International Women's Day Celebration in Computer Science

As part of our International Womens Day celebrations, we are hosting a series of talks by women working in the field of Computer Science.

We are excited to be joined by Professor Julie A. McGann from Imperial College London who will be speaking about cyber-physical interaction. We are also joined by Meghna Asthana from the University of York who will deliver a talk on Face Modelling in VR Communication.

International Women Day (IWD) Celebration in Computer Science @ University of  York, UK

Venue: RCH/037 Lecture Theatre, Campus East – Ron Cooke Hub (map – zone 8)

Friday 18th March 2022

#BreakTheBias #IWD2022

Register on Eventbrite page.  For  any query please contact Host and Organiser Dr Poonam Yadav (poonam.yadav[at].york.ac.uk)

10:15 – 11:00 am

Title:  Computing with magnetic rings

Speaker: Professor Susan Stepney

Bio: Susan is Professor of Computer Science in the department.

She researches non-standard computing (using non-silicon materials to investigate computation in materio) and artificial chemistries (as a route for investigating and building virtual systems exhibiting open-ended novelty).

11:00 – 11:05 am  Prof Paul Cairns, Head of the Computer Science Department.

11:05 – 12:00 noon 

Invited Speaker: Professor Julie A. McCann is a Professor in Computer Systems with Imperial College London 

Title: Finding Rubies in the Dust (A conversation about Cyber-physical Interaction)

Abstract: Since the early days of Wireless Sensor Networks to today’s Internet of Things there have been over twenty years of research. A quick Google Scholar search reveals well over 618,000 papers with ‘Wireless Sensor Network’ and

 485,000 with ‘Internet of Things’. However, when one talks to real users in the worlds of civil engineering, environment modeling, digital agriculture and the industrial IoT etc. they complain about the systems being flaky and completely unusable after a few years. Real users of networked sensor systems want smart infrastructures that are reliable. Given that these users are designing infrastructures that are required to last potentially 10 to hundreds of years, what are the implications for our field if we cannot deliver? In my talk I will discuss some of the issues sensor systems designers face, and put forward some of my thoughts of how knowledge of cyber-physical interaction means that we can turn noise into new or better signals.

Speaker Bio: Julie A. McCann is a Professor in Computer Systems with Imperial College London and is currently Interim Vice Dean Research in the Faculty of Engineering. Her research centers on decentralized and self-organizing scalable algorithms and protocols for Wireless Sensor systems, Internet of Things, or Cyber-physical systems. She leads the Adaptive Embedded Systems Engineering Research (AESE) research group who examine cyber-physical interaction to design better sensor-based systems. She is Deputy Director of PETRAS IoT Cybersecurity Hub, Critical Ecosystems Lead for the Alan Turing Institute, and Imperial PI on the EPSRC programme grant Science for Sensor Systems Software. She has a number of international research collaborations including Singapore NRF funded Eco-Cities (she has a sub-lab in Singapore with I2R and HDB), and until recently directed the Intel Collaborative Research Institute (ICRI) for Sustainable Cities, as well as other projects though EU FP7/H2020 programmes. McCann is an elected Member of the Council of Computer Science Professors and Heads of Computing, and was elected to the membership committee of the UKCRC, she holds the 2018 UKRI Suffrage Science Award for Computing and Mathematics, President’s Medal for Research Excellence 2020, and is a Fellow of the BCS and Chartered Engineer.

12 – 1:30 pm  Lunch 

1:30 – 3:10 pm  Early career researchers talks

Speaker: Dr Anna Bramwell-Dicks

Title: Disability, Chronic and Mental Illness Representation in Past, Present and Future Stories: Responsible Storytelling, the Risks of Empathy Tourism and Unconscious Ignorance

Bio and abstract: Anna Bramwell-Dicks is a lecturer in the Department of Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media (TFTI) at the University of York, currently on a Research Fellowship funded by the XRStories AHRC Research Network Cluster. Her current research project sits between Human Computer Interaction, Media and Disability Studies fields, by applying HCI approaches to understanding issues relating to disability representation across different media formats. Historically, the representation of disabled people and those with chronic or mental illness within traditional storytelling formats (e.g. film and television) has tended towards use of stereotypes and tropes. This inappropriate representation of people from within this often marginalised group has led to increased stigma and misunderstandings, which can have dangerous consequences. I argue that as we move into more immersive storytelling formats (e.g. Virtual Reality) the damages  associated with inappropriate representation are likely to increase, so we need to be thinking about how we tell stories responsibly to overcome issues associated with empathy tourism and unconscious ignorance.

Speaker: Meghna Asthana

Title: Face Modeling in VR Communication – VR as a remote social interaction tool

Bio: Meghna is a 2nd year PhD researcher. She has a passion for her research in Computer Vision, Deep Learning and VR. She is keen on talking about the potentials of Web 3.0 application and diversity in STEM.

Speaker: Reem Alhabib

Title: Data Integrity in Autonomous driving systems 

Bio and Abstract: Reem is a  first year PhD student and previously worked as a TA at Shaqra University in Saudi Arabia. Reem holds a master’s degree in computer science from CU Denver, USA. Currently, She is researching data integrity and authorization in Autonomous vehicles. ADSs are increasingly being developed and integrated into vehicles. They require various data feeds to make control decisions to ensure safety and security when deploying ADS vehicles. By producing, collecting, storing, and making real-time data available, investigators can reconstruct traffic events to reduce the risk of future incidents. However, to conduct a meaningful investigation, the data used by the investigators need to be accurate and to have re- retained its integrity. What is the best way to share and access the data by different authorities while maintaining integrity?

Speaker: Qurat Ul Ain Ali, University of York, UK

Title: Lowcomote: Scalable Low-Code Engineering Platforms

Bio and Abstract: Qurat is a 3rd year PhD researcher. In this talk, Qurat will  introduce the Lowcomote project, which trains a generation of experts that will upgrade the current trend of LCDP to a new paradigm, Low-Code Engineering Platform.This will be achieved by injecting in LCDPs the theoretical and technical framework defined by recent research in Model Driven Engineering, augmented with Cloud Computing and Machine Learning techniques.

Low-Code Development Platforms (LCDPs) are software development platforms on the Cloud, provided through a Platform-as-a-Service model, which allow users to build completely operational applications by interacting through dynamic graphical user interfaces, visual diagrams and declarative languages.

Speaker: Tian Gan

Title: Time-delay dynamical system based Reservoir Computing.

Bio:  I am a PhD student in the Bio-inspired Systems and Technology research lab in the Department of Electronic Engineering. My research focuses on time-delay dynamical system based Reservoir Computing.

Speaker: Sahar Mirhadi

Title: Video Games & Life Transitions: Searching for support and context

Bio: Sahar Mirhadi is a first year researcher in Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (IGGI) at the University of York.  Her research focuses on how gaming can positively affect players during life transitions and the potential social or contextual factors that could drive this. 

3:10-3:20 Break

 3:20 pm – 4:00pm

Speaker: Professor Ana Cavalcanti

Title: RoboStar Technology: software engineering for robotics

Bio and Abstract: Professor Ana Cavalcanti is professor in computer science leading Roobostar and Chair of  Emerging Technologies at Royal Academy of Engineering. 

Simulation is favored by roboticists to evaluate controller design and software. Often, state machines are drawn to convey overall ideas and used as a basis to program tool-specific simulations. The simulation code, written in general or proprietary programming languages, is, however, the only full account of the robotic system. Here, we present the RoboStar technology, a modern approach to design that supports automatic generation of simulation code guaranteed to be correct with respect to a design model, and complements simulation with model checking, theorem proving, and automatic test generation for simulation. Diagrammatic domain-specific, but tool-independent, notations for design and simulation use state machines, differential equations, and controlled English to specify behavior.

Speaker:  Dr Poonam Yadav

Title:  Insights of IoT Fingerprinting 

Bio and Abstract: Dr Yadav is Lecturer at Computer Science and Chair of ACM-W UK professional chapter.  In her talk, she will be providing use of IoT fingerprinting in cybersecurity and how to create different behavioral fingerprints, and lessons learnt.

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