MRL announce the first in their monthly Lecture Series for 2009/2010, which aims to invite senior researchers in industry and academia to present their research in the area of ubiquitous computing and identify areas for collaboration.
20 OCTOBER 2009 – 12.15
B Floor Conference Room, Sir Colin Campbell Building
“Computer Forensics – Catching and Convicting the Electronic Criminal”
Speaker: DC Paul Tew, Nottinghamshire Police and Open University
Computer forensics is a relatively new and expanding field of computer science in which Paul has been involved for the past 4 years. Computer forensics is closely related to computer security but picks up when the latter might have failed. It also involves areas not usually associated with security issues like the lone paedophile downloading unlawful images or a network of terrorists plotting some dreadful act. The gathering and analysis of evidential artefacts from computer systems can take a great deal of technical knowledge involving techniques akin to reverse engineering and other skills.
The ultimate aim of computer forensics is the presentation of technical evidence in a court of law (civil or criminal). This evidence has to be delivered in a form that can be understood by the lay person and must conform to all the rules relating to evidence. Any technical reports must therefore fulfil the need to be simple and accurate but have the detailed evidence to support any conclusions.
In this talk Paul will outline a criminal case from the point where information is first received, through to the final court case. En-route he will explain how proof is built up from artefacts left behind on the computer and how common defences such as trojans and viruses are dealt with.
DC Paul Tew has been in the police force for 24 years, as a beat manager, police law trainer and after gaining a BSc in computing from the Open University, is currently working as a forensic analyst (computers). He has been involved in the successful prosecution of around one hundred offenders where the evidence has involved computer data and has given expert evidence at court on many occasions. He was heavily involved in the prosecution of Jonathan Hipkiss, the first person in Nottinghamshire (and only the third in the country) to be prosecuted for failing to disclose a password. Paul is also an Associate Lecturer at the Open University, lecturing on computer forensics and investigations, and acts as a Consultant to the Open University on the same subject.
…follllowed by an opportunity to meet the speaker over driinks and buffet
Forthcoming Events
Tuesday 17 November 2009 – 12.15
B Floor Conference Room – Sir Colin Campbell Building
“The Daily Practice of Map Making and Data Collection”
Speaker: Dan Belasco Rogers
In 2001 Dan Belasco Rogers received an Artsadmin Artists' Bursary to develop his work and he was subsequently commissioned to make Unfallen by the Arnolfini in Bristol with the first performance in February 2003 followed by further performances in Manchester, Gent, Helsinki, Frankfurt, Sydney, Perth and Berlin. He will present his ongoing work of collecting everywhere he goes with a GPS since 2003, explain the motivations that led him to this practice before explaining why his partner in art and life decided to collect all of her daily movements also. He will explain their practice of cataloguing all the text messages they send each other and the resultant performance pieces in a football stadium in Finland and Tempelhof airport in Berlin. He will also present a selection of their collaborative work with locative media that dates back to 2004 and has led to projects in London, Berlin, Austria and Belgium. Finally he will introduce their current work of expanding on their data collections and presenting the most intimate and sensitive information as it is created to a live audience in an installation.
Tuesday 8 December 2009 – 12.15
Venue TBC
“Symmetric and Asymmetric Immersive Telepresence Systems”
Speaker: Professor Anthony Steed
Professor Anthony Steed is head of the Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics group in the Department of Computer Science, University College London. His research interests are in realtime interactive virtual environments, with particular interest in mixed-reality systems, large-scale models and collaboration between immersive facilities. He is also the director of the Engineering Doctorate Centre in Virtual Environment, Imaging and Visualisation at UCL. He is co-author of the book Networked Graphics: Building Networked Virtual Environments and Networked Games published by Morgan Kaufman in December 2009. In this talk Anthony will give an overview of several recent projects which all touch on the issue of reproducing face to face communication at a distance.
Wednesday 20 January 2010 – 12.15
B Floor Conference Room - Sir Colin Campbell Building
“The Digital Corporeal Turn”
Speaker: Professor Kristina Höök
Professor Kristina Höök is a full professor at Department of Computer and Systems Science, Stockholm University/KTH since February 2003. She leads the Mobile Life Center and upholds a part-time position at Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS). The focus of her group is on social and affective interaction, narrative intelligence, in mobile settings. Methodwise, she works from user-centred design perspective. Höök and her research group have been exploring the idea of involving users both physically and cognitively in what they name an “affective loop”. The idea of an affective loop is for users to step by step interpret, become influenced, imitate and be involved with an (computer or mobile) application, both physically and cognitively. In this talk, Kristina will discuss the new design qualities and the kinds of challenges we meet when designing for physical, emotional, and bodily involvement. She will examplify with systems that she has built (or is building) in her lab, such as eMoto, mobile emotional messaging using gesture, Affective Diary, a way to remember your bodily and social experiences, and Affective Health, a mobile service empowering users to deal with stress.