Faculty Employer Network and

Enterprise Day

11th June 2015

Computing Summer Show

11th-12th June 2015

FLSC

Faculty of Life Sciences and Computing

For your Calendar

Issue 28 May 2015

Edited by Preeti Patel

The devastating earthquake that hit Nepal affected our partner Islington College,

located in Kathmandu, which sustained some building damage. Nonetheless they

are currently undertaking major humanitarian efforts to support the local com-

munity with the provision and delivery of food, water and medical supplies. All

of the students and staff of the college are in our thoughts as they recover from

the earthquake.

We can help by making donations via

Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) at this web link . Plans are also underway to raise funds in other ways throughout the University—please support where you can.

2

Islington College, Nepal earthquake relief programme - days 2, 3, 4 and 5

Editor’s Note

It has been my good fortune to edit this newsletter since October 2012—I have

been the lucky person who gets to report on the amazing things that staff and

students do in the Faculty.

Wishing everyone well,

Preeti Patel

p.patel@londonmet.ac.uk

School of Computing

3

Intern aids local charity

For some time now, the School of Psychology has been working closely

with a local charity called Khulisa in helping provide “powerful and crea-

tive programmes to offenders and those at-risk of crime, violence or vic-

timisation”. In addition to offering consultation services to the charity to

support the development of training for the staff and facilitators, a gradu-

ate intern has also been visiting the organisation to contribute by assisting

with the analysis and evaluation of their research data.

After completing her BSc Psychology degree last year, Mahdieh Alladad

has been interning for FLSC and carrying out numerous roles within the

School of Psychology. Her consultation with Khulisa will be one of the ma-

jor projects she will be taking on and she is very pleased to be sharing her

knowledge and expertise with this charity who do not have the necessary

training or staffing themselves to analyse their collected data. For the next

few months, Mahdieh will be creating a report highlighting the effective-

ness of the programmes in reducing violent behaviour in youths within

school settings including an in-depth assessment of their structure and impact.

Much of the qualitative data will be evaluated based on the Motivation theory of change, also known as the

Transtheoretical Model (Transtheoretical Model Prochaska and DiClemente; 1983), thus the report focuses significantly on the student’s motivation levels for self

-regulation. The quantitative data will be captured on the basis of how effective the evaluation tools and

processes have been in assessing behaviour change, pre-and-post programme. Thus, this report will serve as a helpful tool for the charity in determining the suc-

cess of their programmes as well as any areas that they could work on in order to increase the value of

their overall outcome.

“Reading the news is bad for your health”

4

Preposterous news headlines, such as “MMR vaccine causes autism”, “Vitamins cause can-

cer” or “Breastfeeding enhances intelligence” appear on a regular basis. Is the press always

right? Why are journalists getting science so wrong and who should be held responsible?

Earlier this month our lecturers, Dr Samir Nuseibeh, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacology Dr Esther Murray, Senior Lecturer in Health Psychology, participated in an open debate “Reading

the news is bad for your health”, scientists say” to discuss the ethical issues of science journalism.

Samir addressed the inac-

curacy of scientific report-

ing and the lack of evi-

dence it supplies, in rela-

tion to the findings of

breastfeeding and its ben-

efits. The news reported

that breastfeeding enhanc-

es a baby’s intelligence,

even though there were

extensive limitations to

the study. “In addition, it is

not even clear whether IQ

is a good measure of intel-

ligence anyway,” ex-

plained Samir.

“Correlation does not im-

ply causation, and journal-

A recent publication showed a correlation between childhood

stress and Type I Diabetes. “I get very agitated about stories

that frighten parents. When I wanted to access the research

paper to find out more about the study, I wasn’t able to as it

was not a free publication. If we don’t get access to the re-

search papers from which we might learn more about the is-

sue and what we can do to mitigate its effects, what exactly are

we supposed to do after reading those headlines?” said Esther.

Another point that was addressed during the debate was, how

much control journalists have over their own stories, as there

often are certain political and commercial agendas in place.

Most opinions came to the same conclusion – scientists and

journalists need to interact more, to assure that the research is

reported accurately and the language

used is appropriate.

Esther touched on the psychological effects of such media headlines: “Media loves to scare us. It encour-

ages behavioural changes, hence we need to be mindful how we interact with it.”

By Gabriele Butkute

The Infinity Lecture Series

5

After the successful launch of our Infinity Lecture Series last year, with “The Future of Medicine”, “Psychopaths in the Workplace” and “Do you know what Infinity is?”, this year’s Infinity Lecture Series got

off to an excellent start with Dr Kevin Devine’s presentation entitled “An Astronaut in Structure Space: Probing the structure, function and evolution of nucleic acids using synthetic organic chemistry”.

Dr Devine explained that Life on Earth uses several essential molecules, such as nucleic acids, proteins and

polysaccharides. Nucleic acids, DNA and RNA, being arguable the most important ones, have received a lot

of research attention, and in the past three decades scientists have created synthetic versions of them. Kev-

in went on to answer some important questions: Can the synthetic nucleic acids also carry genetic infor-

mation? If life exists elsewhere in the universe, will it also use DNA?

The second in the series was presented on Tuesday May 7th by Gary Pheiffer (Principal Lecturer, School of

Psychology). This lecture was entitled “Attachment in the Workplace: How does our childhood influence

our workplace behaviour?”. Gary explored how our early experiences with parents or caregivers are inter-

nalised and form enduring cognitive schemas of relationships that influence the type of interactions that we

have with others and the interpretation we make about these interactions. These experiences are generally

classified into three adult attachment styles: secure, anxious/preoccupied, and avoidant. Individual differ-

ences in attachment styles have a bearing on workplace issues such as leadership behaviours, group func-

tioning mental and physical health in the workplace. Attachment style is a powerful and predictive lens that

shows the importance of relationships to our emotional and physical health.

Students visit Pfizer and LGC

6

MSc students and graduate interns recently visited pharmaceutical industry giants Pfizer and LGC located

at Discovery Park, Sandwich, Kent. They also had an opportunity to present their research projects and get

feedback from the LGC team.

Here is what some of the students have to

say:

“My sincere gratitude to Pfizer and the staff

who showed us around the state of the art

facility with so much of patience and under-

standing. Thank you for sharing your

knowledge, expertise and acquainting us with

the instruments and technology, some of

which were new to us like Laser drilling Ex-

trudable Core System and X- Ray Diffraction

System. We understand that you (Elizabeth,

Matt, Ian and Paul) actually set aside half a

day, your time and work beside to host

us. There can be no match to an industrial

visit like this for students like us. Your co-

operation is much appreciated. Having al-

ways been in awe of Pfizer, now I can proudly say that I have actually been to Pfizer. And huge thanks

to Sundus, whose relentless effort made it possible and who made the visit a picnic taking care of the small-

est of things”. (MSc Student)

“The visit to LGC on the 15th April 2015

was a wonderful learning experience for

me. It was also great to learn more about

the work of LGC. I am very impressed with

the high level of services that the company

provide for the society and I truly appreci-

ate your hard work for the development of

new medications. I was familiar with most

of your instruments in the laboratory, but

there were some impressive instruments,

which I have never heard about or seen be-

fore such as Qicpic (high speed imaging

camera). I could see the incredible effort

that you have put in to make the company

so successful. Please accept my sincerest

thanks and gratitude to you (Dr Spoorthi

Dharmayat) and your company for giving

us hours of your valuable time to show us around to and also let us present our own work to you. I appreci-

ate the hospitality, helpfulness and the level of passion of your staff members. Special thanks to Dr Sundus

Tewfik who made an incredible effort to make the visit possible”. (Graduate Intern)

Word memory and Error learning

7

Prof. Dr. Chris Lange-Küttner has published a new paper on Word memory and Error learning (see abstract below). The full article can be retrieved from: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00350/full Prof. Dr. Lange-Ku ttner believes that there is a clear advantage of open-access papers which can have a positive effect for ad-vertising the faculty’s research. This particular paper, which has had well over a hundred accesses in just a few days, shows the popularity of such a platform and its reach globally.

Theories of verbal rehearsal usually assume that whole words are being rehearsed. However, words consist of letter sequences, or syllables, or word onset-vowel-coda, amongst many other conceptualizations of word structure. A more general term is the ‘grain size’ of word units (Ziegler and Goswami, 2005). In the current study, a new method measured the quantitative percentage of correctly remembered word struc-ture. The amount of letters in the correct letter sequence as per cent of word length was calculated, disre-garding missing or added letters. A forced rehearsal was tested by repeating each memory list four times. We tested low frequency (LF) English words versus geographical (UK) town names to control for content. We also tested unfamiliar international (INT) non-words and names of international (INT) European towns to control for familiarity. An immediate versus distributed repetition was tested with a between-subject de-sign. Participants responded with word fragments in their written recall especially when they had to re-member unfamiliar words. While memory of whole words was sensitive to content, presentation distribu-tion and individual sex and language differences, recall of word fragments was not. There was no trade-off between memory of word fragments with whole word recall during the repetition, instead also word frag-ments significantly increased. Moreover, while whole word responses correlated with each other during repetition, and word fragment responses correlated with each other during repetition, these two types of word recall responses were not correlated with each other. Thus there may be a lower layer consisting of free, sparse word fragments and an upper layer that consists of language-specific, orthographically and se-mantically constrained words. Prof. Dr. Lange-Ku ttner also recently cooperated with some female Malaysian engineers who developed a programme for automatic drawing analysis. They used a study by Chris from 1998 where she had analysed similar parameters in children using a graphic tablet plus neuropsychological rehabilitation software for writer's cramp etc.

Vision of Tomorrow

8

Lecture theatre GC1-08 was filled to the brim with mostly FLSC undergraduate students and some academic staff. There was a sense of anticipation in the atmosphere and whispers among students ‘when will he begin.’ This isn’t surprising as Dr Mike Short is one of the leading authorities and personalities in the telecommuni-

cations industry. Without any undue delay Dr Short captivated the attention of the audience. He gave them an overview on how the mobile technology has evolved since its inception, and how it has transformed the lives of billions of people around the globe. He prophesied what chang-es we should expect in the near future with the advent of EU 5G Public-Private Partnership programme. He talked about the emerging technolo-gies that will shape the future of 5G networks, including: Tactile Inter-net, e-Health Services, Smart Cities, Internet-of-Things (IoT), Machine-to-Machine (M2M), etc. He also talked about employment opportunities our graduates can expect now and in the very near future. The talk on 23rd April was followed by a short Q&A session. Professor Bal Virdee said ‘...this was truly an inspirational talk that appears to have motivat-ed our students’. Slides on the talk can be obtained from Professor Virdee.

PADUR (Promoting And Disseminating Undergraduate Research) team

recently tok a group of London Met students to an international BCUR

(British conference for UG research) event to present their UG projects.

They had a fantastic time on 21st April 2015 at University of Winchester.

“It was wonderful to come back and represent London Met at the confer-

ence. I have got a chance to present my findings in front of people from

various educational backgrounds. It also provided me the opportunity to evaluate and critically analyse other

fellow members’ work who presented alongside me at the conference. The conference helped me in gaining

some valuable teamwork experience as well as providing me the chance to be independent and confident”.

(Graduate UG Student)

“It was a lovely day overall; BCUR was a great platform to present my graduate

project and meet other students and academics from different subject areas. At the

beginning I was very nervous about presenting however meeting people and as

conference went on my confidence grew. I have learnt the different ways people

can phrase questions and learned to trust myself”. (Current 3rd Year UG Student)

You can follow PADUR on future events @PADUR_LONDON MET

Students present UG projects

Another business partner and a KTP within FLSC

9

For the third time in less than a year the Faculty of Life Science and Computing managed to have another

KTP approved by InnovateUK with eConnect Cars Limited, as a business partner based at Canary Wharf.

eConnect is a private hire operator using a fleet of electric vehicles to provide chauffeur driven services,

The fleet has doubled from 5 cars on launch in January 2014 to 10 cars by July 2014 and another 5 cars are

currently on order. Each car is driven by a self-employed chauffeur who takes 60% of the fare. The remain-

der is retained by eConnect. Revenue is therefore a function of number of cars, utilisation rates and average

fares. eConnect currently covers the Greater London area, including Heathrow. The company is seeking the

capability to optimise the use of electric vehicles within a private hire operation. To achieve this, a dispatch

algorithm needs to be developed and which incorporates current battery capacity of each vehicle; location /

availability / reservation of rapid charge infrastructure; combined with traditional objectives of minimising

dead mileage and optimising fleet utilisation. The primary requirement of the KTP is to develop bespoke

software which integrates existing and developed applications to help eConnect cars optimise operations.

Such a system will enable the company to more closely match supply of vehicles and drivers with demand,

reducing number of excess cars on the road and maximising return on investment. This will allow the busi-

ness to compete with current dominant market players who use petrol, diesel and hybrid fleets and reduce

the amount of local air pollution created by these vehicles. The strategic plan is to replicate the operating

model in other cities, initially in the UK but subsequently overseas markets as well. Other than developing

the software the company agreed to create opportunities such as placements and internships for London-

met students and graduates; create consultancy work for the WoW agency and allow students to work on

commercial projects and gain business acumen.

Karim said ‘’ this is another good initiative to build on our current research and enterprise portfolio and of-

fer our students placements and employments’ opportunities’’. Also, he urges and encourages staff from

other schools (Human sciences and Psychology) to take part in the KTP scheme as there are incentives.

Prof. Karim Ouazzane (KTP director and academic lead), Prof. Hassan Kazemian (Knowledge base supervisor), Alistair Clarke (Company

director and supervisor), Terry Corner (KTP adviser), Afras Nizam (Company facilitator).

Some Really Big Ideas

10

The Accelerator’s Big Idea Challenge culmi-nated in an Oscars-style award event in Old

Street. FLSC’s Dale Rees (Lecturer, Dietetics) and Junaid Ghani won in the Staff Category for

their “Before You Eat” idea. “Before You Eat” is a new approach to weight management

which uses cognitive and behavioural therapy to deliver impact-

ful results through lifestyle modifica-tion.

Lauren Shepherd (BSc Sports Therapy) also took part in the challenge and was one of 3 finalists in the Commercial Category for her idea “On the Run Nutrition” which provides nutri-

tionally optimised pre and post workout snacks and meals in and close to gyms.

Meral Ibrahim (3rd year BSc Computer Science) has recently presented an abstract of her work at the

BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium. Meral has devised a ‘Colour Shower’ game for mobile devices, to be played

on the go. The aim of the game is to accumulate points by cracking a series of moving balls which have the

same colour as the main static ball.

The BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium is an annual one day conference for women students of Computing and

related subjects. The event started

in 2008, and moves around the

country – this year it was hosted,

on April 9th, by Edinburgh Univer-

sity. The event provides a forum

for undergraduate women to

share ideas and network. The

event also provides informal ad-

vice to undergraduate women

about careers in computing from a

female perspective.

Colour Showers

11

The School of Psychology organises monthly research sem-

inars that are open to public, and the first such event this

year took place on March 25, where Prof. Marcus Pembrey

(UCL) presented a talk “Ghost in your genes: do human

transgenerational responses contribute to developmental

variation?”.

Attendees were warmly welcomed by the Dean, Prof. Dom-

inic Palmer-Brown, and by the Acting Head of School of

Psychology, Robin Iwanek.

Prof. Marcus Pembrey is a clinical geneticist, Emeritus Pro-

fessor of Paediatric Genetics at the Institute of Child Health,

University College London, visiting Professor at the Universi-

ty of Bristol and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

His research over the last 15 years has focused on male-line

transgenerational effects of environmental exposures.

The speaker argued that genes have “memory” - they capture

information on our ancestors’ environmental experience and

this infor-

mation can

been passed on to offspring, increasing or decreasing the

risk for certain diseases.

The lecture was very well attended, it attracted a lot of Lon-

don Met students and staff, as well as, external guests from

other universities, such as, UCL and Goldsmiths. Students

found the event very useful for their studies and personal

development and enjoyed the opportunity to network with

academics and fellow students.

The event was organised by Dr Kostas A. Papageorgiou.

Ghost in your genes

12

Shafi Ahmed was recently awarded his PhD degree. Shafi’s thesis is entitled

“Real time detection of malicious webpages using machine learning techniques”. The

External Examiner was Dr Hak-Keung Lam from King’s College London. The internal

examiner was Dr Jianming Cai from London Metropolitan University. Shafi’s first su-

pervisor was Prof. Hassan Kazemian.

The research solved a simple but important problem of detecting malicious webpag-

es in real time. The simulations in the research used various machine learning algo-

rithms, both supervised and unsupervised to categorise webpages based on parsing

their features such as content, URL information, URL links and screenshots of

webpages. The features were then converted to a format understandable by machine learning algorithms

which analysed these features to make one important decision: whether a given webpage is malicious or not,

using commonly available software and hardware.

Shafi has been involved with London Metropolitan University for more than a decade. Apart from completing

his PhD degree, he did his Honours degree (with 1 year sandwich programme) and led a 2 year KTP pro-

gramme.

Shafi says “I am very grateful to my main academic supervisor Professor Hassan Kazemian for his guidance,

advice and constructive feedback throughout this long journey. To him, research through effective and clear

communication, provides an opportunity to improve our lives. I also thank my other supervisors Dr. Shanyu

Tang, Dr. Sahithi Siva and Dr. Igor Schagaev for their continuous support and motivation. I would also like to

thank Technology Strategy Board for their generous support (UK [Grant no. KTP006367]). My KTP supervi-

sors encouraged me all the way during the ups and downs of the project. KTP's business partner Viridian

Partnership LLP with which I am still involved with, has allowed me to work with more than 30 commercial

projects. The inspiration for the research came when I started working for the KTP project.”

Shafi is married with one daughter. He is currently working at Publicis Groupe UK as an application develop-

er in the DataSciences division. Apart from developing business applications, he is also involved with attribu-

tion modelling using Bayesian machine learning techniques.

PhD completion in SoC

Informatics Research Centre activity

Professor Yong Xue, the Director of Informatics Research

Centre, attended the 36th ISRSE symposium held at Berlin,

Germany, 11 – 15 May 2015. He chaired a session and gave

an oral presentation.

Prof. Yong Xue and Dr. Tingkai Wang have recently published

a peer-reviewed journal paper on Atmospheric Environment

(Impact Factor: 3.062). You are welcome to contact them for

reprints.

13

A recent research paper from the Molecular Systems

for Health Research Group has been published in the

high impact journal Chemical Communications , which

has an impact factor 6.718. The work, entitled

“Structure-tunable Janus fibers fabricated using spin-

nerets with varying port angles” was carried out by

London Met PhD graduate Gaoyun Chen under the

supervision of Drs Nick Chatterton and Ken White, in col-

laboration with Dr Deng-guang Yu of the University of

Science and Technology, Shanghai, China. The publica-

tion forms part of ongoing research at MSHRG on the pro-

duction of novel forms of nanofibers and nanoparticles

with biomedical applications. The research is continuing

with the recent start of PhD student Erum Noreen, super-

vised by Drs Nick Chatterton, Gemma Shearman and

Samir Nuseibeh, on a project entitled “ Tailoring Electro-

spun Nanofibers and Electrosprayed Nanoparticles to En-

hance Cellular Uptake of Low Bioavailability Drugs”.

Nanofibre research makes high impact

Off to Japan

Recent London Met PhD graduate Ravi Velaga has

been awarded a three year post-doctoral fellowship

by Kyoto University, one of the top research universi-

ties in Japan. Ravi will join the Graduate School of

Medicine at Kyoto University to help develop the use

of genomic approaches for the diagnosis and treat-

ment of breast cancer. Ravi recently finished his PhD

on genetics and iron-related disorders in the School of

Human Sciences at London Metropolitan University

and is following in the footsteps of his Director of

Studies Dr Kenneth White, who spent two years at

Kyoto University as a post-doctoral fellow. Dr White comments, “Ravi will have a marvellous time at

Kyoto, both scientifically and culturally. His sponsor, Professor Masakazu Toi, is one of the leading re-

searchers in Japan to apply genomics, and especially next generation genome sequencing, to different

types and stages of breast cancer. It is a remarkable achievement that Ravi was able to join Professor

Toi’s group. We will be keeping in touch and I look forward to learning from Ravi about this major field

of medical research”. Ravi comments, ‘’ I took a lot of inspiration from Dr. White (London Met) and Dr.

Wolfgang (NIH) in exploring life in research and still continued to be inspired. Dr. White always had time

and immense knowledge to share as and when I needed. It has been an absolute privilege to be associat-

ed with Dr. White for all the years. Without Dr. White’s help and guidance I could not have even dreamt

of sending applications for research trainings at University of Cambridge, Wellcome trust (UK) or NIH

(US) which were successful.

The association will continue in future both at personal and intellectual levels’’.

Nick Gardiner (Principal Lecturer, Faculty Student Enterprise Coordinator)

“Business Developments in Sport” is an innovative one semester

module, which provides students with academic knowledge and

understanding on how to implement good business practice including marketing, accounting, manage-

ment, service and reflection. It is a core module for Sports

Therapy students and optional for all other Sports students.

The module uses a league table to assess students, followed by

an award ceremony, where the faculty Dean, Prof. Dominic

Palmer-Brown presents the winner with an iPad mini.

The class was divided into 10 teams who competed against one

another during weekly tutorials. Students delivered presenta-

tions relating to their assessments with themes such as

“Britain’s Got Talent”, “The Voice” and interview “speed da-

ting”.

The teams were peer and tutor reviewed to provide the scores, in addition, yellow and red cards were

given to penalise late arrival, phones going off or talking during presentations. The team finishing at the

top of the league provided the 4 finalists who were selected based on their attendance records.

This year the finalists were Jamie-Lee Gleed, Callum

Christian, Tejal Patel, Liam Foster. They had to give a

10mins presentation entitled “How would my business

benefit from an iPad mini”. Finalists covered such uses

as, the ability to showcase work to clients on the go, an

easy way to build work relationships, being able to reach

out to people with speech disorders, as well as, an envi-

ronmental and paper-free way to manage a business.

Content and presentation style were the key criteria on

assessing the presentations, both sharing 50% of the

grade. Presentation skills were a strong theme through-

out the module and the students have improved markedly throughout the semester.

The winner was Liam Foster, who went above and beyond by producing a promotional video and deliver-ing a fascinating demonstration using four audience members.

14

Student Enterprise

Business Development in Sport module awards You can follow

London Met FUTURE on Facebook and Twitter.

Earlier this month, BSc and MSc psychology students met several experts from the industry and got a chance to find out more about career options in work psycholo-gy. The day included guest talks from Ketchum, OPP, Saville Consulting, Investec and Deloitte representa-tives. Students learnt more about different career paths, as well as, received some tips on job search and applica-tions. The talks were followed by a CV clinic, which was run by our careers advisor Alison Street. We thank Gary Pheiffer for his help while organising this event!

Psychology students meet experts from industry

15

Faculty Enterprise Development Associate Professor Yanguo Jing (Academic Leader Faculty Enterprise Development) reports:

Faculty Employer Network and Enterprise Day

Venue: Graduate Centre

Date: Thursday 11th June 2015

Time: 10:00 - 16:50

Colleagues are reminded to register to secure a place at

the Faculty Employer Network and Enterprise Day. All

colleagues are welcome to invite any industry contacts,

alumni and student body employers to attend the event.

However, registration on industry15.eventbrite.com is es-

sential as soon as possible.

This year’s annual event will welcome parallel strands

from all three schools in the faculty. Guests will be able to

hear from a leading big data expert – Dr. Tom Khabaza on

data analytics and data mining, employer presentations

from Amazon and Student@Home, project showcase

demo from the faculty’s in-house software – the WOW

agency, a CPD taster session from Kevin Campbell-Karn,

Health Psychology interventions from Sophie Edwards

and Dr Ravi Gill and so much more.

Register your place and see the full agenda:

industry15.eventbrite.com

On 15th April 2015, Associate Professor Yanguo

Jing invited Kelly Klein (CEO of Student@Home)

and Satwant Chana (Recruitment Manager of

Student@Home) to the university’s Ladbroke

House and hosted a paid internship interview session. Nine Work Related Learning students have been

interviewed. Kelly and Satwant were so impressed by the quality of the students, they have decided to

employ five of the nine they interviewed. Kelly said “I have been blown-away by the quality of the stu-

dents, I will most definitely do the interview with Londonmet Students again”. Kelly also mentioned this

interview session on Twitter.

All five students are over the moon with this fantastic opportunity to gain work experience, getting paid

and earn academic credit via the Work Related Learning module. Kelly will also be presenting at the up-

coming Faculty Employer Network and Enterprise Day and provide a tailored student interview training

session for our students.

Work Related Learning students get work from Student@Home