News From The Faculty of Computing
September to December 2009

Faculty of Computing Awards Ceremony December 2009
Everyone at the Barbican cheered wildly when The Dean, Professor Dominic Palmer-Brown announced the fifty years of research that led to the prestigious award of Doctor of Science for Edward Steers, pictured with Dr Bal Virdee and two of the Faculty's graduates Sajid and Marjid Afzal who are working on various WoW projects. Two other staff were also awarded degrees, Bash Patel, senior technician in Comms Tech, got a first class honours in BSc Computer Networking and Freddy de la Cruz, visiting lecturer for CISCO, was awarded an MSc in Computer Networking with merit. See more photos from the awards ceremony
(posted December 2009)

Faculty takes part in K12 Online Conference

Alan Hudson, one of his MSc E-Learning students Lawal Muhammad, and Virtually Linked, the makers of Second Life London, presented at this year's K12 Online Conference. The conference was centred around a series of online videos supported by blogs and wikis for attendees to comment on, exchange ideas and make connections.

The video showed examples of their work in introducing new users to Second Life. It was created without the three parties meeting in real life. Discussions and plans were made using Skype and Second Life and various very large files were uploaded and downloaded to enable the whole video to be assembled before being uploaded to the conference site.

The conference started officially on December 7th and was free http://k12onlineconference.org/ . The LondonMet video was released on December 9th.
(posted December 2009)

FoC Industrial Liaison Group
The Industrial Liaison Group met on 25th November. Eleven of the external members attended the meeting representing the following companies: Smile-on Ltd., Entertainment Fund Management Company LCC, LIFELINE IT, Swift Computers Ltd, ST-Ericsson, Disability Essex, SGS International Ltd, Ask Direct Ltd, Castle Microwave, Morgan Fraser, and Ericsson. The meeting was very stimulating and generally set the scene for this Group's activities. As there were quite a few new members, the meeting provided us with an opportunity to know each other's background and interests better. The role of the external member's is mainly advisory and the remit of the Group is to enhance the student experience.

At the meeting we were very pleased to learn that some of the external members are interested in participating in a Student Enterprise Workshop to talk about their experiences and technical aspects of their work, and soft-skills for graduates like employability, project management, writing application letters for jobs etc. Some of the members also expressed an interest of providing our students with industrial placement opportunities. This is great news as we know some of our students cherish the idea of working as part of their studies and engage in a real project.
We were also encouraged to visit our members' companies in order to find out more about their business activities and explore the possibility of further engagement. From our discussions it became apparent that companies like Ericsson provide undergraduate and postgraduate projects, including research related projects.
(posted November 2009)

Successful IT4C Mentor Programme Launch
The IT4Communities Mentor programme launch in The Graduate Centre on Tuesday 17 November was a huge success. Over 130 people attended with an audience mix of charities, Industry professionals and students.
Pen Lister delivered a very informative talk on WEB 2.0 and the implications of social networking for social enterprises.
The Charities were given a chance to define their IT/Web requirements and the evening included very dynamic and vibrant networking sessions where our students met with the industry mentors to discuss the various projects on offer.
Our FoC students were a credit to the Faculty as they engaged with the mentors and charities and it was a fantastic opportunity for them to employ their communication and inter-personal skills.
Alan Stuart gave a short introduction to The WOW Agency which was followed up with keen interest by a number of organisations and industry professionals at the event.
There are over 100 projects available for students to work on and the process of matching the relevant student skills, industry mentors and charities is now well under way.
One IT professional who said he attends numerous high profile events and had just come from a Digital Media event at the O2 with profile speakers said that our event was 'infinitely more relevant' and he wished our Faculty had a Twitter account so that he could 'twitter to all and sundry to on how good the evening was' .
Thanks go to The Dean, Professor Dominic Palmer-Brown for his introduction, to Pen Lister for her informative take on web 2.0 and to Natasha Sattaur for her support in organising catering.

For more information on the event and our on-going collaboration with IT4C, please contact Alan Stuart (a.stuart@londonmet.ac.uk)
(posted November 2009)

FoC Student in the News

From Study London Magazine, the following article is about one of our MSc students, who is also a StAR:

Anvar Nazarov from Uzbekistan is an MSc Digital Solutions student at
London Metropolitan University. He knew studying in London would help him develop his career. "London is the most important financial and business centre in the world. IT solutions are very important components to drive companies and business, and to study and work in this environment is very beneficial for my further professional development."
It is easy to see why IT students like Anvar are attracted to London. The city's IT services market is growing at more than seven percent each year and the capital is already home to the largest concentration of IT software and services companies in Europe. The city's IT sector generates an annual turnover of $7.8 billion and the top 25 European software and IT service suppliers are all based in London, from Compaq and IBM to Microsoft and Infosys. Courses at London's universities give students both the theoretical and practical experience required for business. For instance, Anvar is now completing an internship within his university's business incubator, developing IT solutions for local businesses. "I learnt a lot in terms of working in the business environment of London and interacting in a multicultural team. At the same time I have a great opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills I am studying."
(posted November 2009)

GameLab Nominated for 3 BAFTA Awards
Gamelab has been nominated three times in this year's Children's BAFTA awards - a fantastic achievement. The nominations are two in the secondary learning category and one for drama.

See: www.bafta.org/awards/childrens/awards-2009,879,BA.html
and www.gamelablondon.co.uk and see GameLab scores Bafta hat trick

In 2008, GameLab was also nominated for a BAFTA and a BIMA award, for information about the latter, see
www.bima.co.uk/bima-award/020E131703/bima-awards-2008/view-shortlist/55/

Congratulations to the team Martin Wright, Andy Wan, Owen Smith, Barbara Zambrini, Richard England and Mohma Ahmed.
(posted October 2009)

FoC Celebrates Book Launch
Retired Professor Richard Meadows (pictured) gave an entertaining and scholarly talk at this week's research seminar about the history, meaning and applicability of numbers down the ages. Speaking largely without notes, Dickie moved effortlessly from Copernicus to Archimedes, from Fibonacci to Leibniz.
His new book is entitled 'Just Numbers?', suggesting that there is always more than meets the eye; for example, who could have foreseen how the study of primes would lead to their vital importance in modern, secure communication systems.
In addition to his writing, Professor Meadows also runs the Microwave Centre, a profitable offshoot of FoC, working closely with Dr Bal Virdee (an ex-PhD student of his). He called on other academics in FoC to exploit their research in similar ways (and couldn't resist a side-swipe at the university's apparent lack of clear rules on Intellectual Property Rights.)
(posted November 2009)

A Successful Inaugural Talk in the Student Enterprise Workshop Series (SEWs)

On 14 October Paolo Barone, an Academy Evangelist from Microsoft gave a talk on 'Interoperability of Microsoft technologies with PHP'. Mr Barone encouraged students to participate in Microsoft Imagine Cup 2010 and reminded the audience about London Met's participation in this competition over the last two years. Paolo's talk was followed by a quick introduction to the WOW agency by Alan Stuart, the Faculty Business Development Manager. The session ended with a message from Mohammed Abbas, a student in the Faculty and the Treasurer of the British Computer Society (BCS) Young Professionals Group inviting students to join the BCS. See Paolo’s presentation. If you want us to invite someone you know from the Industry, please contact Dr Yanguo Jing y.jing@londonmet.ac.uk with details.
(posted October 2009)

We are Proud of Our MSc Students
On Wednesday 23rd Sep 2009, for the second year running, the Knowledge Management Research Centre (KMRC) organised the FoC student research seminar, the theme being 'Best & Most Innovative MSc Project 0809'. It was received by all as a great success in terms of professional quality, student-presentations, and its role in enhancing and elevating overall student experience, student-staff rapport and future research collaboration. Prof Dominic Palmer-Brown extended his warm welcome to the students and staff and highlighted the importance of the event which helps the faculty in recognising our student potential. What colleagues liked the most was the enthusiasm and professionalism shown by our best students. Peter Chalk said “I was delighted to watch the masters students present their projects. It felt like I was at a research conference. I was able to sit back and learn about many topics and up-to-date research, from data mining to JPEG2000, aircraft safety to Bluetooth data capture. They were all a credit to their teachers and their project supervisors." The event ended with a vote of thanks by Dr Farhi Marir, Head of KMRC, congratulating the students. The students participating will be sent individual letters signed by the Dean confirming that their project is deemed as one of the ‘best and most innovative’by the Faculty. Farhi thanked members of the selection team; Dr Boris Cogan, Dr Sahithi Siva, Dr Yanguo Jing and Preeti Patel for their help in selecting the projects and the project module leaders and course leaders for their help in liaising with the students. See more photos from the seminar
(posted September 2009)