We are pleased to report that Dr Simon Graham, Senior Research Fellow from the Department of Computer Science, has received a SEM Faculty Thesis Prize.

Each year, the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine (SEM) funds a prize for the best PhD/EngD thesis in each of its ten departments. Each department nominates a winner out of the applications received after a judging process as determined by the Faculty.

Dr Simon Graham commented regarding his award:

My research focussed on the development of computational tools for the automatic analysis of digitised cancerous tissue samples. Now, I am continuing my research in the area of computational pathology and soon hope to see it utilised in a clinical setting, where it may help improve cancer recognition and treatment planning. I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Nasir Rajpoot and all my collaborators within the Tissue Image Analytics Centre and at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire for their support during my PhD.

The Mathematical Association of America has presented Mike Paterson with a 2021 Paul Halmos - Lester Ford Award for an article of "expository excellence published in The American Mathematical Monthly". There were several unusual aspects to this paper: the title, "A head-ache causing problem"; the authors, "Conway, J.H., Paterson, M.S., and Moscow, U.S.S.R"; the sole reference in the paper is to itself; the main result is first disproved and then proved; and the acknowledgments make clear that Conway wrote the paper. Paterson previously received this award in 2010 (then the Lester Ford Award) for his "Overhang" article. More information can be found here.

We are delighted to announce that Dr Long Tran-Thanh has been awarded funding and support from Google’s AI for Social Good program.

The program focusses on using AI to address some of the world’s biggest societal challenges. Dr. Tran-Thanh’s project, titled Incentive Engineering and Truthful Mechanisms for Grassland Quality and Local Market Price Estimation in Africa, will address the problem of holistic grazing and pasture management in East Africa. The main objectives of the project are: (i) to identify the most efficient ways to evaluate the overall quality of different grazing areas; (ii) to develop a user friendly recommendation system that chooses the next best grazing areas for pastoralists, that takes into account the holistic aspect of pasture management; and (iii) to incentivise pastoralists to truthfully report their activities in order to further improve the system’s predictive ability. The project is a collaboration between the University of Warwick and AfriScout.