Blog
Psychology leads multidisciplinary research project
by Graeme Earl
A project to use cutting edge mobile phone technology in behavioural change interventions is the subject of a £1.5 million grant from EPSRC, one of just four funded from 144 responses to the original call. Professor Lucy Yardley (Psychology) led the bid for “UBhave: ubiquitous and social computing for positive behaviour change”, which will build on the success of LifeGuide, an ESRC funded project that allows researchers to easily and flexibly create and modify internet-delivered interventions.
The new funding will develop systems to use mobile phone technology and knowledge of virtual communities to sense the location, activity levels, company and mood of participants to trigger real-time interventions to change their behaviour. For example, participants in the weight management pilot may be sent menu plans when the systems detect they are close to a ‘trigger point’ by identifying people they are with, the time of day, and their mood.
Lucy Yardley comments: “Our project will change the way you do behaviour change interventions. Historically, these have involved asking people what they have done and what they are planning to do, but we know that doesn’t work very well. We will be measuring what people really are doing. We are trying to be with them to intervene at the time they need us.”
The project is a joint bid with ECS, Cambridge and other Universities and will generate unprecedented quantities of data on participant behaviour. There is opportunity for involvement from across the faculty, with S3RI already being coinvestigators, and anyone interested in using digital support for behaviour change is encouraged to contact Lucy on L.Yardley@soton.ac.uk.
Further details: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/research/projects/782
Southampton Mathematics wins almost £1m in grants for underpinning research in Digital Economy and Energy
by Graeme Earl
Two teams led by mathematicians from Southampton’s School of Mathematics have been successful in the recent EPSRC call ‘Mathematics underpinning digital economy and energy’ with grant awards close to £1m.
New tools for data visualisation and analysis
Starting in April 2011, this research will study geometric and analytic structure of large data sets, which are ubiquitous in digital economy, and will develop new mathematical tools for efficient data visualisation and analysis. Among the main motivations and potential applications of this research are IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative, web science and the UK Government’s Open Data drive, giving the team the opportunity to influence these exciting developments. The project will last 3.5 years.
A further award of over £239,000 will fund 2.5 years of research from August 2011 into ‘Mathematical analysis of nanostructured electrochemical systems for lithium batteries and solar cells’ and is a joint research venture between Oxford University (who have received a separate grant) and the University of Southampton involving the companies Nexeon Ltd of Abingdon, and TIAX of Massachusetts.
Design of organic solar cells
The team includes Professor Colin Please from the School of Mathematics, working with Professor John Owen (School of Chemistry) and Dr Giles Richardson (School of Maths). It will develop novel mathematical model to guide development of enhanced charging and discharging rates of lithium batteries, and design issues in the manufacture and electrical efficiency of novel organic solar cells.
The research will develop mathematical ideas common to the two areas and is motivated by the need for efficient energy storage such as for vehicles and for creating inexpensive solar panels. The work draws on interaction previously funded by the Southampton based SYMBIOSIS grant. Both projects arise from the Southampton Initiative in Mathematical Modelling (SIMM) which was launched in January 2010 to build on the work carried out within the School and to foster new collaborations across the University.
Further details: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/research/projects/756
£1.7m for Multi-disciplinary Design of Effective Research Spaces
by Graeme Earl
University of Southampton researchers from Electronics and Computer Science and Archaeology form part of a multi-disciplinary team from six institutions awarded a grant of £1.7m. The project aiming to revolutionise the design of technologies for supporting research has been awarded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) through the RCUK Digital Economy programme. The University of Southampton library will provide one of the test environments and also direct input from the Academic Liaison Librarian for Archaeology.
The project, entitled PATINA (Personal Architectonics of Interfaces to Artefacts) will be led by the University of Bristol in collaboration with the Universities of Brighton, Greenwich, Newcastle, Southampton and Swansea. The project includes involvement from Microsoft Research, Nokia Research and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Dr Graeme Earl of the Archaeological Computing Research Group in the School of Humanities said: “The project is designed to be transformative in terms of research practice. In archaeological terms it will break down the divide between the physical interactions between researchers and objects, and digital information. The technologies used will be trialled ‘in the wild’ on a series of extremely important archaeological sites, and in our labs and libraries. This project further builds on the strong research links between the School of Humanities and School of Electronics and Computer Science.”
Professor Luc Moreau of the Intelligence, Agent, Multimedia group in the School of Electronics and Computer Science said: “Being able to relate your discoveries and their provenance with the ones of famous researchers will offer tremendous opportunities to the research community and beyond”.
Current digital research support systems take attention away from the material that they describe. PATINA will provide researchers with new opportunities to create research spaces that emphasise the primacy of research material, and support the sharing of research activities as well as results.
The consortium will build wearable prototypes that can enhance research objects by projecting related information back into their research space. These technologies will also provide the means to capture, record, and replay the researcher’s activities to support intuitive archiving, sharing and publication of interactions with research objects. The design of the technologies will draw on theoretical frameworks of space developed from studies of research spaces as diverse as libraries, museums, homes and archaeological fieldwork sites.
Dr. Mike Fraser of the Bristol Interaction and Graphics group in the Department of Computer Science said: “Imagine walking in the footsteps of famous researchers and seeing how the provenance of your developing ideas links with theirs through shared objects that exist both online and in the real world. This grant demonstrates just how important it is to explore substantive design dialogues between arts and engineering disciplines to our mutual benefit. We expect this project to have immediate and lasting impact on the ways in which research is conducted.”
The project begins in June 2010 and will run for three years.
Further details: http://www.patina.ac.uk/
Links: