Faculty of Computing News from 2010/11

Having some fun with Comic Relief Graduate stories Gamelab wins grant for gesture recognition Africa News profiles FoC alumna	Adobe success story Real interviews at special SEW StARs meet the Dean Juggling Masterclass

Having some fun with Comic Relief 17 June 2011 Comic Relief is working with The WOW Agency on their 2012 Sport Relief project. The key remit for WOW is to carry out detailed Usability, Functionality and Browser testing on both the web and mobile sites for the SR2012 release. Meetings have been held in their very red offices in Embankment and here at Tower - with first testing phases due to start mid-July. This will make great use of the revamped Usability Lab on the 10th floor and will also engage new WOW students on the projects. Marcus East - Head of Future Technology at Comic Relief is a fervent supporter of WOW and has brought a number of key projects our way. He is also an alumnus of the Business School - demonstrating a fantastic example of on-going links between the University and past graduates.
Graduate stories 6 July 2011 BSc Business Information Technology student Anna Koumantou has just graduated and reports "I found a job one month ago and I work for an entertainment company in central London, as an Application Support and Testing Analyst. It's a paid Internship role for 6 months, and after that we will see…I'm involved in a massive 'Windows 7 and Office 2010 Upgrade' project. As we are leading the whole EMEA, we have to upgrade all the end users from XP to W7 and Office 2003 to 2010 around the world. I'm involved in the deployment plan and more in the testing. I have to deal with the end users around the world from different operating companies and check what Core applications they use and if they are compatible with windows7. Basically I am doing the SIT-Integration testing. I am very happy and I like a lot what I am doing, it's very challenging and very interesting as well."
Gamelab wins grant for gesture recognition June 03 2011 GameLab, the Faculty of Computing's innovation centre based at Accelerator in Shoreditch, has won their bid for £95k for a project entitled 'Gesture recognition for learning disabled non-verbal communication'. The funding has come from two competitions sponsored by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and managed by JISC TechDis, a leading UK advisory service on technology and inclusion. Both competitions represent phase one of a Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) programme, which encourages technology solutions to specific public sector needs. A broad range of companies are involved in competitions that result in development contracts. The successful bids include some potentially ground-breaking developments. The first SBRI competition; 'Making Waves,' was designed to attract companies who could focus on enhancing communications, a basic human right and a learned skill, which is often a challenge for people in society who have disabilities or other difficulties. Gamelab will explore the use of open technologies to apply "natural interaction" tracking to gesture recognition through sensors, such as those used in Microsoft?s Kinect, rather than relying on a camera-based solution. The technology has the potential to offer users the ability to communicate and express their needs more naturally without the technologies that normally get in the way, or mark them out as different. The SBRI press release states that the GameLab project will "have the potential to vastly improve educational and social communication by providing solutions which can be tailored to meet individual needs and enhance the skills of learners as they progress into further learning or employment". For more information about GameLab, see http://www.gamelabuk.com/.
Africa News profiles FoC alumna 20 May 2011 Up-and-coming portrait photographer and London Met alumna Tosin Pedro (left) has been profiled in Pan-African news website Africa News. Nigerian-born Tosin began pursuing photography as a hobby while studying Computing & Multimedia in the Faculty of Computing. See: www.londonmet.ac.uk/news/latest-news/2011/may/africa-news-profiles-nigerian-alumna.cfm
Adobe success story 20 May 2011 Following on from last week's story about the Faculty's Adobe short courses, see the video at: http://youtu.be/paQZ4MesyHU. To quote from the youtube site: "London Metropolitan University offers Adobe Certified Associate courses in Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flash to internal and external candidates. Stephen Breen, a Senior Lecturer and the Adobe Course Leader at the University, reveals the secret to their success in achieving Centre Of Excellence status and explains how they deliver their Adobe courses." Video shot by Prodigy Learning (www.prodigysolutions.com) Back to the top
Real interviews at special SEW March 30 2011 The special Student Enterprise Workshop (SEW) event on Wednesday March 30 was titled "Network and Interview training" - (co-hosted by the Faculty of Computing with LMBS BusinessWorks) and drew about 100 visitors. Many students, resplendent in their suits and ties, were interviewed by real employers for real jobs - an inspiring sight through the windows of the new meeting rooms next to the Costa Cafe! One of the students interviewed said “I would like to thank you for organizing such an event as this. It was a really great experience and will definitely help in future. I was interviewed by Neil, who looked really convinced but he is looking for someone who can start full time ASAP, but I am doing my MSc client project which is due on May 18th. Neil asked me to contact him immediately afterwards and he will consider me, which is a good outcome and lifts my confidence". Back to the top
StARs meet the Dean 11 March 2011 Student Academic Representatives (StARs) in the Faculty of Computing (FoC) met the Dean, Professor Dominic Palmer-Brown, Associate Deans and course leaders on Friday 11 March. The meeting covered a broad range of issues, including the Review of Undergraduate Education (RUGE). StARs raised the issue of choice and flexibility in the proposed new UG scheme. The Dean explained that we will give choice where we can afford to do so, such as for popular H level modules. The Dean emphasised the importance of the National Student Survey (NSS) and mentioned the 'You Said We Did' list on the FoC web site and NSS slides - citing examples of how the faculty has responded to student requests, eg for Maths Clinics, Peer Support, Enterprise Workshops, and specialist labs. All students, to be encouraged by the StARs, are being asked to complete the NSS (if eligible), contribute to course committees and, generally, report their concerns. Postgraduates were asked to complete the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) - PRES for research students. Back to the top
Juggling Masterclass 4 Feb 2011 On Saturday 4 February nearly one hundred schoolchildren attended their second Royal Institution Mathematics Masterclass hosted by the Faculty of Computing. The masterclass was presented by Dr Andrew Tonks, of the Faculty of Computing (pictured left). Andrew gave his tour-de-force lecture on the mathematics of juggling and much fun was had by all; as well as the serious learning of aspects of sequence analysis and group theory! This is the second year the Faculty has hosted the Masterclasses which aims to encourage more young people into the STEM subject, especially girls who make up half the numbers in the class. Back to the top