This week I attended the Research Expo for the UNB Faculty of Computer Science. This is the 4th year they have held this event, and I have attended every year. I enjoy the opportunity to see what research is being done, talk to the researchers, faculty and students, and hopefully explore opportunities for collaboration between the Faculty and industry in New Brunswick. The format for the event has remained pretty much unchanged from previous years, with undergraduate and graduate students presenting posters of ongoing research, and faculty members presenting short (~10 minute) talks on their activities. One variation this year was the invitation of industry representatives to speak alongside the faculty presenters. The idea is to encourage collaboration between industry and the university by giving the university better visibility into the research activities in industry, and into the issue which industry is trying to address. I was happy to be invited to be one of the industry speakers.
All of the speakers, and especially the students presenting posters, deserve a great deal of credit for taking the time to participate in this event. While all of the research activities are interesting and worthwhile, a couple jumped out at me, either because I was previously unaware of the work, or just because it is cool J.
The first I would like to point out is a presentation by Dr. Dawn MacIsaac regarding work at UNB’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering. I was not aware of the work they were doing in the area of using artificial intelligence to control powered prosthetics. I admit I know very little about this, but I found their work impressive, and would encourage people to check out their site.
Among the industry presenters, I was intrigued by Dale Ritchie’s talk regarding his new business, Pitch Mobile, developing audio based learning games for mobile devices. I look forward to seeing how this progresses – it is cool stuff.
Among the poster sessions, I think I was most impressed by Microphone Efficacy for Facilitation of Mobile Speech-based Data Entry by Scott Durling, Jo Lumsden and Irina Kondratova. This is an area of personal interest for me, and I spent quite a bit of time talking to Scott about their work. I was impressed.
Finally, there was an announcement of a new UNB Faculty of Computer Science SOA Lab, supported by Sun Microsystems.
Brad Nickerson and many others deserve a lot of credit for continuing to put this event on – I think it is really worthwhile. I look forward to next year’s event!
FredSpace 