In Research

• Introduction
• Theory
• Vision and Interaction
  • Vision
  • Interaction, Media and Communication
• Information Engineering
  • Risk Assessment
  • Information Retrieval
• Public Engagement
• Interdisciplinary research
• HUB research magazine
• Technical Reports
• Augmented Human Interaction Lab
• Contact us

See also:

• Women in Computing Research
• PhD degrees
• People
• News and events
• Business
• Facilities/resources

Public Engagement

Introduction
Encouraging public engagement with science and engineering research is recognised as of vital national and international importance by the UK government. It is important both to demystify the subject and to inspire the next generation of researchers. Our public engagement work has been widely praised. For example, cs4fn, our free webzine and magazine on the fun side of computer science was commended in the 2006 EPSRC International Review of Computer Science. Dr Paul Curzon gave an invited keynote talk at the 12th Annual ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education in 2007 on our public engagement work. Professor Peter McOwan’s work has been selected for the Royal Society summer exhibition twice since 2005, and teachers and students alike have enthused about our work with schools. This external recognition is also reflected in the amount of external funding we have attracted to support our public engagement work, from academia, learned societies and industry: over £760 000 since 2002.

International quality researchers in the public engagement group include: Professor Peter McOwan, Dr Paul Curzon, Professor Norman Fenton, Dr William Marsh, Dr Nick Bryan-Kinns, Dr Pat Healey and Professor Ursula Martin.

Highlights of our public engagement work include:

cs4fn: Dr Paul Curzon and Professor Peter McOwan developed and edit the free cs4fn website and magazine, funded by EPSRC. Distributed free to schools, it presents research and other core computer science topics in a fun and off-beat way. Our aim is to spread our enthusiasm not just for computer science but also related science, maths and engineering topics. The cs4fn project has the support of industry, the British Computer Society and the Higher Education Academy and is used by several other Universities.

Sodarace: Professor Peter McOwan, working with Soda Creative Limited, developed the online Humans versus Artificial Intelligence Olympics, Sodarace. Based on the BAFTA winning sodaconstructor website, it recently completed a UK-wide tour funded by EPSRC and was selected for the Royal Society Summer Exhibition in 2005. Sodarace has over 120 000 registered users age 7-70.

Making Sense of Probability: Professor Norman Fenton in partnership with Agena, a company that specialises in risk management for critical systems, has a special interest in raising public awareness of the importance of probability theory and Bayesian reasoning in everyday life. Many aspects of probability go against our natural intuition. Mistakes in such reasoning can have serious consequences, from the jailing of innocent people to companies going bust. As a consequence Professor Fenton developed the 'Making Sense of Probability' website. It explores a range of fallacies, myths and puzzles about probability in an accessible way.

Daisyphone: Dr Nick Bryan-Kinns runs the EPSRC Daisyphone project. Daisyphone is a novel musical instrument that lets people play loops of music together in a novel and engaging way. It has been freely available on the web since 2003, so anyone can get involved. At its peak up to 18 players were visiting it per day from all over the world. You place notes on the petals of Daisyphone and choose your instruments from the stamen. It is a messy instrument - you can draw, doodle, sketch, or do whatever you want. Your contributions are shared with others over the Internet: you can see and hear what they do, they see and hear what you do. It forms part of ongoing research exploring how technology can support joint creativity. It was featured in New Scientist (25 October 2003).

Women into Computer Science: We engage in a range of activities to encourage women into computer science, from talks on Women in Computer Science to special issues of cs4fn which celebrate the achievements of women. Professor Ursula Martin was also seconded part-time from 2003-2005 to the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cambridge as Director of the Women@cl project. It provides local, national and international activities for women engaged in computing research and academic leadership.

The Computer Science Magic Show: Professor Peter McOwan and Dr Paul Curzon have developed a popular live computer science magic show. Rather than just using technology to present magical effects, each trick instead embodies some fundamental computer science concept or issue. In the show, the tricks are performed and participants are challenged to work out how they are done as well as what the computer science link behind them is. Finally we show the secret and explain the computer science. The show has been given in collaboration with several organisations including the Royal Institution.

The Big Draw: Dr Pat Healey along with other members of the department took part in 'Body Science/Body Culture': a huge celebration of drawing, exploring science and biology at The Big Draw East. The day, funded by the Wellcome Trust, was part of a continuing collaboration between Queen Mary, University of London, artist Tessa Garland and the Bow Arts Trust, to discover just how big an impact drawing can have on science, and if new visual tools can be created to help scientists in their work. A Wellcome Trust Small Arts Award funded the project.

The Perception deception: The Perception Deception: Maths made optical illusions is an exhibition on the Maths, Psychology and Computer Science behind illusions. Based on the research of Professor Peter McOwan and Professor Alan Johnston of the Department of Psychology at UCL, it explores how optical illusions can show how our eyes and brain work together to generate human visual perception. It was first exhibited at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition 2007.

Lectures for Schools: Our team also do a popular series of research talks for schools, with leading researchers giving accessible talks on topics related to research.

Public Engagement Writing: Dr. Paul Curzon and Peter Hearty both won prizes in EPSRC's 2007 Computer Science Writing Competition. Paul was joint winner of the 'Non-professional Science Writer of the Year' category. Peter, a PhD student in the Risk Assessment and Decision Analysis group, won a runner-up prize.

BrainAcademy: We organised a combined Computer Science web quiz and programming competition, BrainAcademy that aims to encourage public understanding of computer science and the career opportunities that result from it.

Royal Society Primary School Partnerships: Dr Paul Curzon has partnered two London primary schools on Royal Society Partnership grants. The first with Manorside Primary School involved Year 6 pupils learning a series of specialist usability evaluation techniques. They were then faced with the task of designing a device to beat products currently on the market in terms of ease of use. In the second pupils from Chingford CofE Junior School will be investigating Artificial Intelligence. How would you know an Intelligent computer if you met one?

Science and Portrait Art: Members of the Vision and Interaction research group were involved in organising a seminar at the National Portrait Gallery on 3D and Instillation Portraiture in June 2006. It gave members of the public the opportunity to discuss with leading artists and critics work on the representation of human form and identity in a range of media from sculpture to sound. Members of the department both discussed and performed their work.

Sciencewise: Professor Peter McOwan is a member of the Sciencewise panel. Sciencewise is a unique UK Government programme, which provides opportunities for people to have their views heard by Ministers and senior civil servants on emerging areas of science and technology to help them develop policies that affect us all. The 22-member Sciencewise panel plays several roles such as providing expertise to support the commissioning of Sciencewise projects.

The Not Quite Yet: Working with East London's SPACE gallery and the Drama Department Dr Pat Healey was involved with a ground-breaking art-science collaboration to create a month long exhibition: 'The Not Quite Yet: On the margins of technology'. It uses techniques from performance and live art to help people envisage new social and technological futures. The aim is to engage new constituencies in the debate on how digital networks can, or should, change our world.

Gifted and Talented Students: Queen Mary is the Government established London Excellence Hub for Gifted and Talented School Students. In the Department we support the Excellence Hub, for example giving Saturday talks on Artificial Intelligence and a special extended version of our Computer Science Magic Show.

More maths grads: The East London pilot of the more maths grads project is based at Queen Mary and we are heavily involved in its work, both in the organisation and activities. It is developing, trialling and evaluating ways to increase the number of students studying mathematics.

Industrial collaboration

The group have very strong industrial collaborations. Highlights include:

• The EPSRC funded cs4fn project is supported by ARM, Intel and Microsoft.
• The Sodarace project, also funded by EPSRC is in collaboration with Soda Creative Limited.
• The Making Sense of Probability website is in partnership with Agena.
• women@CL was made possible with support from EPSRC, Microsoft Research, and Intel Cambridge Research.
• 'The Not quite Yet' was in conjunction with East London's SPACE gallery.

Academic collaboration

We also collaborate with other Universities in our public engagement work. Highlights include:

• Partners on our cs4fn project, who use the magazine in their own outreach work, include the University of Bristol, Department of Computer Science; the University of Dundee, School of Computing; Siena College, Department of Computer Science, USA and the University of Edinburgh, School of Informatics. Academics at a range of other Universities have contributed to articles for cs4fn.
• The Perception deception: Maths made optical illusions is in collaboration with the Department of Psychology, University College London.
• women@CL is based at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge and is in collaboration with Newnham College Cambridge, Cambridge-MIT Institute, and the Oxford Internet Institute. Other ' Women in Computer Science' initiatives we have been involved with have been in collaboration with Equalitec.

Top