School of Computing News

The School of Computing will welcome four new members of staff who will be teaching from September 2020. Three were members of staff who were previously in the School of Engineering and Digital Arts and have a background in computing. They are Gareth Howells, Chee Siang (Jim) Ang and Christos Efstratiou. We will also be welcoming Dr Kemi Ademoye who joins us from University of Wales Trinity St Davids. Helen Frampton has also recently joined the School a...

Congratulations to Janet Carter who has been promoted to Reader in the School of Computing with effect from 1 October 2020. Janet is a long-standing member of staff in the School of Computing whose expertise lies in the research of computing education. Janet's teaching includes the mathematical underpinnings crucial to computer science and a module called Computing in the Classroom, and she is the Director of Undergraduate Studies, the Senior Tutor for ...

Dr Rahime Belen Sağlam and Dr Jason Nurse, have received a Provocation Paper Honourable Mention Award at the annual International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI’2020), for their research paper ‘Is your chatbot GDPR compliant? Open issues in agent design’. This paper explores and presents some of the key open questions in conversational agent (chatbot) design, in lig...

Computer science could not be more important in the digital age we live in today. From cyber security to automated technology and web development, businesses in many sectors are looking to recruit tech-savvy experts. Yet, there are often misconceptions that computer science is only a higher education route for those who already have a background in computing – or that an undergraduate degree in a different field of e...

3D face shields manufactured by the University, to protect frontline care service providers and the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic, have successfully received CE marking after inspection from the UK national standards body, BSI. The certification demonstrates the high quality of the 3D face shield product, and is a testament to the expertise and skills of the technical staff involved in the project. The 3D shields could n...

Anjuli R. K. Shere, University of Oxford and Jason Nurse, University of Kent US police forces have been turning to technology to track down Black Lives Matter protestors. Content from social media platforms and affiliated sites has been instrumental in the authorities being able to identify protestors based on photos of their faces, clothes and hair, or on the fact that they posted while at the protests. Meanwhile, drones h...

As with most things in 2020, the celebrations for the class of 2020 happened at a safe social distance. The School of Computing graduates from Canterbury and Medway campuses had their prize giving streamed on YouTube followed by zoom after-party rooms where students and staff could meet to chat, talk about their time at Kent and their future plans. Head of School Professor Peter Rodgers welcomed the students and congratulated them on their amazing achie...

Peter Taylor-Gooby, University of Kent and Tomas Petricek, University of Kent Food banks in the UK reported that demand had tripled in March this year as the coronavirus lockdown threw millions out of work. Many food banks faced an urgent need for money to buy extra food and launched appeals through crowdfunding websites. The public response was impressive, with a massive surge in support....

We will be relocating the teaching of all Medway–based computing programmes to the Canterbury campus from September 2021.  All of the computing research activities will move to Canterbury at the same time, so that the entire School of Computing will be based on the one campus. This move, to the larger of our two campuses, will allow us to provide more facilities, study and social space for staff and students. It will also consolidate o...

First year PhD student Keenan Jones has received a best paper Honourable Mention award at the 14th International AAAI conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM). The paper entitled "Behind the Mask: A Computational Study of Anonymous’ Presence on Twitter", came out of a project undertaken by Keenan for his MSc Computer Science conversion course and was co-authored with Dr Jason Nurse and Prof Shujun Li. The paper examines the hacktivist group...