstrated that yearling female fallow deer mate later in the breeding season than older females, with the first yearlings not mating until eight days after the start of the season.

“This difference in yearling female matings meant that a small but consistent proportion of them do not mate with the ‘big and dominant’ males each year." 

Wildlife in trouble from oil palm plantations, according to scientists Forest fragmentation driven by demand for palm oil is having a catastrophic effect on multiple levels of biodiversity, scientists from the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences have discovered.

The researchers are worried that unless steps are taken to safeguard and manage the remaining forest, then certain species will struggle to survive.

The study, which focused on bats as an indicator of environmental change, was published in one of the leading scientific journals, Ecology Letters.

The team conducted bat surveys in pristine forest and also in forest

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patches of varying size in central Peninsular Malaysia. They recorded the numbers of different species present and also assessed the level of genetic diversity within populations of some species.

Lead author Matthew Struebig, jointly based at Queen Mary University of London and the University of Kent, said: “We found that smaller forest areas support fewer species, and that those species that remain face an eventual decline, potentially leading to local extinction in the long-term.”

When the team compared the number of species present to genetic

diversity within populations they found that fragmentation appeared to have an even greater impact on genetic loss, which might also be important for long-term population viability.

“We found that in order to retain the numbers of bat species seen in pristine forest, forest patches had to be larger than 650 hectares, however to retain comparable levels of genetic diversity, areas needed to be greater than 10,000 hectares,” he said. 

research news

A safer treatment could be realised for millions suffering from parasite infection A safer and more effective treatment for 10 million people in developing countries who suffer from infections caused by trypanosome parasites could become a reality thanks to research from the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences.

Scientists have uncovered the mechanisms behind a drug used to treat African sleeping sickness and Chagas disease infections caused by trypanosome parasites which result in 60,000 deaths each year.

The study, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, investigated how the drug nifurtimox works to kill off the trypanosome.

Dr Shane Wilkinson, senior lecturer in the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences and co-author of

the study, said: “Hopefully our research will lead to the development of antiparasitic medicines which have fewer side effects than nifurtimox and are more effective.

“What we’ve found is that an enzyme within the parasites carries out the process nifurtimox needs to be converted to a toxic form. This produces a breakdown product which kills the parasite.

“This mechanism overturns the long-held belief that nifurtimox worked

Structure of nifurtimox

against the parasites by inducing oxidative stress in cells.”

Nifurtimox has been used for more than 40 years to treat Chagas disease (also known as American trypanosomiasis) and has recently been recommended for use as part of a nifurtimox-eflornithine combination therapy for African sleeping sickness (also called human African trypanosomiasis).

Dr Wilkinson and colleagues Dr Belinda Hall and Mr Christopher Bot focused their research on the characterisation of the breakdown product from nifurtimox.

“Understanding how nifurtimox kills trypanosomes may generate new and safer compounds which utilise the bioreductive activity of this parasitic enzyme,” Dr Wilkinson said. 

New technology holds the key to earlier diagnosis of heart disease A revolutionary digital stethoscope to help GPs spot the first signs of heart disease is being developed with the help of a team from the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science.

Professor Mark Plumbley led the group which developed computerbased technology to synchronise sounds from the new stethoscope with a human heartbeat.

The resulting analysis of the sounds (using ICA, otherwise known as independent component analysis, an existing technique which can only analyse heartbeats if they are presented as one sound) and graphical representation of the heartbeat is able to show any anomalies, giving GPs who aren’t experts in cardiac care a greater ability to spot heart disease in their patients.

Professor Plumbley said: “Heart disease is still the UK’s number-one killer. Our work here is making a vital contribution to an invention that will help GPs identify heart problems before they

become serious – even when patients come to surgery about a totally unrelated health matter. Early interventions not only help patients but also reduce the burden on healthcare resources.”

The new stethoscope, called DigiScope, is able to capture four heartbeat sounds one after the other, like a regular stethoscope. The technology developed by the Queen Mary team can transform the separate sounds into one which is integral for ICA to process.

The technology was unveiled at the 36th International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing in Prague on 25 May and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. 

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research news

Less radiation in Chernobyl lakes than feared

A study of the lakes in and around Chernobyl’s fallout zone reveals that radiation from the nuclear accident appears to have had no long-term effect on the abundance or diversity of aquatic animal life.

The research, which coincided with the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, examined invertebrate animals, such as insects, snails and crustaceans, living along the shores of eight lakes.

Levels of radiocaesium in the lakes ranged from near-background levels at 0.1 microGrays per hour, considered normal, to around 300 times higher.

No evidence was found that the abundance or diversity of the animal communities was influenced by direct contamination from the world’s worst nuclear accident 26 April 1986. Indeed, the most contaminated lake, Glubokoye, 6.5 km north of the nuclear power plant, supported the most animal diversity of those lakes studied.

The research was published in the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity and led by Dr John Murphy from the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, in conjunction with Dr Jim Smith from the University of

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Portsmouth, and Dr Liubov Nagorskaya of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.

The results of the lake-based research are significant because they contrast with previous studies of the region’s land-based and flying insects which reported a significant negative impact associated with radiation from Chernobyl.

Dr Murphy said: “Our study found no evidence that radioactive contamination from the Chernobyl accident has had a direct influence on the lakes’ aquatic invertebrates. We discovered over 230 species some of which are rare and endangered and even species that are thought to be particularly susceptible to high levels of radioactive contamination, such as freshwater snails, showed no response.

“This indicates that, twenty five years on, the radiation has not had a perceptible affect on the diversity and abundance of the region’s lake invertebrates.”

The study was carried out while both Dr Smith and Dr Murphy were based at the Natural Environment Research Council Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (www.ceh.ac.uk). 

Queen Mary scientists partner with broadcaster in audio research initiative A BBC-led research collaboration which will bring together the crème of UK audio experts, including scientists from Queen Mary, was launched in July.

The BBC Audio Research Partnership, which will see the corporation’s Research & Development group work in close collaboration with leading universities in the field of audio research and innovation, will last at least five years.

Professor Mark Plumbley from the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science commented: “Here at the Centre for Digital Music we’re very excited at the opportunity to work with the broadcaster on making their audio research partnership a great success. We will be helping them to develop ways of extracting information out of their extensive archives, making them more easily accessible to the public and streamlining their production process.”

Along with Queen Mary, the other academic partners include University of Surrey, University of Salford, University of Southampton and University of York; all are worldleaders in audio research. 

research news

Understanding what affects beauty through the pirouette of a dancer An in-depth analysis of a ballet dancer’s movements could hold the answer to how we distinguish whether someone has grace and beauty, researchers from the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science suggest.

A team of scientists from Queen Mary and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) worked with renowned Italian ballet dancer Roberto Bolle to capture his movements using a variety of new technologies in May 2011.

They were able to create a digital pixilated formation of Bolle using 3D body scanning, motion capture and digital conversions with the aim of studying the body in new ways.

“We know that people are sensitive to changes in human movements at the millimeter and millisecond level,” said Pat Healey, Professor of Human Interaction and lead for the Interaction, Media and Communication Research Group.

“Motion capture technologies make it possible, for the first time, to analyse human movements in full 3D at very high resolutions. Modeling human movements at this unprecedented level of detail can help us to understand what affects people’s perceptions of grace and beauty.”

The project, Dancing Atoms, was conducted at Queen Mary’s Pinter Studio where scientists converted Bolle into a digital copy. One million digital pieces of his body were created to form a full 3D, 360 degree copy. The body scanner mapped Bolle’s co-ordinates to replicate both his shape and colour.

Adam Pruden, project lead and research fellow with MIT’s SENSEable City Lab, said: “What better way to study the body than through the spatial mapping of a ballet dancer?

Greater analysis and understanding of our bodies in space is necessary as technology becomes more integrated into the building infrastructure, and as we increasingly use our bodies as an input to control objects around us.”

Bolle wore a black bodysuit with reflective markers on his body which allowed Queen Mary’s Vicon motion capture system to record his movement through space.

The Dancing Atoms project was developed by Adam Pruden and Carlo Ratti of SENSEable City Lab in collaboration with Roberto Bolle, Italy’s étoile ballet dancer; Pat Healey, Stuart Battersby, Arash Eshghi and Nicola Plant of The Interaction, Media and Communication Group at Queen Mary, University of London; KevStenning of Rapido3D; Sanders Hernandez and EunSun Lee of CMYK+WHITE. 

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research news

A step closer to solving one of the biggest mysteries in fundamental physics?

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kamioka observatory, icrr (institute for cosmic ray research), the university of tokyo

Scientists from the School of Physics and Astonomy are attempting to solve one of the biggest mysteries in fundamental physics, through their work on the international T2K neutrino experiment in Japan.

The latest intriguing results indicate a new property of the enigmatic particles known as neutrinos, and are an important step in discovering where all the matter in the universe came from.

Neutrinos or ‘ghost’ particles are very elusive and difficult to detect. They come in three types (flavours) called electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos, and tau neutrinos.

Previous experiments around the world have shown that these different flavours of neutrinos can spontaneously change into each other, a phenomenon called ‘neutrino oscillation’. Two types of oscillations have already been observed in previous experiments, but now the T2K experiment has observed evidence of a new third type of oscillation electron neutrinos in a muon neutrino beam.

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Dr Francesca Di Lodovico, who heads the Queen Mary neutrino group and leads our T2K team, explains: “These results show that neutrinos can oscillate in every way possible. This could play a crucial role in explaining why there is more matter than anti-matter in the universe - something which could not happen within the known laws of physics.

“This is exciting news, and rewards all our efforts in recent years. We are all eagerly waiting to observe more data soon!”

Queen Mary’s T2K group in the School of Physics has ten members of staff, and was among the pioneering institutions in the UK that joined T2K in 2004. The group has contributed to all aspects of the experiment, from the design phase to construction of the electromagnetic calorimeter, and now the analysis of the data. 

Method used in hunt for serial killers turns to killer diseases A tried and tested method used in the hunt for serial killers can help combat infectious steve le comber diseases, research from the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences reveals.

Geographical profiling, a statistical technique which uses the locations of crimes to identify areas in which the serial criminal is most likely to live and work, was originally developed to help police prioritise suspects. It has been successfully used by law enforcement agencies around the world, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Scotland Yard and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

New research by Dr Steven Le Comber has shown that this mathematical method can be used to map the locations of diseases to try and identify the source of the disease.

Dr Le Comber, in collaboration with scientists at the University of Miami and Ain Shams University in Cairo, as well as with the inventor of geographic profiling, former detective turned Professor of Criminal Justice Kim Rossmo from Texas State University, examined the 1854 cholera outbreak in London, and more recent cases of malaria in Cairo.

In both cases, geographic profiling successfully located the sources of the disease - the Broad Street pump in London, and the breeding habitats of the mosquito Anopheles sergentii in Cairo.

The findings were published in BioMed Central’s International Journal of Health Geographics. 

research news

Through the looking glass: physicists solve age-old problem A problem plaguing physicists across the globe for centuries has finally made a leap towards resolution.

The nature of glass has stumped scientists for years but now Dr Kostya Trachenko from the School of Physics has a novel theory to reignite the glass debate.

Glass has historically sat in an unknown classification territory, somewhere between being a liquid and a solid.

Its molecules are jumbled randomly, similarly to a liquid but moving a lot slower, to the point where they almost aren’t moving at all, in a similar state to a solid.

Many theorists have argued that glass must enter a phase transition at some point like water does in changing its state from liquid water into solid crystalline ice.

Dr Trachenko, together with his collaborator Professor Vadim Brazhkin from the Russian Academy of Science, took a fresh look at the physics debate and argued that glass is a liquid with no phase transition at all.

“It is difficult to think of glass as a liquid when it displays all the qualities of a solid – it is hard and it shatters when it breaks,” Dr Trachenko said.

“However, contrary to what has been previously thought, we propose that glass is not different from a liquid from a physical perspective, in that the differences between the glass and the liquid are only quantitative but not qualitative.”

Dr Trachenko and Professor Brazhkin decided to go back to the drawing board in order to explain the accumulated data in a new and non-controversial way.

“When matter, being it gas, liquid or solid, changes between its different phases, its properties change profoundly. A similar important change,

the jump of heat capacity, also happens during liquid-glass transition, which is why physicists thought there is some sort of a phase transition, between the liquid phase and the glass phase.

“However, there has been no evidence to support the existence of a distinct glass phase: we know that the glass and the liquid are nearly identical in terms of structure. It was this simple yet persisting controversy that was at the heart of the problem of glass transition.

“What we have shown is that you do not need to assume a new phase or a phase transition of sort to explain the jump of heat capacity. Instead, the mere fact that the liquid stops flowing at the experimental time scale necessarily results in the jump of heat capacity as well as the change of other important properties such as elasticity and thermal expansion. This, in essence, is our new and simple proposal to solve this oldstanding problem in physics.”

Dr Trachenko and his collaborator Professor Brazhkin published their findings in the flagship physics journal Physical Review, earlier this year. 

SEnews 11 AUTUMN 2011

student placements

QM STUDENTS Taking on the ‘real world’ The success of the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science Industrial Experience programme continues to grow with 11 students in Business Computing, Multimedia Computing and Computer Science courses securing 12-month placements in technology roles. Students started their placements during the summer with the following employers: London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Kurtosys, Nomura, IBM, ITRS Group, Credit Suisse, M&G Investments, and Shopping.com UK. Three third-year students, Anthony Schafer, Nicholas Ung and Shana Dacres, talk to SE News about what it’s like to use some of their knowledge in the ‘real world’.

nicholas ung

Nicholas Ung is studying a Bachelor of Computer Science (Hons) with Industrial Placement at M&G Investments.

How are you finding your placement?

It’s really good. I’ve never really worked in a professional environment before but I’ve found it pretty easy to settle in – it hasn’t been too hard.

What’s the organisation like?

The environment is pretty laid back.

I only have to be there between the hours of 9am and 5pm, whereas other students working at investment banks have to be at work a lot longer.

Everyone is really friendly and I’m really enjoying it. I can see myself coming back later on when I’ve finished my course. It seems like a really good place to work.

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Shana Dacres is studying a Bachelor of Business Computing (Hons) with Industrial Placement at IBM.

What are you doing?

My role is a developer intern and I report to the Head of Development.

I’m helping to consolidate different systems into one central system.

My manager said we’re the moneyspenders; the back office; whereas the front office are the money-makers.

We make sure we have the right systems in place so they are able to do their job properly.

How are you finding your placement?

It’s really good; I really like it.

What are the types of skills you’re developing?

I’m definitely improving my communication skills. I’m also using analysis skills, expanding my knowledge about the software in place and adapting it so we get the most out of it and it functions better. I really know my way around the software now! But it is really early days so I’m sure there are a number of skills I’ll come out with by the end of my placement.

What are you doing?

I’m working on a Transport for London programme as a Resource Manager in charge of risks and issues. Everyday is different. I’m taking on contractors and updating the risks and issues log.

How do you think this placement will help you find work?

I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my studies and this is a great way to find out how I can apply my knowledge. It gave me a bit more thinking time and the experience to take into my working life. I think it helps with job prospects because I’ve got experience on my CV that other graduates won’t have. I never really considered working in finance so I’m kind of trying it out to see if it suits me. I’m actually really enjoying it.

What’s the organisation like?

It’s very busy, fast-paced and there are lots of different business lines like consulting, programming and business management. I get to learn a lot.

What are the types of skills you’re developing?

I’m developing really good business skills and communications skills. I deal with a real range of different people from executives to everyday workstream managers. I’m looking to develop my technical skills like programming and working on applications development.

How do you think this placement will help you find work?

The knowledge gained in my placement will be of great benefit to me. It helps in understanding the change between university and the work environment. I will have better skills to offer future employers because of this placement.

student placements

“… this is not just work experience; I consider it as a once-in-a-lifetime experience” – third-year student Anthony Schafer

anthony schafer

Anthony Schafer is studying a Bachelor of Business Computing (Hons) with Industrial Placement at the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG).

How are you finding your placement?

I really like it. From the very first day I was impressed by the way the company is run. LOCOG is a great organisation in the way it integrates everyone; it doesn’t matter what their background is. In co-operation with ACER and other partners LOCOG is on the way to providing the most impressive Olympic and Paralympic games ever. I am really proud to be part of the team.

What’s the organisation like?

The number of employees grows every day. It is exciting to meet new people constantly - it gives me the opportunity to improve my interpersonal skills. There are many different departments with people from a wide range of nations. The environment is very friendly and the location is just amazing. The offices are located in Canary Wharf and the view from the 37th floor across East London and Olympic Park is just breath taking.

What are you doing?

At first I didn’t have very much responsibility and was doing only basic desktop support. I was trying to get to know the organisation and the people. During the test events I have been involved in many different activities like deploying, maintaining and decommissioning Acer hardware on site. This gave me the opportunity to work at interesting locations like Olympic Park, Earl’s Court, Wimbledon and Horse Guards Parade. Right now I’m back in the office and working on a project where hundreds of laptops are being updated. This involves a lot of customer service, task planning and time management, but also technical knowledge. I now have the responsibility of leading this project, which is a huge difference in tasks compared to the beginning of my placement.

How do you think this placement will help you find work?

As I said previously, interpersonal skills are very important to be successful within an organisation.

This placement, and especially this company, gives me a perfect opportunity to develop those skills.

And this is not just work experience; I consider it as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I am pretty sure that there are going to be other placements out there after I finish my university, but this placement is unique. I believe it will help me stand out from the crowd in the job market. I’m also looking forward to the Sochi Games 2014.

I think with my degree, Olympic operations experience and Russian as my mother tongue, I will have a pretty good chance to get a job over there.

What are the types of skills you’re developing?

I’ve developed an understanding of how different departments work together. The technical knowledge is important of course, but I have also discovered it is essential to learn how to interact with people on a professional level. I would say that those interaction skills are really important to be successful within an organisation. The knowledge I gained in the last two years at Queen Mary helped me a lot. Although my placement does not include any programming, I can use and extend my technical knowledge every day.

AUTUMN 2011 SEnews 13

QAPPS

If you’rE ‘appy and you know it...

From Angry Birds to Facebook and youtube, the world of smartphone apps seems to provide a gadget or distraction for every walk of life. But with so many apps to chose from, and so many more coming on the market every day, what makes an app stand out?

And what role can universities like Queen Mary play in their development?

A team of academics from the Faculty of Science and Engineering are taking a unique approach to app development, by creating applications based on cutting-edge research from across the Faculty.

One of the first ventures of its kind in the UK, QApps is the brain child of Professor Peter McOwan, who for a number of years has supervised projects developing smart phone apps.

Professor McOwan joined forces with Queen Mary Innovation Ltd (QMI), our in-house specialist knowledge transfer company, to develop the framework for establishing app development and deployment in a university environment.

Launched at the end of September 2011, the venture now works to distribute smart phone and social networking apps produced by students and staff from across the College.

“These days impact, getting our ideas out and making a difference in the world, is increasingly important,” explains Professor McOwan. “I wanted to ensure that clever concepts from the creative minds here at Queen Mary had an easy to use route to be released into the world, and with the ever resourceful help of QMI’s Adam Daykin we created this doorway in Qapps.”

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Dr Adam Daykin, Senior Technology Transfer Manager at Queen Mary, adds: “It’s been great to be part of this new type of venture for QMI. QApps represents a progressive approach to commercialising the ideas of the Queen Mary students and staff which embraces a new digital era.”

As well as working with students and research teams at Queen Mary, QApps has also teamed up with Always on Message, an award-winning smartphone development company, to help bring the apps to market with maximum impact.

Always on Message is a recognised award winning market leader in smartphone and tablet apps; focusing on the iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry platforms. MD Peter Swain is an industrial advisor to QApps and will be guest lecturing to Queen Mary students. His involvement has been key to the initial success of QApps.

He commented on the collaboration: “There can be a gap between education and the ‘real world of business’ and the responsibility to bridge this gap falls to, not only the educational sector, but also specialist businesses.”

The next phase in the venture will see the team focus on two areas: apps originating from Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) projects; and healthcare apps originating from the School of Medicine and Dentistry.

If you think your research could lend itself to a smartphone app, then get in touch with the QApps team by contacting a.daykin@qmul.ac.uk

QAPPS

SmartCoach SmartCoach is designed for the Sunday league football manager, coach or enthusiast.

Users can collect the statistics from their team’s performance during the game, and rate the players. Using this information, the

smart functionality of the app then provides a recommended training plan to improve team performance. The iPhone app was developed as a final year MSci project by student Shabbir Naqvi in EECS. 

Sentimental: Feel the Tweets in your Streets Sentimental has been developed by Dr Stuart Battersby and Dr Matthew Purver from EECS as part of their commercial venture, Chatterbox Analytics. Part-funded by the Queen Mary Innovations Prospects Fund and distributed in

partnership with QApps, Sentimental detects an area’s local sentiment using data from Twitter. Put simply, Sentimental tells people how happy people are around them, and what they are happy about. 

Eyes&Seek Do you fail to notice when a friend has a new haircut or is wearing new clothes?

This phenomenon is known as change blindness. Eyes&Seek is a quantitative ‘spot the difference’ competition which measures a user’s change blindness by switching between two near identical images

M2DS M2DS is an educational tool for doctors to assist them with understanding the risk of fictional scenarios. The app includes a multiple choice risk assessment tool and Sepsis Screening tool.

with have a discrete area of difference. This app uses a proprietary algorithm developed by Dr Milan Verma while he was a PhD student in EECS, and was developed into the released android phone app as part of a final year student project by Aditya Chikara. 

M2DS was developed at the Centre for Risk for Heathcare Research and Practice at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, with input and guidance from experts in the field of assessing clinical risk. 

Fame Factors Are you as dashing as George Clooney, or as glamorous as Angelina Jolie? Fame Factors uses a mathematical formula known as the Golden Ratio to calculate the proportions of your face, and then compares the results to

those from a database of celebrity pictures, to tell you how you compare in the attractiveness stakes.

This software was developed by research on facial perception in the EECS Vision Group. 

www.qappsonline.com SEnews 15 AUTUMN 2011

awards and achievements

‘Bone healing’ materials engineer wins top engineering award Dr Karin Hing, a medical materials engineer, who pioneered a form of bone graft with enhanced structure and chemistry to boost healing, scooped a top award in May for successfully taking her innovation into the marketplace.

Dr Hing was awarded one of four 2011 Silver Medals by the Royal Academy of Engineering for being the “technical linchpin” behind an orthobiologics company sold recently for more than £200m.

Karin, used her research into the bioactivity of bone graft substitutes materials used in orthopaedic surgery as scaffolds for guided bone regeneration - to develop the hypothesis that bone healing could be enhanced through optimisation of both graft pore structure and chemistry, and invented a novel production route for the manufacture of these pore structures.

In 1999, Karin was one of a handful of founding scientists who began engaging with venture capitalists in order to advance the technology. In

dr karin king

2001, ApaTech was formed and it was not long before grafts with these innovative structures (ApaPore™) went into clinical use and were quickly adopted for bone repair. In 2005, a second product with enhanced chemistry, Actifuse™ also went into use, delivering better and more cost-effective results than previous devices.

In the 10 years before ApaTech was sold for £200m, Karin had helped it grow to employ 160 people in nine countries with an annual revenue of £40m. In that time, more than 120,000 patients had been treated with ApaTech products.

Karin is only the third woman to receive the Academy’s Silver Medal. 

Dr Akram Alomainy presents Isambard Kingdom Brunel Award Lecture This year’s British Science Festival has honoured Dr Akram Alomainy from the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, with an Isambard Kingdom Brunel Award Lecture.

Dr Alomainy was one of five professional scientists in the early stages of their career to be chosen to give an Award Lecture at this year’s festival, which was held in Bradford in September. The popular lectures aim to promote open and informed discussion on issues involving science.

Dr Alomainy discussed how electronic engineers can apply their physics and engineering skills to create materials which can make objects invisible in a talk entitled The Magic of Harry Potter!

Can We Make Cloaking A Reality?

He said: “Invisibility was once contained in the pages of fiction books.

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news AUTUMN 2011

Now, with the excellent research led by Professor Yang Hao and the innovative research team in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, invisibility could become a reality.

“The applications of such technology could range from advanced military solutions to efficient sensing for healthcare and medical treatments.”

Professor Peter McOwan, Dean for Taught Programmes in Science and Engineering, nominated Dr Alomainy to present the esteemed Award Lecture.

He said: “It’s fitting Akram was recognised with an Award Lecture at the festival. He has made outstanding contributions to his field at such an early stage in his career and is very talented in explaining his research to a wider audience.” 

Dr Michael Proulx awarded Drapers’ Award Dr Michael Proulx from the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences has been awarded a prestigious Drapers’ Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Dr Proux was nominated for the award by his students, one of whom commented: “He is the most supportive and inspiring lecturer I have had. His teaching style gives the best possible grounding for independent research, challenging students to think of further possibilities and ideas beyond current research.”

The Drapers’ Award was presented at Graduation over the summer.

Dr Proulx commented: “My primary teaching objective is to transform the way students think about the world: I want them to learn to think like a psychological scientist, both critically and independently. I find the challenge of teaching to be invigorating. The students will rise to any intellectual challenge, and their insights can even provide new directions for my research.

Dr Proulx joins previous winners in the Faculty, including Dr Caroline Brennan (SBCS), Dr Paul Curzon (EECS), Professor Peter Cameron (Maths), and Dr Brendan Curran (SBCS). 

dr michael proulx

outreach news

Face Science meets Robot Science at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition

dr richard garriott

Space for Health: Get Fit and Aim Higher Astronaut Dr Richard Garriott visited Queen Mary in July to promote healthy lifestyles and careers in science and medicine, and to recieve his honorary Doctorate at the summer graduation ceremonies.

More than one hundred teenagers from nine schools in Hackney, Newham, and Tower Hamlets met Dr Garriott, a multi-millionaire computer games entrepreneur and private space participant, at the event at Centre of the Cell, Queen Mary’s award-winning children’s education centre.

Garriott is the sixth private citizen to fly in Earth’s orbit; he shared the secrets of his career success with students, as well as giving an inside view of what it is like to train like an astronaut and to venture into space.

Professor Peter McOwan, Dean for Taught Programmes in Science and Engineering, commented: “It’s always great fun to work with Richard and our local schools in promoting science and medicine.” www.our-space.org 

New methods of studying face perception that could help scientists to create the next generation of lifechanging software and robots went on show at the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition in July.

Your brain processes lots of tiny and subtle clues about faces whenever you interact with other people, and scientists from the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science are investigating whether robots and computers can learn to do the same thing.

The team showcased some of the latest research from the EU funded LIREC project, which aims to create socially aware companion robots and graphical characters. Visitors were able to see how the brain understands faces, what their faces look like when they switch gender, how to transfer motions from one person’s face to another and see state of the art computer vision systems that can recognise facial expressions.

The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition is the Society’s main public event of the year and is open to members of the general public as well as students and teachers, scientists, policymakers and the media. It provides a unique opportunity for members of the public to interact with scientists and ask them questions about their work. 

Illusioneering reveals secret science behind amazing magic tricks A magical new educational website for schools, which allows students and teachers to explore the range of secret science and engineering behind a series of amazing magic tricks was launched during the summer.

Illusioneering (www.illusioneering.org) is the brainchild of Faculty researchers, and is led by Professor Peter McOwan.

He explains: “This fun new website shows the entertaining magic tricks you can do using hidden chemistry, physics, mathematical and engineering principles.

It’s a fun way discover fascinating facts through learning magic tricks.”

The site features video demonstrations and free to download instructions for teachers.

Matt Parker, stand-up mathematician and co-Illusioneering-developer said “Magicians have always used the latest

Mathematics, Science and Engineering to perform amazing tricks. It’s great to see students so enthused about these subjects when they realise they can use them to amaze and annoy their friends and family.”

The project is supported by the National HE STEM Programme, which supports Higher Education Institutions in the exploration of new approaches to recruiting students and delivering programmes of study within the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines.

Visit the Illusioneering site at: www.illusioneering.org 

AUTUMN 2011 SEnews 17

in the news

Communicating your research in the media Ever wondered why you see some of your colleagues in the media? Maybe you have seen ‘experts’ from other universities commenting on the latest developments within your research area? Is it time you got involved and raised your profile and that of your research, both nationally and internationally?

Queen Mary is obliged to tell the public, a major stakeholder, about the innovative research its academics are working on. Indeed, many research grant contracts contain a clause that requires academics to promote their findings.

“It is important we showcase the amazing research being done across the Science and Engineering Faculty,” says Professor Wen Wang, Science and Engineering’s Dean for Research.

“We need to raise our profile, not only as a College, but also as a Faculty and one of the best ways we can do that is through increasing our impact in the media.”

The landscape of the higher education sector has changed and universities are in fierce competition to attract the brightest students.

“Having your research appear across a variety of media will engage with a number of different people. We need to be seen in as many different ways as possible to help encourage our nation’s brightest students to come to Queen Mary,” Professor Wang said.

“The national newspapers have many different audiences, as does Radio 4 and social media applications such as Facebook. But all of them will engage people in different ways and we need to use the Communications Office to help disseminate our research in the best way.”

Stories covered in the mass media have the potential to shape public opinion, encourage debate and influence policy – perhaps provoking interest from potential collaborators and funders. So isn’t it time you got involved?

18 SEnews AUTUMN 2011

What do you need to consider?

Here are some things you need to consider when you’re in the process of getting your paper published: • Does this research have broad appeal or does it suit a more specific group of people?

• Can I turn my research into everyday language that a teenager could understand?

• Have I got in touch with the Communications Office about my research?

If you haven’t worked with the media before, don’t worry; the Communications team can walk you through the steps and give you some practice before you talk to a journalist.

Some handy tips for dealing with the media are available online at: www.qmul.ac.uk//media/downloads/ mediaguide/36431.pdf and feel free to contact 118 at any time to discuss your research by phoning 020 7882 3004. Someone will be at the other end to help take your research out to the masses for everyone to enjoy. 

“We need to raise our profile, not only as a College, but also as a Faculty and one of the best ways we can do that is through increasing our impact in the media”

professor wen wang

in the news

changes your Augmented reality mirror arch Professor Ebroul Izquierdo and rese en Que student Vlado Kitanovski from research Mary’s Multimedia and Vision reality ted men ‘aug an ted group have debu res to featu your mirror’ that lets you alter or’ is ‘mirr change the way you look. The

custom a webcam hooked to a PC with of the el mod 3D a tes software that crea s the warp then user ’s face. The software ller. sma features, making them bigger or

reporting New Scientist covered the story ications appl ty reali d ente that other augm

face on the fly

world layer virtual objects onto the realy’. ‘jitter es imag video, which can make the be d coul There are hopes that the tool surgery used as a visual aid for plastic phones in er pow g essin and, when proc app. ne develops, as a smartpho

Naked mole rat blueprint revealed

R

esearchers from the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, in partnership with a team from the University of Liverpool, have made a first draft of the naked mole rat’s genome in an attempt to understand why the strange looking creature can often live for more than 30 years.

The BBC reported that gene sequencing technology allowed the team to use chemical scissors to ‘snip out’ long strands of the mole rat’s DNA code. Shorter parts of the code could then be read and ‘jigsawed’ back

together into the complete genome.

Queen Mary is home to the UK’s only naked mole rat colony, which is native to the deserts of East Africa.

Dr Chris Faulkes told the BBC that the “genome will be a valuable research tool”.

“We’re interested in how the animals evolved their amazing social behaviour. They live in groups of up to 300 animals and each group has a [reproductively active] queen who can ‘switch off’ the reproduction in other animals.” These findings will allow

Dr Faulkes and his team to find any features of the rats’ brains that might drive these unusual social bonds and behaviour.

Bayes’ theorem: A formula for just ice Professor Norman Fenton from the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science has, in the last four years, been an expert witness in six court cases, using the statistical tool Bayes’ theorem to calculate the odds of one event happening given the odds of other related events. His work was covered

by the Guardian’s G2 Supplement in October.

Judges have shown hostility toward using formulae in the future, with one recently deciding that Bayes’ theorem should not be used again unless the underlying statistics are “firm”. Forensic experts have expressed

concern that miscarriages of justice will occur as a result. “The impact will be quite shattering,” says Professor Fenton. Professor Fenton and Amber Marks have begun assembling a group of statisticians, forensic scientists and lawyers to research a solution to bad statistics.

Why the warming climate makes animals smaller Dr Andrew Hirst and Dr Jack Forster from the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences spoke to New Scientist in September about their work. Their research has

found that copepods (small, freshwater crustaceans) grow faster at different temperatures. Dr Hirst found that as temperatures rose, the copepods got heavier

faster but they also got to adulthood quicker, so their quick growth ended at a young age. As a result, the warmer crustaceans were smaller. Dr Hirst believes that

evolution favours organisms that are flexible in how fast they mature to adulthood as it increases their chances of reproducing before they are killed.

AUTUMN 2011 SEnews 19

new faces

New Faces in Science and Engineering The Faculty is committed to establishing itself as one of the leading science & engineering faculties in the UK, with our research, teaching and outreach activities impacting both nationally and internationally. Maintaining the high calibre of our staff by recruiting exceptional new talent is a crucial component in achieving this objective.

In the S&E strategic plan we set the ambitious goal of recruiting a minimum of 25 professors and 45 new lecturers in the period 2010-14. In the past academic year we have made a number of appointments as part of this strategy.

Professor Jeremy Kilburn commented: “We are delighted to have attracted so many exceptionally high calibre individuals to the Faculty. Their hugely diverse range of research interests and academic backgrounds will add significantly to the breadth and quality of research and teaching at Queen Mary.”

Professor Elaine Chew joined the Centre for Digital Music in 2011.

An operations researcher and pianist by training, her research activities aim to explain and demystify the phenomenon of music and its performance through the use of formal scientific methods.

As a scientist/engineer, Elaine Chew designs mathematical models and computational techniques to analyse music and its performance; as a pianist, she has performed widely as a proponent of contemporary eclectic repertoire.

Her research activities aim to de-mystify music and its performance, and include modelling of music cognition, expressive gestures and decisions, and ensemble coordination dynamics, with an emphasis on analytical models and intuitive visualizations. She hopes to build bridges to arts organizations and create concerts in which interactive visualizations explain music structure and performance choices.

Professor Chew commented on her appointment: “I hope to discover and forge deep connections between the musical arts and cutting-edge science and technology, and to find good colleagues with whom to do this.”

Professor Martin Dove, Director of the new Centre for Condensed Matter and Materials Physics (CCMMP) joined Queen Mary in 2011 from Cambridge where he was Professor of Computational Mineral Physics.

The new Centre that Martin leads will have a focus on understanding the relationship between atomic structure and materials properties, with a new emphasis on emerging experimental and computational techniques to increase understanding of the role of short-range order and local structure.

Professor Dove commented: “Since I joined the School we have enhanced the materials modelling efforts through some new staff appointments, and have recently become members of the Thomas Young Centre, a loose collaboration between the major materials simulation groups in London.

He added: “These are early days of course, but this is an exciting development for the School and for Queen Mary.”

Dr Gregory Chass has been appointed as Senior Lecturer in Computational Chemistry and joined in September 2011. Dr Chass was born and raised in Toronto, Canada and held post-doctoral positions in a variety of North America and European countries and visiting professorships in Asia. His research focus is on the continued development of Systems Chemistry through ‘case study’ sub-projects in catalysis, and his teaching interests include Surface Science and Colloids, Synchrotron and Neutron Spectroscopy, as well as Physical and Theoretical Chemistry.

Professor Yan Fyodorov was appointed as Professor of Applied Probability and Mathematical Physics in 2011.

He started his career at the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, and has since worked at the Universities of Essen, Brunel and Nottingham. His research interests are mainly centred on applications of random matrix theory to mathematical and theoretical physics of disordered systems, both

classical and quantum. He is regarded as a world leading expert on random matrix theory and its applications and on supermatrix nonlinear sigma models.

His research was distinguished with the Institute Henri Poincaré prize in 1998, the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award (2006), and the Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2008).

Other new faces in the Faculty include: School of Engineering and Materials Science Dr Julien Gautrot, Lecturer Dr Russell Binions, Lecturer Dr Haixue Yan, Academic Fellow Dr Emiliano Bilotti, Research Fellow School of Physics and Astronomy Dr Alston Misquitta, Lecturer in Condensed Matter and Materials Physics Dr Anthony Phillips, Academic Fellow in Condensed Matter and Materials Physics Dr Alan Drew, Lecturer in Condensed Matter and Materials Physics Dr Brian Wecht, Lecturer in Theoretical Physics, Centre for Research in String Theory Dr Marcella Bona, Lecturer in Experimental Particle Physics, Particle Physics Research Centre Dr Jeanne Wilson, Senior Lecturer in Experimental Particle Physics, Particle Physics Research Centre School of Mathematical Sciences Vito Latora, Professor of Applied Mathematics (Complex Systems) Sasha Gnedin, Professor of Applied Probability Dr Konstantin Ardakov, Reader in Pure Mathematics Dr Adrian Baule, Lecturer in Applied Mathematics/Financial Mathematics Dr David Ellis, Lecturer in Pure Mathematics Dr Behrang Noohi, Lecturer in Pure Mathematics School of Biological and Chemical Sciences Dr Yannick Wurm, Lecturer in Bioinformatics/ Phylogenetics School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science Dr Felix Cuadrado, Lecturer in Networks Dr Maged Elkashlan, Lecturer in Networks Dr Chrisantha Fernando Dr Hatice Gunes, Lecturer in Digital Media Dr Hamed Haddadi, Lecturer in Digital Media Dr Andrew McPherson, Lecturer in Digital Media Dr Marcus Pearce Dr Khaled Rajab Professor Steve Uhlig, Professor of Networks Professor Geraint Wiggins, Professor of Computer Science