Seminar: Finding Rubies in the Dust

Abstract: Over the past 25 years I have been studying wireless sensing systems and their evolution from dumb embedded computation to intelligent edge and IoT systems. This type of computation is highly distributed, decentralised, and is prone to effects not found in more general computing (e.g. in datacentres). However, I find this interesting, and look specifically at this cyber-physical interaction to find ways around problems, optimise systems or reuse our infrastructure - essentially turning noise into new or better signals - therefore finding Rubies in the Dust. I will also introduce two new initiatives that I'm leading.

Biography: Julie A. McCann is a Professor of Computer Systems with Imperial College London and is currently Co-Director of the School of Convergence Science in Space, Security and Telecoms and Director of the national CHEDDAR communications research hub. Formerly Vice Dean Research in the Faculty of Engineering, she has published extensively on decentralized and self-organizing scalable algorithms and protocols for Wireless/RF Sensor-based systems, Internet of Things, and Cyber-physical systems. She leads the Adaptive Emergent Systems Engineering Research (AESE) research group, and between 2015-2022 was the Deputy Director of PETRAS IoT Cybersecurity Hub, Critical Ecosystems Lead for the Alan Turing Institute, and Imperial PI on the EPSRC programme grant Science for Sensor Systems Software. She has a number of international research collaborations including Singapore NRF funded Eco-Cities (until March 2024 she had a sub-lab in Singapore with I2R and HDB), between 2012-2017 directed the Intel Collaborative Research Institute (ICRI) for Sustainable Cities, and NCC Japan on smart communications technologies, as well as other projects though EU FP7/H2020 programmes. McCann is an elected Member of the Council of Computer Science Professors and Heads of Computing, and was elected to the membership committee of the UKCRC, she holds the 2018 UKRI Suffrage Science Award for Computing and Mathematics, President’s Medal for Research Excellence 2020, and is a Fellow of the BCS and Chartered Engineer.