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Programme Info
Meeting Synopses - 2004-05
Tuesday 12/10/2004
A Defence of Data Protection
Andrew Sharpe, Solicitor and Carolyn Bigg, Solicitor.
Joint meeting with the BCS Data Management Specialist Group (DMSG).
UK citizens currently enjoy unprecedented levels of protection of their privacy and personal information thanks to the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Data Protection Act 1998. However, since 9/11, governments worldwide have attempted to legislate against privacy rights and recent events,
such as the Bichard enquiry into the Soham murders, have seen a backlash against our current legislation. In an age when information can be transmitted to millions around the world in seconds, how far do we have to protect individuals' privacy and personal data?
The speakers, solicitors in Charles Russell's Data Protection Team, will give guidance on best practice in the light of topical events and current developments in data protection and privacy law.
Tuesday 23/11/2004
Design Patterns (using Lego Mindstorms robots)
Alan O'Callaghan and Maria Kavanagh, Senior Lecturers, Faculty of Computing Sciences and Engineering, De Montfort University.
Joint meeting with the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE).
The Bots and Pieces® Pattern Language is the outcome of a sixteen-month (to date) experiment to see if pattern languages can be applied to software systems.
To this end workshops have been run in which teams of 4-5 people (who, often, have never met before) have competed against each other to build 'race-winning' Lego Mindstorms robots. The problems they have encountered have been analysed, and patterns to solve those problems have been produced. In this talk the speakers will explain the background to the experiment, report on the workshops that have been conducted around the world and explain its significance.
Thursday 09/12/2004
World class or outclassed? IT service management in the 'always on world'
Peter Wheatcroft CEng, FBCS, FIEE.
The consumer economy has meant an exponential increase in the demand for online services and information. We no longer expect to stop being provided at 5pm and IT fulfilment has to be available at any time of day or night. This session explores the issues and challenges facing the 'always on' enterprise and shows how some leading UK blue chip companies have restructured their IT to deal with continuous service delivery.
Peter Wheatcroft is the founder of 4 Dimensions Partnership, a consultancy specialising in IT management. He has worked in IT for 30 years and been responsible for service management for more than 20 years. Readers of 'The Computer Bulletin' January 2004 may have seen his most recent article, 'The Human Touch'.
Tuesday 18/01/2005
Public Key Cryptography
Mr Clifford Cocks, GCHQ Cheltenham.
Joint meeting with the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), East Midlands Branch.
The speaker will describe the main ideas of public key cryptography; the mathematical principles that underlie this technology and how they were discovered. He will go on to show how this is applied in the real world, for example how it can be used to secure transactions on the internet and explain how digital signatures work. The speaker will then look at a variety of mathematical structures that can be used in cryptography, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these different approaches, finishing with a discussion of some recent advances in the subject.
Clifford Cocks is a mathematician and cryptographer who invented the widely used encryption algorithm now commonly known as RSA. He was and is still not generally recognized for this achievement because his work was not released to the public at the time. He currently holds the post of Chief Mathematician at GCHQ.
Tuesday 15/02/2005
Capability Maturity Model® Integration (CMMI) and its Importance to Industry.
Andy Collins, Thales.
CMMI (Capability Maturity Model® Integration) is a collection of processes, goals and practices that act as a leverage point for an organization's sustained improvement. The purpose of CMM Integration is to provide guidance for improving processes and the ability to manage the development, acquisition and maintenance of products or services.
CMMI is an evolution of the Software (and other) CMM from the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). Thales has a significant involvement with CMMI having been one of the multi-national companies involved in its creation. Many parts of the organisation have already achieved CMMI Level 2 or higher. This presentation describes CMMI and its importance to industry with emphasis on its applicability to software development.
CMMI Meeting Notes
Wednesday 16/03/2005
Current Postgraduate Research in Computing
Speakers: PhD students from local universities
Venue: Charles Wilson building, University of Leicester.
Part of National Science Week 11-20 March 2005.
A small number of students will be selected to give an overview of their research projects. Presentations will last around 15 minutes each with an 5 additional minutes for questions. The best presentation will be awarded a £50 prize. The prize will be decided by the audience and awarded on the night. Please note that the research projects being presented will be announced nearer the time by use of email and the branch website.
Thursday 14/04/2005
Staring into Space - Searching for Planets using IT
Dr Richard West, Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, University of Leicester.
The Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) is an ultra-wide angle photometric survey of bright stars, looking for planets in orbit around them. It is run by a consortium of researchers from several universities including Leicester. By using a telescope with wide-angle optics the team is able to measure the brightness of millions of stars in the night sky. The
analysis and interpretation of the images acquired by the WASP telescope represents a very significant IT challenge. Richard West, one of the collaborators, will discuss some of the initial work in data acquisition, processing and archiving, and will describe the extensive data-mining this ambitious programme involves.
Thursday 12/05/2005
Testing Drive-by-Wire Applications using a Novel Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) Testbed
Dr. Michael Short, Embedded Systems Laboratory, University of Leicester.
This meeting will be preceded by a short branch AGM.
Distributed embedded systems (DESs) are highly complex, and understanding the implications of different design decisions - including the choice of programming language, system architecture and network protocol - is never straightforward. With the growing use of safety-critical DESs in applications such as "drive-by-wire" there is a pressing need to investigate the implications of these design choices and their possible impact on system reliability.
This talk will describe a novel HIL testbed which is being developed in the Embedded Systems Laboratory at the University of Leicester. The talk will describe various key aspects of the system, including the vehicle models, 'intelligent' drivers and the motorway simulation.
This novel testbed has been used to refine the design for an adaptive cruise-control system, incorporating both throttle- and brake-by-wire. The talk will conclude by presenting some results from this study.
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