Faculty of Science and Technology

On the 14th of September InfoLab21 hosted a mini-conference on the research work being carried out across the MSc programmes at the School of Computing and Communications (SCC).

Introduced by Dr Plamen Angelov, six students presented to a mixed academic and industry audience.

The Showcase provided an excellent opportunity for businesses to engage directly with the graduating talent from the SCC Masters programmes and see some of the research going on at InfoLab21.

Following the presentations, 3 students were selected by a panel of businesses and academics to receive an award which were kindly sponsored by three of the attending companies; Survey Me,A.T. Transport World Services Group Ltd and Savant Ltd. The award categories and winners were:

1. Most Promising Commercial Opportunity

Glyn Jones from Savant with SCC Student Prakash Iyer

A £50 voucher and certificate was awarded MSc Networking and Internet Systems student Prakash Iyer for his work on 'Assessing the Performance of Fountain Coding in Wireless Networks' which looks into issues related to good and efficient methods of data transmission.

This award was sponsored and presented by Savant Limited. Savant's Glyn Jones explained why Prakash was the winner of this award, "We chose Prakash because his research indicated that there would be a marked improvement in error correction rates for data transmission without a large increase in network traffic as feedback channels are not required. In the area of wireless communication there would seem to be a clear benefit from implementing his research into physical devices."

Prakash was very pleased with the event, "I thank the School of Computing and Communications, InfoLab21 for providing a great platform to present my work. The feedback which I received from the distinguished guests and members for my presentation, has motivated me to do further research in this field."

2. Best Research Idea

SCC Student Tu Vuong with Ainsley Tidd from AT Transport

This award was given to Tu Vuong (MSc Networking and Internet Systems) for his idea 'Real-Time Distributed Network Traffic Classification Network'. The project aims to build a real-time traffic classification framework that tries to achieve 0% packet loss rate by exploiting the power of parallel processing using a cluster of computers with commodity hardware, as opposed to using a single supercomputer.

A certificate and £20 voucher was presented to Tu by Ainsley Tidd, Managing Director AT Transport who commented, "It was a very close award decision and all of the students presented a very good case but as with all these things we have to pick only one, I was impressed with the amount of research and the way it was explained in a clear way that could be understood by ordinary people who perhaps do not have the technical knowledge. Very well done in what was a very close competition."

Tu added, "I really liked it, it was a unique opportunity to present the hard work without going through many hoops."

3. Best Presentation

SCC student Ayo Dawodu with Lee Evans from Survey Me

MSc Networking and Internet Systems student Ayo Dawodu won the award for Best Presentation with "Exploiting low-cost computing: AndroidRFID Check-in Application".

Lee Evans of Survey Me presented Ayo with a certificate and a £10 voucher. Following the event Lee reflected on the benefits of the Showcase to businesses that attended and how impressed he had been with Ayo's work; "For us, the recent Lancaster University MSc Showcase really demonstrated the breadth and depth of talent being nurtured. As a rapidly growing North West tech company it gave us a chance to meet some of the upcoming ideas and research currently being undertaken. We were particularly impressed with the presentation by Ayo which combined both theory and a live demonstration of the commercial application of RFID in check-in environments. It was impressive how within 15 minutes, Ayo was able to cram the results of so much research in what is an increasingly interesting commercial opportunity for business."

Ayo said, "I am absolutely thankful for the opportunity which I think improved me. It was a pleasure being in the midst of such brilliant minds."

Fri 28 September 2012

Associated Links

• A T Transport - A.T. Transport World Services Group Ltd are a "one stop shop" for all your transport needs incorporating chauffeur services, logistics, driver training, European chauffeur federation and corporate travel arrangements.
• Masters Courses at the School of Computing and Communications
• Savant - Savant Limited develops innovative software solutions that meet the business goals of their clients.
• Survey Me - SurveyMe is the fastest, most flexible and portable way of receiving, recording and rewarding 'point of experience' customer feedback.