CAIR News

New Promotions and Appointments ... CAIR Deputy Director, Dr. Rich Picking, has been promoted to the position of Reader in Human-Computer Interaction. Professor Raed A. Adb-Alhameed, from the University of Bradford has been appointed as Visiting Professor and Dr. Yunzhi Yan joins us on a Leverhulme research grant as a Visiting Research Fellow.

ITA 09 ... The Third International Conference on Internet Technologies and Applications (ITA 09), held at Glyndwr University, Wrexham, Wales, from Tuesday 8th - Friday 11th September 2009 was an outstanding success. Over 60 papers were presented with delegates attending from over 30 countries. The programme included three distinguished keynote addresses and a number of stand-alone workshops and tutorials. See www.ita09.org for full details.

Keynote Address ... CAIR Director, Professor Vic Grout, will give a keynote address on "Complexity Issues in Traffic Management" at the 1st International Workshop on Traffic Engineering, Modelling, Analysis, Control and Simulation (TEMACS'09) in Rome in March 2009.

SEIN 2008 ... From November 5-9 2009, CAIR will be hosting the Fourth Collaborative Research Symposium on Security, E-learning, Internet and Networking (SEIN 2008), a result of the research alliance between Glyndwr University, the University of Plymouth and The University of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt in Germany. The event will include keynote addresses, regular paper sessions, a variety of social activities and tutorials to provide advice and assistance to researchers and supervisors.

Another New Professor! ... CAIR's professorial count increased from two to three in August 2008 with the promotion of CAIR Director, Dr Vic Grout, to a personal chair in 'Network Algorithms'. He joins the Head of the School of Computing and Communications Technology, Peter Excell (Professor of Communications) and Dean of the Faculty of Business, Science and Technology, Graeme Wilkinson (Professor of Signal Processing). They are supported by Research Directors, Dr Rich Picking and Dr Zhishun She and Research Supervisors, Denise Oram, John Poulton, John Worden and Mike Wright.

New Professor ... CAIR's newest Professor of Communications, Peter Excell, has had a busy and successful start with the Centre. Firstly, he has been appointed to the review panel evaluating research proposals in the field of electronics and electrical engineering for the Academy of Finland and the Finnish Research Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering. Secondly, he has been awarded a Japanese patent for the novel "independently fed log-periodic antenna" that he designed and subsequently prototyped, with his research team. Thirdly, whilst attending the annual conference of the Council of Professors and Heads of Computing (CPHC), held this year at the University of Greenwich, he was elected to membership of the managing committee as a lay member.

IEEE Workshop ... CAIR’s Stuart Cunningham and Vic Grout and have been asked to organize and chair the IEEE International Workshop on “War & Peace Driving” (Wireless Security and Public Uptake), WPD(WSPU)WiMob'2008, to take place in Avignon, France, on 12-14 October 2008. So called ‘War Driving’, in which special software is used to detect and take advantage of unsecured wireless access points, is now seen as a serious threat to wireless network security. CAIR’s approach is to use similar technology to assess the level of the threat and provide appropriate defence mechanisms, for which they coined the term ‘Peace Driving’. With a number of publications already appearing and more to come, CAIR members are established as leaders in the field and natural choices for this IEEE role.

Special Session ... CAIR's EASY LINE+ Team, headed by Rich Picking and Vic Grout, have been asked to organise a special session at the IASTED International Conference on Assistive Technologies (AT 2008) to be held in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, in April 2008. The special session, 'Affordable Assistive Technologies', will focus on low-cost technologies suitable for use in domestic environments and on a large scale. Potential authors may submit papers directly to Vic Grout.

Keynote address ... Vic Grout, CAIR's director, gave a keynote address ('So Many Paths: A stroll through the minefield separating Internet theory from practice') at the International Conference on E-Activity and Leading Technologies (E-ALT'07), held in Porto, Portugal, from December 3rd-6th 2007.

Conference award ... Karim Mohammed Rezaul and Vic Grout’s paper, “BPTraSha: A Novel Algorithm for Shaping Bursty Nature of Internet Traffic”, won “Best Paper” award at the Third Advanced International Conference on Telecommunications (AICT 2007) in Mauritius last month.

Software available ...  Based on the work of CAIR's Karim Mohammed Rezaul, we have free traffic analysis software to download by researchers in the field.  The software analyses traffic packet traces and uses the auto-correlation function to estimate the 'Hurst Parameter' of the stream.  The Hurst parameter, H, is a measure of the 'self-similarity' of network traffic.  Self-similar or 'long-tailed' traffic is known to cause problems within networks by causing TCP buffers to overflow, etc.  The software provides a simple, efficient method of estimating H.  Download the software here.

ITA 07 ... The Second International Conference on Internet Technologies and Applications (ITA 07), hosted by CAIR in September 2007 was an outstanding success. The ITA 07 programme included keynote addresses by Don Gotterbarn, Professor of Software Engineering Ethics at the East Tennessee State University, Simon Shepherd, Professor of Computational Mathematics, University of Bradford, Mike Kern, Secretary of Defense Network & Information Integration at the Pentagon, and Dr. Kevin Doughty, Deputy Director of the Centre for Usable Home Technology, part of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation at the University of York, UK. The conference attacted papers from over 30 countries in a variety of technical sessions and workshops and included a memorable social programme. Preparations are now underway for ITA 09.

Euro funding success ...  Working with partners from several countries, CAIR has won a substantial European Union funding award.  The project, which teams NEWI with, amongst others, the University of Zaragoza in Spain, Siemens from Germany and ADSS from the UK, will be to develop a range of intelligent home appliances for use by elderly or disabled people - allowing them to lead a longer independent life.  CAIR's role will be to develop software for the device interfaces, including remote control and Internet access.  The total value of the contract is over two million euros with NEWI receiving the largest grant of over a quarter of a million pounds.  See income for details of other research grants, awards, etc.