CDE Conference 2017
The CDE Annual Event took place on 31st May and 1st June 2017, at the Edge, University of Bath. This year the conference was organised by the students for the CDE students and wider community. Bringing together students, academics and industrial partners in a fabulous showcase of research, sharing ideas and networking.
Here are just a few pictures to give you an insite into the CDE conference 2017.
A little crazy golf to break the ice.
It was then off to the Westgate to meet up with a few more of the CDE family, and enjoy a relaxed evening reception and networking before the big conference day.
The main conference was opened by CDE Director Prof Peter Hall and was followed closely by a welcome speech and outline of the schedule from Daniel Finnegan and Daniela De Angeli, committee chair.
We were treated to keynote talks from Tom Dolby, Head of Simulations at AiSolve Ltd, who gave us an insight into their VR applications within industry and where they see VR in the future, and from Sylvia Pan of Goldsmiths University of London, entertaining us with her research on ‘Virtual Social Interaction’.
CDE students were able to submit presentations, posters, workshops and demos to showcase the diverse research taking place within CDE at the moment. This really made the conference an interactive experience for all attendees.
The conference was a great success and it was a real pleasure to see the CDE community coming together and sharing, experiences, skills and knowledge.
Co-Director of the CDE, Prof Jian Jun Zhang, gave the closing speech at the conference and said “This is the first time our CDE annual event was organised and run by our students. I was so impressed to see so much variety of the activities at the conference, from student presentations to posters and keynotes. I’m so proud to see them rapidly grow into more mature researchers.”
The event was also a good opportunity to say a fond farewell to our Centre Manager Denise Cooke. Having been with CDE for the past year, Denise really made some great improvements to the operational elements and we will all be very sad to see her go, but we wish her well in her new venture. When asked how she felt the event went Denise said “It was a great opportunity for the students to get together as a cohort and for the first-year students to learn about the placement experience from the students already based in companies”.
Daniel Finnegan, Papers Chair found the conference to be a great experience, “It was exciting to be on the organizing committee this year. It’s always inspiring to hear what my peers are up to, and as the CDE expands, the diverse set of projects becomes a testament to the widespread domain leading research happening within the UK”
The Organising Committee pictured above: top left to right – Daniela Di Angeli, Daniel Finnegan, Lazaros (Aris) Michailidis, Ifigeneia Mavridou, Naval Bhandari, Joanna Tarko, Kyle Reed and CDE Event Co-ordinators Anna Beeton (University of Bath) and Zoe Leonard (Bournemouth University).
Thank you to everyone who took part in the conference and helped to make it such a success. Now we can all start looking forward to 2018 and see what the annual event has in store for the CDE Community.
Conference News
27th April 2017
We have great pleasure in announcing that Tom Dolby from AiSolve Ltd will be joining us as keynote speaker during the CDE Conference 2017.
Tom Dolby takes the role of Head of Simulations at AiSolve Ltd. He specialises in the design and development of mobile, PC, AR and VR interactive 3D applications. Tom holds a degree in computer games development and has been developing serious games and simulations with AiSolve since 2010, achieving a wide variety of successful commercial deployments using innovative technologies. He holds a PRINCE 2 qualification and has proven experience of project management for several publicly funded projects. Tom and AiSolve are currently working with the CDE to perform research into expanding VR’s potential for training and education.
Abstract
VR has now entered the mainstream, and now more than ever there is huge potential to explore and exploit this new medium. This presentation will cover how VR is not just for entertainment and how it’s already being used for education and training, solving contemporary problems for real people. It will look at what evidence we can already see for where the industry is heading, and what kind of people the industry is looking for to make that happen, as well as detailing on how AiSolve Ltd is working with the CDE to prove that educational VR can make a real and valuable difference to classrooms and the workplace.
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19th April 2017
We’re delighted to confirm that Dr. Sylvia Xueni Pan from Goldsmiths, University of London will be joining us at the CDE Conference 2017. Dr. Pan is a Lecturer in Virtual Reality at Goldsmiths. She received a BSc in Computer Science at Beihang University, Beijing, China in 2004, an MSc in Vision, Imaging and Virtual Environments at University College London (UCL), UK in 2005, and a PhD in Virtual Reality at UCL in 2009. Before joining Goldsmiths in 2015, She worked as a research associate in Computer Science, UCL, and in the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL, where she remains an honorary research fellow. Over the past 10 years she developed a unique interdisciplinary research profile with journal and conference publications in both VR technology and social neuroscience. Her work has been featured multiple times in the media, including BBC Horizon, the New Scientist magazine, and the Wall Street Journal.
Dr. Sylvia Pan will present her talk on ‘Virtual Social Interaction’
The abstract for her talk will follow shortly!
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All submission dates have now been extended to 14th April 2017
The core motivation this year is that the conference is student driven. To achieve this we are seeking submissions from ALL students. The conference is a compulsory event and all CDE Research Engineers are expected to attend and therefore submit at least 1 paper/poster/showcase. We wish to point out that there are no restrictions on submissions and all rights remain yours, enabling you to use the content for any other conference, such as CHI, SIGGRAPH, CVPR, UBIComp etc.
Please help us to make this conference a success and encourage your CDE students to submit and register. Also don’t forget to register yourselves, especially if you will require accommodation for the night of 31st May 2017.