Thought Leadership Event: Professor Mike Payne on “How on earth did I end up doing this?”

Date: 23 June 2020, 11:00 – 12 noon BST

Speaker: Professor Mike Payne, Cavendish Lab, University of Cambridge

Title: How on earth did I end up doing this?”

Professor Mike Payne from the world famous Cavendish Lab, University of Cambridge presented our latest thought leadership event. 

Mike took us on a tour of his career – which he honestly said wasn’t the career he planned!

Talking about Quantum mechanical modelling; Developing methodology; the commercialisation of CASTEP (Cambridge Sequential Total Energy Package) and the key influencers who have made the biggest impacts on his career. Mike also talked about relationships between academia and industry and how important this is, including his involvement with Cambridge Enterprise, where he advises academics about technology transfer.  He also explained how Pembroke College has made their Corporate Partnership Programme scheme a success and where BT is the longest standing partner – of which Mike is BT’s corporate Fellow.

Please get in touch if you would like to explore the world of physics with Mike Payne  or Sarah Mackenzie

Researcher Profiles: All in One View

Researcher Profiles

Tommy Flowers Network is putting the focus on the future research leaders. On our blog we are providing a forum to introduce themselves and their work.

If you wish to publish with us, please get in touch through

• Our publication request form
• Email

The list is in alphabetical order by first name

Abdirazak Rage University of Surrey, "Creating Value for Economies" NG-CDI Panel

Daniel O'Connor, UCL, Lightning Talk on "Quantum annealing for network optimisation"

Davide Ferraris, University of Malaga: 'To give trust measurement a key role on IoT systems, considering trust in the whole IoT System Life Cycle from the early to the final stages of a System development.'

Eleanor Crane, UCL/IBM, Lightning Talk on: "From two qubit entangling gates to quantum algorithms, and the steps in-between

Frank Carver, University of Suffolk, Lightning Talk on "What do Software Developers Know About Sustainability?"

Hannah Steventon, University of Suffolk, Lightning Talk on "Smarter Suffolk: Sensors and data for public services"

Kakia Chatsiou, University of Essex, Lightning Talk on "Political text classification using Neural Networks"

Kyle Martin, Robert Gordon University, "Creating Value for Economies" Maximising the Value of Research

Maharishi Dhada University of Cambridge, "Creating Value for Economies" NG-CDI Panel

Pradeep Debata University of Cambridge, "Creating Value for Economies" NG-CDI Panel

Reginald Ankrah, formerly, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen: 'Specialised planning and risk-modelling algorithms focused on key aspects of network design'.

Sam Tickle, formerly University of Leeds: 'Efficient changepoint detection for data streams'.

Will Fantom, University of Lancaster, "Creating Value for Economies" NG-CDI Panel

Yu-Tun Lin, University of East Anglia, Lightning Talk on "Physically Plausible Spectral Reconstruction"

Thought Leadership Events: All in One View

Thought Leadership Events

Organised by the BT Academic and Research Partnerships team those live presentations feature world class researchers, opening insights into hot topics of the IT sector.

They are streamed and recorded via TEAMs and registration is required to attend the event. The links below will lead you to the individual pages.

Ongoing

• Essex University Series. Please visit the overview page with registration links and recordings

 

Ongoing

• New Series on "NG-CDI: Next Generation Converged Digital Infrastructure"
• To come in 2021
• Anomaly detection (January 2021) TBA
• Culture and governance (February 2021) TBA
• Ambitious deep learning, resource optimisation (March 2021) TBC
• Previously
• Dr Ajith Parlikad on "Intelligent Asset Management for Service Assurance & Infrastructure Management"
• Prof Nicolas Race on "Next Generation Converged Digital Infrastructure (NG-CDI)"
• Prof Ning Wang, Dr Charalampos Rotsos, Peter Willis on “Intent-Based Networking”

Previously

• Prof John McCall, National Subsea Centre, Robert Gordon University on "Energy Transition: Transforming the North Sea Supply Chain"
• Dr Sandy Brownlee, University of Stirling on "Improving trust in the results of search-based optimisation"
• Prof M Jones, Prof D Archambault, Prof X Xie, Computational Foundry at Swansea University on "Data Visualisation Techniques"
• Prof Mike Payne, University of Cambridge, The Cavendish Lab, on "How on earth did I end up doing this?"
• Chris Golding, Durham University business School, on Emotion: "The key to innovation?"
• Dr Fumiya Iida, University of Cambridge, on "Agri-Food Robot Revolution"
• Russell Beck, ImagineThinkDo, on the "Future of Work"
• Dr Madeline Cheah, Horiba Mira, on "Cybersecurity for Future Mobility"
• Dr Hazel Harrison, Think Avellana, on "How can Technology enhance our mental health as we age"

Posters Galore: All in One View

Posters Galore!

Following the cancellation of our Spring 2020 conference decided to making use of the fantastic Poster contributions we received and to publish them here.

And we would like to keep it going!

If you wish to publish with us, please get in touch through

• Our publication request form
• Email

Teoco

• 'Artificial Intelligence and Quantum computing in Wireless Networks: Within and Beyond' Rishi Raj

GAIUS Networks 

• GAIUS: Powering hyperlocal content ad ecosystems for communities', Arjuna Sathiaseelan

University of York

• 'Deploying and scaling models in Data science', Panagiotis Kourouklidis

Robert Gordon University

• 'Ensemble-Based Data Relationship Discovery Framework in Supply Chain Business Processes', Akinola Ogunsemi

University of East Anglia

• 'Improved detection of nuisance calls in-network using machine learning techniques', Matthew Middlehurst

University of Lancaster

• Detecting Emergent Phenomena within Streaming Data', Edward Austin

University of Essex

• 'Wideband RF Over Fibre/IP', Matthew Evans
• 'A Statistical Framework for the UK's Mobile Network', Dave Townend
• 'Securing Software Defined Networks Through Blockchain Technology', Dr Jiejun Hu
• 'Exploiting Mixed-Reality Technologies for Interacting with BIM models to Assist Onsite Activities', Hugo Leon-Garza
• 'BT Order Journey Data', Mahsa Abazari Kia

University of Suffolk

• 'Do You Know The Impact of Your Software Choices?' , Frank Carver 
• 'Smarter Suffolk: sensors and data for public services' , Dr Hannah Steventon and Prof Nicholas Caldwell

BT

• 'Converged QoE Network Forensics', Achilles Petras
• 'IoT for Assisted Living', Matt Wallwork

Making Something Wonderful - University Essex Final Year Projects

A quick Sneak Peek into Final year Computer Science student Projects at University of Essex

Targeting industry collaborators, IET and interested parties, School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at University of Essex released an abstract booklet and electronic poster video summarizing a range of fascinating final year student projects, including:

• Smart Robots for Smart Homes
• FrutiBots (Strawberry Picking robots)
• Development of Switched beam microstrip loop antenna
• Predicting the judiciary decision of European court of human rights
• Coral Detection and Modelling
• Online collaborative games
• MediControl-Saving time and Lives for East of England Ambulance service
• VR Interactive brain visualization
• Identifying Cyberbullying

The 2019-20 academic year saw the largest number of projects undertaken in both scale (230 projects) and diversity (spanning a number of areas including Game design, Robotics, Artificial intelligence, Mobile app development, Data science, IoT, Industrial Assembly, Communications, Cybersecurity, Brain computer interfaces to mention a few ). The projects reflect both the extreme hard work undertaken by the students over the year and the Schools Motto of "Making Something Wonderful" and ‘Useful’ for humanity.

The School traditionally hosts a project open day event in April where students present their work directly to industry colleagues and visitors, through posters and live demos. Since the event could not be held this year, the school thought of reaching out to the industry nevertheless, though a booklet of abstracts and a video containing e-posters of each student project, which includes short introductions from the module coordinators.

You can download the booklet of abstracts here

The posters appear on the video in the same order laid out in the booklet:

Posters Galore: 'Converged QoE Network Forensics'

Achilles Petras, BT

Achilles Petras, BT

Email

Converged 4G/5G/Fixed connectivity requires joining the dots amongst multiple monitoring platforms & data sources across Mobile & Fixed networks. This is in order to deliver data analytics and holistic insights into network performance & end user experience. 

In the BT Converged QoE Research team, we have achieved this by exploring both active and passive monitoring tools & instrumentation. The derived data are combined, analysed and visualised to provide different views on how existing and future converged services, like Fixed Wireless and Hybrid Access, perform. 

We help Ops, Architects and Product managers understand KPIs & performance characterisation via PoCs and trials of new emerging technology, thus driving product strategy. Our insights, backed by expert knowledge of QoE, QoS, network performance and traffic management principles, strengthen BT’s position a

View the poster here
View more posters and videos

Posters Galore: 'Artificial Intelligence and Quantum computing in Wireless Networks: Within and Beyond'

Rishi Raj, Teoco

Rishi Raj, Teoco

Email

Wireless networks, such as 5G, is advancing to provide faster throughput and minimizing latency. Networks are getting more complex and it needs smarter ways to deliver an optimum capability of the network in reality. 

Therefore, it is critical to understand the need for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Quantum computing (QC) within the Network Architecture. This is to provide the required capability for beam management, resource management, and interference management. 

The subsequent wireless network needs to be self-predictive and proactive to handle futuristic applications like holographic communication, haptic feedback, or any latency dependent application. Radio frequency itself is a dynamically changing component, therefore rather having fixed rules it should prefer to have a dynamically adaptable network. 

Today, the main challenge in the modern wireless network is to have constant knowledge of the radio environment - including multipath propagation of MIMO channels - especially with the introduction of Narrow beams in higher frequency (tracking of beams will be a challenge). But with an increasing number of beams and different kind of users - apart from mobile users like vehicle to vehicle communication, holographic communication, and haptic feedback - it will be very difficult just with the CSI (Channel State Information) and SRS (Sounding Reference Signal) reports constantly from the devices with changing radio environment. 

View the poster here
View more posters and videos

Posters Galore: 'GAIUS: Powering hyperlocal content ad ecosystems for communities'

Arjuna Sathiaseelan
GAIUS Networks

Arjuna Sathiaseelan, GAIUS Networks 
Email

The World Wide Web (WWW) is facing two critical issues:  
1. increasingly centralised with a few organisations controlling majority of users' data and hence global ad revenue.  
2. Centralised cloud infrastructures induces significant latency and performance issues for users in rural/remote areas with challenged backhaul - a misnomer for UK's 5G story.  

In this poster, I want to showcase the potential of building Decentralised Hyperlocal Web for communities in the UK using our GAIUS platform - a decentralised content ad exchange platform that can fully function at any edge. Each GAIUS server sits at the edge of a community (e.g. on the MEC) serving highly localised content and ads specific to a particular community. Users in a community can create, interact and transact with hyperlocal content through their mobile device. Businesses and organisations (e.g. schools, local government bodies etc) in a community can promote their product offerings and services within their own community. A major focal point of the GAIUS platform is that the data is governed and owned by the community.  

The GAIUS platform will demonstrate a new usecase for MEC: how operators can empower communities to create, interact and transact with hyperlocal content and ads at the operator's edge especially in rural areas. Apart from creating a new usecase (& potential revenue stream), GAIUS empowers operators to potentially fulfil their CSR requirements by supporting local community needs and facilitating local community engagement and social cohesion as well as addressing the major concern of data privacy 

View the poster here
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Posters Galore: 'Deploying and scaling models in Data science'

Panagiotis Kourouklidis
University of York 

Panagiotis Kourouklidis, University of York
Email

In recent years, commoditisation of computing and digital storage resources has allowed businesses to extract insights from the data generated by their operations at a scale not witnessed before. Additionally, thanks to advances in the field of AI, a number of tasks that previously required human labour can now be automated. Of course, human labour is still needed in order to develop the system that is going to complete the aforementioned tasks.

The development of such a system starts with a data scientist producing a model, usually by using machine learning techniques and a training dataset. Unfortunately, the model produced by the data scientist is not the only component needed for a production-ready system that can run reliably. Usually, after the model has been produced it is passed on to a team of software engineers so that they build the rest of the system around it. Components of this kind of system include data gathering, cleaning and transformation as well as model deployment and performance monitoring.

The ongoing goal of the presented research project is to develop a framework that can streamline the development of the above components and can be used by a person not necessarily well versed in software engineering. That will allow data scientists to develop systems that are closer to being production-ready while reducing their reliance on software engineering teams.

View the poster here
View more posters and videos

Posters Galore: 'Ensemble-Based Data Relationship Discovery Framework in Supply Chain Business Processes'

Akinola Ogunsemi
Robert Gordon University

Akinola Ogunsemi, Robert Gordon University
Email

This project represents the initial phase of developing a holistic, data driven formulation of service and supply chain optimisation problem. This is a prime prerequisite into understanding links between billions of data records generated from supply chain business processes.

We performed an investigation of how eight data relationship discovery algorithms can be combined to identify more comprehensive links between database tables. This could be used in providing database users/analysts with the opportunity to understand data relationships and the ability to extract insights from data for commercial advantages like reducing time-intensive analysis and exploration of data by domain experts.

We performed comparative analysis to rank our individual discovery algorithms, the combination framework and selected state-of-the-art algorithms to evaluate performance and suitability. Preliminary results are indicative that using an appropriate combined strategy of discovery techniques can best provide a comprehensive and more supported discovery of data linkages in supply chain business processes.

View the poster here
View more posters and videos

Posters Galore: 'Improved detection of nuisance calls in-network using machine learning techniques'

Matthew Middlehurst
University of East Anglia

Matthew Middlehurst, University of East Anglia
Email

Nuisance marketing, nuisance sales and fraud calls - generalised as nuisance calls - are a problem which has rapidly expanded in recent years. Yearly, tens of thousands of people lose money to telephone scams and a significantly larger amount deal with the annoyance of spam from call centres.

Previous studies into automated detection of these calls have largely neglected the presence of legitimate call centres. These cases have similar characteristics to nuisance call centres and can cause great harm if incorrectly blocked. 

For a range of calling line identities used by legitimate and nuisance call centres, we track the outgoing call volume for a single day. In recent years, time series classification (TSC) has had a rapid advance in predictive power. Using this time series data we attempt to classify cases as nuisance or legitimate using a variety of TSC techniques. 

We show that the shapelet transform classifier and the time series meta-ensemble HIVE-COTE can differentiate between these centres reasonably well, but may not reach the specificity required for real world application on their own. A further look into cases misclassified as nuisance shows a lot of cases to have patterns resembling robotic callers. This leads us to doubt the certainty of the provided labels, and suspect the classifiers performed better than initially presented. Further analysing the results, we describe the most informative parts of the series for discriminating between legitimate and nuisance using the inherent interpretability provided by shapelets.

View the poster here
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Posters Galore: 'Detecting Emergent Phenomena within Streaming Data'

Edward Austin
Lancaster University

Edward Austin, Lancaster University

Email

Throughput data is a measure of the volume of internet traffic passing through points on the BT network. Due to consumer behaviour over the course of a day, this data takes an expected shape; put simply, less data is streamed in the early hours of the morning, than in the middle of the working day. Deviations from this expected shape, however, are indicators of faults, outages, or unexpected customer behaviour taking place on the network. The rapid detection of these deviations is critical as it allows maintenance to be performed to fix the problem. This benefits the customer, and in turn enhanced BT revenue and reputation. 

This work explores how mathematical tools can be used to model daily throughput data with smooth curves, and then how differential equations can be used to model the expected shape the throughput data takes. A test is then presented for the detection of deviations from this shape in real time. 

View the poster here
View more posters and videos

Thought Leadership Event: Dr Fumiya Iida on "Agri-Food Robot Revolution"

Thought Leadership Event
Speaker: Dr Fumiya Iida, Bio-inspired Robotics Laboratory, University of Cambridge
Title: Agri-Food Robot Revolution

Agriculture and food supply is the largest industry in the UK, but it faces significant challenges of transformation needs because of wage increase, geopolitical uncertainties (Brexit) and health and safety concerns (COVID-19). 

Despite the increasing demands, the automation of processes that are currently being performed by human labourers is not trivial for many reasons, not only the cost and the efforts, but also the fundamental lack of technologies.

In this talk, FumiyaI introduced the team’s efforts to analyse the landscape of challenges in the agri-food sectors from the technologist’s viewpoint and discussed what the problems that we can solve today are, as well as the challenges for the future.