The Horizon Centre for Doctoral Training has recruited 15 cohorts of students.
Centres for Doctoral Training are one of the three main ways by which EPSRC provides support for Doctoral Training, and bring together diverse areas of expertise to train engineers and scientists with the skills, knowledge and confidence to tackle today’s evolving issues, and future challenges.
They also provide a supportive and exciting environment for students, create new working cultures, build relationships between teams in universities and forge lasting links with industry.
The list of research topics that our current Horizon CDT students are studying gives a good indication of the breadth and depth of our transdisciplinary research:
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2023 Cohort
1. Supporting Holocaust education with mixed reality Digital Playgrounds
The National Holocaust Centre and Museum has a goal of education, testimony and remembrance. It works closely with schools to deliver a series of ultra-relevant content around reducing hate and antisemitism. Over the past several years we have used immersive technology to further this agenda through a series of designs, exhibitions and applications, often co-designed with their education and curation team, as well as with holocaust witnesses. This theme seeks to further that practice in a more formal way – understanding how the personal stories and testimonies of individuals, might be related to the personal stories of visitors and students in embodied ways, using highly visual and engagingly interactive means – appropriate to a learning and cultural context, while respecting the ethical challenges of this difficult context, and the deeply personal nature of testimony.
External Partner: The National Holocaust Centre and Museum
Student: Ashley Graham-Brown
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2. Loneliness, gossip, and the embeddedness of social networks: How our participation in online and offline social networks influences wellbeing throughout the life course
As we get older the structure of our social networks change. We leave school, move to different places, begin jobs, start families, meet new friends, and invariably lose some along the way too. At various points throughout the life of an average person the social network structure they inhabit will undergo transformation, making them feel more or less embedded, and potentially raising the risk of loneliness and its associated physical and mental issues. Despite the abundance of online social networks to which people now belong there is surprisingly limited research on how measures of embeddedness affect mental wellbeing. Or in other words, does it matter whether you have many ‘friends’ if your friends aren’t also friends with each other, and you can’t gossip about them? This PhD will partner with the befriending charity ‘b:friend’ to consider how social network data and cutting-edge network analysis methods might be used to understand loneliness, and hopefully, directly contribute to the design of real-world interventions that make people healthier and happier.
External Partner: b:friend
Student: Bogna Liziniewicz
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3. The car of the future which can adapt to a user’s mental state
The car of the future will be used very differently with the advent of self-driving vehicles and BlueSkeye AI’s technology for measuring the mind. Passengers are expected to treat their cars more as an extension of their home than as a machine they must operate. Remaining a large capital investment, cars can be equipped with new sensors and provide services during people’s journeys that are currently not even considered, perhaps have a haircut on your way to work? BlueSkeye AI’s technology allows for the sensing of mood and medically relevant behaviour in the car. Mood and similar measures can be used to improve the passenger’s experience. For those who use their cars regularly, behaviour measurement becomes an ideal opportunity to monitor over a long period of time, picking up early signs of illness such as Parkinson’s.
At BlueSkeye AI we work hard every day to make people’s quality of life tomorrow better than it is today. Our mission is to aim and create the most-used technology for ethical machine understanding of face and voice behaviour you can trust to measure your mind through the use of ubiquitously available, affordable technology. BlueSkeye AI operates in three sectors: Automotive, Digital Health, and Interactive Devices (including Social robots and Virtual Assistants).
This is an entirely new set of opportunities, and much is unknown about how to design for this. Together with the University of Nottingham’s Horizon and the Human Factors Research Group, we are looking for a PhD to explore this space.
External Partner: Blueskeye AI
Student: Iris Jestin
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Nitka, Bonardi & Robinson, 2020 reported novel procedures to investigate recognition memory: Human participants were presented with images on a computer display. The locations of the display that participants looked at was recorded using an eye-tracker. Participants spent longer looking at new images (‘spontaneous object-recognition’); at the oldest of two equally familiar objects (‘relative recency’); and at a familiar image, presented in context different to that which it was previously encountered (‘object-in-context’).
A non-computer-based variant of these tasks has been used in rodent models of memory to identify responsible brain and neurotransmitter systems; and the spontaneous object-recognition task has been used to identify future pathology in clinical groups.
The tasks also lend themselves well to testing current psychological models of recognition memory. In our own experiments, we found support for a general, associative memory model, over other alternatives. This model made predications, not made by the alternatives, that variation in time intervals in the ‘relative recency’ and the ‘object-in-context’ procedures would have opposite effects on test performance, which Nitka et al. reported. However, we used images of every-day objects, introducing a potential role for verbal/linguistic performance, rather than raw, visual recognition memory.
The purpose of this work is to replicate the main findings of Nitka et al. with non-namable images—either ‘scrambled’ versions of namable object images or fractal images, avoiding this potential interpretation. Confirmation of Nitka et al.’s findings will provide firmer support for the model.
External Partner: NHS
Student: Kirsty Woodward
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5. From Research to Innovation: Responsibility in Digital Mental Health Systems
Digital mental health interventions are often designed in research environments very different from where these will be deployed (e.g., NHS mental health services). At the same time, there are many mental health apps and services available outside of healthcare infrastructures and institutions. This theme will focus on (1) the current processes and methods from ideation to deployment of digital mental health interventions, (2) the role that Responsible Research and Innovation should play within this, as well as (3) the challenges in connecting this to real world healthcare infrastructures and pathways to consider various challenges e.g., organisational capacity for innovation, culture, leadership, structural complexity, governance, compliance and regulation. Partners supporting this PhD will include PeopleDotCom, MindTech and the Biomedical Research Centre Mental Health Technology theme.
External Partner: BRC and PeopleDotCom
Student: Lucy Hitcham
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Blast Theory make interactive art to explore social and political questions. Our work places the public at the centre of unusual and sometimes unsettling experiences, to create new perspectives and open up the possibility of change.
We’re interested in expanding the ways in which we integrate data in the design of the digital projects that we make. To use data to create novel forms for interaction which allow audiences to engage with complex social questions. And to improve our design processes and understanding of how audiences engage with these projects.
We have particular interests in film, narrative and interaction through dialogue, and the potential for autonomous agents to support complex and subtle forms of interaction.
We’re looking to work with a CDT candidate that can contribute skills to developing media rich, data-driven apps and web applications with skills in analytics and user centred design.
External Partner: Blast Theory
Student: Nick Tandavanitj
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7. Citizen Science, Personal Data, and Technology
Earthwatch Europe is an environmental charity and UKRI recognised independent research organisation based in Oxford. They run successful citizen science program such as FreshWater Watch [https://earthwatch.org.uk/get-involved/freshwater-watch], which was recently featured on the BBC news [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63747838]. They also run successful citizen environmental initiatives such as Tiny Forests [https://earthwatch.org.uk/get-involved/tiny-forest] and NatureHood [https://earthwatch.org.uk/get-involved/naturehood]. Earthwatch frequently works with graduate students and has been recognised as a 2022 Gold Standard Internship Host by Oxford University, based on feedback from interns.
Earthwatch is broadly interested in projects that involve citizen science and/or science communication and its impact (https://about.mics.tools/), particularly at the intersections between (environmental) citizen science, technology, and personal data. Citizen science may be defined as actively involving the public in science, for example with data collection, data cleansing, and analysis. More and more these efforts are being augmented by personal data about the volunteer, the use of autonomous systems to collect data, and combining human effort with machine learning and AI. There is a huge wealth of potential for PhD projects in this area.
One potentially fruitful example would be looking at the ethical, legal, social/psychological, and/or technical factors involved in using personal data and digital technologies (for example recommender systems, apps, smart products) to nudge people into better environmental behaviour. Another example would be understanding the role of (in the field) citizen science in promoting environmental behaviour and how personal data and digital technology can support this. This PhD would particularly suit a candidate with a background in environmental science, social sciences/psychology, or human factors, but other disciplines may also be appropriate.
External Partner: Earthwatch
Student: Nimisha Parashar
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8. Citizen Science, Personal Data, and Technology
Earthwatch is broadly interested in projects that involve citizen science and/or science communication and its impact (https://about.mics.tools/), particularly at the intersections between (environmental) citizen science, technology, and personal data. Citizen science may be defined as actively involving the public in science, for example with data collection, data cleansing, and analysis. More and more these efforts are being augmented by personal data about the volunteer, the use of autonomous systems to collect data, and combining human effort with machine learning and AI. There is a huge wealth of potential for PhD projects in this area.
One particular avenue considers Earthwatch’s involvement in creating a number of ‘digital twins’ of the oceans. Research is required to consider how such technologies, and the data they present, can be used to foster ownership and knowledge with regards to the environment that communities belong to. In doing so, a range of ethical, legal, social/psychological and technical factors become important to consider, especially when using said technologies to encourage improved environmental behaviour and responsibility. Additional research directions could also consider the personal data that stakeholders provide, in terms of its interoperability with larger datasets, and its relevance at a localised and global level.
External Partner: Earthwatch
Student: Stephen (Parky) Parkinson
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9. Examining how managing personal data on fintech platforms will increase the investment into female founded businesses
Female entrepreneurs are faced with many challenges such as investor bias. One potential solution that has been explored is the role of female angel investors to overcome the challenge of investor bias. This theme will focus on female entrepreneurs participating in the STEM industry, emphasising the barriers endured and potential solutions. Additionally, exploring the role of female angel investors with entrepreneurship and investment in the UK. Therefore, the focus will be on the intersection of digital entrepreneurship with race or gender.
A key part of the research will be working with the partner company Obu, a fintech platform focused on angel investing for women and investing in female founders, to close the gender gap in investment. One area of focus will be to understand how to drive participation onto their female focused angel investment platform. Specifically, understanding how to manage the personal data that is being received and how to share this personal data in a regulatory way to ensure compliance.
External Partner: Obu Invest
Student: Ramneek Kaur Rai
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10. Visible Food Systems: Exploring Digital and Alternative Food Production Narratives
Dominant visions of future food systems are defined by “master narratives” of high-tech solutions meant to maximize output and increase efficiency, leaving the social, environmental, health, nutrition and food justice aspects of the food systems to be side-lined yet again. Moreover, a large proportion of current research is heavily focused on the digitalization of farming alone. By 2050, 68% of the world’s population is projected to be living in urban areas (UN, 2018), further widening the disconnect between producers and consumers.
In considering the lack of visible and accessible mainstream public narratives on how food is produced and where it comes from, which is in part responsible for the growing disconnect between consumers and their food, there is scope to explore how digital wrappers and smart labelling of food products may be able to be a vehicle for alternative narratives of food provenance and hence provide a way to recreate social and ecological connections to food. This PhD will foreground visions of inclusive and resilient urban food systems and provide an exploration of the concept of value in this context from multiple standpoints especially traditionally marginalised voices
External Partner:
Student: Saria Digregorio
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11. Youth Socialization online and offline: implications for health and well being
This project will collect longitudinal data on the impact of online in-game socialisation on young adults and study the impact that this had on the manner they interact with their peers in the real world, their mental health and well-being. The data will be used to develop a theory of youth socialisation in the digital era and build AI-supported interventions.
External Partner: De Montfort University / NHS
Student: Szymon Olejarnik
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2022 Cohort
Lakeside Arts is working with an installation and performing arts company to reimagine the use of the Wallner Gallery white box space in the D H Lawrence Pavilion to create and experiment with small-scale installations which encourage visitors, most especially children and families, to engage with artworks in this space. As part of this free offer, Lakeside is keen to attract park users who don’t normally engage with Lakeside’s indoor programming, and as such Lakeside will also consider outdoor activities, but there will be a strong focus on building relationships between the inside out and the outside in whilst capitalising on our beautiful natural environment. This brings particular challenges in terms of activities which can safely and securely sit within a non-invigilated space, and are therefore suitably robust in order to withstand the considerable traffic through this space, however equally brings fantastic opportunities for large numbers of people to engage with works.
External Partner: Makers of Imaginary Worlds / Lakeside Arts
Student: Pavlos Panagiotidis
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2. Adapting Assistive Robot Design and Behaviour Using Intelligent Data Analysis of User Activity Patterns to support pain management
Assistive technologies, such as smart home environments, integrated sensors and service robotics are recognised as emerging tools in helping people with long-term conditions improve their quality of life and live independently for longer. A key aspect of the research into assistive robotics for assisted living is developing contextual and social intelligence for the robot to interact appropriately, safely, and reliably in real-time. This research relates to developing assistive robot designs and behaviour by incorporating both environmental and user characteristics, and behaviour, as part of an overall intelligent control system architecture.
In addition to having a ‘memory’ of previous interactions and situations, assistive robots need access to information that is current and one that provides a dynamic worldview of the user (including their emotional state) so that they can provide information and responses that are contextually appropriate. Typical activities for which support can be provided is support with rehabilitation, medication management, cognitive and social stimulation, nutrition management etc. Drawing on information from environmental and activity sensors instrumented into a smart home, and information about the user’s current physical and emotional state through wearables, assistive robots can potentially create value through the provision of interventions that are more socially intelligent regarding how, and what advice and support they provide. Creating a more holistic service, that takes into consideration the prioritisation of events based on aspects of health and social circumstance requires an adaptable, intelligent learning system. Building on existing research on robot design and intelligent control system architectures, the aim of this research will be to investigate user-centred design approaches to design and test modular semantic memory architectures and robot designs that can be adapted over time. As part of this research, you will investigate optimal combinations of contextual data comprising implicit (emotional, physiological) and explicit user data (interaction), as well as behavioural activity data assimilated from a range of wearable and smart home sensors, to develop adaptive, intelligent and emotionally engaging robot designs and behaviour, to support pain management.
External Partner: Extra Care Charitable Trust
Student: Angela Higgins
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3. Ethical framework for the design and use of immersive technologies to address harms experienced in immersive spaces
The research will develop an ethical framework for the design and use of immersive technologies addressing the harms disproportionally experienced by vulnerable groups, especially women, in immersive spaces. This will include measures to improve access to and inclusion in such spaces. Vulnerable groups, especially women, experience various forms of tech-facilitated violence, harassment and abuse. An ethical framework for immersive technology must, therefore, successfully balance rights considerations, including privacy, data protection, freedom of expression and non-discrimination. However, the conversation surrounding immersive technology and ethical frameworks is underdeveloped, especially compared to other data-driven technologies, such as AI and the Internet of Things. The research will evaluate potential policy interventions drawing upon work and research carried out in these adjacent fields and by policymakers and academics in Law and Science, Technology and Society.
External Partner: Digital Catapult
Student: Favour Borokini
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4. Improving robotic teleoperation through human-robot interaction and robotic autonomy
Teleoperation is a common solution for nuclear (remote hazardous object handling) medical (robot-assisted surgery) as well as social robotics (e.g. systems deployed in people’s homes, hospitals, or other care settings). The ability of robots to fully autonomously handle complex scenes involving dense clutters or a heap of unknown objects has been very limited due to challenges in scene understanding, grasping, and decision-making. In this theme, the student will investigate semi-autonomous approaches where a human operator can interact with the system (e.g. using teleoperation but not only) and give high-level commands to complement the autonomous skill execution. The work will involve improving autonomous robotic manipulation abilities through learning from humans, as well as exploring, designing and evaluating new interaction modalities and interfaces for the force-feedback teleoperation of a robot with semi-autonomous capabilities. The candidate will work with research-grade robotic teleoperation systems from the University of Nottingham’s Cobot Maker Space, including the Franka Emika Panda arms and Haption Virtuose haptic device.
The PhD studentship will explore best strategies for i) helping the operators understand the automatic capabilities of the robot relevant for the current activity, ii) splitting the control responsibilities between the robot and the operator, and iii) control switching within a spectrum of fully manual and fully-autonomous modes.
External Partner: RACE
Student: Gift Odoh
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5. Consumer Protection by Design
How can games (and/or particular game mechanics) be designed to ensure that consumers are protected from detriment? Can player data help? How can and should the law ensure consumer protection for gamers?
External Partner: University of Nottingham Institute for Policy and Engagement
Student: Hannah Heilbuth
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6. Studying community wellbeing and inclusion in the UK through ‘Neodemographic’ approaches
Social distancing and lockdowns have exacerbated the long-term risk of social isolation, loneliness, and wellbeing issues for millions of people around the world. However, identifying and helping those communities most at risk is a challenging task. Though the UK government measures deprivation, these measures are slow, expensive and provide limited predictive value for understanding the prevalence of wellbeing issues at scale. Drawing on Co-op’s pioneering work to help understand what matters most to communities across the UK, this PhD project will draw on non-traditional or ‘neodemographic’ data sources (such as aggregated, anonymised transactional data) to study community wellbeing outcomes. The aim is to understand, critique, and model leading indicators of social inclusion and wellbeing to help inform interventions for those most in need.
External Partner: Co-op
Student: Kuzivakwashe Makokoro
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7. Data-driven public/private integrated transport solutions – design, integration, ethics, privacy and regulatory issues
What is the future of data-driven public/private integrated transport solutions and the design, integration, ethics, privacy and regulatory issues they will face?
This project theme will be explored and developed in partnership with Department for Transport colleagues and may include the potential to consider the use of prototype apps to record journeys for different policy needs. Department for Transport would also be interested in topics that consider how we could combine/integrate data from different sources such as payment data, travel data etc. to produce mobility avatars to aid the understanding of whole trips and trip chains (multiple successive trips) from different population groups to feed into transport planning.
External Partner: Department for Transport
Student: Phuong Anh (Violet) Nguyen
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8. The use of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Live Creative Installations
With robotics technologies becoming more affordable and accessible, there is a growing interest from creative industries to involve robotics in live installations. However, there are many challenges, as well as opportunities, when working with robotic installation art. Especially, there is a strong need for research to enable technological capabilities to improve the entire audience experience through an artistic lens.
This PhD project aims to build socially intelligent robotic installations by 1) developing artificial intelligence methods to create robotic installations, which are easy to configure by artists, 2) implementing adaptive robot behaviours that respond to changing audience states, such as engagement, boredom, attention, in order to enhance interaction through cognitive and user modelling, and 3) evaluating the developed techniques in real-world installations with real audiences.
The project will be realised in collaboration with the Makers of Imaginary Worlds (MOIW), where the student will lead the co-design and development of the art installation. It is anticipated that the techniques developed through the project will provide new insight and become a unique resource to enable highly functional robotic installations that can easily be used by artists.
External Partner: Makers of Imaginary Worlds
Student: Victor Ngo
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The successful candidate will be registered at De Montfort University but based in Nottingham for much of year 1 where most of the training takes place. After year 1 the student will mainly be based at De Montfort University, with an occasion period of training and activities in Nottingham.
Investigating the collection, processing and storage of big data and the use of AI for the purposes of surveillance. What will be the impact of future surveillance technologies on society and the individual? How can legitimate surveillance for the purposes of safety and security also protect the rights of citizens to privacy? How much surveillance is enough? When does legitimate surveillance become societal control with implications for democratic principles? How can surveillance be implemented responsibly?
Student: Anjela Mikhaylova
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10. Integrating digital technology and co-creation approaches to improve healthcare research and access for marginalised communities
With eight years remaining on a globally agreed target to address inequalities and to ‘Leave No One Behind’ by the year 2030, European states have significant progress left to meet their target deadline. Migrant populations are often ‘left behind’ when accessing healthcare. This is driven by a number of factors, including language barriers, legal status or entitlement issues, fears around data usage and lack of trust, poor linkage of records (particularly across countries or in the context of high mobility within the UK) and a ‘digital divide’ making it challenging to access digital healthcare tools. In light of the rapid transition during covid-19 to digital healthcare, as well as the increasing use of online interfaces for data collection in health research, there is an urgent need to ensure that migrant populations aren’t ‘left behind’.
Provided the significant issues and complications which arise from low accessibility to electronic health records and digital healthcare and research tools for migrant populations, this project aims to explore the feasibility and suitability of developing a mobile-based app to enable and facilitate improved accessibility to and security of electronic health records for migrant populations. In order to ensure it is accessible and acceptable to migrant communities, the project will utilise a collaborative approach, integrating patient and public involvement and engagement and co-creation to strengthen the trustworthiness and utility of this tool, as well as to strengthen knowledge around how to meaningfully engage with these communities in healthcare and research.
External Partner: TPP
Student: Jonathan Chaloner
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2021 Cohort
Despite interactive film becoming more mainstream, now available on streaming services and online, the central interaction has mostly remained unchanged since the 1960s, that of the viewer actively making decisions for the central character to progress the plot. Adaptive cinema has the potential to address the issues of ludo-narrative dissonance by utilising passive methods of control to create personalised narrative experiences. Working in this field the project partner AlbinoMosquito is investigating scalable methods of sensing real-time viewers’ effect and response to interactive cinema, such as (but not limited to) front-facing cameras, computer vision and machine learning. AlbinoMosquito is a production company which creates and tours interactive cinematic work. Their most recent production, The MOMENT, an adaptive film that uses the viewer’s EEG data to interact, has toured internationally and currently online. They are planning multi-platform distribution online via various marketplaces. The research areas of the PhD could encompass- marketing, interaction design and development, and audience/business development. The candidate will have the opportunity to work closely with the industry partner throughout various stages of production and distribution.
External Partner: AlbinoMosquito
Student: Callum Berger
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2. Exploring input/output data that people use/create in planning and making their travelling decision
The aim of this PhD project is to:
External Partner:
Student: Carina Yu Zhao
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3. Interactive performance environments for children
The PhD project is aimed at creating digitally-driven interactive physical environments that adapt for children. This experience will be based on a unique set of data from each child or sibling or small group of children. This could include special needs children but does not have to. The key will be to investigate how data can be acquired from children anonymously while also creating personalised and (Covid) safe experiences.
External Partner: Makers of Imaginary Worlds
Student: Daniel Swann
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4. Understanding user experience and identifying therapeutic impact of MIW
My Internal World (MIW) is an online platform designed to improve emotional health. Users are assessed and individually coached on a journey of raising awareness of their wellbeing through building and maintaining their emotional health. Inside its walls, MIW has a comprehensive assessment, personalised report and 40-plus videos and worksheets to help individuals develop at their own pace. This is supported with exclusive articles and a personalised dashboard to measure and support progress. MIW’s purpose is to build and maintain healthy emotional states and catch people before the fall.
Currently, the effectiveness of MIW to help and support users to improve and maintain their emotional wellbeing is positive but anecdotal. This theme will benefit a PhD candidate interested in data science, statistics, and mixed methods. The focus of this theme is to understand the users’ experience and identify the therapeutic impact that MIW and its model of wellbeing have on users. We are interested in both the overall emotional wellbeing of the user throughout the time of the project and also which areas they choose to work on and how they decide to do so. All this work will be closely supported by the MIW team who will look to the results to better inform the further development of their wellbeing model.
External Partner: My Internal World
Student: Emma Gentry
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5. Biometric recognition systems
In this project, the main aim would be to build robust biometric recognition systems. The first steps would include a study on how robust biometric recognition systems are and how prone to adversarial attacks they are.
Biometric recognition systems can be based on physiological and/or behavioural characteristics. Physiological characteristics include fingerprints, the colour and size of the iris, the retina, the shape of the hand, the shape of the ear, and the physiognomy of the face. Behavioural characteristics include vocal imprint, writing style, typing style on the keyboard, movements of the body, and gait.
Potentially, this project would explore physiological aspects beyond facial features, as well as behavioural characteristics. In terms of problems to tackle, we can approach it from two different angles: verification or identification.
In verification, a person declares their identity, so the main goal of the model is to confirm or verify is this is true. It will require the creation of robust matching algorithms that can act in real-time. In identification, the biometric recognition system will associate identity by comparing and identifying the most similar and consistent physiological and behavioural characteristics between those in the training and those collected in real-time.
The current state of art focuses on feature extraction. However, there have been advances within deep learning that not only study novel ways of learning biometric information but also novel data sources, such as eye movement and finger veins.
The major research gaps in this area cover: a) the fusion of different biometric features and b) the focus on features that go beyond faces. A major point of interest for Horizon will also be the focus on privacy-preserving and trustworthy models.
A Pilot Project in this area could be a survey on physical and behavioural datasets in the public domain along with baseline models (both traditional and deep learning) in the area.
External Partner:
Student: Gabrielle Hornshaw
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XenZone provides a flagship mental health service for young people called Kooth. Kooth gives children and young people easy access to an online community of peers and a team of experienced counsellors, and more than 1,500 children and young people across the UK log in to Kooth every day.
The focus of this PhD will be to use Kooth data to develop a deeper understanding of the trajectories of users through the variety of service support elements. This would involve working closely with the team at Xenzone to explore the trends and patterns of usage of Kooth and how these relate to the outcomes recorded in measures implemented across the domains – triangulating usage with outcomes, and forming part of service evaluation to improve and inform AI capabilities – to tailor the service to needs based on trends data.
External Partner: Xenzone / Kooth
Student: Gregor Milligan
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7. Connecting Consumers with Producers
This theme will explore digital technologies such as smart wearables to 1) collect consumer data to share with food producers (e.g. when and how they consume a particular product) and 2) display product data generated by the producers (e.g. provenance, sustainability and nutrition). This theme aligns with the CDT challenges around products, technology and responsibility.
External Partner: Campden BRI
Student: Melissa Clover
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8. Data Driven Industrial Sustainability Solutions
Process manufacturing sectors such as Fast Moving Consumer Goods and Oil and Gas have a significant impact on the environment due to the natural resources they utilise and the waste and emissions they generate. Data and digital technologies have the potential to address these challenges but questions still remain around the optimal data collection, analysis and visualisation methods to enhance sustainability within an organisation and across supply chains. This project will focus on developing industrial apps to monitor and minimise the resource use of manufacturers within the process manufacturing sector and determine how this app must adapt to address the different sustainability challenges of different organisations.
External Partner: Intelligent Plant
Student: Nasser Alkhulaifi
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9. Improving Customer experience through quantitative measures for various factors
Creating a set of quantitative measures for factors such as ‘comfort’, ‘experience’, ‘stress’, ‘uncertainty’, and ‘confusion’, to understand how to improve customer experience, especially for people who currently don’t travel by rail due to preconceptions about what the experience will be like for them. Measures will allow comparison with other modes of transport to be able to demonstrate advantages over competing modes.
External Partner: RSSB
Student: Sam Smith
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10. Using data to inform zero carbon policy/investment routes
Nottingham City Council (NCC) has responded to the climate and ecological crisis with an ambition to become the first carbon-neutral city in the UK by 2028. Citywide carbon emissions reduction of 42% has already been achieved between 2005-2018, leaving the more complex-to-tackle emissions due to social, governance and economic factors. The ‘2028 Carbon Neutral Action Plan’ sets out the targets, actions and outcomes needed to achieve the city’s aims. One of the identified action routes is to “Enforce regulations effectively to monitor and encourage energy efficiency standards and improvements”. Within that, a number of actions have been identified including a review and expansion of enablers such as funding and planning policies. Beyond that, NCC would welcome the expertise available at UoN to explore how building and city data (energy and mobility) can help inform the direction policy and investment should take in order to deliver against the carbon neutrality target.
External Partner: Nottingham City Council
Student: Torran Semple
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11. Exogenous cognition: Using consumer decision making models to study how and why people cede their decisions to smart technologies
A rapidly growing range of human decisions is now being augmented or relinquished entirely to smart technologies. The consequence of this dynamic cognitive interplay between technology and consumers has profound consequences for consumer sovereignty, welfare, and privacy. The concept of ‘exogenous cognition’, recently introduced into the consumer behaviour literature, seeks to explain how and why people form decisions in concert with the algorithms they interact with throughout the consumer decision-making process. This PhD will work with OLIO and other large commercial partners to examine how people interact with technology to form heuristics throughout the consumer decision-making process, from automating alerts that shape need recognition, to augmenting information searches with personal data, to broadcasting post-consumption evaluation.
External Partner: OLIO
Student: Yang Bong
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2020 Cohort
1. Exploring late adopters’ (dis)engagement with digital technology in the rail sector with a view to enhancing accessibility and reducing barriers to travel in the digital and built environments
The PhD aims to better understand the barriers to travel faced by passengers that are considered to be late adopters of digital technologies in terms of their access to and use of supporting services such as journey planning tools. From an academic perspective, this project will help us to understand the relationship between the digital and built environments of the rail travel sector as well as explore the travel experiences of an often-overlooked segment of society – namely late adopters. From an industry perspective, this PhD will make recommendations to the rail sector on how the technological, psychological and/or physical barriers in the digital and built environments can be removed. The overall aim of this project is to make the rail more appealing and accessible for all passengers.
External Partner: Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB)
Student: Charlotte Lenton
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2. The Use of Personal Data in Automated Digital Manufacturing Environments
The project will focus on how to best utilise the available personal data found within Industry 4.0 manufacturing environments (also known as Digital Manufacturing environments or DMTs). The data can be found in numerous different types, such as performance data and has the potential to feed into the computational systems present within DMTs. The aim of this data is to be able to increase the usability of the systems (which will primarily be ones of an automated nature) while simultaneously using data in an ethical way. ‘Usability’ in the context of this project will refer to trust in the automated systems.
External Partner: DigiTOP
Student: Joshua Duvnjak
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3. How artificial intelligence can support new creative practices in conversational interactive artworks to improve audience engagement
The PhD concerns developing new interactive artworks that integrate artificial intelligence (AI) natural language processing (NLP) and the analytical investigation of data collected from the audience’s interaction with the artworks. The aim is to delineate the artistic process that involves the artist and the audience in real-time collaborations with a creative agency represented by AI. The study of the process can reveal insights into human creative conversation interactions with autonomous systems and how AI can change the generation of artistic ideas and inform the artwork’s subject. With an overview of the critical arguments in the literature around the topic and research through design, this PhD contemplates two main themes: artists’ collaboration with AI to create conversational interactive artworks, and ethical aspects of AI as the subject of the artwork. The investigation of the current literature reveals several studies about the impact of conversational AI on human behaviour and many artistic projects that expose technology’s limitations and advantages. However, it seems there is still a gap in exploring the creative process of machine-to-human interaction through new art installations using conversational AI, as technology is novel and fast-growing. Moreover, there is an opportunity to contribute to the literature with new data and the consequent analysis of how people attach meaning and value to digital interactions with autonomously generated written communications in an art context, inspiring new art practice.
External Partner: Blast Theory
Student: Guido Salimbeni
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4. Understanding (Political) Internet Memes and their effects on social media users
This research aims at understanding what effects internet memes have on social media users. This will be done by analysing Internet Memes (IMs) in general and then focusing on the effects that Political Internet Memes (PIMs) have on users. The proposed methodology and planned activities work in an iterative manner: the insights gained from each of the stages will shape and inform the next stage’s design and hypotheses. The proposed PhD will: (a) significantly contribute to the emerging literature on memes, (b) construct tools and apply novel methods to the analysis of IMs and PIMs, (c) offer insights on online political discourse, information and opinion spread and (d) contribute to the literature in computer science, digital politics, digital communication, and psychology.
External Partner: Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)
Student: Giovanni Schiazza
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5. Online Harms/Law and Regulation
My work is looking into the potential impact of the proposed digital duties of care on young people, contributing to law and regulation as a theme. These duties are connected to online harms as this is what they are proposed to reduce, so my project will assess if these duties address harms from the perspective of young people, speaking to that theme.
External Partner: The Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport
Student: Ellie Colegate
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6. Reimagining autism and gender through data
Gender and autism have both been constructs long controlled by institutions and dominant medical and cultural narratives. Digital communications and networks are enabling disparate communities of interest which experience atypical genders and neurotypes to meet and share ideas. From these links, new concepts for gender and autism are emerging, diverging and gaining traction to challenge the longstanding hegemonic definitions. This PhD aims to explore these intersections of autistic experience and gender through digital data generated from those with lived experience.
External Partner: MindTech
Student: Jenn Layton-Annable
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7. Personalising Walking Route Recommendations through User Engagement with Place-Based Features
Understanding user engagement with more pedestrian routes and places of interest is a major problem in providing recommendations for activities such as walking. The PhD study will therefore investigate how interactions with a route’s features can provide improved detail to be applied in walking recommendations. Researchers have not treated the area of more discrete interactions with geography in much detail, instead focusing on actions in the most popular areas such as city centres, where users are more likely to check in and leave a large data footprint. These existing studies focus on using visitors as a key value of popularity, limiting the potential for knowledge to be gained of lesser-known features and how interactions with these can be used. The PhD study will therefore look to investigate three core concepts which include: (1) forming an understanding of when, how, and why users interact with features while using walking routes; (2) establishing knowledge on how the collected data can be represented and combined with existing sources; and proposing a novel route recommendation framework which integrates user-centred places of interest to recommend personalised routes.
External Partner: Ordnance Survey
Student: James Williams
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8. The Psychology of excessive ‘Viewing on Demand’: How might platforms be designed to optimise user autonomy of VOD consumption?
For decades, we have been motivated to watch television for reasons ranging from the habitual or passing of time to seeking information or forms of companionship. The ‘why’ we engage with television may be similar but the ‘how’ we engage with it has changed considerably since its inception.
The introduction of Video on Demand (VoD) platforms in the aughts has unlocked viewers from an imposed schedule and drip-fed storylines. This isn’t entirely new as Digital Video Recording introduced in the nineties afforded some plans for flexibility and Video Home Systems (VHS) or Betamax were available before that. However, VoD, particularly with the whole series release has made back-to-back (or binge) watching episodes more convenient than ever before.
Binge-watching is now a household term but a clear and widespread definition of what constitutes binge has yet to be set. When applied to other activities (eating, drinking, gambling), binge is considered undesirable but in this context, it may be classed as a not-so-guilty pleasure. Some VoD platforms advertise ‘Binge-worthy TV’ in a way which might come across as crass when applied elsewhere, it’s difficult to imagine that ‘portion control is for suckers’ would be so acceptable as a tagline on a bottle of scotch for example.
Perhaps the difference is due to perceived harm. While a number of studies have shown a relationship between viewing time and negative outcomes (e.g. sleep quality, physical health, social interaction), the direction of that relationship is less clear which may be why there is little guidance on potential risks associated with ‘excessive’ viewing time.
This research is intended to help identify the circumstances in which the consumer may find themselves viewing more than intended, establish if and how much that matters and if so, how it might be addressed. The values-centred design will be employed to create a user-friendly VoD interface framework that suppliers can utilise to ensure their consumers have the greatest degree of autonomy over their viewing habits.
Student: Joanne Parkes
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9. Investigating the public discourse surrounding decision-making algorithms using a hybrid language approach
This multidisciplinary studentship within the Horizon CDT in collaboration with the Trust and Autonomous Systems (TAS) Hub (and relevant Hub partners) focuses on a new exploratory strand of research, drawing on computational linguistics and sociolinguistics. These methods will be used to examine the public discourses surrounding trust in decision-making algorithms, such as the NHS Test and Trace application and the Ofqual algorithm used to calculate A-Level grades in 2020, on social media.
External Partner: Trust and Autonomous Systems (TAS) Hub
Student: Daniel Heaton
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10. Transparency and accountability in automated decision-making
Autonomous decision-making under GDPR
External Partner: Trustworthy Autonomous Systems hub (TAS)
Student: Kathryn Baguley
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11. Cybersecurity & Trust in Internet of Things (IoT): Agency and Negotiability over personal data in smart devices in the home
Internet of Things is making everything smart through a network of items with sensors connected to the Internet (Minn et al., 2015). Smart devices are those items that connect to other devices or networks using wireless connectivity such as Wi-Fi, 5G (IGI Global, 2021). Smartphones, smart locks, and smartwatches are examples of smart devices. Personal data according to the UK Data Protection Act (DPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is any information that relates to an identified or identifiable individual such as name, email, NI number, and location data (ICO, n.d.). Both the DPA and GDPR mandate that the design process for new products and services consider data protection and privacy risks within it. We argue that the cutting edge for storing personal data in the home and setting user preferences in smart devices requires research. Our research will (i) provide design and governance guidelines in a non-legalistic language for the manufacturers and the service providers of smart devices to consider in the design process for new products and services and (ii) consequently they will yield a competitive advantage, and reduce their compliance, and data processing burden. (iii) Our research will bridge the gap between the manufacturers, service providers, privacy professionals and regulators concerning the data protection and privacy risks leading to privacy issues in smart devices.
Why it is important? Smart device users lack an understanding of data privacy (Marwick & Boyd, 2014) and control over how their personal data is shared and processed (Broenink et al., 2010). Our proposed research will (a) enable and empower the users of smart devices to make informed choices about how much and who they share their data with and therefore have control over their personal data. (b) So the users can enjoy the tailored services of smart devices, to improve convenience and not worry about their data privacy.
We will do this through the co-creation of design and governance guidelines. A technical standpoint of our starting position is to assume a solution that brings data processing and storage closer to where it is generated, such as the Databox (McAuley et al., 2016). The guidelines for the solution will cover the user interface and interactions, so users can model their privacy settings and preferences without difficulty, it will also cover areas such as user authentication and security.
External Partner: Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Hub (TAS)
Student: Farid Vayani
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12. Recognising Movements for Wellbeing
Investigating the applications of Machine Learning in observing, mapping and modelling the movements of all oral articulators; for applications within dental healthcare.
External Partner: GSK
Student: Muhammad Suhaib Shahid
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13. How does legal digital literacy impact access to justice?
At present both within academia and within UK legal policy there is no clear definition of legal digital literacy, which in turn means there is no understanding of how legal digital literacy, or a lack of it, impacts access to justice in the English civil justice system. This research is foundational, with the twin aims of providing a baseline definition of legal digital literacy through which future research may be conducted, and secondly, providing policy suggestions to the UK government and NGOs highlighting the impact of legal digital literacy on access to justice.
External Partner: vLex Justis
Student: Rachel Saunders
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14. Investigation of the role that online information plays in affecting perceptions of morality relating to decision making
Student: Ruairi Blake
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2019 Cohort
1. Effectiveness of Industry Standards for Ethical information services
With the growing appreciation of the impact that information services, such as online platforms, are having on individuals and society, industry standards-setting organisations such as the IEEE-SA and BSI have recently initiated a number of standards development projects focusing on establishing ethical best practice. With children constituting a vulnerable group that represents 1/3 of all users online, 5Rights is working closely with the IEEE to support the development of ethics standards with a particular focus on ensuring that the needs and rights of young people online are respected.
The goal of this research theme is to establish and test methodologies for measuring the impact that the adoption of standards for ethical information systems has on the lived experience of child users with a special focus on if standards co-created with children, perform better.
External Partner: 5Rights
Student: Ephraim Luwemba
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2. Data Donation, Data Linkage and Health Outcomes
Much personal data is being collected about us, by companies and organizations. Yet such data is difficult to access, use, or contribute to research, despite the right we have to do so. This PhD will explore the concept of “data donation”, an act of active consent by an individual to donate their personal data to research programmes, and investigate how “data linkage” might enable new forms of health research and public health benefits. Via a model of participant consent, the challenges of linking data streams such as loyalty card data (e.g. Boots Advantage card) to longitudinal cohort studies (such as the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children: ALSPAC) in a privacy-preserving fashion will be explored. This will enable researchers to go back to participants to investigate not only the context around their decisions but to study in more depth their health journeys as well as finding predictors of physical and health outcomes (including well-being). ALSPAC was specifically set up to study pregnancy and parenting journeys and includes three generations of participants. There are about 15,000 active participants, including Mothers, fathers and Children (now 28-29 years old).
External Partner: Avon Longitudinal Studies of Parents and Children (ALSPAC)
Student: Elizabeth Dolan
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3. An exploration of applications of Deep Learning for credit risk assessment
A credit score is a numerical expression based on a level analysis of a person’s credit files, to represent the creditworthiness of an individual. A credit score is primarily based on credit report information typically sourced from credit bureaus. The creation of models to produce highly predictive credit scores is central to their lending approach. Historically the partner has relied on regression techniques to build these models but over the last 3 years has moved to more complex Machine Learning approaches (specifically Gradient Boosting Machines).
Deep learning (also known as deep structured learning or hierarchical learning) is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on learning data representations, as opposed to task-specific algorithms. Learning can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised. It is the partner’s belief there is potential to use Deep Learning techniques to build credit scoring frameworks and as such a better understanding of the potential pros, cons and constraints would be desirable.
This PhD will focus on an exploration of the applications of deep learning for credit risk assessment. What are the pros and cons, what are the comparisons to established techniques, and what issues need to be addressed around fairness, bias and data ethics?
Student: Edwina Abam
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4. Understanding the motivation and methodology of offenders sexually grooming and exploiting children and young people (under 18) online
This PhD will aim to further understanding in relation to individuals involved in sexual offending against children and young people and the activities of engaging, exploiting and sexually grooming them online. The research will look to examine offender motivations, escalation and offending patterns as well as the impact of changing technology and its accessibility on offending and victimology.
External Partner: East Midlands Special Operations Unit (EMSOU)
Student: Michael Harmson-Silvestri
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5. Farmers, digital technologies and the future of agriculture
Food systems have become interconnected, complex and multi-actor networks. Developing technologies to ensure sustainability (environmental and financial), requires an understanding of the interrelationships between different actors as well as the context new digital technologies will allow for the creation of more sustainable farming businesses.
This is especially true for smallholders who are a crucial part of food systems and there is a need to ensure their long-term sustainability. Smallholders often lack the capital and human resources to implement new technologies, while there is an opportunity offered by digital technologies to increase the value of their produce and communicate directly to the consumers. To achieve this we need to design technologies suiting the local capacity that will be easily adopted.
In this work, we will aim to understand smallholder communities, farming practices and relationships with different actors across the supply chain to provide a context to design new technologies. Understand the context that new technologies will have to be performed by carefully addressing other associated factors such as people, processes and information. We will build on an existing relationship to bring together a multi-disciplinary team spanning from arts to engineering to sustainable food chains.
External Partner: Future Foods Beacon
Student: Eliot Jones
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6. Applying immersive technology to martial arts training
The work will explore the challenges of training without a ‘real’ partner, both support individual development and also distance learning. Working with an industrial partner, artist William Galinsky, who is developing a martial art-based artwork, exploring the socio-political themes of cross-philosophy communication, Christine will have access to a number of expert martial artists, as well as a large pool of public participants, both short and long term, and have the opportunity to both develop her work as part of that piece, and to learn from the practical deployment of the same. The wider research questions will explore whether sensory misalignment is a viable sports-training technique; what the role of haptics or haptic misalignment might be; and whether somaesthetic design is an effective strategy for designing such interventions, using the specific sport martial arts as a test case to deeply examine the methodology.
External Partner: William Galinsky
Student: Christine Li
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The exchange of gifts has a long tradition and has been widely recognised as socially important; building bonds and promoting wellbeing. It also brings economic benefits to manufacturers and retailers by driving the sales of products, with the global gifting market predicted to exceed £30 billion by 2021. Digital gifting, giving media (such as music, video, images, games and subscription accounts) as a gift in a digital format online is still in its infancy but is a rapidly growing sector of the market. Digital gifts, however, fail to be appreciated as gifts as much as their physical counterparts by their recipients, and as such are easily forgotten, and rarely reflected on or reciprocated. At the same time, companies are also embracing opportunities to provide additional value to tangible products through supporting services, in particular by connecting physical goods to digital services to support customisation or personalisation. For example, physical products can be enhanced by augmented reality content overlaid onto them when they are scanned using mobile phones.
External Partner: Hybrid Gifting Project
Student: Rebecca Gibson
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8. Privacy-preserving insights
How can we ethically generate insights from consumer data that may be shrouded in regulatory implications? How might we bridge the gap between the plentifulness of such data on the one hand and its potential non-usability due to regulatory and ethical concerns on the other? How might the monetization of such data deliver value to both consumers and companies? And how can the lessons learned from this be rolled out as frameworks for upholding data ethics?
Student: Ana Rita Pena
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9. Using digital technologies to improve astronaut muscle health
The human body undergoes many biological changes during space flight, including loss of muscle mass and performance. Since muscle mass and performance also decline during periods of immobilisation, an immobilisation study on Earth can be used to model the effects of spaceflight on human muscle mass and performance. Digital techniques can be used in such a study to measure and look for a correlation between muscle personal data (e.g. size and performance) and gene expression personal data. We have previously used principal component analysis and network analysis to identify genes predictive of an individual’s personal muscle response to exercise and will start by applying these approaches to immobilized muscle. More advanced machine learning and/or AI approaches may also be trialled. Small animals can also be used to model the loss of human muscle mass and performance in space. Previous gene expression data from space-flown C. elegans worms will be used to compare with human immobilization gene expression data at the level of both individual genes and networks. Lastly, computer vision methods will be used to analyse videos of space-flown C. elegans in order to capture muscle performance in space and directly assess the correlation between human personal data predictive of muscle performance and worm personal data and muscle performance. Ultimately these studies will have the potential impact of being able to predict loss of muscle mass and performance in space and potentially on Earth in response to prolonged inactivity, such as confinement to bed. Additionally, if the effect of spaceflight on the animal model and the personal predictors of decline are similar to those in humans, interventions can also be made during in space-flown worm studies to see if muscle loss can be slowed. Successful interventions could then eventually be trialled on humans to help patients with muscular atrophy of different causes such as inactivity, ageing, and muscular dystrophy and to aid human deep space flight in the future.
External Partner: NASA GeneLab Animal Analysis Working Group
Student: Henry Cope
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10. How RRI can be implemented in practice and embedded into research and innovation practices
ORBIT is interested in understanding how RRI can be embedded in practice in different areas of the ICT portfolio. Working with the Horizon CDT this research project will look to develop a programme of investigation related to the question of how RRI can be implemented in practice and embedded into research and innovation practices. Research questions to be explored could include:
External Partner: ORBIT
Student: Vincent Bryce
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11. Understanding how the digital world influences children’s social development
The partner for this project is the Andrew and Virginia Rudd Centre for Adoption Research and Practice at Sussex University http://www.sussex.ac.uk/adoption/. This project will examine how the digital world that surrounds children’s everyday lives impacts their experiences of family, school and peer relationships, and how these influences impact their emotional, behavioural and social development. This project will use existing longitudinal studies (UK and international) to examine how the digital world affects children and young people and how intervention and support strategies may be developed to positively influence young people’s mental health and development.
External Partner: Andrew and Virginia Rudd Centre for Adoption Research and Practice at Sussex University
Student: Cecily Pepper
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2018 Cohort
1. Accurate camouflage/adversarial attack detection
The goal is the creation and development of machine learning algorithms impervious to camouflage and/or adversarial attacks. Instead of investigating current methods, the contribution would be in creating machine learning resistant to possible attacks.
Detection could include: physical camouflage (i.e. the use of particular physical objects to “confuse”) and digital camouflage (i.e. through image transformations, also known as adversarial example detection).
External Partner: DSTL
Student: Ioanna Ntinou
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2. Deceiving the Machine
The goal would be to develop a framework or set of metrics/methods that could formally quantify the limitations of current machine learning techniques. Ideally, these techniques would include deep learning methods. Points to investigate would be: where do they work well? Where don’t they? What is their sensitivity to changes in the input (i.e. how easily can they be fooled by physical or digital camouflage)? Are there methods of camouflage/transformation that are able to fool multiple certain machine learning algorithms but not others?
External Partner: DSTL
Student: Matthew Yates
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3. Digital Relationships: Creating meaningful and new relationships with audiences
Nottingham Contemporary is an international art centre with a strong local purpose. Digital media has underpinned our art, learning, film, music and public programmes, which place an emphasis on being accessible, audience-centred, collaborative and sustainable. The collection of digital data also plays a significant role in our marketing efforts but, going forward, we believe that there are opportunities to build radical new forms of personal and meaningful relationships with our audiences based on digital media and digital data.
This PhD will explore ways for the Contemporary to develop collaborative digital relationships with audiences: what benefits are there for the audience member and the venue for developing a long-term digital relationship that spans the venue and digital space? How can audience experiences (both for individuals and for groups) be enhanced if the venue builds a long-term understanding of their attitudes, beliefs, habits and cultural interactions? How can the nature of the relationship be developed over time, in order to shift audiences from unfamiliar consumers to participants to trusted collaborators, and how can this shift be measured? Can this development in trust be used to bring hard-to-reach audiences, or increase engagement with non-traditional audiences? How can programming decisions be improved when long-term trends and cultural shifts are revealed?
This research might be approached from a practice-led perspective, where the researcher develops new deeply-personalised audience experiences driven by data donated by the audience over multiple visits. The project would also benefit from consideration of the ways that audiences can be individually and collectively modelled using the personal data they generate. Whatever approach is taken, the project will necessarily explore the impact of new data protection legislation, which places the emphasis on privacy by design, and greater control for the individual over the ways that their personal data is collected, processed and stored. This legislation, and the aims of the research, may require a significant re-think of the way that data is collected by the Contemporary: should data be donated by audiences rather than collected? Should audiences curate their digital history for the venue? Should audiences self-identify or self-segment, and collaborate to reassess these models as cultures change?
External Partner: Nottingham Contemporary
Student: Harriet Cameron
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4. Interactive and responsive broadcasting
The broadcasting industry faces many technical, cultural and social challenges as the impact of online platforms changes the ways in which audiences interact with media. As a public service broadcaster, the BBC is exploring opportunities for new engagements with audiences to deliver our public purposes to inform, educate and entertain. BBC R&D is exploring the convergence of real-time rendering technology developed by the game industry and interactive and responsive broadcasting. One of our recent experiments was to build an interactive VR model of the Queen Victoria pub from EastEnders to enable us to think about how and what interactions based on real-time rendering might scale to TV audiences. How will multiple formats and interaction modes scale and how will they contribute to our public purposes? Will the next ‘National Quiz’ be hosted in Queen Vic and be delivered in multiple formats over a future iPlayer? BBC R&D hosts a number of PhD students from universities around the UK at our North Lab at MediaCityUK.
External Partner: BBC
Student: Luke Skarth-Hayley
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5. Application of Artificial Intelligence to Connected Transport and Logistics
Over the last few years, major transport and logistics operations have been increasingly relying on big data analytics. This project will explore designing and developing artificial intelligence and optimisation algorithms for connected and autonomous vehicles in transport and logistics environments. This project can take advantage of live data feed from over 300,000 commercial vehicles and construction machines fitted with Microlise’s advanced telematics technologies in testing and evaluate AI-based systems.
In particular, the focus of the research project will be on:
External Partner: Microlise
Student: Jimiama Mafeni Mase
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6. Online safeguarding of vulnerable children
This research theme seeks to explore new solutions for online safeguarding among parents and children bereaved by partner/parent separation or death. These groups often increase their digital engagement as a coping mechanism or to remain in touch with the separated parent. Both death and separation are a loss and –emotionally- the effects are very similar. Often with victims of data abuse, grooming, internet fraud, sexting and online serious organised crime activities, the stigma and shame associated with cybercrime can mean that these vulnerable groups suffer in silence, failing to report fraud to the relevant authorities. Reaching, engaging, and working collaboratively with these groups on issues of cybersecurity can be very challenging, especially if these groups are inexperienced with technology and unaware of the risks associated with the internet.
In collaboration with Cyber Crime Investigation specialists within the Crime Command at Northamptonshire Police, this theme will explore solutions to help these groups of vulnerable citizens to critically understand cybercrime and engage with cybersecurity, as well as understand their attitudes, main concerns, behavioural patterns, and levels of awareness. This information will lead to a further understanding of how these users interact and behave online, and identify user-led solutions to enhance critical thinking about cybersecurity and data literacy, with a view to promoting good practices and allowing users to protect themselves from the risks associated with increased digital interaction.
External Partner: Northamptonshire Police
Student: Melanie Wilson
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7. Digital Technology for Early Warning Signs in Bipolar Disorder and other Mental Health conditions
Bipolar Disorder (BD) is a common and severe mental health problem characterised by repeated relapses of mania or depression, with high recurrence rates. Evidence shows that teaching people to recognise and manage Early Warning Signs (EWS) of relapse can increase the time to recurrence, decrease hospitalisation and improve functioning. People with BD regularly express a strong wish to be able to recognise when they may be entering a period of relapse, by identifying the factors (behaviours, thoughts, moods) that may be indicative of this – known as “relapse signatures”.
New digital technologies such as mobile phones and smart devices in the home have the potential to be used to develop platforms that could detect an individual’s relapse signature and provide personalised and tailored feedback to the individual, and potentially other individuals and organisations. This PhD will explore the opportunities and challenges of this type of technology and work in partnership with people with lived experience to develop and test technologies in the field.
External Partner: Biomedical Research Centre
Student: Shazmin Majid
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8. Digital cultural content sharing and evaluation across the arts and cultural sector
Leveraging online networks and growing brand profile with a view to creating value and establishing potential routes for monetisation.
The digital landscape is rapidly evolving. Large digital platforms have gained significant influence through their ability to control access to global audiences online, yet they have not acknowledged the significant role and volume of cultural content appearing across their platforms. The challenge is for artists and cultural organisations to have the influence and ubiquity of their work online acknowledged, valued and protected from copyright infringement. This project will collaborate with The Space to explore new and experimental engagements with audiences online, leveraging global networks and influencers to identify and determine effective ways in which creative artists and organisations can engage in worldwide, effective, proactive dialogue with communities online, creating additional value for their ‘brand’ and creative outputs and potentially generating new sources of income.
External Partner: The Space
Student: Kadja Manninen
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9. The ethical, social, legal, regulatory and personal aspects of future digital technologies
With the advent of Industry 4.0 there will be a change in how digital technologies are implemented in traditional workplaces. These technologies will be all-pervasive, affecting both our home and work lives, and will result in changes to the skills, behaviours and attitudes that people develop.
This project will take a broad perspective on some of the challenges presented by the introduction of novel digital technologies, with a particular focus on robotics and the types of technologies that we may see in future manufacturing settings. It will particularly focus on the ethical, social, legal, regulatory and personal aspects of future digital technologies, with the goal of providing policy input and guidance to future employers, employees and governments. The project will align with the EPSRC-funded project DigiTOP, and the student will be part of the DigiTOP team, being invited to project meetings and acting as an ambassador for the project activities through their PhD work.
External Partner: The EPSRC DigiTOP project
Student: Natalie Leesakul
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10. Exploring the use of Digital Technologies to provide immersive experiences for older people living with dementia
Consumer Virtual Reality (VR) technology now has applications in a variety of domains, most visibly in entertainment and education. However, current applications may overlook certain demographics, such as older people, for whom the technology might provide significant benefits. This PhD will involve a doctoral candidate in City Arts’ ongoing exploration into the use of Digital Technologies (including mobile, VR, AR, 3D scanning, printing and sound) to provide immersive experiences for older people living with dementia, using this opportunity to identify the social, psychological and physical benefits to that audience.
The candidate will investigate both the technical challenges of providing VR-based experiences to an audience with particular physical and cognitive needs, and also the ethical and legal issues around privacy and risk that the users (and wider stakeholders, such as City Arts) may face. For example, there are likely to be particular issues around informed consent and psychological risk assessment for an audience that is both unfamiliar with cutting-edge technologies and affected by dementia. Ultimately, the PhD will aim to inform the emerging regulations around the provision of VR.
External Partner: City Arts
Student: Stanislaw Piasecki
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11. Interacting with the Smart City
City administration of the future will be enabled by “smart” systems. These systems will include live sensor feeds, Internet of Things devices allowing control of the city environment as well as sensing, and critically the interlinking of different departments, so for example the pollution sensor network might drive the traffic control systems to adapt vehicle flows and timing. How do we summarise, understand and control these complex systems? And how do systems for authorities and experts differ from systems for the public to use? Can the public interact with such systems to do more than observe but also to request or alter services?
Many of these interactions are mediated or linked by location or place. Ordnance Survey in the national mapping agency for Great Britain. We are interested in how current or new features of our digital data and services will enable these interactions. We bring relevant experience from research in privacy and security of IoT, through practical experiments in the CityVerve city demonstrator systems in Manchester, to visualisation and augmented reality (AR) research. You will be joining a cohort of around 20 PhD students we sponsor around the UK and beyond. We like to be involved in our sponsored PhDs, as industrial supervisors, as hosts for ad hoc research visits and internships by our students, and through workshops and seminars at our headquarters.
This PhD may involve issues in data integration from relatively static background geography layers through to dynamic sensor and IoT APIs or connected vehicles. We are also interested in the human factors of the interaction with city data, from current online mapping through tangible displays such as Projection Augmented Relief Models (PARMs) to techniques such as AR. Which display technologies best enable which interactions? The PhD might start with the University of Nottingham Smart Campus activities before building out to a larger environment such as the Manchester CityVerve area.
External Partner: Ordnance Survey
Student: Peter Boyes
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12. Social implications of digital manufacturing
The focus of this theme will include an identification of key human issues from the introduction of digital manufacturing, from an individual and organisational perspective. In particular, and in alignment with the interests of Warwick Manufacturing Group, there will be consideration of the cybersecurity implications of the introduction of digital manufacturing.
External Partner: WMG
Student: Neeshé Khan
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13. Using digital technologies to understand consumer drivers
The different factors that influence consumer choices related to vegetarian/vegan food are certainly multiple, and it can reasonably be anticipated that cost, sensory perception, label information, ecological considerations and nutritional profile (among others) are included in the list of most impactful factors. However, in order to adopt the right strategy to propose a relevant food offer to vegetarian and vegan consumers, it is important to identify the most important criteria driving the food choice for this population. In this project, it is proposed to use digital technologies (e.g. online surveys) to identify the different components/dimensions that vegetarian consumers value the most and to quantify their impact on the purchase intent. Dedicated approaches like the Design of Experiments may be used to get better control of the virtual prototypes that consumers will evaluate through these surveys. The outcome of this work is two-fold: first, it should lead to the identification of possible challenges linked with online product evaluation and second it should help to establish a hierarchy among drivers of vegetarian food choice (for the selected product categories that will be investigated).
External Partner: Nestlé
Student: Oliver Miles
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2017 Cohort
1. User-centred design of interactive personalised prosthetics
The emergence of additive manufacturing technologies such as 3D printing raises the possibility of producing personalized wearable limbs that are tailored to fit the bodies of individuals. In parallel, the spread of lightweight cameras and computer vision techniques together with other ubiquitous sensors and ever-smaller wifi-enabled computing platforms suggest that future prosthetics could behave more smartly, for example adapting their gripping mechanisms to specific objects that they can see. This PhD will adopt a user-centred approach to the design of future prosthetics, seeking to understand how users actually engage with the everyday world, especially the many everyday challenges that they must overcome, and then reflecting these in the design of new prosthetics that combine additive manufacturing, computer vision and possibly other technologies.
External Partner: Additive Manufacturing CDT
Student: Feng Zhou
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2. Visual Interface Design for Feedback of Everyday Data
The project aims to explore the use of computational methods for personal data visualization. Unilever is a producer of fast-moving consumer goods. As digital sensing becomes increasingly commonplace in consumer products, for example with wearable devices and smart appliances, being able to show the user the data that relates to their own everyday activities with products offers interesting research challenges. Developing effective visualisation methods for this class of data including structuring the interaction with the user is a highly relevant scientific requirement when linked to digital sensing opportunities. The work relates to two Research Areas: (i) Human-Computer Interaction, in the development of novel data interfaces, and for personal data domains, the consideration of social, ethical and human aspects. (ii) Graphics and Visualisation, for visualisation of information and manipulation of visual content.
External Partner: Unilever
Student: Gustavo Berumen
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3. Enabling environmental citizenship
Environmental monitoring by public agencies faces significant challenges: reduced public funding; increasing maintenance costs, and inherently low spatial and temporal resolution. These reduce our capacity to tackle complex problems like urban air quality, flood risk and pollution. At the same time, falling consumer technology costs (smartphones, Raspberry Pi, low cost sensors) are increasing the number of people with technology that can capture and report useful measurements dramatically. Coupling citizens’ measurements with traditional monitoring systems could significantly extend our environmental monitoring capacity without increasing costs. It has the bonus of engaging citizens in monitoring and raising awareness of the environmental problems facing society. Thus, citizen science projects are starting to generate large datasets to complement public data, calibrate models and enhance decision-making. But technological and sociological questions must be answered if these volunteered data are to be calibrated and validated to standards applied to traditional data sources. What motivates participants? Which population groups participate and why? Does this influence data quality? You will work with researchers trying to answer these questions and develop the use of citizen data in monitoring flooding, pollution and other environmental applications. See, for example, http://www.orchid.ac.uk/ and https://cobwebproject.eu/about.
External Partner: British Geological Survey
Student: Clifford Richardson
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4. Asthma and the Digital Ecosystem
Asthma inhalers and treatment devices are increasingly incorporating the capability to ‘track’ the way they are used as part of our ‘digital ecosystem’. This tracking can include information about the number, size and frequency of doses per day, as well as data associated with the individual using the device, such as their location, health state or environmental conditions (e.g. air quality). The potential of this data for clinicians, clinical researchers and developers, patients and their families is large, but the management and use of this data present ethical and data analysis challenges. This PhD could explore questions such as ‘how should data be presented to encourage patients to adhere to treatment regimes?, ‘how can clinicians responsibly gain value from multiple data sets containing personal patient data?’ or ‘how can clinical development use inhaler use data to inform the development of future treatments and delivery devices?’. This project will build on previous work conducted in partnership with colleagues at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust, and work in partnership with Glaxo Smith Kline
External Partner: Glaxo Smith Kline
Student: Vanja Ljevar
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5.Healthy conversations with agents
This PhD will explore the challenges and opportunities of employing conversational agents to deliver mental healthcare. The combination of behaviour analysis (computer vision/speech recognition), dialogue management, and behaviour generation (speech generation and interactive graphics) – underpinned by personal data – enables conversational agents. Such interfaces could try to engage users in natural conversations, which could be used to monitor one’s mental health or to deliver simple computer-based treatments. These conversational agents may range from text-chat bots to speech interfaces and even fully-fledged humanoid-like avatars. One aspect that should be studied is to what extent the brain reacts in a similar way when conversing with a virtual agent compared to a real person. To do that, you will have the ability to run an fMRI brain scanning study in collaboration with our BRC partners.
External Partner: The Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre
Student: Keerthy Kusumam
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6. Embedding digital interventions into everyday life
Most mental health problems persist over long periods of time, so any self-help tools should also be used regularly and for a long time. This PhD will explore the challenges and opportunities of using ubiquitous technologies to more richly interleave mental health interventions with the patterns of daily life to naturally achieve this. The spread of the first mobile and now ubiquitous computing as well as the Internet of Things into daily life is drastically reshaping when and where we encounter digital technologies. This might have profound consequences for how we deliver mental healthcare interventions, for example in which digital technologies engage us frequently, regularly and at opportune moments. Cues to determine when and how interactions with a person should occur could be learned from personal data, and incremental learning could be used to adapt to each user over time.
External Partner: The Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre
Student: Marie Dilworth
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7. Intelligent Mobility
Individuals travel in different ways and at different times throughout their lives, and increasingly data about these travel patterns are captured through the use of personal devices and interaction with online travel systems. This data has a number of possible types of value, from telling personal stories about travel experiences, to delivering discounted travel for frequent journeys. This project will run in collaboration with the Ordnance Survey to explore how personal histories and patterns of travel can be used to inform ‘intelligent mobility’ – the more efficient movement of people and goods in space and time. The project could take a number of different approaches, from building applications to exploring user models of their own mobility patterns, and would be expected to link geographical data sets (in collaboration with Ordnance Survey collaborators) and personal data (through Horizon supervisors).
External Partner: Ordnance Survey
Student: Dominic Reedman-Flint
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8. Digital Identity and Interactive Musical Performance
This PhD will explore creative relationships between digital identity, personal data and music. How might, for example, the combination of digital music technologies and personal data enable new approaches to musical composition and performance? And how might these respond to or express musicians’ digital identities? The research will follow a practice-led approach, developing new music technologies, working with musicians to compose and perform new works, and studying this to establish wider principles. It will suit candidates with a background in digital music technologies and live performance. This PhD will be associated with the FAST project, a major UK research initiative to establish the next generation of interactive music technologies: http://www.semanticaudio.ac.uk/
External Partner from FAST project
Student: Laurence Cliffe
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9.Future Experience Technologies (FXT)
The theme concerns the relationship of a broadcaster with its audiences and how and why changing technologies and capabilities will enrich or distort this relationship.
External Partner: BBC
Student: Joe Strickland
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10.Exploring personal contributions to the National Videogame Arcade
The National Videogame Arcade is a major collection and museum of video games, based in Nottingham. The nature of video games is that many visitors to the museum may also be able to contribute to its collection, for example, memories, software and perhaps even hardware. This PhD will explore how gamers can become involved in contributing to the museum’s collection and how their personal data and recollections can be used to enable deep personal interpretation as part of new kinds of social visiting experiences. The PhD will suit an “in the wild” approach in which digital technologies are developed, deployed in the museum and studied in order to explore underlying research challenges.
External Partner: National Videogame Arcade
Student: Alexa Spors
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11.Fitbit for the Brain
We are only a step away from being able to track data about our daily mental activity in the same way that we track physical activity. We do not know what it means to look at our mental lives in data – what goals do we set? what, in our day, creates high and low mental workload? and what do we learn about ourselves by reflecting on that data. This project will investigate the design of a Fitbit for the Brain, working with fNIRS as a formal measure, and investigating solutions with more commercially adoptable technology.
External Partner: Brain+
Student: Serena Midha
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12. Blockchain & Distributed Ledger Technologies
According to the 2017 Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, Blockchain, the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) behind Bitcoin, is within the three top trends to dominate the business ecosystem in the next 5 to 10 years. However, Blockchain is still in its infancy. Not so from a technological perspective but mostly from the perspective of actual applications in the outside world. A recent report from the World Economic Forum mentions that the business development when it comes to Blockchain technologies outpaces the scientific research on the topic (WOF, 2017). Moving to a decentralised future as blockchain and DLTs promise requires immense behavioural changes in aspects of our lives we consider fundamental, ranging from banking and governance to identity and data protection. That negligence of other parameters apart from the technicalities of the Blockchain and DLTs creates a research gap in the field and raises a number of fundamental questions. How will people experience this disintermediation and the shift from the “rule of law” to “the rule of code”? Which factors will shape this emerging form of digital trust? Which are the key incentives (economic or otherwise) in order for them to adopt and use these technologies? Since the barriers of adoption can expand beyond the fundamental idea of trust, to misconceptions, ease of use, and communication language, what are the tools we need to develop in order to tackle them? Moreover, what are the barriers for businesses and governments to transition to this new technological era and what are the possible means (educational, technical, business models, incentivisation) to overcome them? Answering these questions will fill a much-needed gap in the development of Blockchain and DLT both from the perspective of the user as well as from a business development perspective
External Partner: Digital Catapult
Student: Symeon Dionysis
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2016 Cohort
The 2016 cohort are working closely with external partners over the 4 years of their PhD on the following research themes:
1. Using personal data to configure navigation support for blind and partially sighted people.
Location-based services have great potential to support blind and partially sighted people. This research will investigate the potential blend of available location technologies on low-cost devices and will explore how the services might be enhanced by the capture and analysis of personal data to build a profile of an individual’s personal needs and history whilst maintaining security of the personal and location data. Furthermore the project will investigate how the data might be appropriately shared with, and added to, by the various different environments that the user visits over time.
Partners: Satellite Applications Catapult, Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB)
Student: Ahmed Al-Talabany
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2. Analytics for Enhanced Personal Medical Identities
Healthcare is awash with data of varying types, structure, quality and resolution of detail. At one extreme there is information from a patients DNA that is completely unique to them. The other extreme is where there are population based statistics that only have a loose association to the patient at best. The challenge for the medical professionals is how to apply the population statistics to the need of the individual patient. Conversely (and rather ironically) the challenge for the data analysts is to find groups of similar patients that display similar characteristics, behaviours or responses to treatment in order to produce population statistics. There are also increasing opportunities for integration of other key personal and population data, such as that available from social networking, personal app data, and similar, raising new possibilities of additional complex data to be processed, and associated complex questions around ownership, permissions and ethical uses of such data. This demonstrates a need for both analytical methods and medical decision supports systems to be capable of utilising data of different levels of detail within their respective processes. From an analytical perspective this could conceptually be the ability to include the population statistics in order to introduce the necessary contextual information within the analytics to inform the processes as to what is expected and/or what has been observed before. Are the patients within this study following what would be the predicted path based on the population statistics – is there a group that consistently opposes the population behaviour and what are the consequences. Therefore we are seeking someone to explore these challenges and to seek mechanisms that could unleash the potential within the datasets to improve the care given to patients.
Industry Partner: Nottingham University Hospitals Trust
Student: Fraz Chaudhry
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3. Artistic Explorations of Personal Data and Digital Identity
Personal data and digital identity provide artists with a rich palette for creating engaging and powerful interactive experiences. In turn, these experiences can provoke participants to reflect on the wider nature and uses of their personal data and to explore the boundaries their own digital identities. Blast Theory are an award winning artists group who have been working at the forefront of digital performance for over fifteen years, during which they have collaborated extensively with Horizon researchers to produce a portfolio of unusual and provocative touring performances alongside a series of published academic studies and reflections that have drawn research agendas and design principles from these. Their latest work – Karen – is an exploration of personal profiling and digital identity. This PhD will work with Blast Theory to develop and study new artistic works, alongside the student’s own works, in order to answer questions such as: how can digital art engage with personal data and digital identity? How do artists treat the boundary between fiction and reality in such works? How do they manage to creative experiences that offer participants choice and yet also lead them along predefined narrative arcs? And what are the political and ethical dimensions of their work?
Industry Partner: Blast Theory
Student: Michelle Coleman
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4. User Privacy Choices
Users often seem to make privacy choices that are contrary to their best interests – whether through ignorance, indifference, habit, or combinations of factors. Work on similar decision cycles in areas such as diet, smoking, and exercise suggests that effective, sustainable behavioural change is best achieved by influencing the values users place on the associated outcomes. Some research has already been done on the malleability of users’ privacy choices (e.g. Adjerid, Acquisti & Loewenstein – 2014), but the practicalities of such an approach remain to be tested. This PhD will aim to examine models for user privacy decision cycles, and to consider whether different styles of intervention are most effective at different points in the cycle. The goal is to produce guidance for multiple stakeholders (users, service providers, application designers/developers, privacy advocates, etc.) to increase the chances of a virtuous cycle of privacy habit-forming, as opposed to the largely vicious cycle one can observe currently.
Industry Partner: The Internet Society
Student: Joseph Doherty-Bailey
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5. Impact of new data and technology on human and system performance
Industry Partner: Rail Industry
Student: Abi Fowler
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6. Map design for navigation applications in future highly automated vehicles
Highly automated vehicles are being developed in which the “driver” will not need to actively control the vehicle for the majority of time. In this level of automation there is no need for the driver to permanently monitor the system while it is active, but they may still be requested to resume manual control within a predefined time-frame. This fundamental shift in the role of a driver generates many interesting research topics, for instance concerning the management of transition periods/warnings, and how to provide shared situation awareness for vehicle/driver. In addition, there is considerable scope for novel design associated with non-automated driving functionality, given the freedom for radically different vehicle interiors and the potential for new tasks to be permissible in a vehicle. This PhD would aim to design and evaluate new forms of navigation user-interfaces for vehicles that exploit the opportunities afforded by automation. In particular, the work would use the University of Nottingham driving simulator to investigate novel HMIs, such as augmented reality head-up displays that provide map information in a manner that might enhance a user’s overall situation awareness but in a way that adapts to their level of engagement with the operation of the vehicle.
Industry Partner: Ordnance Survey
Student: Chloé Jackson
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7. Smart Ticketing
What is the business relationship that travellers and operators (and other 3rd parties) can expect in the future? Explore the boundaries of certain business models and the expectations of traveller anonymity versus new revenue streams, such as targeted advertising. How to engage the ‘last 10%’ of travellers who will resist the leap to smart tickets, so the machines can be retired as quickly as possible. What new approaches to revenue protection will be required? How far can dynamic pricing be used to better match demand with available capacity, without damaging the ‘journey transaction’ that customers expect. Lots of business and economics possibilities here and not just rail – can be multi-modal too.
Industry Partner: Thales
Student: Christian Tamakloe
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8. People-centric smart cities
The smart cities narrative is dominated by accounts of large system deployments that are often centralised, monolithic, and techno-centric. What would be the implication of reframing the vision around a notion that people are the smartest part of a smart city?What sort of systems would emerge to support the individual experience of the city rather than the needs of a centralised administration?
Industry Partner: Open Data Institute
Student: Roza Vasileva
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9.Optimization of interventions of social-technical systems
Monitoring, Analysis and optimization of socio-technical systems to deliver coordinated intervention and support the engagements of individuals and services. Exploring the constraints and effects of governing policies and importance of ethical issues. How can digital technologies be used to optimise delivery logistics? Areas of impact could include delivery of aid to disaster zones such as refugee camps, first-response to everyday emergencies such as cardiac-arrest and optimization of the safest routes of travel for refugee journeys.
Industry Partner: Humanitarian Open Street Map Team
Student: Maddy Ellis
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10. Reflections on Personality and Identity through Analysis of Facial Expression Dynamics
Who am I? One’s identity is a puzzling thing, and is something that we only learn about slowly throughout our life. ‘Know thyself!’ is a commandment common in many cultures. What exactly constitutes one’s identity is perhaps not entirely known, but we do know that part of it is one’s personality, and that personality, in turn, manifests itself in the dynamics of expressive behaviour. In this research theme, the goal is to make use of and extend the latest state of the art in facial expression analysis. The state of the art to adopt is Deep Learning, as well as existing knowledge about what works for expression analysis (e.g. adoption of feature dynamics as well as modelling dynamics in machine learning hypothesis, fusing geometry and appearance, etc.). Where significant extensions need to be made are for example the challenge of how to economically create systems that can do explicit prediction of expression dynamics in terms of its constituent temporal phases – something that is known to be hard due to the excessive costs of annotating these concepts. Cooperative and active learning may well offer solutions in this area. Similarly, solutions need to be found to personalise analysis systems. But perhaps the biggest open questions that need to be addressed in this work is how to utilise the machine analysis into a usable self-reflection tool – a mirror of one’s identity.
Industry Partner: Shenzhen University
Student: Siyang Song
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11.Interventions to rediscover the digital
While the argument of “if you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to hide” is used as a crutch to counter-argue privacy advocates, there remains millions of digital inhabitants unconscious of the fundamental (and invisible) processes that affords disembodied and distributed information communications.
While advertisements are an annoyance to users, there hides a digital economy collecting, processing and selling user data that individuals might not be aware is being shared. For someone living with a complex chronic health condition, whereby they might rely on medical innovations for the rest of their lives, their data exhaust (and so their data profile) may become extremely valuable to pharmaceutical companies and health insurance agencies. Facebook ‘likes’ and Google searches, both that may feel ‘private’ to a user from the comfort of their homes, may suddenly be significant contributors of information for these third party stakeholders. Ubiquitous technologies are enabling digital intimacy, where the human and the digital are co-dependent and blending into one greater ecosystem. This complex relationship with the digital makes it difficult to separate our understanding of the user from the human: one example being the detachment of what feels private, as an individual interacting with a technology, and what is private, as considered by the digital economy.
This PhD will explore using non-linear and embodied interventions to safely move individuals from a position of misperceived privacy to a position of agency, where they can better negotiate the digital to suit their needs. This theme will deliver new insights into how individuals navigate through different learning pathways to understand the impacts of their digital footprints in the short and medium term. It will also explore how individuals can better negotiate their digital identity through meaningful behavioural change.
Industry Partner: Newcastle University Digital Civics CDT
Student: Kate Green
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2015 Cohort
The 2015 cohort are working closely with external partners over the 4 years of their PhD on the following research themes:
1. Using live brain data to create, affect and communicate in artistic and therapeutic ways.
Commercially available EEG devices allow us to draw data that provide insights into inner selves, and allow for the development of implicit control methods. This project will take cues from neuroscience research, dream, memory and various measurable states of mind to inform artistic and therapeutic experiences. Through a series of publicly exhibited installations, interactive films and systems the project will create work that disrupt our understanding of consciousness lived experience. This research will investigate methods of improving communications between people and computers and people and people, to build a cinematic platform/ development kit that can be adopted by other filmmakers and to find new ways of alleviating anxiety and pain.
Partners: FACT, B3 Media
Student: Richard Ramchurn
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2. Using personal data in TV content.
The BBC wishes to explore the creation of new broadcast content and experiences in which people contribute their own personal data, for example data from wearable biosensors that might give individual or collective insights into sports, fitness, and wellbeing as part of a wide range of formats. The research would explore the potential of such data to create innovative broadcast content, how this delivers new insights and learning experiences to viewers, and how this personal data can be managed in a trusted way as part of a BBC digital identity.
Industry partner: the BBC
Student: Neelima Sailaja
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3. The effects of brain tumour treatment on digital identities and experiences.
Brain tumours are the leading cause of cancer deaths in children and adults under the age of 40. As with any cancer diagnosis, those affected by the disease are faced with a new reality that is dominated by decisions about treatment and dealing with the outcomes of those decisions. Online communities of patients and families can empower those affected by the disease by providing a platform for sharing experiences and giving and receiving advice. However, brain tumour treatment is likely to affect the very vehicle that people use to construct their identities online and interact with the relevant discourse communities: language. This project takes a longitudinal view of how patients construct online identities, and how these change over time as they undergo treatment for their brain tumours. It seeks to further our understanding of the interrelationship between language and identity in digital contexts in populations whose ability to express and perform that identity may be impaired.
Partner: The Brain Tumour Charity
Student: Wendy Olphert
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4. A day in the life of your language.
The way we communicate with others on a day to day basis is changing rapidly as a direct result of the increase in digital domains of discourse that now tend to be an integral part of our experience of language production and reception. We perform our individual and group identities largely through language, and the blurring of digital and physical communication has led to a host of challenges in how we navigate and negotiate those identities at any one time. For the language learner, this presents an additional challenge, as a large number of digital communication practices and discourse communities are inextricably linked to cultural patterns of expression. This PhD research project will explore the notion of identity in discourse throughout the course of a day of a language learner. Key areas for exploration will include how we may use technology to track the language perception and production of language learners throughout a day and across different types of context; how we may analyse the vocabulary requirements to express and understand nuanced speaker and audience identities; and how this may inform a more evidence-based and adaptive approach to language learning and teaching.
Partner: Cambridge University Press
Student: Andrew Moffat
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5. Data, Psychology and Consumer Understanding
Boots PLC has a long history of engaging with its customer to produce products and services that meet their needs via consumer analysis. However, there is still much scope for further development. This project will examine the interface between psychology, computer science and consumer analysis to generate better understandings of customers goals by combining analysis of their motivations as well as data streams. There are many factors that affect our everyday purchasing behaviours: our motivations, our preferences and our values. Psychological theory suggests that people are, to a certain extent, stable in their decisions from one situation to another – we call these stable propensities `traits’. For example, some might enjoy impulse buys, while others carefully planning is key. By researching these traits and how they are expressed, and then examining how they are reflected in data streams of consumer behaviour, it will possible to better explain why a customer buys what they buy and then better adapt existing products and services to their needs.
Partner: Boots PLC
Student: Rosa Lavelle-Hill.
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6. Developing dynamic and inclusive ecosystems for the visually impaired community.
Research Themes – ‘Inclusive Ecosystems’ and ‘Segmentation and profiling work’. With an ageing population, increase in chronic disease and evidence of a rise in sight loss in babies and young children, there is a projected increase in the number of people in the UK with sight loss to 2.5mill by 2020 and nearly four million by 2050. Within the visually impaired (VI) and blind community there are additional challenges whereby the population has higher incidences of physical and cognitive disabilities and reduced mental health and wellbeing. Historically this community have sometimes been marginalised, however recent developments in digital and mobile technologies have provided products and services which are inclusive of their needs. This research will investigate the prospects for inclusive ecosystems in bringing the needs of the VI community into the mainstream and in the development of dynamic ecosystems to ensure inclusivity over time. The project will utilise data driven techniques to understand the opportunities associated with segmentation and user profiling and explore the use of explicit and implicit techniques to understand the needs and changing requirements of users at different scales; individuals, family units, small groups and the community as a whole. We envisage the project will include significant elicitation of user needs together with trialling of prototype systems.
Partner: Guide Dogs for the Blind Association
Student: Ziyad Yehia
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7. Surveying Personal Data
This theme will explore the value of mining personal data to inform mapping from local to national scale, answering questions such as: What can aggregations of personal data tell us about specific locations? What privacy and security issues should be considered when performing such aggregations? How can information architectures and visualisations be design to facilitate the mapping of dynamic and personal data sets?
Partner: Ordnance Survey
Student: Judit Varga
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8. Digital identity for travellers
Industry contact, Huw Gibson and Nick Wilson. Integrating data from different sources, including journey planners and transport operators, provides new opportunities to provide travellers with planning and real-time journey information when using public transport. There are, however, a number of technical, operational and ethical challenges associated with combining different data sets in a way that allows passengers to move with confidence around the country, trusting in the data with which they are presented, and understanding the extent to which they control how their data is used by others. The goal of the project, which will be particularly appropriate for a student with a human factors, psychology or interaction design background, is to understand the challenges associated with traveller identity curation for frequent and occasional travellers. The project has the potential to also consider issues associated with transport accessibility, and the applicability of these concepts to the international rail community. This project is co-sponsored by a consortium of rail-related organisations, including Rail Safety and Standards Board and Network Rail, and lead by ATOC (The Association of Train Operating Companies). ATOC was set up after privatisation in 1993 and brings together all train companies to preserve and enhance the benefits for passengers of Britain’s national rail network.
Industry Partner: RSSB/Network Rail/ATOC consortium
Academic Liaison: Sarah Sharples
Student: Shalaka Kurup
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9. Datamining and visualisation for Big Data
The world of Big data poses many new research challenges, in particular when looking for more personalised results. To address this, the long-term research vision is to create an integrated framework of problem understanding, modelling, analysis and visualisation techniques, based on an inter-disciplinary perspective of their closely-coupled nature. This will lead to breakthrough advances in addressing challenging real-world problems, such as in the medical domain. Key to this is working closely with the problem owner, providing user-centric data analysis and personalised (or stratified) results.
Partner: Shenzhen University
Student: Bo Wang
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10. Intelligent Transportation Systems
Information and communication technologies and advancing at a rapid rate at the moment. More and more information becomes available digitally every year, while the connectivity between transportation systems and data sources, especially from mobile devices is simultaneously increasing. These advances offer huge opportunities for improving transportation systems as well as for offering additional facilities to the users of those systems. Intelligent transportation systems seek to provide their users with more, useful information, in appropriate formats and representations to facilitate its use. For example, the ability of self-positioning in indoor environments has become increasingly important for various applications. Travellers can therefore make more informed decisions, for more efficient, coordinate and safer travel.
Partner: Shenzhen University
Student: Qing Li
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2014 Cohort
The 2014 cohort are working closely with external partners over the 4 years of their PhD on the following research themes:
1. Community identities and place.
How can community digital identities centred around particular places be expressed and how do they relate to personal identities? How can the digital representation of place support this? How can knowledge of place and community be used to collect enriched descriptions of place whilst protecting the identity and personal data of the individual contributor? How much personal data can be constructed/inferred about an individual or community using geographic information?
Industry Partner: Ordnance Survey
Student: Iona Fitzpatrick
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2. Digital identities for personalised media experiences
This project will explore how relationships traditionally built on trust can be maintained as cultural venues increasingly use data to deepen their understanding of customer activity and preferences and to tailor communications and programming. Are there opportunities for the data collected on an individual’s interactions to be shared transparently to enrich that customer’s experience and levels of engagement and in turn increase the sustainability of the venue? For example, how might cinemas enable filmgoers to discover and express their digital identities by curating personal film histories, to explore collective film histories or to develop a narrative on memories of previous interactions with the building and its cultural and commercial offer?
Industry Partners: Broadway Media Centre, Digital Catapult
Student: Tatiana Styliari
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3. Intelligent mobility
This project will explore how our personal data and digital identities might enhance future end-to-end journey experiences across a lifetime of travel. How can they deliver personalised travel experiences that join-up across multiple services and contexts? What are appropriate ways of sharing our data with these services and/or others to achieve wider benefits for all concerned? This project will have the ultimate aim of improving traveller experience, providing personalised information and considering the concept of end to end mobility as a service. There are a number of different perspectives that may be taken in addressing this challenge, including computer science (information architectures and interoperability), user needs (trust in systems and understanding of data use), industry goals (encouraging and supporting data sharing amongst industry stakeholders and enabling entrepreneurship) and policy (taking a systems approach to transport system financial and regulatory frameworks).
Industry Partners: Transport Systems Catapult
Student: Gregor Engelmann
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4. Introducing a social perspective to future digital identity products
The theme focuses on understanding of the social aspects of Digital Identity with a view to informing future Digital Identity products. Today’s digital identity products focus on a relatively narrow range of applications, mostly around personal finances and credit histories. However, future products may have a far wider scope and draw on a far more diverse set of personal data. This theme will explore the social aspects of digital identity and especially how our personal digital identities are reflected in and shaped by social media, with a view to informing the development of future digital identity products but also the social, policy and regulatory frameworks within which they should operate.
Industry Partner: Experian
Student: Sam Doehren
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5. The contextual footprint at work
Whilst we work we produce and use data. These data might be about how we perform a task, which systems we use, who we communicate with, or might even reflect how we feel or cope. One context in which the extent to which we understand worker performance is both potentially valuable (in its potential to inform changes to workplace design or tasks) but also challenging (through questions around privacy, ethics and data management) is in a hospital. In hospitals, many different workers interact with each other, technologies, patients, relatives and carers. Technologies give us the potential to track people’s movements, record their physiological responses and log their interactions. If we start to use these technologies in a context such as a hospital, research is needed in how to technically achieve such data collection and storage and ethically and responsibly implement such tools. This project could be explored using a range of different disciplinary perspectives, from computer science or geospatial science to human factors, psychology or sociology. The project will be supported by Nottingham University Hospitals, including senior clinicians (Dr. Dominick Shaw) and data management specialists.
Partner: Nottingham University Hospitals Trust
Academic liaison: Sarah Sharples (institutional pathway)
Student: Kate Arnold
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6. Augmenting fast-moving consumer goods in the home to support sustainable living and wellbeing
From washing machines to toothbrushes, smart appliances that contain embedded sensor and display technologies are able to provide feedback about their usage so as to promote more sustainable use or personal wellbeing. Emerging Internet of Things technologies may see this capability extend to the many fast-moving consumer goods that pass through our homes and that we use with such appliances, from washing powders to toothpaste. How can we design these to sense usage and provide appropriate feedback at key touch-points during the user-experience? What novel datasets will they produce, how might we usefully interpret these, and how can they be managed in an acceptable way in a complex social environment of the home?
Industry Partner: Unilever
Student: Obrien Sim
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7. The Internet of Things at home
From washing machines to toothbrushes, smart appliances that contain embedded sensor and display technologies are already able to provide feedback about their usage so as to promote more sustainable use or personal wellbeing. Emerging Internet of Things technologies may see this capability extend to the many fast-moving consumer goods – the stuff that we out in these appliances – that pass through our homes from washing powders to toothpaste. How can we design these to sense usage and provide appropriate feedback at key touch-points during the user-experience? What novel datasets will they produce, how might we usefully interpret these, and how can they be managed in an acceptable way in a complex social environment of the home?
Industry Partner: Unilever
Student: Yitong Huang
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8. Using Personal Data to Encourage Wellbeing.
The design of radical new online health services, from deeply personalised health journeys on the one hand, to being able to combine data from many individuals to build a picture of health issues across communities and populations on the other. At the same time, it raises important issues of trust and transparency that must also be addressed if this potential is to be realised. The use of personal data to encourage wellbeing, creating digital identities that define the interface between individuals and health services, and exploring the opportunities and challenges of individuals donating their personal data to support wider medical research.
Partner: Nottingham University Hospitals Trust
Student: Pepita Barnard Stringer
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9. Personal data and privacy in context
The question of who has rights to our personal data lies at the core of how we will maintain and use our digital identities in all walks of life. It is also a question that is exercising policy makers, lawmakers, regulators and increasingly the wider public through media coverage and debate. This PhD will explore the question of people’s ownership of and rights to their personal data across varied contexts – for example from healthcare to transportation – through a series of case studies of our CDT projects, exploring people’s attitudes towards the use of their personal data as well as the wider regulatory framework within which it will be managed.
Partner: The Open Rights Group
Academic Liaison: Steve Benford (Institutional Pathway)
Student: Matt Voigts
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10. Personal movement profiles for more sustainable buildings.
The emergence of indoor positioning systems opens up the possibility for creating personal movement profiles that captures how individuals make use of buildings. However, at the moment there is no single compelling solution to the indoor positioning problem. This project will investigate novel approaches to indoor positioning combined with navigation between buildings using GNSS. These systems, and personal movement profiles, could potentially be used to optimize and manage energy use at an aggregate or potentially even at an individual level. However, this will require that people are comfortable sharing their data and perceive clear benefits from doing so.
Industry Partner: The Satellite Applications Catapult
Student: Shadab Mashuk
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11. Adult social care represents an especially challenging domain for digital identity services
Clients are often vulnerable, may be digitally disenfranchised, and can lead complicated lives. They then find themselves negotiating a complex landscape of public and increasingly third-sector and private service providers in order to access social care. In partnership with Nottinghamshire County Council, the student will explore how we can understand the complex digital identities of those engaging with social care and how we might develop new digital identity services to support them in the future and help them manage sensitive personal data across different providers.
Partner: Nottinghamshire County Council
Student: Alex Young
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