Success Stories

Staff successes

A selection of staff successes are presented here and many more can be found on the Computer Science News page. 

Professor Federica Sarro was recently awarded the prestigious IEEE CS TCSE Rising Star Award for her high-impact, industrially relevant research on predictive modeling for Software Engineering. The award was presented at the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering on May 28th 2021 

Professor Ann Blandford, Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in UCL Computer Science, and former IHE Deputy Director (Digital) was awarded the IFIP TC13 Pioneer in Human-Computer Interaction Award (2021) which ‘honours the greatest contributors in the development and growth of the field of HCI”.  

Professors Alexandra Silva and Yvonne Rogers have been honoured at the third Suffrage Science Awards for Mathematics and Computing. The Suffrage Science awards scheme, curated by the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences, celebrates women in STEM subjects, and encourage others to enter scientific fields and reach senior leadership roles. 

Student successes

One of our PhD students and Athena SWAN Representatives, Sheena Visram ran a Listening Campaign in 2020 to first listen to staff and students on their experiences and perceptions of race inequality, and then, to better understand the barriers to a tolerant and fair culture that may be encountered by under-represented groups.

Each story offered an authentic and valued voice to reason on a more inclusive culture. The outputs and action plan from this initial campaign has now initiated several other activities designed to put in place measures such that all staff and students feel equally empowered to realise their potential.

These will be progressed in partnership with other groups within the EDI committee. This includes outreach activities, allyship, role modelling academic successes across diverse ethnicities, and training on unconscious bias. Inspired by experiences of curating TEDx talks and community organising, it is hoped that listening campaigns of this type will be used again to open a dialogue on difficult topics and to establish a listen-first approach.

Another of our PhD students and Athena SWAN Representatives, Mar Esterellas has also created a monthly series of 10-minute friendly chats with women in Computer Science. These can be viewed on a dedicated youtube channel and on the facebook group Women in CS, UCL.

These inspiring chats are aimed at aspiring young students to raise awareness of the opportunities and challenges for women in Computer Science. By talking with women in CS about their life inside and outside the department, we are hoping to help breaking the stereotype of what a woman in computer science looks like.

Student projects

Our student successes can also be viewed in the videos below:

Body Movement Sonification for Chronic Pain Video by Lilly Neubauer (Computer Science BSc)

Cognitive VR for stroke patients (Proof of Concept) with Evolv by Richa Lad (Computer Science MSc)

MotionInput v2.0 supporting DirectX with Microsoft by Ashild Kummen (Computer Science MSc)

Intel Sight++ v3.0 by Lydia Tsami (Software Systems Engineering MSc)

VizAI: Visualising Explainable AI by Julian Popovski-Jones, James Chang, Dylan Hoi

Augmented Reality Business Cards by Henry Zhang, Zhiwei Zhang and Jiayi Chen