MSc student projects
The high point of our Masters programmes is the dissertation project which is an opportunity to undertake an extended piece of work in an area of interest to you, reflecting the focus of your chosen course. For many students the project is closely related to an area in which they intend to gain employment in the Computing industry, providing a valuable focus for discussion during interviews for jobs, while for others it provides an entry point for research, possibly leading to a PhD in a area related to the project.
Astrology: an MSc Information Technology project
This project involved the development of a web front end for a database system, using Java Servlets and advanced
HTML, the types of technologies often used in commercial applications. Rather than the system containing
traditional sorts of data such as names and numbers, the database contained text segments that could be combined
to form 'horoscopes'. The system was then used to undertake an experimental examination of the 'Barnum' effect,
which suggests that horoscopes 'work' because they contain general and ambiguous statements that are applicable to
the general population. It was found with the computer-generated horoscopes that there was no statistically
significant difference between test subjects who were horoscope 'believers' and 'non believers'; both groups rated
the Barnum effect horoscope as an accurate reflection of themselves.
Fruit fly: a Bioinformatics project
This Bioinformatics project looked at building new software to help researchers examine the drosophila (fruit fly)
genomic database. After discussion with researchers to find their requirements, a suite of software was developed
that automated the often repetitive process of running data through alignment programs (BLAST1 and BLAST2) in the
analysis process of the non-LTR retrotransposons in drosophila, so speeding up the research process. The project
involved extensive use of online genomics databases, state of the art computer techniques and also close liaison
with Bioinformatics researchers.
Web portal: a Bioinformatics project
This project looked at developing a web based software package to assist biomedical researchers. Interfacing with
and accessing genetic data from the extensive online gene databases throughout the world the system developed can
examine the data in two given sequences to recover complex information about base pairs clusters at positions
within the data set. The software was developed in conjunction with biomedical researchers give them custom
software for their data processing requirements, and was used in later research.
An Intelligent Imaging system project
This computer vision based project looked at methods to try and solve the difficult task of recognising objects
from their shapes when they are overlapping. Taking as a starting point work by earlier vision researchers, Ozcan
and Mohan, a new system was developed using an evolutionary programming technique, called a Memetic algorithm. The
system designed included an easy to use interface and was capable of recognising a number of overlapping shapes
even in the presence of small amounts of visual noise in the pictures. The work was later published as a
scientific conference paper.