The Digital Futures Institute is a new research institute established at the University of Suffolk, which aims to bring together academic, entrepreneurs and industrialists to deliver impactful research and business engagement for the benefit of individual citizens, wider society and the UK economy. The University has gone through a period of capacity building with the investment in the Digitech Centre at Adastral Park, an increase in the portfolio of digital based undergraduate and postgraduate courses, and the recruitment of new academic staff who are research active and business engaged. It is developing into a vibrant hub for research and business links that complement our teaching and learning. Academics within the Institute are part of Suffolk CENTRIC in that we are a regional partner of the national Centre of Excellence in Terrorism, Resilience, Intelligence and Organised Crime Research.
The Digital Futures Institute is based in the School of Engineering Arts Science and Technology. It has three research pillars, each consisting of distinct but coherent and related strands.
Technology Futures (Pillar 1) undertakes pure and applied research into the technologies central to the future, namely security, networks, software and systems engineering. In the Security strand, we have two PhD researchers, one investigating how to calibrate cyber risk and resilience, another exploring human factors in cyber security. We have also secured two grants from phase 1 of 2022-23 Cyber Security Academic Startup Accelerator programme. In Networks, we are currently building a future network research laboratory at our new DigiTech Centre to enable research in this area, and have been undertaking 25G Passive Optical Networking trials with Openreach. In the Software and Systems strand, we are research partners in the Smarter Suffolk consortium (£4.41m project funded by the Department of Transport), have an active KTP project on the topic of software quality assurance with Coderus, and a PhD researcher working on the sustainable software development practices.
The Smarter Suffolk project with Suffolk County Council is part of a national initiative of the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport’s (ADEPT) SMART Places Live Lab, funded by the Department of Transport. The work involves a variety of scientifically rigorous trials utilising Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, and through analysis of the resulting rich and large datasets of environmental, traffic and other conditions, we are seeking to determine the validity of the business cases and inform strategic adoption across the UK.
Creative Futures (Pillar 2) addresses the intersection of creativity and digital, with emergent strands in Serious Games, Advancing Games, and Augmented and Virtual Reality, with a growing element of research in vision science.
In Serious Games, we are currently seeking opportunities where we can apply our expertise in gamification, visualisation and simulation.
Advancing Games addresses actual improvements to gaming concepts and techniques, which may benefit both serious games and entertainment games, and a staff PhD project is underway. £20,000 of funding has been secured from Epic Games to create an ‘Epic School Days’ programme to engage secondary school pupils with the games industry. Output from this project will be shared with international educational partners by Epic Games.
The Augmented and Virtual Reality strand has already had notable success with the MySpira App, undertaken as a KTP with Orbital Media, with Innovate UK evaluating the KTP as Outstanding. The MySpira App, a revolutionary augmented reality technology asthma training app, has been successfully trialled with children via collaboration with members of the Life Science team in EAST. This initiative has received widespread plaudits, being nominated for awards and featuring on the BBC Click programme. (See https://www.allergyuk.org/get-help/resources/1001-myspira). We are currently working with Blue Novation to identify and evaluate the benefits of using Augmented and Virtual Reality to improve the teaching of "soft" skills
Application Futures (Pillar 3) is intended to support applied research through utilising computing know-how in specific domains and cross-disciplinary collaborations. It currently has four emergent themes – namely AI/Machine Learning, Usability & Practice, Bioinformatics and Computing Enabled Research.
In AI/Machine Learning, a cross-disciplinary Bioscience and Computing project is well underway in partnership with East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust to support rapid diagnosis of COVID-19.
In Usability & Practice, we completed the 100CC/ConnectedTogether project (£1m InnovateUK funded project) in February 2020 supporting the SME partners in usability testing of their hardware and software solutions. This assisted the SME partners (Bronze Software Labs and GDS Digital) in improving their software and hardware solutions aimed at combating the social isolation and lack of digital skills of elderly and vulnerable people. Consequently, both partners were able to deploy their products to support a number of local government authorities in assisting vulnerable citizens in accessing essential services during the current pandemic. In Suffolk, Bronze Software Labs deployed their TRIBE Volunteer app for Suffolk County Council as a volunteering platform to microcommission service, connecting those with needs with appropriate volunteers. We have two PhD students, one exploring remote working and collaboration in engineering practice, the other exploring the impact and usability of digital technologies on the grieving process.
We provided additional support to Suffolk Libraries, helping them both in the preparation of their successful bid for NESTA funding and subsequent execution of their Happy Place project (a Tech To Connect Finalist project). This has been followed by a KEEP+ project which has developed a prototype AI recommendation engine for matching activities to the unmet emotional needs of library users, and yielded results proving that participation in library events and activities can improve wellbeing. Through EIRA funding, we were able to support Suffolk Mind in the development of online mental health materials.
In Computing Enabled Research, we are keenly pursuing "New Approach Methods" such as in silico toxicology for human and environmental risk assessment and drug discovery. Advanced computer models using large datasets and molecular docking tools are used to predict the adverse effects of chemicals without the need for testing on live subjects. Following the successful iNVERTOX BBSRC Industrial Partnership project looking at rapid intelligent in silico prediction of sub-lethal ecotoxicological effects in invertebrates, we are now involved in four new projects in this arena. These research efforts include developing a 3-D in vitro model for predictive pharmacokinetic of environmental pharmaceuticals in fish, work on hepatic 3D spheroids for toxicology testing (SPHERTOX), developing fish cell line-based toxtests to replace fish toxicity tests (FishTox22), and developing intelligent animal-free fish bioassays (DEVINA). These projects are in partnership variously with researchers from Sweden, Norway, King’s College London, University of Exeter, University of Cardiff, and Astra Zeneca. Three PhD students are supporting this research area.
Technology Futures
Security: Professor Nicholas Caldwell, Professor Peter Cochrane, Dr James Kadirire, Dr Felix Ngobigha, Ali Hasan Alhaj, Sean Preston, Rob Wade
Networks: Professor Peter Cochrane, Dr James Kadirire, Dr Felix Ngobigha
Software and Systems: Professor Nicholas Caldwell, Professor Peter Cochrane, Dr Hannah Steventon, Dr Chris Lewington, Mark Power
Creative Futures:
Serious Games: Dr Adam Clayden, Steven Harris
Advancing Games: Steven Harris
Advancing HCI: Dr Adam Clayden
Augmented and Virtual Reality: Dr Adam Clayden, Professor Peter Cochrane, Chris Janes, Nick Thomas
Application Futures:
AI/Machine Learning: Professor Nicholas Caldwell, Dr Aikaterini (Kakia) Chatsiou, Professor Peter Cochrane, Dr Adnane Ez-zizi, Dr Matloob Khushi, Dr Chris Lewington, Dr Federica Masieri, Sean Preston
Bioinformatics: Professor Nic Bury
Computing Enabled Research: Professor Nic Bury
Usability and Practice: Professor Nicholas Caldwell, Professor Peter Cochrane, Dr Chris Lewington, Mark Power
Journals
- Miller,T.H., Baz-Lomba, J.A., Harman, C., Reid, M.J., Owen, S.F.,, Bury, N.R., Thomas, K.V., and Barron, L.P. (2016) The First Attempt at Non-Linear in Silico Prediction of Sampling Rates for Polar Organic Chemical Integrative Samplers (POCIS). Environmental Science and Technology, 50(15), 7973–7981, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.6b01407
- Miller, T.H., Gallidabino, M.D., MacRae, J.I., Hogstrand, C., Bury, N.R., Barron, L.P., Snape, J.R., and Owen, S.F. (2018) Machine Learning for Environmental Toxicology: A Call for Integration and Innovation. Environmental Science & Technology 52 (22), 12953-12955. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.8b05382
- Adeyemi-Ejeye, A.O., Alreshoodi, M., Al-Jobouri, L. et al. Impact of packet loss on 4K UHD video for portable devices. Multimed Tools Appl 78, 31733–31755 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-019-07996-1.
- Miller, T.H., Gallidabino M.D., MacRae, J.R., Owen, S.F., Bury N.R., and Barron, L.P. (2019) Prediction of bioconcentration factors in fish and invertebrates using machine learning. Science of The Total Environment, 648, 80-89, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.08.122
- Chang, E.D., Hogstrand, C., Miller, T.H., Owen, S.F. and Bury, N.R. (2019) The Use of Molecular Descriptors To Model Pharmaceutical Uptake by a Fish Primary Gill Cell Culture Epithelium. Environmental Science & Technology, 53 (3), 1576-1584, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.8b04394
- Atkinson, S.R., Skinner, C.J., Joiner, K.F., Caldwell, N.H.M., and Swidan, A. (2020)
“Important trends and junctures in warship design”, Marine Systems & Ocean Technology, DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s40868-020-00076-2 - Alhaj, F., Al-Haj, A, Sharieh, A. and Jabri, R. (2022) Improving Arabic cognitive distortion classification in Twitter using BERTopic. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 13 (1). pp. 854-860. ISSN 2158-107X
- Ogbodo, E.A., Ngobigha, F., Obadiah, A.N. and Atuba, S.. (2021) A diplexer with direct coupled resonant junction. Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, 63(6), 1677-1681, Wiley Online Library https://doi.org/10.1002/mop.32787
Conference Papers
- A. S. Ajrash, R. F. Ghani and L. Al-Jobouri, "ANN based Measurement for No-Reference Video Quality of Experience Metric," 2019 11th Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CEEC), Colchester, United Kingdom, 2019, pp. 128-133, doi: 10.1109/CEEC47804.2019.8974336.
- R. F. Ghani, S. A. Mahmood, Y. N. Jurn and L. Al-Jobouri, "Key Frames Extraction Using Spline Curve Fitting for Online Video Summarization," 2019 11th Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CEEC), Colchester, United Kingdom, 2019, pp. 69-74, doi: 10.1109/CEEC47804.2019.8974340.
- K. M. Ali Alheeti, L. Al-Jobouri, D. Al-Dosary and M. S. Al-ani, "Energy Conservation Based on Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector Protocol in Intelligent Internet of Things," 2019 11th Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CEEC), Colchester, United Kingdom, 2019, pp. 108-112, doi: 10.1109/CEEC47804.2019.8974330.
- A. Benmir, A. Korichi, A. Bourouis, M. Alreshoodi and L. Al-Jobouri, "An Enhanced GPSR Protocol for Vehicular Ad hoc Networks," 2019 11th Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CEEC), Colchester, United Kingdom, 2019, pp. 85-89, doi: 10.1109/CEEC47804.2019.8974321.
- Salako, O., Ngobigha, F., and Ugwunna, C. “An End-User Programming Approach for Creating Virtual Innovation Labs”, Emerging Applications and Technologies for Industry 4.0 (EATI' 2020) Conference, September 2020
- Larkins, H. and Caldwell, N.H.M. "IPsec: A Study Exploring Bandwidth and CPU Utilization", 2021 International Conference on Computing and Communications Applications and Technologies (I3CAT), IEEE Xplore, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9629394 doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/I3CAT53310.2021.9629394
- Obekpa, A.J., Ngobigha, F., Walker, S.D. and Ogbodo, E.A. Non-Line-of-Sight 5G FWA Performance Testing and Monitoring using COTS Antennas, 2021 International Conference on Computing and Communications Applications and Technologies (I3CAT), IEEE Xplore, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9629398 doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/I3CAT53310.2021.9629398