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2004 Scholars
 Alban Rrustemi
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Supervisor: Dr Simon Moore
Microsoft Research supervisor: Dr Ken Wood
Research title: Dense wired sensor networks
Research summary: Computing fabrics could be constructed from
small elements (e.g., 1.5mm x 1.5mm chips) woven into clothing
or embedded into the structure of some device. Communication
amongst these elements and other components would allow useful
systems to be constructed. Reconfiguration approaches will
address the void between conventional architectures of
microcontrollers + software at one extreme to field programmable
gate microcontrollers + arrays (FPGAs) at the other. To enable
prototypes to be made, Alban will draw on existing research and
industrial expertise in the areas of sensors, chip packaging and
power sources.
 Anna Ritchie
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Supervisor: Dr Simone Teufel
Microsoft Research supervisor: Prof. Stephen Robertson
Research title: Combining term-based and citation-based methods for
enhanced information retrieval
Research summary: The aim of the project is to combine citation
information with traditional term based IR information sources for more
sophisticated search. In which form citation information is to be
included is itself an object of research: one could use the citations
themselves, the citation anchor text as context, and possibly discourse
structure information of the segment where the citation occurs.
 Benjamin Rudiak-Gould
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Supervisor: Prof. Alan Mycroft
Microsoft Research supervisor: Dr Simon Peyton-Jones
Research title: Alternatives to monads
Research summary: The concept of ‘monad’ in Haskell unifies many
useful control-flow patterns within a single overloaded interface. Code
written in monadic style explicitly captures the continuation at each
step; as a result, it is a natural fit for applications such as
backtracking parsers and many kinds of exception handling. However,
Haskell monads are monolithic in that they can only capture a single
notion of state at a time, and moreover they often over-sequentialise
accesses to that state. This research proposes to look at variants of,
or alternatives to, monads which are less monolithic. One attractive
starting-point is that of ‘implicit parameters’, introduced by Lewis et
al.
 Dana N. Xu
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Supervisor: Prof. Alan Mycroft
Microsoft Research supervisor: Dr Simon Peyton-Jones
Research title: Software tools for secure component programming
Research summary: With our ever-growing reliance on software systems
– occasionally for life-critical situations, it is no longer safe to
rely solely on the informal assurances of software testing. Dana proposes a
new framework for software systems to be safely (and securely) built
from software components. Several major verification techniques have
been advocated over the last two decades, including model-checking,
static analysis and advanced type theory. However, little attention has
been paid to applying these techniques to component-based programming.
In this project, Dana plans to explore both the foundations for secure
component integration and practical tools to support its development.
 Greg Hale
University of York, United Kingdom
Supervisor: Prof. Andrew Monk
Microsoft Research supervisor: Dr Ken Wood
Research title: Qualitative and quantitative studies of ‘fun’ with
interactive feature film based entertainment via mobile phones and
Web sites
Research summary: This research project is an investigation of
entertainment content experiences, focused particularly on movies and
narrative based mobile games/ interactive stories. The objective is to
create an integrated psychological framework of these content
experiences, which in turn can inform content design. Work completed.
The first empirical study involved a systematic qualitative
investigation of people’s responses to a short film, using interview
data. This work is being integrated into the relevant literature from
psychology, human-computer interaction and cognitive approaches to film,
around a specific focus of schemas. The work has resulted in two
conference papers, presented at international conferences. Work
remaining. The integrated framework will be used to analyse three
successful movies from the same genre, a ‘systems’ investigation. The
flow of schematically structured experience events in the films will be
logged and mapped onto the psychological framework. A short film will be
then created using the framework and tested on viewers, with interview
data being gathered. Finally, the framework will be tested for
robustness in a different context by analysing either an existing mobile
game or interactive story.
 Julia Lasserre
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Supervisor: Dr Roberto Cipola
Microsoft Research supervisor: Prof. Christopher Bishop
Research title: Bayesian object recognition using weakly labelled
data
Research summary: This PhD will focus on the problem of object
recognition using weakly labelled data, it will build on recent
developments in probabilistic modelling and Bayesian inference. A
typical task, for example, will be to learn about and recognise say cars
given only a pile of images containing cars and a pile not containing
cars. At some level this is very feasible, but a general solution will
be very challenging to find. A central point of visual perception is the
classical problem of invariant object recognition: different appearances
of an object can be seen as equivalent, but with changes in position,
illumination, distortions, or partial occlusion by other objects. It can
then take account of prior knowledge to do with geometrical
transformations of objects, but can also to some extent learn invariant
features from the training data. One approach which may prove very
helpful involves capturing multiple images of the same object from
different orientations and viewpoints. Prior knowledge of the image
generation process including projective geometry can be used to exploit
known geometrical transformations and invariants.
 Mathieu Verbaere
University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Supervisor: Prof. Oege de Moor
Research title: An extensible toolkit for refactoring
Research summary: To enable developers to author their own
refactoring transformations. Existing tools offer only a fixed menu of
refactorings. Furthermore, even simple refactorings like ‘extract
method’ are often incorrectly implemented, because the implementation
does only syntactic and no semantic analysis. Mathieu aims to construct an
extensible framework for easy and correct implementation of refactoring
transformations at several levels: a set of static analyses that
frequently occur in refactoring; an API for using these analyses, and
applying the corresponding transformations to the source (retaining
layout and comments).
 Maurice Fallon
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Supervisor: Dr Simon Godsill
Microsoft Research supervisor: Prof. Andrew Blake
Research title: Multi-channel audio source localisation and tracking
Research summary: In this project Maurice will study signal processing
methods for enhancing audio signals obtained from microphone arrays. The
methods will aim initially to improve on the current state of the art in
echo cancellation, then develop into the areas of source separation and
localisation. The approach will be based on time-frequency models of the
audio signals and the inclusion of Bayesian prior information about
coefficients across time and frequency in order to aid the enhancement
process. A selection of methodologies will be pursued, including variational methods, particle filters and fast approximations to these.
 Paulo Eduardo Ferreira de Castro
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Supervisor: Dr Steven Hand
Microsoft Research supervisor: Dr Richard Mortier
Research title: Next generation inter-networking
Research summary: Design of a new network architecture that aims at
conciliating disparate technologies and protocols, offering a new
approach to the interconnection of innovative networks such those
involving sensors, node mobility and ubiquity and the global Internet.
This research work is jointly supported by grants, from Microsoft
Research, the European Union Programme Alßan and the Cambridge Overseas
Trust.
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