Faculty of Life Sciences and Computing
Issue 23
October 2014
Edited by Preeti Patel
FLSC
Chinese Delegation from the Ice City
Prof. Dominic Palmer-Brown recently hosted a visit for a delegation from
Harbin, China. The president, Professor Gu, of Harbin Huade University College
with his management team of seven colleagues were seeking to establish a collaborative relationship with London Met, particularly on teaching and learning
curriculum and the progression of their students to London Met.
Harbin Huade University College is a teaching oriented university with 9700 undergraduate students ranging from Sciences, Engineering to Humanities and Business. Harbin is the
8th most populous city in Northeast China and, due to its bitterly cold winters, is known as the
Ice City where ice sculptures are
created each winter.
Discussions during the afternoon, led by Prof. PalmerBrown and with contributions
from Peter Chalk (Head of
School of Computing), Preeti
Patel and Peiyuan Pan as able
translator, revolved around
course provision and potential
collaborative models.
For your Calendar
Friday 31st October 2014
SHS Research Seminar Series
1-2pm T11-03
“Consciousness, computations and creativity”
Prof. Mark Bishop
Goldsmiths College, London
Thursday 6th November 2014
Career Fit event GC1-08
8:30—17:00
Editor’s Note
Contributions are welcome from all areas of the Faculty—please send to
me by the middle of the month.
Preeti Patel
[email protected]
School of Computing
Dean meets with FLSC StARs
Prof. Dominic Palmer-Brown, on Friday 24th October, engaged in a lively open discussion with elected
Faculty Student Representatives. The forum was organized by Eddie Rowley, SU Liaison Coordinator
and Obie Opara, SU President, invited the Dean to lead the discussion. Points raised by StARs included
library opening hours, free printing facilities, timetabling and software requirements.
2
Tortoise Tracking at Royal Geographical Society
London Met games students attended "Re-discovering Galapagos Day" at The Royal Geographical Society
last night (http://galapagosconservation.org.uk/event_listings/re-discovering-galapagos-day/) to showcase their recent work for the Galapagos Conservation Trust.
Work Related Learning interns Michal Chmielewski (BSc Games, Modelling, Animation and Effects) and
Cosmin Stanescu (BSc Computer Games Programming) worked with BSc Computer Games Programming
graduate Marcus Oldfield to design and develop a 3D Tortoise Tracking game over the summer. The game
will be part of an educational package delivered to school children in the Galapagos and Key Stage 2 and 3
children in UK, helping them to learn about conservation in the islands.
The project was initially conceived by Dan Wright and Jen Jones from the Galapagos Conservation Trust,
with advice from Dr Stephen Blake from the Galapagos Tortoise Movement Ecology Programme.
The Tortoise Tracking game was a hit at the event, attracting many
members of the public. In the game, players take the role of a conservationist dealing with environmental hazards that prevent tortoises
migrating in order to lay eggs.
Fiona French (SoC Course Leader, BSc Computer Games Programming) is currently in discussion with the GCT regarding further student game-related placements and evaluation studies.
3
Dr Victor Castano
On 24th September 2014. Victor Castano, our former BSc
student, then colleague ( ISS department ) and later VC
PhD scholar (2010-2013) successfully defended his thesis
“Resilience of an embedded architecture using hardware
redundancy” and became Doctor Victor Castano.
It was a web-based defense as the defendant was in Argentina, the external examiner (Dr Kai Goebel, Head of
Prognostic program, NASA) was in USA and the internal
examiner Dr Vassil Vassilev was in London Met. The successful defence (minor amendment to be completed in 3
months) took around 2.5 hours, and was chaired by Prof
Hassan Kazemian. The supervisory team included Prof.
Igor Schagaev, Dr. Nick Ioannides, and Dr. Eugene Zoueff
(ETHZ).
L-R Prof Igor Schagaev, Dr Nick Ioannides, Dr Eugene Zoueff, Dr Vassil Vassilev, Dr Kai Goebel
LACOSTE at WorldComp14
Prof. Igor Schagaev, Head of the Laboratory of Applied Computer Science and Technolgoy, has had a busy
summer at the WorldComp14 conference held in Neveda, USA, where he delivered a 3 hour tutorial entitled
‘Fault Tolerance and Beyond’. Also presented at the conference was a paper co-authored by a former London
Met masters student Simon Monkman on the topic of Evolving Systems which won an award. The result of
some of this work is to published by Springer in a book entitled “Design of Evolving and Resilient Systems”.
From http://www.world-academy-of-science.org/worldcomp14/ws/tutorials/tutorial_schagaev
4
FLSC Learning & Teaching Coordinator
Shara Lochun (Principal Lecturer, Faculty Learning & Teaching Coordinator) reports:
[email protected]
@flsc_ltc
On 24th October, Chris O’Reilly, Educational Technologist in
ISS and University Teaching Fellow, led an FLSC Learning and
Teaching meeting on the role that e-Learning solutions might
have in supporting learning and teaching within FLSC. Drawing upon his years of experience within educational technology, Chris talked about the range of e-learning tools and techniques we might think about employing to enhance student
learning, engagement and satisfaction.
Chris illustrated his points with examples taken from across
the University that he has been involved with. These ranged
from small-scale ‘talking-head’ video clips (to engage and support distance learners in effectively using
WebLearn tools and resources), through to medium-scale projects (e.g., animated audio clips, infographics). Chris also talked about larger-scale projects which could be used to involve our students
as co-producers, and which, if created in collaboration with external partners, could be used to positively promote and showcase both the Faculty and the University. An example of the latter is a resource created jointly between LMBS and St Pauls Cathedral. This resource provides a guide for visitors to the cathedral was partly created by LondonMet students as part of their course. It is still in use
at St Paul’s Cathedral today, and provides daily positive promotion for LondonMet to both Londoners
and international visitors alike.
So the question, FLSC colleagues, is whether we have any contexts in which the involvement of elearning solutions would enhance the learning, engagement, experience, retention or satisfaction of
our students? Chris noted that some projects could be completed within a few days and required no
funding, whist others might involve a greater investment of resources. There is practical help, advice,
and support available from educational technologists both within ISS and CELT, and there are also free
tools available if we wish to experiment ourselves (for example, there are free tools available for creating infographics, or, with an iPad, for creating stop-motion animations).However, we do not have to
create everything from scratch ourselves: one resource Chris showcased at the meeting was the StudyHub. Within the StudyHub are interactive resources for students supporting them in understanding
academic honesty and integrity issues, and in developing their digital literacy skills (including online
security and the creation of a positive digital footprint). Academic integrity and digital literacy are key
issues for all FLSC students, so Chris urged us all to explore these resources and link whatever we find
useful into our modules.
Chris ended his presentation with a timely reminder to the enthusiastic: “technology can be great – but
what do you want our students to do with it?” Some of the answers he suggested were to raise awareness,
start conversation, change minds, take action, and drive change. If you want help in engaging with
technology for the benefit of your students, get in touch with Chris ([email protected]) or the
CELT e-learning team ([email protected]) for advice, support and practical assistance.
A video recording of this presentation will be available shortly on the FLSC Learning & Teaching web
page (http://learningandteachingflsc.weebly.com/). You can also find links to Chris’s own site and
more examples of his work, and links to some of the free tools and resources mentioned in his presentation.
5
Professor and Doctor Chris
The Executive Vice Chancellor of the University of Nicosia, Cyprus, has awarded Dr Chris Lange-Kuttner
(School of Psychology) the title of an Associate Professor (Adjunct Faculty).
Prof. Dr. Chris Lange-Küttner has worked before as
Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Konstanz from 2009-2011. She completed her Habilitation at the University of Bremen (Venia Legendi) in
2008. She has more than 40 articles in EU, UK and US
peer-reviewed journals on spatial concepts and learning, visual perception, graphic construction, visual and
word memory, articulation, and reading in infants, children, adults and neural networks, as well as numerous
conference contributions. She has been employed as
Senior Lecturer with the London Metropolitan University since 1999.
Informatics Research Centre progress
Leading the recently formed Informatics Research Centre,
Professor Yong Xue, Dr. Romas Mikusauskas, and Dr. Peiyuan Pan, have two papers published in the peer-reviewed
journals “Remote Sensing Letters” and “International Journal
of Remote Sensing”. The two papers are entitled “Estimation of
Soil Thermal Inertia from Geostationary Meteosat Second
Generation (MSG) data and “Observation of an agricultural
biomass burning in central and east China using merged aerosol optical depth data from multiple satellite missions”.
You are welcome to contact them for reprints.
Dr. Yong Xue recently also attended the ESA project meetings
in Helsinki, Finland and Steamboat Spring, CO, USA. This will
promote the University’s reputation worldwide, and enhance
the research in the Informatics Research Centre.
6
What next? From 4G to 5G
With the advent of 4G mobile and wireless communication
systems work on 5G technology has began in earnest.
Challenges of developing 5G systems are immense as significantly higher wireless transmission rates are expected
from it, such as 50 Gbps peak data rates with 8~10 bps/
Hz/cell. 5G systems will require a mix of new system concepts to boost spectral efficiency, energy efficiency and the
network design, such as MIMO technologies, green communications, cooperative communications and heterogeneous wireless networks. 5G is expected to provide high
quality wireless experience in the face of rapidly growing
application, data and device volume in wireless networks,
and the increasingly varied requirements of application
services.
To facilitate this work Professor Bal Virdee, from SoC’s
Centre for Communications Technology, has been instrumental in organising an IET Workshop on 5G Technology
– the future of mobile and wireless communications
technology. This one day FREE workshop will provide
an overview on this technology and the R&D work currently being undertaken in industry and academia to bring
this technology to fruition.
Speakers include:
Dr Mike Short CBE, Vice President - Telefonica Europe
Professor Mischa Dohler, Centre for Telecommunications Research, King’s College London
Dr Li-Ke Huang, Technology Manager, Aeroflex
Dr Meik Kottkamp, Technology Manager, Rhode & Schwarz (Munich)
Professor Cheng-Xiang Wang, Chair of Wireless Communications, Heriot-Watt University
Ian Claris, Director of Leap® and PRA Trading Ltd at Pera Technology
Date and time:
Thursday 30 October 2014, 10:30-16:30
Venue:
IET Birmingham: Austin Court, B1 2NP.
Interested staff and students should register at www.theiet.org/5gtechnology
7
A fond farewell
Dr Fang Fang Cai, a colleague and friend—dearly missed by everyone. We wish Fang
Fang good luck as he continues his academic career at Anglia Ruskin University.
8
MET2020 bears fruit
Dr Jianming Cai reports on the MET2020 investment in the IT Security and Computer Forensics Lab (T7-20A) which provides practical experiments with the feel and experience of a real-life
environment.
ISS, quite rightly, does not allow our students to practise these hands-on skills in the university labs,
such as information gathering, port scanning, and exploiting/uploading the payloads which are illegal except when being carried out by highly trusted professionals. These restrictions prevent students from learning vital skills in fighting digital crimes.
When our specialist courses were first set up more than 4 years ago, the specialist lab was built upon with old ‘cast off’ PCs from ISS. Since then it has grown to 100 plus students requiring sophisticated specialist software, including computer forensics toolkits, ethical hacking toolkits, and the virtual environment and cloud for students to practise hands-on skills in a simulated environment,
which protects the lab resource and manages the risks against university intranet and the networks
beyond the university boundary. The extra capacity of the lab also supports short courses (e.g. CISCO), collaborations with industry, and research plus PhD projects, including work for national agencies such as the Police.
Thanks to funding from MET2020, the SoC
specialist lab in T7-20A has undergone a major upgrade since July this year. Our technician team (John Hucker and Chi Ho), supported by the student volunteers, worked extremely hard through the Summer. The lab is
now up and running with new equipment,
new design, and new system configurations.
The upgrade has resulted in 31 old PCs replaced by new high performance PCs with
new widescreen monitors, 16 GB internal
memory and X64-based 4-core Intel i7-4790
processors. The LAN infrastructure in the lab
has been re-built and configured to support
the ever increasing demand for hands-on
skills in Network Security and Ethical Hacking, in both wired and wireless mode to meet different
demands from various modules and protect lab resource from potential security risks from the experiments.
During the summer open events, some applicants visited T7-20A with their parents. The upgraded
lab has also provided a spring board for launching new research projects. In October this year, a
team of researchers from the Applied Computing Group has submitted a research proposal to bid
for funding for Learning and Teaching in Cyber Security from the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and the
Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS).
Without the support of such a sophisticated lab infrastructure, it would be impossible to propose a research
project, which needs experiments in an integrated and
secured lab environment.
Dr Jianming Cai is Course Leader for BSc Computer
Forensics and IT Security. For information about the
MSc equivalent course, contact Michael Ghebru, Course
Leader.
9
Faculty Enterprise Development
Associate Professor Yanguo Jing (Academic Leader Faculty Enterprise Development) reports:
WOW Agency update—project in progress
The WOW agency has been
commissioned to develop a
highly sophisticated web
system for Briant Champion
Long – a successful retail
estate agent. The securing of
such a project demonstrates
the trust our enterprise partner has in the faculty and in
the WOW agency. The project is led by Associate
Professor Yanguo Jing with
a number of students and
graduates recruited in the
development team. Following a number of project meetings, work has now began in earnest. This
project will provide excellent work placement opportunities for our students and graduates.
A successful SALSA HACCP course delivery
Seema Patel - the Faculty Enterprise Project Manager recently delivered a SALSA
HACCP course on behalf of SALSA on 15th
October 2014. SALSA is a food safety
approval scheme suitable for small and
micro food and drink producers. The standard is recognised by a range of retailers such
Asda, Ocado, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose. The
SALSA HACCP course is aimed for individuals responsible for the application of a food
management system used to produce safe
food.
All delegates who attended the SALSA
HACCP course successfully passed the exam
and will gain a nationally recognised food
industry qualification accredited by the Institute of Food Science and Technology.
10