Human-Centred Computing News

Nick Pope successfully completed his PhD entitled "Supporting the Migration from Construal to Program: Rethinking Software Development" under the supervision of Dr Meurig Beynon. His thesis is both a significant contribution to Empirical Modelling research, and a vigorous critique and reappraisal of some of its established principles and tools.

Where previous EM research highlighted the role of families of definitions in developing construals Nick has proposed a richer framework in which to conceptualise the transition from construals to programs. In his vision, the current state of a construal is expressed by a single binary function of the form ϕ: R × R → R that changes dynamically.

His work draws on ideas from prototype-based object-oriented software development and functional programming that have been the basis of practical tools and models first deployed in Warwick Games Design Society. Nick is currently working on the development of a web-based EM tool that will integrate his own distinctive contribution with those of many other graduates from the EM research group.

Nick's independent spirit has not only been evident in his research contribution: he spends as much time as possible trekking, ski-ing, cycling and mountaineering. At the time of writing Nick is believed to be scaling some 4000m peaks in Morocco.

February sees the launch of the ROADBLOCK project, funded by the EPSRC with the goal of developing artificial and programmable bacterial coatings to protect surfaces against infective agents. While Bioengineering techniques that allow genes to be manipulated have been around for some time, the discipline of Synthetic Biology allows for the more effective design of genetic circuits. The Principle Investigator for this project is Dr Sara Kalvala, who will be applying her expertise in Compiler Design and Formal Logics towards the development of tools which will help assemble genetic networks and model their interactions with host genes.

The Department invites applications for a Research Fellowship to work on this three-year project. The project requires a post-doctoral researcher with a good background in Computer Science, especially in either Compiler Design or Automated Reasoning, who would like to expand their horizons and apply their knowledge into Synthetic Biology.

More information and details of the application procedure are available from http://go.warwick.ac.uk/kalvala/pdra. The deadline for applications is 27 February 2012.

Julian Bhardwaj, a first year Discrete Mathematics student, has successfully made it through to the Grand Final of the Cyber Security Challenge which will be held in March. Julian actually qualified twice for the preceding final rounds through his performance in the SANS Packet Capture Analysis and the SANS/Sophos Penetrations Test competitions. His performance in the "Sophos’ Malware Hunt" final round placed in the top 11 candidates, competing against students and experienced IT professionals alike.

Julian has already won a year's subscription to the National Skills Academy for IT and there are more "career enabling" prizes on offer in the Grand Final which Julian is hoping will help him get into a future career in the computer security industry.

Julian is currently taking the module CS134, "Introduction to Computer Security" and wishes to continue to develop his knowledge of Computer Security throughout his degree course and possibly postgraduate study.