All Hands on DEC - April 2007
This Months Stories:
- Business IT - Simulated Business Week
- An overview of this month's activities
- Automatic traffic sign success
- PD Graduate is 'Thinking Kit'
- And the winner is...
- Psychology events
- CAPD graduate short listed for award
- Enterprise profiles
- Computational Intelligence Research Group
- Peter Edwards
- Recruitment update
- Events Calendar
- How to submit future stories
- Next Newsletter
Business IT- Simulated Business Week
The second year BIT students Simulated Business Activity project culminated in a system launch on the last day of term to an audience of staff and invited guests including representatives from JPMorgan Chase and IBM.
All fifty five students from the second year of the course have been involved in the ten-week activity which began with students investigating competing web sites, developing a marketing and financial strategy and a list of features for their intended web site. The finished web site, eEvent.biz, allows users to register their events, invite guests, find and buy tickets for events, and then to post up pictures, videos and reviews.
The invited guests were impressed with the professionalism of the site especially given the project management issues of handling a team of 55 people developing a single site. The students were justifiably proud of their achievements and a typical comment from one student reviewing the activity says it all SB2 has been very successful and although very demanding I have learnt so much in this three weeks not only on a technical level but on a personal level too.
Visit the students' finished work at: http://www.eEvent.biz
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An overview of this month's activities
- Term began again on Monday 23 April
- The first year Business IT students have their simulated business week finishing with their exhibition on Friday 25 May in Jumbucks from 10am.
- Imagineering at the Bath and West Show in Shepton Mallet begins on the 30 May
Automated traffic signs success
Six weeks of rapid development resulted in TM Safety Signs exhibiting their remotely controlled Motorway Land Closure Sign at the Traffex 2007 show at the NEC, Birmingham, during April. Alumni Chris Nagle, now Director of TM Safety Signs came to DECs Innovation Centre to fast track the development in time for the show. Martin Teal and Christopher Benjamin produced a working prototype of the system which generated considerable interest when exhibited at the NEC. Martin developed the PC software which included a dynamic HCI with the necessary background control signal generation and checking, linking to the hardware via USB, while the communication hardware was developed and an existing sign adapted by Christopher utilising the ubiquitous PIC micro-controller.
This is hoped to be the first stage of a larger development project culminating in a fully remote system utilising mobile technology, and offering the user instant and complete control over a large number of portable traffic signs. As well income generation for the University, the technology used and the experience gained from this project has already begun to feed into the delivery of existing and the design of possible future academic programmes.
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PD graduate is Thinking Kit
Product Design graduate Phil Robinson is helping teenagers throughout the UK to turn their wildest ideas into real-life success.
Phil, who graduated from BU in 2001, turned his BioLogic Zorin Post Pump from student project into commercial reality. His story is now being used as a case study in the UK Patent Offices Think Kit®.
The kit is a free educational resource for schools to develop the knowledge and understanding of intellectual property and enterprise amongst students at key stage four.
The resource highlights the use of intellectual property (IP) in real-life scenarios by relating real stories about people and their journey to success.
Phils story is used as a case study and he is the subject of a lesson plan with activities for Business Studies/Management and Design & Technology pupils.
His success is also the basis of a competition sponsored by the UK Patent Office. Hobby to Enterprise 2007 challenges 14-16 year olds to come up with something new and useful to do with their hobby. Participants are asked to consult the Patent Office website to see what IP they will need to consider.
Phil, originally from Newbury in Berkshire set up his first business, Zorin Innovations Limited to support the development of his final-year university project.
He designed a new type of bicycle pump and last year exchanged contracts with the multi-national company Dahon California Incorporated to see his revolutionary invention enter volume production and begin global distribution.
With expert advice from the UK Patent Office, his Biologic ZorinPump is now being manufactured under license by Dahon for the world-wide original equipment and retro-fit accessory markets. It has just gone on sale in the UK and United States.
And the winner is...?
Invotek have been short listed for a highly prestigious AIS (Association of Interiors Specialists) Gold Award for a project recently completed at Winton Primary School. This project was designed by one of our students during her work placement with Invotek this year. Becky Holden is doing a BA (Hons) Interior Design and is currently in her final year. The awards are to be made at the Dorchester on 12th of June and Invotek will be asking Becky to receive the award if they win.
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Psychology events
Dr. Jacqui Taylor has recently returned from a trip to Malta where she was an invited speaker at the British Computer Society (Malta Section) E-identity Conference, 15-17 April. Jacqui gave a presentation on the role of Psychology in electronic identity and made some good contacts with many of the delegates and other speakers who were interested in the contribution of psychology to computing issues. The conference looked at a whole range of factors impacting on identity and many talks related to the introduction of the new e-identity cards across Europe. Present were lawyers, forensic computing experts, software engineers and representatives from major companies and European governments.
One of the contacts is also interested in working with Jacqui on looking at the psychological impact of the new e-identity cards on citizens in Europe and another has suggested a book on Psychology and Biometrics.
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CAPD graduate short listed for award
Simon Phelps has been short listed in the Shell Livewire awards for the South West. He has won £500 and will be using the money to travel back to the UK, as he is in the US on the Kauffman Fellowship at the moment, to collect his award and compete against the two other candidates to try and win £3000 and the chance to go to the final in June.
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Enterprise profiles
The Technology Transfer Centre will be running a number of marketing initiatives over the next few months to generate income from business projects, but recognise that they have to have willing experts in place to deliver their services. An Enterprise Profile will enable the team not only to identify which academics are willing (and have the time), but also allow them to target market their specific expertise.
With the new staff web pages currently being generated, the team should be able to complete the Enterprise Profiles on the academic's behalf from the information they provide for their web pages to save them duplicating effort - however, if they haven't yet done that but would like to become [more] engaged in enterprise, then the team will go through their details with them in order to complete the Enterprise Profile and agree a personalised marketing plan. They simply need to contact Paula or Norman to arrange a suitable time.
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Computational Intelligence Research Group
Prof Bogdan Gabrys has been awarded the Fellowship of Higher Education Academy.
Bodgan has also been involved in a plenary discussion session on Foundations of Computational Intelligence at IEEE. Prof Gabrys has organised and chaired an invited plenary discussion session on the Foundations and Future of the Computational Intelligence area during the first IEEE Symposium Series (http://www.ieee-ssci.org/) which consisted of 12 separate, though linked Symposia related to various aspects of dynamically growing Computational Intelligence area. The session gathering 6 other very well known panellists has been very well received and sparked very interesting discussion. The organisation of the session has been sponsored by KES International (www.kesinternational.org ) and resulted from the Computational Intelligence Research Group's leadership roles of committees and focus groups in Europe wide initiatives like the European Network of Excellence on Intelligent Technologies for Smart Adaptive Systems (EUNITE - www.eunite.org ) and the European Co-ordinated Action project on Nature-inspired Smart Information Systems (NiSIS - www.nisis.de).
For further information please contact Prof. Bodgan Gabrys on bgabrys@bournemouth.ac.uk
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Peter Edwards
Peter was notified on Friday 13 April that he has now been elevated from Member of the Higher Education Academy to a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
This adds to the previous prizes he has received including the BU Learning & Teaching award 1999 (accompanied by a £15,000 BU bursary), UK National Teaching Fellow 2000 (with a £50,000 award) and a personal chair in Engineering Mathematics Education.
Congratulations Peter!
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Recruitment Update:
Helen Impett circulated the latest recruitment figures on 18 April.
Overall applications are up by 43.5% on 06 and by 23% on 05. Overseas/Islands applications are down by 1.2% on 06 and by 31.6% on 05.
416 applications are for the 5 new programmes (Psych 238, Forensic 28, SD 3, Music & Audio 130, Media Tech 17). Removing these from the overall numbers means that overall applications are up by 13.6% on 06 but are down by 3% on 05.
It has now been decided that BSc (Hons) Forensic Computing will start in September 2008 not 2007.
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Events calendar
To help keep you up to date with events happening within DEC, please find attached a chart which outlines Open Days, Conferences, School Visits, Planned Activities, Events, Careers Fayres and other activities.
We are hoping that the introduction of this calendar will provide a useful overview, to see which schools are having visits and outline various events you may wish to be included in.
You are welcome to add to the list yourselves by visiting the link below. If you are filling in a School Visit please also fill in the other sheet within the table outlining the details of your trip.
I:\DEC\Public\Marketing\All Hands on DEC
Any questions or queries please contact Sonia via email.
How to submit future stories
If you have a story you would like included in the next issue of all hands on DEC please send it to Sonia. Each month the next deadline will be found at the bottom of the newsletter and a document can be found in the I drive (I:\DEC\Private\Marketing\All Hands on DEC) with all copy/story deadlines for the rest of the year.
Next Newsletter
April copy/ story deadline is: Friday 18 May
April newsletter will be sent out: Friday 25 May
