India Trip to United Motorsport College

Our Automotive lecturer Rex Keen, visited India from 18th October to 2nd November 2023.

Rex Keen set up two Race Car Engineer courses that ran for four days each.

The first course was ran in Mumbai at the club rooms of the Mumbai horse racing club for the first three days. The last day being practical exercises at the workshop of a race team after the three days of theory.

Rex then went to Chennai in the south east of India, where he was greeted by the Vice Chancellor and given a full tour of the facilities.

Rex delivered the Race Car Engineering course at the Hindustan Institute of Technology & Science where he was able to use their auditorium for the lectures and their very large and very well equipped Automotive workshop for the practical sessions. Rex was also able to take the students to Madras race track for half a day, as it is in close proximity to the university.

On the final day the Vice Chancellor presented Rex with an award in recognition of him delivering the first race engineering course in India. Rex was delighted to visit India and said:

5G-ERA Project Workshop

The Workshop took place at the OTE Academy, Athens, Greece, on 26th October 2023.

In recent years, there has been a significant advancement in wireless communication technologies. Concurrently, the field of robotics has witnessed rapid progress, particularly in the domain of autonomous mobile robots. With progress achieved in both fields, there is a trend to leverage the connectivity into more intelligent and connected robots “beyond the abilities of a single robot in an interconnected environment (such as the internet)”. The 5G-ERA project is designed to demonstrate the latest progress of 5G-Enhanced Robotic Autonomy on accelerating the transformation from the traditional Cloud Robots to 5G/6G enabled Connected Robotics. University of Bedfordshire is the scientific coordinator of the project. The team lead is Professor Renxi Qiu who is leading the development of connected robotics platforms.

5G ERA Workshop

5G ERA Workshop Solutions

5G ERA Workshop Welcome

5G ERA Robotic Deployment Talk

5G ERA Workshop - Bartosz Bratus

5G ERA Workshop - Radu Popescu

5G ERA Workshop - Diwali

5G ERA Workshop - Renxi Qiu

Previous Next

Grant Success - Innovate UK

A team of Computer Science and Technology researchers, Dr Rohtiha Weerasinghe, Dr Mina Mortazavi, and Professor Vladan Velisavljevic, in collaboration with Bristol University, City University London, a UK company, and a university and a company from Sri Lanka, successfully gained external funding from Innovate UK for their project “Off-Grid Renewable Energy Production and Storage with Organic Rankine Cycle, Solar and Waste” (RESORCS). The total value of this award is £1.4m, of which £200k will come to the University. The project will investigate smart, economic, and efficient ways to produce and store energy in combined ways from various green sources, including solar, wind and waste incineration.

UCAS Event 2023

The UCAS event held at Bedford Campus in June 2023 was attended by over 12,000 students. It was a great opportunity to see so many potential students and tell them about our university and it's courses.

The engineering team's display was in the entrance to the demonstration marquee and was well attended. So much so we didn't stop for a coffee over the two days!. We were given the opportunity to give some talks on engineering that were also well attended. The event was professionally organised and we had plenty of helpers over the two days. Overall a great experience. Looking forward to next year.

Computer Science and Technology Poster Day May 2023

The School of Computer Science and Technology’s poster exhibition day held on Friday, 12th May 2023 was a highly anticipated event where our undergraduate students presented their final year works.

The venue within the STEM building was filled with a vibrant atmosphere as students from our various courses ranging from Computing to Engineering set up their posters, hence creating an engaging and visually appealing display. The exhibition attracted a diverse audience, including fellow students, faculty members, industry professionals, and external examiners. Attendees had the opportunity to explore the wide range of topics and disciplines represented in the posters and to engage in discussions with the presenting students.

Prizes were given to exceptional students. Sebastian Sokalski (Telecommunication and Network Engineering) received the first prize for the most commercially viable project about smart devices for home and buildings; Ben Allum (Computer Games Development) was given the first prize for the best academic project: investigating techniques used to create a feeling of unease in horror games; and Kieron Joy-Kimber (Computer Science) was awarded for the best poster: the use of a mobile application to improve the stock management processes in licensed venues.

Jaguar Land Rover Experience - 22^nd February 2023

Mechanical Engineering and Automotive Engineering students of (Level 5 and 6) visited Jaguar Land Rover manufacturing facility in Birmingham also known as Jaguar Land Rover Experience. This guided tour provided a unique opportunity for students to see behind the scenes of JLR car manufacturing, to see the state-of-the-art production facility itself and discover how the technology behind Jaguar and Land Rover cars has developed over the years.

This was a great opportunity to experience different aspects of a challenging but rewarding industrial environment including design, automation, manufacturing, testing and management of JIT(Just In Time) manufacturing.

28 keen and enthusiastic students took part in this one-day visit and accompanied by their lecturers, Dr Rohitha Weerasinghe and Dr Mina Mortazavi.

Aquaculture Sensor Project

Dr Tahmina Ajmal visited South African aquaculture partner, Abagold for REDIA (Developing a Resilience framework using Digital Innovations for the Aquaculture industry in South Africa - GCRF project). During the visit TriLux sensors were installed underwater at the partner’s farm for monitoring water quality parameters to develop a model for forecasting algal blooms. In addition, she also met with other stakeholders in the region which included South African National Space Agency (SANSA) and other aquaculture farms. On 14th February, she delivered a workshop for middle managers working in aquaculture sector on 'Towards a sustainable precision aquaculture in South Africa – The role of Digital Technologies'

Computer Science and Technology Extended Poster Day February 2023

On Friday, 20^th January 2023, we organised an extended Poster Day for our students of February 2022-23 cohort and for our MSc project students. This is the first time that we run such an extended event. Our Research & Innovation Service brought us delegates from Luton Borough Council, local business, including Satisnet Ltd, Manton Engineering, Ardentisys Ltd, Nomura, S-digital and AIsolve.

The event was well attended by our students, staff and externals.Students discussed their projects and demonstrated their artefacts with staff and external delegates. The projects covered wide ranges of research and development topics, such as AI enabled number plate reader and door locker; intelligent home gateway; simulation and optimization of aerodynamic effects for a racing car; infographic climate change app; IoT supported farming; security framework for SEMs, and interactive game for language learning. At the end of the event, prizes (evaluated by a panel of both internal and external members) were given to students under three categories: best poster, projects with best academic contribution, and project with the best commercial potential.

The external delegates were impressed by the quality of the projects, and they asked some students for their CV's and invited some students for interview to their companies.

Construction Course Team November 2022

The Construction Course team have seen some interesting industry engagement on the courses with a recent guest speaker session on ‘Construction Contracting’ from Andre Martins, Commercial Director at JRL Group, and a site visit to a £140M commercial project in London, hosted by one of our course alumni, Josh Peach who is the Site Manager on the project. In terms of research, the team have been successful in securing a second grant in partnership with Luton Borough Council as part of their Net Zero Innovation Programme project looking at energy consumption and efficiency in the home. The research team for this project ran a dissemination event in November for the first stage of this project to share some of the early findings.

Attendees at the event included local authority professionals, councillors, local charities, youth groups, and students from Barnfield College, Luton Sixth Form College and University of Bedfordshire.

Field Trip to Game Anglia Conference

Second and third year students, along with some recent graduates, attended the Game Anglia Conference in Ipswich on 26th October 2022, where they made connections with local game developers, heard talks from industry leaders and voted for their favourite exhibited game.

The conference was hosted by the University of Suffolk. One of our students (currently on their Industry Placement year at Disney) even exhibited one of their own projects! It was also a great opportunity for the teaching team to network with academics from neighbouring departments and begin laying the groundwork for future collaborations, which will be explored further at, and in time for, the Game Anglia Academic Retreat next year.

Students attended the talks which they really enjoyed and played lots of games in development - we all chatted to the game developers there and made some new connections which we hope might be useful in future, plus lecturers from UoS - students had a really good time, learnt a lot and said they felt more motivated and confident to show their work next time (so I guess that means we will have to do it all again next year!!

We set up a lovely stand and had demo videos running and flyers etc. It was good we were there, at least they know of us now. Sixth formers local to the area might consider the University of Bedfordshire as an option now too. It was good also to just get the hang of exhibiting at an event so we can maybe do others in the future now we kind of know what to do!

Marcia Gibson, Senior Lecturer

The Creative Technologies Team has had a great start to the Winter term, welcoming sizeable new cohorts into both Computer Games Development and Computer Animation and Visual Effects courses. The subject cluster also welcomed two new full-time lecturers – Thomas Martin and Mujeeb Syed Muhammed – who are excited to bring their expertise to the team.

Graduation November 15th 2022

We are proud to say on Tuesday 15th November at 1:30pm the School of Computer Science and Technology had a graduation ceremony for our Institute of Research and Applicable Computing (IRAC) and Computer Science students.

Associate Dean leads the way for the graduates passing through Computer Science and Technology staff, joined with Deputy Vice Chancellor, (Education) and the Dean.

TechEx global

University of Bedfordshire BSc (Hons) Cybersecurity students, attended TechEx Global on Friday 2nd December 2022, to learn about the latest security trends and technologies.

(from left) Lecturer, Rebecca Harrop, Students, Ivan Bonchev, and Charalampos Andreou.

Outreach and Nuffield Research Projects

Over the summer, the school of Computer Science and Technology, will be hosting five Nuffield Research Projects. These projects, supervised by Dr Maina Korir, Dr Mina Mortazavi and Dr Paul Sant will allow talented year 12 students from across the local region to engage with skills development projects that will be showcased at an end of summer event.

All three supervisors are offering a range of exciting projects from across computer science and engineering, with projects taking place during July and August 2022.

Maina Korir will specifically be hosting a student for a 3-week placement, focusing on supporting research into information-seeking practices on social media platforms.

Dr Ghazanfar Ali Safdar

The school of Computer Science and Technology is pleased to announce Dr Ghazanfar Ali Safdar (Senior Lecturer in Computer Networking) has recently had a book published with Wiley on the important topic of D2D Interference mitigation. D2D is an integral part of 5G and is also an important aspect of Intelligent transportation systems (ITS), as well as V2X (Vehicle to everything).

This book will be a good resource for researchers, especially into the communications and electronic engineering sector, as well as PhD and MSc students.

Dr Ghazanfar Ali Safdar, Senior Lecturer

Dr Ali Safdar also intends to donate a couple of copies of his book to the University of Bedfordshire library.

The 18th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence

Two of Dr Renxi Qiu’s research papers have been accepted for publication in the 18th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations, AIAI 2022 (Greece) The research papers are part of the 5G-ERA research project.

Paper title: The use of robotics in critical use cases: the 5G-ERA Project solution.
Author’s list: Christina Lessi, George Agapiou, Marios Sophocleous, Ioannis Chochliouros, Renxi Qiu, Stelios Androulidakis.
Paper title: AI-driven In-tent-based networking for 5G enhanced robot autonomy.
Author’s list: Marios Sophocleous, Zhao Xu, Jakub Špaňhel, Renxi Qiu, Adrian Lendinez,
Christina Lessi, Ioannis Cho.

W2 - 1st IEEE Workshop on Sustainable and Intelligent Green

Internet of Things for 6G and Beyond

Dr Ghazanfar Ali Safdar is acting as Technical Program Chair at the W2 - 1st IEEE Workshop on Sustainable and Intelligent Green Internet of Things for 6G and Beyond. He will be responsible for quality, and reviewing of submitted papers prior to the conference which is taking place this summer in Finland.

International Conference – AI Technology

A final year student from the University of Bedfordshire has been selected to present her paper on improving facial recognition technology at a leading international Artificial Intelligence (AI) conference later this month. Hannah Claus, who is in her third year of studying Artificial Intelligence & Robotics, will present at the 36th Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) event.

Hannah’s paper – ‘The Importance of Hyperparameter Optimisation for Facial Recognition Applications’ – looks into how current facial recognition technologies frequently exhibit racial, gender and a number of other biases, making them less effective at recognising the faces of already marginalised groups, and how the technology can be improved Professor of Robotics and course coordinator for Hannah’s degree, Dayou Li, commented:

Hannah’s paper has been published as part of a chapter in Big Data Intelligence for Smart Applications.

Inspire STEM Day for Girls on 8^th March

To commemorate the international women’s day on 8th March 2022, an inspire Girls into STEM Day was organised by Dr Tahmina Ajmal in collaboration with the outreach department (Ms Roisin Kendall). There were 35 girls from years 7, 8, 9 & 10 from Denbigh High School.

The day was filled with inspiring workshops in cybersecurity (Dr Rebecca Harrop), DNA finger[1]printing (Dr Maria Simon), Electronic Engineering (Dr Tahmina Ajmal), and apprenticeships (Dr Tess Crosbie).

The day ended with an inspiring talk by external speaker Ms Louisa Allen allowing girls to reflect and internalise on their learning. It was exciting to see some local girls engaging and enjoying the sessions and getting motivation.

Congratulations to PhD students

Mahmoud Artemi successfully defended his PhD thesis on “A Theory-based Content-based Image Retrieval Approach for Capturing User Preferences during Query Formulation” on 21 Feb 2022.

Olaniyi Omoyajowo passed his PhD, with the topic and title of his thesis “A Systematic Risk Management Approach for Small Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria Manufacturing Sector”.

(ADPAC) Project

Advancing Digital Precision Aquaculture in China

Aquaculture 4.0 - Advancing Digital Precision Aquaculture in China ADPAC www.adpac.info is an ongoing Innovate UK funded research project in collaboration with China. It aims to bring state of the art sensing technology, 5G wireless connectivity and Big Data Analytics together to revolutionise precision aquaculture. The vision of ADPAC is to increase efficiency, reduce waste and improve both human and animal welfare, through digital industrialisation. There has been various outputs from project, sensors deployed in Scotland and China, the research articles published by team BEDs are listed below:

• Developing a Novel Water Quality Prediction Model for a South African Aquaculture Farm. E. Eze, S. Halse, T. Ajmal, Water 2021, 13, 1782. doi.org/10.3390/w13131782
• Time Series Chlorophyll-A Concentration Data Analysis: A Novel Forecasting Model for Aquaculture Industry. E.Eze, S.Kirby, J.Attridge, T.Ajmal, Eng. Proc. 2021, 5, 27. doi.org/10.3390/engproc2021005027
• Dissolved Oxygen Forecasting in Aquaculture: A Hybrid Model Approach. E. Eze; T.Ajmal, Appl Sci- Environmental and Sustainable Science and Technology Appl. Sci.2020, 10(20), 7079; www.mdpi.com/853284

19th Annual World Food Innovate Virtual Summit 2021

Dr Tahmina Ajmal was invited to speak at 19th Annual World Food Innovate Virtual Summit in October 2021, www.foodinnovateworld.com

Her presentation discussed the transformation of food supply chains using disruptive innovations in REAMIT project.

This project is currently running several technology demonstrations across Europe on various sections of the food supply chain. Main technologies used include off-the-shelf sensors together with big data analytics. Initial results and response from businesses is very encouraging. We shared our initial findings and learning so far.

For the 20th World Food Innovate Summit in 2022 details please see: www.foodinnovateworld.com

 

IEEE Outstanding Service Award

Dr Xiaohua Feng received an IEEE Outstanding Service Award in recognition of her outstanding service and contribution to the 2021 IEEE International Conference, namely CyberSciTech/PICom/DASC/CBDCom 2021(Joint CST 2021), Online, 25-28 October 2021.

Xiaohua submitted and presented the paper ‘Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain for Future Cyber Security Application’, co-authored by Dr Marc Conrad, Elias Eze and Khalid Hussein. Further papers co-authored on Smart Cities AV and Edge Intelligence.

Dr Karen Chessum designed the ACE workshop webpage and publicised the event via the CST website, this helped to attract cutting-edge technology papers for our two workshop sessions.

Dr M. Conrad chaired the conference sessions and co-authored the other papers in Biometric Authentication, Image/face Recognition and Motion Sensors, as well as Smart-city Autonomous Vehicles. He will also join the forthcoming ACE-2022 workshop Programme Committee.

Dr Jon Hitchcock will chair the forthcoming ACE-2022 workshop. There were four papers presented from CST/CATS of UoB at the ACE-2021 workshop. For further details of the conference please see: cyber-science.org/2021

 

MSc Studentship Sponsored by Life Science Group Ltd

As part of a collaboration with Gordon Brady's team, Life Science Group Ltd has been awarded a grant to co-fund a Masters by Research "Scalability of Business Management Support Systems" under the ERDF-funded Productivity Escalator programme. Interviews are planned to take place in January 2022.

The successful candidate to be supervised by Dr Marc Conrad and Dr Tess Crosbie.

2021 5G-ERA Research

Studentships have been awarded to Mr. Bartosz Bratus and Mr. Radu Popescu. They both graduated from CST undergraduate courses in July with excellent academic achievement.

Bartosz received his Bachelor of Science with Honours First Class in Software Engineering. He will be working in the field of container orchestration and deployment.

This is a great opportunity to continue studies at the University of Bedfordshire and take part in the 5G-ERA project.

Bartosz Bratus

The project is in line with his interests and will allow him to expand his knowledge in Cloud Computing and container orchestration. Taking part in a 5G-ERA project is an excellent opportunity to take part in researching and creating state-of-the-art solutions.

Radu received his Bachelor of Science with Honours First Class in Computer Science.

He will be working in the field of microservice development for robotics. He is grateful for the opportunity presented by the University, to further enrich his education and take part in such an exciting project. The paradigms intrinsic to the project come as a natural next step to the concepts explored in his undergraduate project. The studentship is sponsored by EU H2020 5G-ERA project.

Women in Engineering

Construction Courses at UoB and Encouraging Diversity in the Industry

Construction student Jade Catchpole talks about her career ambitions and an upcoming work placement, which was developed through a collaboration between the University of Bedfordshire construction teaching team and construction contractor JJ Rhatigan.

Read the full story www.beds.ac.uk/news/2021

 

RadioLAB Interview with Construction Students & Staff

Work Placements & Industrial Collaboration

Construction student Ciprian Cretu and lecturer Dr James Bishop discuss the benefits of industrial work experience and the importance of close collaboration with industry.

• Listen to the broadcast listenagain.canstream.co.uk/radiolab (From 15:30 onwards)

Summit-XL Mobile Robot

Institute for Research in Applicable Computing (IRAC) is in the process of purchasing the SUMMIT-XL mobile robot platform for research and student projects.

SUMMIT-XL is a highly versatile 5G capable mobile robot platform which can carry loads up to 65kg and can navigate autonomously or be teleoperated by means of a PanTilt-Zoom camera that transmits video in real time. SUMMIT-XL uses the ROS open architecture. More information on the SUMMIT-XL

Congratulations to Marwah Ibrahim, supervised by Dr Jim Wood and Professor Amar Aggoun who passed her PhD on the topic of, ‘The Design Of An Innovative Automatic Computational Method For Generating Geometric Islamic Visual Art With Aesthetic Beauty’, (subject to confirmation at May RDC).

Congratulations to Creative Technologies Students on their Game Releases!
Recent Games Development graduate, Jacob Campbell released his first publicly available solo project, “Sonpai”. Sonpai is a puzzle game about finding an optimal path. Sonpai - Available here

PhD student Lionel Jayaraj released his game, “Chase VR Cricket”. A game where you have to defeat alien robots at cricket. The game also features the option to use full body motion capture. Chase VR - Cricket Available here

Creative Technologies Guest Speakers

Dr Marcia Gibson organised a series of talks and workshops from industry speakers for students from BSc Computer Games Development and BSc Computer Animation and VFX.

• Computer Games Development alumni Jacob Campbell, Sylvester Yeboa and Vlad Vizeteu talked about their jobs and experiences
  working as programmers and 3D modellers at Sodalite Creative.
• Computer Graphics and Animation alumni Cara Gifford-Pitcher talked about the application and interview processes at large organisations such as Sega and Discovery+, the initial few weeks at a new job and her general experiences moving gradually from games into the mobile app industry.
• Chris Filip of Game Anglia gave a series of lectures on pitching, product marketing and networking for games and animation.
• Jabez David Director of Yaali Comics, talked about pitching and finding investment for, and production of, motion comic, “Dr Green”.
• Jason Howard Art director of Payload Studios discussed his lengthy career in games, how his process of candidate selection works and how to put together a portfolio for employers.
• Adam Coburn Artist and Game Developer at Hollow Ponds gave a talk on non-linear careers, wellbeing and mental health in games development and the production of “I am Dead”.
• Oliver Walker of Ubisoft gave a series of talks and workshops on level design.
• Cian McNabola of Fortitude games gave a series of talks and workshops on game UI and UX.

We are grateful to all our speakers, especially those who volunteered. The series was greatly received by all students, alumni and staff attending.

We hope these valuable insights will enhance student employability

Dr Marcia Gibson, Senior Lecturer

Construction courses accredited by the Chartered Association of Building Engineers

The construction teaching team are very pleased to confirm that the FdSc Construction Management and BSc (hons) Construction Management (Top-up) degrees have been awarded accreditation from the Chartered Association of Building Engineers (CABE). In addition Dr James Bishop and David Jazani have been awarded Chartered Fellow status with CABE.

John Barfoot commented:

The panel were really impressed with the presentation provided by the University, the passion and enthusiasm shown by the course team, and the wide range of background of studen ts enlisted on your courses; a really inclusive admissions policy which aligns with CABE values. We very much look forward to continuing to grow our relationship over the coming years and welcoming your students to membership, and from a professional body perspective we hope this is the start of developing a great partnership with you

John Barfoot, (CABE’s Learning, Education and Academic Director)

James said:

As an academic team, we are focused on delivering courses that support the development of “industry-ready” graduates. Working closely with industrial partners and professional bodies is a central aspect of achieving this, and the accreditation of courses by CABE provides them with an important quality benchmark in terms of industrial-relevance.

Dr James Bishop, Senior Lecturer

Chartered Association of Building Engineers

The construction team have continued with their exciting programme of guest speakers this year with two more live virtual seminar presentations over the last few weeks.

Monday 26th April 2021

The first of these was on the 26^th April and was delivered by John Barfoot from the Chartered Association of Building Engineers (CABE). John is CABE’s Learning, Education and Academic Director, and provided the students with an overview of CABE and professional bodies more generally.

John also gave an insight into the current focus of the industry on fire, and the building regulations covering fire protection/prevention/compartmentation within buildings following the Grenfell disaster, which has already, and will continue to have over the coming years, a huge impact on the industry.

Luton Airport DART

Friday 30th April 2021

Following-on from John’s presentation, on the 30^th April the teaching team were very pleased to welcome the Luton Airport DART (Direct Air – Rail Transport) project team from Kier/VolkerFitzpatrick (main contractors on the project) to speak with the students virtually about this large, extremely interesting and complex project. The presentation was given by Olivia Perkins (Project Manager), Chrissy Haine (Section Engineer – Parkway Station) and Tom Gothard (Section Engineer - Central Station).

The DART will provide a rail link between Luton Airport Parkway station and the main airport terminal, and as a result will make Luton Airport one of the fastest airport terminals to access from central London. The project faced some huge challenges, not least the topography of the site itself, but also the Covid pandemic.

The team provided a fantastic glimpse of the project, solutions and approaches taken by the team. The construction course team also collaborated with their contemporaries for CST’s Mechanical Engineering course, to provide an opportunity for the engineering students to also benefit from the talk, and deliver a cross-disciplinary learning session.

Following the presentation session, Chrissy said:

Presenting to the group was a great way to engage with students from the local area - it was fascinating to hear their opinions on sustainability within the industry, especially in the area of social sustainability, and their suggestions on how the industry can improve. It was a rewarding experience, allowing us to contribute towards the teaching and learning at the University and developing the next generation of Construction Managers and Engineers

Chrissy Haine, Section Engineer - Parkway Station

For more information on the DART project, please go to www.kier.co.uk/our-projects/luton-dart

Bridging the Gap - 19th March 2021

On 19th March 2021 Dr Haiming Liu co-organised a workshop called Bridging the Gap between Information Science, Information Retrieval and Data Science (BIRDS 2021) at the 6th ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR 2021).

For further details please see: BIRDS2021

Computer Science and Forensics MSc Student

University of Bedfordshire MSc Student aims for the stars

Mooneesah Fatimah, a University of Bedfordshire Computer Science and Forensics MSc Student, achieves third place in the International Astronomy and Astrophysics Competition.

Apart from pursuing my career in the field of Cyber Security, I also have interest in the field of Astronomy and Astrophysics. I recently participated in the International Astronomy and Astrophysics Competition (IAAC) and came 3rd place internationally.

Mooneesah Fatimah

Mooneesah Fatimah is a Majan student, studying in Majan University College, a partner institution of the University of Bedfordshire.

 

Representatives of Industry-Leading Organisations

The construction team have continued to develop opportunities for students on their courses to hear from leading professionals, with two more Live seminar sessions this month from representatives of industry-leading organisations.

Tuesday 9th March 2021

Linked specifically to the Human Resource Management and Career Development unit, the students enjoyed an excellent presentation from Nigel Barnes on Project Leadership. Nigel is Head of Life Science (Europe Middle East and Africa) for Linesight, and has previously been Vice President Engineering for one of the world’s top pharmaceutical companies, as well as Head of Industry for one of the UK’s leading engineering construction consultancies.

Nigel gave a fantastic insight into the key considerations around leadership, teamwork and culture, and the significance of this in terms of delivering successful construction projects. After the session with the students, Nigel commented:

Friday 12th February 2021

The construction teaching team were pleased to welcome Alys Bishop to the University in February 2021, to deliver a virtual seminar on sustainable drainage systems for the construction management students.

Alys is the Principal Drainage Engineer and Flood Risk Team Leader for Central Bedfordshire Council, and gave an overview of best practice and cutting edge approaches.

Following the session, Alys said:

International Women’s Day

Monday 8th March 2021

International Women's Day is a world-wide day that celebrates the achievements of women.

This day has been celebrated by the National Environment Research Council (NERC).

Senior Lecturer Dr Tahmina Ajmal has been recognised and included in their celebrations.

To read the full story please see:

engage.nerc.ac.uk/2021/03/08/celebrating-international-womens-day

IRAC Seminar

IRAC Seminar Wednesday 27th January 2021

Speaker: Tristan Bacon, Zenzic

Online: MS Teams 

Date & Time: Wednesday 27th January, 11.00

Title: The UK Connected and Automated Mobility Roadmap to 2030: CAM Creators Update

About Tristan Bacon

Tristan Bacon is a Research Associate at Zenzic having joined in 2019. He has a MEng in General Engineering, Electronics, from Durham University, where he undertook a research project in connected vehicle communication technologies. Since joining Zenzic, Tristan has worked on multiple technical projects, with a primary focus on roadmapping the UK’s development and deployment of connected and automated mobility (CAM).

Tristan Bacon from Zenzic spoke in the IRAC Research Seminar series on activities his company is championing in order to set a national UK roadmap for developing the technologies needed for automated vehicle transportation until 2030.  In this interesting talk, Tristan reported on recent developments of the CAM Roadmap that includes a number of partners from industry and academia and that is also supported by the Government.  Various channels are open for interested parties to join the collaborative work and find their own avenues within the CAM Roadmap in order to contribute to this exciting field that is expected to fundamentally change our future experience in traffic of both people and goods.

The UK Connected and Automated Mobility Roadmap Gallary

Industry and Academia Partners

Creation Of Roadmap

CAM Ecosystem

Previous Next

H2020 MSCA Exchange Programme “MNR4SCell” Extended to 2021

The MSCA (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions) enable research-focused organisations (universities, research centres, and companies) to host talented foreign researchers and to create strategic partnerships with leading institutions worldwide.

MNR4SCell (Micro/Nano Robotics for Single Cancer Cells) is a MSCA Research and Innovation Staff Exchange project lead by the University of Warwick and participated by the school of Computer Science and Technology, University of Bedfordshire.

It focuses on building blocks of the micro/nano robotics and biomedical applications; and developing methodologies that improve understanding of the disease condition and progression.

The MSCA has awarded to Dr Renxi Qiu and Prof Dayou Li of Computer Science and Technology a €153K grant to extend the project until December 2021.

H2020 MSCA Exchange Programme “MNR4SCell”

The H2020 MSCA Exchange Programme “MNR4SCell” Extended to 2021. The H2020 MSCA Exchange Programme enables research-focused organisations to host talented international researchers and to create strategic partnerships with leading institutions worldwide.

The MNR4SCell Overview

MNR4SCell (Micro/Nano Robotics for Single Cancer Cells) is a MSCA project led by the University of Warwick and participated by 11 universities, research centres, and companies across the world. Dr Renxi Qiu and Professor Dayou Li are local coordinators of the project in Bedfordshire. They have received a €153K grant to extend the project until December 2021. The project is focused on building blocks of the micro/nano robotics and biomedical applications; and developing methodologies that improve understanding of the disease condition and progression.

For further information please see: warwick.ac.uk

5G-ERA

H2020 Research Grant Award, entitled “5G-ERA”

A £6 million H2020 project with 13 partners from 7 different countries to study 5G enhanced robot autonomy. The EU Research and Innovation programme - H2020, has awarded to Dr Renxi Qiu, Prof Dayou Li and Dr Enjie Liu from the School of Computer Science and Technology, University of Bedfordshire, a €700K grant as part of a 6 million research project entitled “5G-ERA”. Robot autonomy is essential for many 5G vertical sectors and can provide multiple benefits in automated mobility, Industry 4.0 and healthcare.

The project will accelerate the ongoing convergence of robotics, AI & cloud computing; and to unlock a next level of autonomy through 5G based learning in general. The 5G-ERA project is led by RobotNik Automation SLL who is a leading provider of service robots in Europe.

Dr Renxi Qiu from the University of Bedfordshire is the scientific coordinator of the 5G-ERA project.

H2020 Research Grant

H2020 Research Grant Award, entitled “5G-ERA”

A £6 million H2020 project with 13 partners from 7 different countries to study 5G enhanced robot autonomy.

The EU Research and Innovation programme - H2020, has awarded to Dr Renxi Qiu, Professor Dayou Li and Dr Enjie Liu from the School of Computer Science and Technology, University of Bedfordshire, a €700K grant as part of a 6 million research project entitled “5G-ERA”.

Dr Renxi Qiu is also the scientific co-ordinator of the entire 5G-ERA project. The project is oriented towards a user-centric paradigm of integrating Robot Autonomy into the existing standardised 5G testing framework under cloud native architecture to improve Quality of Experience (QoE). 

Robot autonomy can provide multiple benefits in automated mobility, Industry 4.0 and healthcare and 5G technology has the great potential to enhance robot autonomy.

Internet of Humans

Dr Ghazanfar Safdar is a guest editor on a special issue flyer of Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks
which focusses on Internet of Humans (IoH) in the Perspective of the Next Generation of the Internet (NGI). NGI will involve all sorts of new protocols, to the point where it might entirely reshape the stack and existenceof the dominant TCP/IP stack.

For futher details please see: www.mdpi.com/journal/jsan/special_issues/IoH_NGI

The fifth (5th) generation, while leveraging from the benefits of SARC, will allow humans to communicate with each other as part of the Internet of Humans (IoH). IoH is indeed imminent and undeniably a prominent and essential part of NGI.

International Symposium on Water Ecology and Environment

Tools for Precision Aquaculture

Dr Tahmina Ajmal was invited to present her research at the International Symposium on Water Ecology and Environment www.confiswee.com/#/aboutIsweeKeynoteSpeakers on 8^th December 2020. Her talk entitled ‘Tools for Precision Aquaculture’ was based on her ongoing research projects in aquaculture.

1st Year BSc Computer Games Develpment Student Wins Design Award

Congratulations to James Arnold on winning the “Humanity” award for his short game, “Reasons” which was developed as part of the Games Jobs Live Game Parade Jam.

The game jam took place over one week in October, giving students a chance to showcase their talents directly to companies hiring in the gaming sector. This year’s topic was “seize the day”. James’ game highlighted struggles that people with depression can face in daily activities.

The game involves controlling an unnamed character during their morning routine. Difficult challenges become easier when the player gives the character “reasons” for carrying out the tasks. 'Reasons' can be downloaded for free here

Knowledge Transfer Partnership

Welcome to Cem Ekin Sunal who has joined our team as KTP Associate to work on a KTP project with Deckpro Pumps /Uptime Systems from October 2020. Cem will be working on development and implementation of machine learning algorithms that will predict and classify failures of electric pump motors
based on readings of electric current in real-time.

The project topic is tightly coupled with the concept of Internet-of-Things (IoT) and with the popular deep learning paradigm. The expected project outcomes will greatly improve efficiency and quality of service and maintenance delivered by our industrial partner and will enable them to open a whole new palette of products with a potential step into other markets, such as monitoring and failure prediction of electric vehicles.

The project will last for 2 years with a total value of £160k and is led by Dr Vladan Velisavljevic and Dr Vladimir Dyo from School CST & IRAC. Congratulations to Cem on a successful start of the project.

ACE-2020 Workshop

The 4th International Workshop on Applications of AI, Cyber Security and Economics Big Data (ACE-2020)

Held in conjunction with The 5th IEEE Int’l Congress on Cyber Science and Technology (CyberSciTech 2020)

Hosted in Calgary, Canada, 22-26 June 2020

cyber-science.org/2020

This international workshop provides a platform for IT experts and young researchers to present their cyber-related original research discoveries.

Master the Mainframe

We are proud to announce the University of Bedfordshire came 3rd in the Master The Mainframe 2019 competition with 38 registrations. This included 13 students who completed Part 1, 2 completed Part 2, and 1 completed part 3.

Two students who were Part 2 and Part 3 finishers are listed in the Hall of Fame 2019 (among the 33 entries) - go to mtm2019.mybluemix.net click on the UK map, then search for Bedfordshire.

Congratulations!

Congratulations to all our students who took part and to Daniel Serbanescu and Radu Popescu for their success in the hall of fame! 

December 2019

Cybersecurity Club@UoB

• Presentation on Wednesday 4 December 2019
• Presenters: Dr Ali Mansour, Duke Ludera, Vincent Goldman, and Graham Winchester
  

A large group of enthusiastic students and members of the Cybersecurity Club@UoB from the School of Computer Science and Technology attended this Major League Hacking (MLH) hands-on workshop in collaboration with the Cybersecurity Club@UoB in the new STEM building on 4 December 2019.

From left to right: Dr Ali Mansour, Duke Ludera, Vincent Goldman, and Graham Winchester

Students learned about IBM Z, the powerful enterprise-computing platform that 71% of Fortune 500 companies depend on for their success. This workshop focused on z/OS, the operating system favoured by businesses with high requirements for availability, accuracy, and security. z/OS is the home of enterprise software, including CICS, which serves up 30 billion transactions a day.

Students logged into a live IBM Mainframe system, explored its environment, performed exercises on data processing, and accessed a UNIX subsystem for performing some basic tasks. This hands-on experience set the students up with the educational foundation needed to excel on this platform built specifically for business. 

This Hands-on workshop was sponsored by IBM Z and arranged by the Cybersecurity Club@UoB and Major League Hacking (ML), USA. Special acknowledgement goes to Mr Paul Fairbairn, Z Client Skills Leader Europe, IBM Z Ecosystem, IBM UK, for his support with this workshop.

Tranzfuser 2019 - UK Games Fund National Project

A team composed of three graduates from the BSc Computer Games Development course and one post-graduate

researcher from the School of Computer Science and Technology have been selected as one of 13 teams to participate in Tranzfuser a national competition for graduate games talent. Its an excellent opportunity for our graduates to work on a games project and pitch to a national audience. Well done to the team on their proposal, and good luck for the project!

The School of Computer Science and Technology will host the team as a ‘Local Hub’ for the Tranzfuser project.

Announced by news@ukgamesfund on June 25th, 2019:

“Graduate teams from across the UK have today been announced as participants in this year’s Tranzfuser competition. Based at Tranzfuser Local Hubs across the length and breadth of the country…

Participating teams will work on their individual games over the course of the summer, getting a playable demo for a large consumer games show in the Autumn. There they will vie for the attention of the playing public, standing alongside the AAA games of 2019. This year’s competition also sees the teams attend a bootcamp-style Practice Pitch event in Dundee; in preparation for the full pitch to the UK Games Fund team at the Autumn consumer show for support of up to £25,000 for the development of their project, the teams will practice their pitching skills to a range of industry professionals. The Practice Pitch event will determine which teams go on to exhibit at the consumer games show later this year.”

tranzfuser.com/tranzfuser-teams-2019

• Fusebox Inc.
• Team Leader: Vlad Viziteu,
• Mihăiţă-Iulian Vlad, Deepaseem Gurung, Amy Hoang.

About the Project

We would like to thank UK Games Talent for the opportunity to participate in the Tranzfuser competition. Fusebox.Inc is ready to bring this VR experience to the world! So grab your headset and get ready to fly! Take to the skies in Wings of Reality; a virtual reality flight sim arcade game. Grab your controllers and battle it out with your friends in this intense PVP multiplayer game! Aim to become top dog by destroying your friends in an action-packed jet fighter combat. Only one person can survive. Only one person can become victorious. Are you ready to become the number one pilot?

May 2019

Poster Day

The CST School held it's annual Project Poster Event on the Friday 24^th May 2019, in the Luton Campus Centre. This event saw a number of business visitors and offered an opportunity for our CST third year students to exhibit their final projects in poster format and to demonstrate their artefacts to visitors and industry. The event was open to all students and members of staff to have a look at some of the wonderful achievements of our 3rd years!

Best Poster

• 1^st Nishat Ahmad
• 2^nd Muhammad Zulqarnain
• 3^rd Jason Clifton

Best Academic Contribution

• 1^st  Aykut Sirma
• 2^nd Miguel Fernandes Vieira
• 3^rd Boguslaw Smolarczyk

Best Commercially Viable Project

• 1^st Jason Clifton
• 2^nd Maciej Olkowicz
• 3^rd Enoch Banjo

Sodalite Prizes

Three prizes were donated by Sodalite.

Best Poster

• Fortune Nweke-Maraizu

Best Academic Contribution

• Enoch Banjo

Most Commercially Viable

• Jordan Dunn

Hornby Prizes

Two prizes were donated by Hornby.

Projects with Most Potential

• Sadiqul Chowdhury
• Jack Bartlett

The prizes were presented by Dr Paul Sant (on right in photo(s) above),
Head of the School of Computer Science and Technology.

January 2019

Guardian League Tables

The School of Computer Science and Technology is proud to announce we are ranked 7th (out of 62) in the most recent Guardian League Tables for 2019 in the 'Electronic and Electrical' subject area.

Focusing on providing authentic learning experience, effective student inclusion and consistent high-quality academic support has brought the CST School a fantastic achievement! The most recent 2019 Guardian University League Tables has ranked the University of Bedfordshire 7^thout of 62 institutions in the country in the subject of electronic and electrical engineering, placing the UoB and CST School in a group of several leading UK institutions in this subject. The success is even greater having noted that the UoB is the only university in the country with the maximal score of 10 in the category of added value. We are remaining committed to the highest quality of teaching, academic support and student inclusion and we are aiming at retaining such a high rank in the competitive academic world.

Congratulations to our Electronic Engineering staff!

From left to right: Dr Vladan Velisavljevic, Dr Tahmina Ajmal,
Dr Carlos Jacome Fernandez and Head of School, Dr Paul Sant.

• View the Guardian 2019 University League Tables >>>

Please see our Electronics courses below:

• BEng (Hons) Computer Systems Engineering (sandwich year)
• BEng (Hons) Computer Systems Engineering
• BEng (Hons) Computer Systems Engineering (foundation year)
• BEng (Hons) Electronic Engineering (foundation year)
• BEng (Hons) Electronic Engineering (sandwich year)
• BEng (Hons) Electronic Engineering
• BEng (Hons) Telecommunications & Network Engineering (foundation year)
• BEng (Hons) Telecommunications & Network Engineering (sandwich year)
• BEng (Hons) Telecommunications & Network Engineering

www.beds.ac.uk/howtoapply/departments/computing/courses

Project Poster Event May 2018

The CST School held its annual Project Poster Event on the 25^th May 2018, in the Luton Campus Centre. This event saw a number of business visitors and offered an opportunity for our CST third year students to exhibit their final projects in poster format and to demonstrate their artefacts to industry. The event was open to all students and members of staff to have a look at some of the wonderful achievements of our 3rd years!

The event was sponsored by the School of Computer Science and Technology, together with local companies Sodalite and Mac Donald Humfrey (Automation) Ltd.,

The projects were judged and a number of prizes were awarded.

And the winners are...

Best Poster

• 1^st Ken Chin
• 2^nd Haroulis Harris

Best Academic Project

• 1^st Nikolaos Christu
• 2^nd Ion Sarov

Best Commercially Relevant Project

• 1^st Lukasz Kaleta
• 2^nd James Early

Experience Day with MacDonald Humfrey (Automation) Ltd

• Tom Roberts
• Mario Rodriguez

The prizes were presented by Dr Paul Sant (on far left in photo above),
Acting Head of the School of Computing and Technology.

BCS Arduino Workshop

On 2nd May 2018, the Bedfordshire Chapter held its first Arduino workshop. Chapter President, Faisal Hoque, ran the workshops after securing BCS funding for the equipment.

The 5 hour Arduino workshop was a tremendous success with over 30 students attending, over the course of the event.

Students were able to either work on their own projects or work in groups on projects ranging from music boxes through to a calculator project that would show results on an LCD screen.

Well done to Faisal and the Chapter for organising such a successful workshop.

Faisal expressed the group’s gratitude to BCS for their funding.

And finally, special thanks go to Jeremy Bennett, Chair of the BCS Open Source Specialist Group for his advice and support on what items to buy and where to find them. Read more

Outreach

On 8^th March David Jazani visited Denbigh High School helping to support their Careers Day by providing talks on careers and information on CST / Engineering courses available at the University, including our Foundation Year offering. David has been asked to return and provide further inspirational career talks to students on 15^th May 2018

IBM University Day

On 14^th May, Acting HoS Paul Sant took a group of 17 CST students to the IBM University day, hosted by IBM. The students attended Key Note seminars, had a networking lunch and engaged in a series of interactive and discursive sessions in the afternoon/evening.

Degree Apprenticeships

The degree apprenticeship (DTS) is now running its third unit in UBMK with the apprentices from BMW Mini and the level 4 Data Analyst apprenticeship has 15 apprentices based at Luton. Most of these are currently employed at Luton Borough Council but are joined by apprentices from Vauxhall Motors and the University of Bedfordshire.

Publications

CST Lecturers author new book: Masood Ur Rehman & Ghazanfar Ali Safdar, LTE Communications and networks: Femtocells and antenna Design challenges

LTE Communications and networks fills a gap in the literature to offer a comprehensive review of the most current developments of LTE Femto cells and antennas and explores their future growth. This book identifies technical challenges and presents recent findings related to the development, integration and enhancement of LTE systems in portable devices. It will pave the way for students, researchers and industrial professionals for understanding of 4G and upcoming 5G technologies.