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Transition Zone™ - Our training ethos presented at the ASEE Annual Conference

16 June 2019

The 126th edition of the Annual Conference & Exposition of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) will be a platform to present our PhD training programme, the Transition Zone™. Our Executive Director and Director of Training, Dr Torres-Sánchez, has been invited to participate in the session on 'Non-traditional Doctoral Programs' which will take place on June 19th in Tampa, Florida. A round table with representatives from Texas A&M University, John Hopkins University, Purdue University, Purdue Polytechnic Institute and the CDT-EI will discuss how industry-ready graduates can be produced by designing training schemes that promote professional management while doing a PhD. This round table will be preceeded by a presentation of the CDT-EI Transition Zone training ethos, which is our bespoke training programme to support transitions through different stages in a researcher’s career:

(1) into doctoral studies as a high performing researcher,

(2) through doctoral studies to make the most out of their doctorate and associated training and, (3) on exiting, to empower and equip them as highly employable graduates.

Information about our paper can be seen here: https://www.asee.org/public/conferences/140/papers/27849/view 

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CDT-EI Annual Report 2017-18

13 May 2019

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“Everything is Awesome!!!” or is it? Cyber Security Risks in Critical Infrastructure

29 April 2019

The CDT-EI is holding a Foresight Lecture by Prof Awais Rashid, University of Bristol, on Cyber Security Risks.  The event is free to attend (registration is necessary) and visitors will have the opportunity to find out what the CDT-EI students and co-sponors are working on in our exhibition entitled "What do CDT-EI students do?"

Abstract:

Industrial Control Systems play an important role in the monitoring, control, and automation of critical infrastructure such as water, gas, oil, and electricity. Recent years have seen a number of high profile cyber attacks on such infrastructure exemplified by Stuxnet and the Ukrainian Power Grid attacks. This naturally begs the question: how should we manage cyber security risks in such infrastructure on which the day-to-day functioning of our society relies? In this talk I will discuss insights from three years of research studying cyber security in such settings. The talk will highlight the complexity of managing security in a landscape shaped by the often competing demands of a variety of stakeholders, e.g., managers, control engineers, enterprise IT personnel and field site operators. I will also discuss how the security decision-making patterns of the various stakeholders contrast, with some surprising (or perhaps not so surprising) insights into the decision patterns of security experts and so-called non-experts.

Date: 22 May 2019

Time: 12:00 (Refreshments available from 11:30)

Location: Room 1.108 Sir David Davis Building, Loughborough University (please use entrance C)

Exhibition:  'What do CDT-EI PhD students do?' Find out what our students and co-sponsors are working on.

Click here to register.

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BigDat2019 Research Training Week

25 February 2019

CDT-EI Cohort 2 student Rhys Comissiong and Cohort 5 student Jack Prior attended attended the BigDat2019 research training week, hosted by the IRDTA at the University of Cambridge Department of Engineering from the 7th to 11th January 2019.

Jack Prior gave a short account of the event:

The event comprised of a series of workshops focusing on its namesake: the evolving landscape of techniques available to data scientists that can aid in the handling of Big Data. Whilst the array of 4.5 hour lecture series available all shared a common link to this area, there was great diversity in the array of techniques and topics discussed. These included, but were not limited to:

• Big Data Clustering
• Network Analysis
• Cloud Computing
• Data-Driven Optimisation
• Data and Deep Learning Ethics

These modules were delivered by the highest possible calibre of speaker, including incredibly cited technical innovators such as Geoffrey McLachlan (Finite Mixture Modelling) and Sankar Kumar Pal (Granular Computing), with a keynote delivered by Kenji Takeda, former global lead for Microsoft’s Azure for Research Program. As a researcher in Embedded Intelligence, the event has been transformational of my understanding of data: how their volume, shape and structure vitally affect their successful deployment in problem solving. The IRDTA hosts training weeks in the field of data science multiple times per year globally. I would strongly advise my peers to attend, based on the value proposition of BigDat2019.

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UK Robotics and Autonomous Systems Conference

20 February 2019

The Centre for Embedded Intelligence at Loughborough university was proud to play host to the UK Robotics and Autonomous Systems (UKRAS) Network’s annual conference.

The UKRAS19 Conference on Embedded Intelligence UK took place on Thursday the 24th of January and the conference attracted over 130 delegates on the day. The programme included four plenary speakers; Dr Slava Chesnokov, Senior Technical Director, Media Imaging, ARM, “ARM computational platforms for CV/Image Processing for future Robots: NN accelerator vs. fixed NN HW”; Prof. Tom Duckett, Professor of Robotics & Autonomous Systems Director, Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems (L-CAS) “The Future of Robotic Agriculture”; Dr. Séverin Lemaignan, Senior Research FellowBristol Robotics Laboratory, “Robots for education: from social to non-social, a look at the challenges of tomorrow”; and Prof. Barry Lennox, Professor of Applied Control School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering /Dalton Nuclear InstituteFaculty of Science and Engineering, “Development of Robotic Systems for Nuclear Applications”.

The event was attended by many of the CDT-EI students including Hazel Carlin and Jenny Lantair from Cohort 5.

We asked Hazel Carlin to share what she felt were the highlights of the day:

One of the most interesting talks was on reading the emotions of children based on stick models. This is a first step towards robots judging the mood of their co-workers in order that the robot can vary the speed of its actions. As well as numerous interesting talks, there were also many posters on display and we also had the chance to visit the Intelligent Automation Centre in Holywell Park. The day was valuable for finding out what the current state of research is in Robotics and AI.

Jenny Lantair shared her experiences of the day:

Attending UKRAS19 at Loughborough University this year was an eye opening experience, not just through touring the amazing facilities available to robotics researchers at the university, nor hearing the oratory skills of many of the presenters, being able to craft an exciting narrative, captivating an audience, but it was the people who stole my heart at the conference this year. Such an international group of researchers, across a diverse set of disciplines, all at different stages in their careers, some like Yang Zhou who is in their first few months of a PhD and others like Prof. Barry Lennox who is world renowned for his development of robotics to assist with nuclear decommissioning. These people should have little in common, yet over the day the passion for their research, the belief that what they are doing will make the world a better place in however small a way shone through. Research from Dr Severin Lemaignan would see our children educated with the assistance of robots, Prof. Tom Duckett will ensure a future food supply whilst teams at Loughborough are not simply solving the crisis of labour in the welding industry, their robotic arms can weld better, faster providing us with safer products.

The day provided inspiration to me; to achieve more, to present there next year and to never lose that passionate belief that what we are researching today will affect all of our tomorrows.

 For more information about the event please visit the UK RAS website

https://www.ukras.org/news/ukras19-conference-on-embedded-intelligence

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LNG Metrology Workshop October 2018

5 December 2018

Our cohort 3 student, Matthew Hammond attend the LNG Metrology workshop in October.

The LNG Metrology programme is part of the European Metrology Programme for Innovation and Research (EMPIR) with the goal of improving techniques and reducing uncertainty in measurements of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). A workshop and seminar are held every two years to bring together project partners and other interested companies to share information and recent developments in different areas of the project. The Metrology for LNG project is now in its 8th year and entering the third and final stage of funding.

On the first day of the workshop, presentations were given on the various aspects of the project including flow metering, composition measurements, density measurements, and new sensor technologies. On the second day, training sessions were provided for the different technical areas to give attendees the chance to learn more about the fundamentals of each measurement and how they are typically made.

Matthew commented:

Part of my research is dedicated to improving the measurements of LNG, particularly composition and density, so much of this workshop was relevant and interesting to me. One of the difficulties in developing new technologies for measurement is that primary standards are required in order to test, calibrate and validate instruments. My co-sponsor, EffecTech, are leading the way in providing Primary Reference cryogenic liquid mixtures with very low uncertainties in amount fraction to calibrate new LNG composition devices, for example Raman spectrometers.

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Cambridge Spark Applied Data Science Bootcamp

2 November 2018

• Heriot-Watt University
• Industry
• Cohort

Cohort 3 student Gergely Hantos took part in the Cambridge Spark Applied Data Science Bootcamp.

Gergely, who is based at Heriot-Watt and supervised by Prof. Marc Desmulliez, took part in the 6-months Cambridge Spark Applied Data Science Bootcamp. The course gave an excellent knowledge of the most relevant Data Science skills matching industry needs.

Each student had to carry out a one-month real-life project backed by industry partners that covered problem understanding, data cleaning and feature engineering, visualisation, model selection, training, evaluation and optimisation.

Gergely worked on a project for Entomics, a biological waste valorisation company that transforms organic waste into high value agricultural products using insect larvae as a unique bioconversion engine. The objective was to create a predictive machine learning model that optimizes the bioconversion by predicting the daily waste intake of the larvae.

Gergely delivered a solution that worked with so little prediction error that Entomics was able to use the output immediately. The outcome of this project has opened up a specialised software engineer position at Entomics.

A conference paper based on the work achieved was delivered for the First Symposium on Smart Systems Integration (SS1S) by Gergely on the 31st of August 2018 in Balatonvilágos, Hungary and is currently under review for publication in Periodica Polytechnica Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Cambridge Spark, the company delivering the course was also impressed by the work, thus they wrote a blog article about the project available here: Project Partner Case Study: Entomics that includes a video interview with Fotis Fotiadis, Co-Founder and CTO of Entomics.

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Powertrain Modelling and Control Conference

29 October 2018

Our Cohort 2 student, Gajarajan Sivayogan, presented at the Powertrain Modelling and Control Conference.

Powertrain Modelling and Control Conference is a biannual conference that is hosted by Loughborough University. Specifically the joint efforts of the Automotive and Dynamic Research groups. It hosts numerous automotive driven companies from around the world to show case their latest research and discuss future prospects on the automotive industry. It also gives opportunity for automotive related projects to present their findings in front of industry and academic experts. This allows future collaborations and understanding on the latest research being developed globally. This year’s conference showed increased interest in power control systems and fuel cells. With new technologies driving towards alternative fuels.

CDT-EI candidate Gajarajan Sivayogan presented his research work on ‘Prediction of Friction in EHL Contacts for Drivetrain Applications.’ He showed that the real entrainment velocity within a lubricated tribological contact under high loads can have a significant influence and hence a more realistic inclusion of this in the predictive models may lead to a better and more truthful evaluation of frictional and power losses in certain drivetrain applications.

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