As part of a 2021/2022 MEng group project, Horia Druliac, Matthew Bardsley, Chris Riches, and Christian Dunn implemented a fully functional end-to-end (E2E) verifiable online voting system and conducted a successful trial among the residents of New Town in Kolkata, India during the 2022 Durga Puja festival celebration. This was the first time an E2E online voting system was built and tested in India. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Full details about the implementation, the trial and the voter feedback are written in a paper, published in the Journal of Information Security and Application. A free version of the paper is available on IACR e-print as a technical report. Also, see the earlier news item about this Durga Puja trial.

Professor Feng Hao, who supervised this group project, commented: “This is great teamwork. The four MEng students worked relentlessly for nearly a year, with good assistance from Luke Harrison and Professor Bimal Roy. The e-voting system was developed at an industry standard and worked flawlessly during the Durga Puja trial. Several government officials from India also helped us, providing invaluable support for the trial. We sincerely thank them in the acknowledgement section of the paper.”

Congratulations are in order for the accomplished individuals of WMG who marked a significant milestone at the University of Warwick's Winter Graduation Ceremonies this week.

A total of 1,381 Master's, Postgraduate Research and Undergraduate students graduated from across WMG.

There were 1,225 Master’s students; 1,072 were full-time, 35 part-time, and 118 studied overseas.

Twelve graduated from the Postgraduate research programme including 11 PhD students and one Master’s of Science by research student.

A total of 144 were undergraduate students; three graduated with a BSc in Cyber Security, one with a BSc in Digital Healthcare Science; two with a BEng in Automotive Engineering and the remaining 138 were Degree Apprenticeship students.

At the WMG graduation event, the alumni speeches delivered by esteemed speakers, Philomena Lavery (MSc Cyber Security and Management, 2020), and Dr. Benjamin Wood, (MEng Mechanical Engineering, 2006; EngD Engineering, 2012) were nothing short of inspiring. Their words not only resonated with wisdom but also ignited a sense of motivation and empowerment among the graduates.

Philomena Lavery, Senior Vice President Digital Security at AVEVA, and Dr. Benjamin Wood, Director, Research & Technology – Manufacturing Innovation at Hexcel Corporation, brought a unique blend of expertise and experience to the podium. Their heartfelt messages added an extra layer of significance to the celebration, leaving a lasting impression on all who attended.

Professor Robin Clark, Dean of WMG, said, “Congratulations to all our graduates. Your dedication and remarkable achievements have not only sculpted your academic journey but have also enriched the vibrant and innovative community here at WMG.

“I take immense pride in your accomplishments, and they stand as a testament to your resilience and commitment to excellence. I hope you continue to reach for new heights and inspire those around you now and in the future. Well done!”

Professor Steve Maggs, Director of Alumni and Industry Engagement, added: “As these graduates embark on new horizons, we celebrate their remarkable journey and commend their dedication. With a total of 1,381 Master’s, Postgraduate Research and Undergraduate students, this class not only signifies academic prowess but also adds depth to our diverse community.”

Professor Steve Maggs, further says, “At the University of Warwick, connections do not end when our students graduate; you join a community like no other. As a Warwick graduate, you become part of a global community of more than 285,000 alumni in more than 180 countries and territories, with over 29,000 of those who are WMG graduates. Wherever you are in the world, you can keep connected with the friends and networks developed during your studies and also have the opportunity to make new connections.”

Check out the WMG alumni web pages for more details: https://warwick.ac.uk/alumni

To find out more about studying at WMG visit: Study | WMG | University of Warwick

For all students joining us in Autumn 2023, we are very pleased to welcome you to the History Department.

Please visit the Undergraduate handbook for more information and a welcome message from the Head of Department, Professor Tim Lockley, MBE.

Mustafa Yasir, a former Warwick Department of Computer Science student who graduated in Summer 2023, wrote up and presented an academic paper on the work carried out as part of his third year project. The paper was accepted to the 3rd Annual Workshop on Graph Learning Benchmarks at KDD 2023, and was presented in California by Mustafa.

Mustafa's third year project idea, supervised by Dr Long Tran-Thanh and titled 'Extending the Graph Generation Models of GraphWorld', started whilst he was interning at Google last summer. Mustafa contacted some researchers at the company working in the Graph ML space, to ask for any relevant project ideas. He bumped into a team who had just published GraphWorld: a tool to change the way Graph Neural Networks are benchmarked, by creating synthetic graph datasets through graph generation models – as opposed to using real-world datasets that are limited in their generalisability and present a major issue facing the field of Graph Learning.

However, since GraphWorld only used a single graph generation model in this process, Mustafa integrated two additional models with the system, ran large-scale GNN benchmarking experiments with these models and published his code to Google’s official GraphWorld repository. The project provides a significant advancement to researchers across the field looking to benchmark models and guide the development of new architectures.

Dr Long Tran-Thanh commented:

What Mustafa and the GraphWorld team has been working on is very important for the machine learning and AI research communities. In particular, there has been a vocal criticism against the whole field that most models are trained on the same public datasets (e.g., ImageNet, MNIST, etc), therefore are not diverse enough. One way to mitigate this issue is to generate realistically looking synthetic data. This need is especially of importance in within the graph learning community. GraphWorld’s aim is to address this exact problem by creating a powerful and convenient tool that can generate a diverse set of graphs, ranging from large social network-style graphs to molecule-inspired ones. Joining this project with the Google researchers is a huge opportunity for Warwick students to participate in a very impactful project.

On Thursday 27th July, WMG celebrated the success of its latest graduates.

With a total of 562 Master’s, Undergraduate, Postgraduate and Research students graduating, the team at WMG is very proud of everything the Class of 2023 has achieved.

There were 150 Undergraduate students, 76 of whom completed a Degree Apprenticeship, 73 studied full-time with one studying part-time.

For Postgraduate there were 383 Master’s students; 267 were full-time students, 31 part-time, and 85 studied overseas.

There was a further two MSCRs (Masters by Research), 22 PhD, and five EngD students.

Professor Gill Cooke, Director of Education, at WMG, University of Warwick said: “We are incredibly proud of our graduates. They have worked incredibly hard, and we hope they enjoy celebrating their achievements. We wish them all the best for the next stage of their careers.”

To find out more about studying at WMG visit https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/wmg/education/

Pablo Brereton Rodrigo, a School of Engineering student at the University of Warwick, has won the Logistics Research Network Undergraduate Dissertation of the Year Award 2023, from the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT).

Pablo has recently completed his degree in Engineering Business Management. This undergraduate degree, although part of the School of Engineering, is led by the education team at WMG, University of Warwick.

Pablo’s dissertation entitled “Integrating supply chains in a turbulent, complex and uncertain era” was nominated by Professor Rob Thornton, Director of Undergraduate Programmes, at WMG. Pablo will be presented with his certificate and prize money at the Logistics Research Network Conference (LRN 2023) dinner and awards ceremony on the 7th September 2023 at Herriot-Watt University.

Professor Thornton explained: “Pablo’s dissertation was nominated for this award, for both academic excellence and the challenging topics addressed, which are highly relevant to today’s turbulent supply chains.”

Pablo said: “In discussing topics such as supply chain integration, I explored the challenging and turbulent landscape in today’s business environment and applied it to modern-day supply chains to reach the conclusion that forward-looking firms will leverage supply chain integration through self-contained, cross-functional and digitalised many-to-many structures.

“Directly applying skills learned during my placement year in supply chains, this project has further developed my personal growth and competencies relevant to the field. As such, I am immensely grateful to my university tutor, Alexa Kirkaldy, and all my friends and family for the continued support throughout the project.”

Pablo’s research was supervised by Alexa Kirkaldy, Associate Professor and Director of Academic Integrity at WMG who said: “Pablo defined his project idea and objectives after a year in industry and was excited to delve into the topic of supply chain integration, reaching depth and breadth usually expected at Master’s level. In addition Pablo was a delight to supervise and I wish him well in his career within the semiconductor industry.”

Professor Georgia Kremmyda, Head of Teaching and Deputy Head of School of Engineering said: “On behalf of the School of Engineering and the Education team, I would like to warmly congratulate you for your amazing achievement. The award strongly highlights your effort, commitment and dedication to your studies. You should take time to celebrate what you have accomplished.”

Professor David Towers, Head of School at the School of Engineering added: “This is quite an achievement and definitely something to capture on your CV!”

To find out more please visit: WMG - The University of Warwick

We are delighted to announce that one of our recent graduates has been awarded The University’s Outstanding Student Contribution Award (OSCA) for 2023.

The inaugural Eutopia Summer School on the history of violence is taking place at TU Dresden from 2-8 July 2023. The school is aimed primarily at undergraduates about to enter their final year of study and will enable exploration of themes such as:

• Historiography of Violence
• Gendered Violence
• Colonial Violence
• Violence in Political Discourse
• Representing Violence
• Drink-Related Violence

Born out of the longstanding relationship between Warwick and Dresden, the summer school is run by scholars from both institutions, providing students access to world-class research and teaching. An amazing opportunity and we wish them well this week!

When you purchase an IP-based spy (hidden) camera for surveillance, are you aware that others may be spying on what you are watching? Recent research by Samuel Herodotou in the Department of Computer Science, Warwick, as part of his third-year undergraduate dissertation project under the supervision of Professor Feng Hao, has revealed a wide range of vulnerabilities of a generic camera module that has been used in many best-selling hidden cameras. Exploiting these vulnerabilities, an attacker may capture your hidden camera's video/audio streams from anywhere in the world, and furthermore, take complete control of the camera as a bot to attack other devices in your home network. To launch the attack, all the attacker needs to know is merely your hidden camera’s serial number. It is estimated that these vulnerabilities affect millions of hidden cameras, mostly sold in America, Europe and Asia. The (insecure) peer-to-peer network that is used by the affected cameras is also being used by 50 million IoT devices as a general communication platform. Hence, many millions of other IoT devices may also be affected. Researchers have responsibly disclosed findings to the manufacturers, and a CVE has already been assigned. Samuel will present this research work at the 17th International Conference on Network and System Security (Canterbury, UK, 14-16 August 2023). More details can be found in the paper.