After being postponed multiple times by the pandemic, the final Creativiety Sandpit for the final HiPEDS CDT cohort took place in late September 2021. The cohort was joined by students from the KCL CDT in Smart Medical Imaging, as well as other students from Imperial’s Physics, Computing, Electrical Engineering, and Earth Science and Engineering Departments.

The two-day event was spread across three days. We were very fortunate to welcome to the event industry engineers who each presented a challenge, which the students would work on during the event. The challengers were from Stryker, The Engineering Company, and Huawei Research. Each gave a stimulating briefing for their challenge: How could wearable or implanted sensors to improve recovery from knee replacement surgery; How can humans and computer systems collaborate on engineering problems; and How can we improve the experience of using everyday devices for the elderly. Together with academics from Imperial, the challengers participated as mentors throughout the sandpit, giving valuable guidance and feedback. The underlying theme of the workshop was reflecting on various activities, all of which can enhance creativity in different ways.

During the first day, the students learned about the challenges, started asking questions and having initial ideas, got to know each other, and built Rube Goldberg contraptions for popping party crackers. There was also an activity to demonstrate different aids to being creative. On the second day they constructed mind maps and thought of potential solutions ideas for the problems before forming small groups to work on one of the problems for the remainder of the workshop. After initial presentations and feedback from everyone, the mentors ran a “test lab” to help the students challenge themselves further about their ideas. On the final half-day, the students presented their ideas for final feedback and then gave an elevator pitch to conclude.

Students appreciated the chance to discuss research ideas from an industry perspective and to work on real industrial challenges. The aims of the sandpit were several: to give them an opportunity to reflect on their own approaches to creative thinking, enable them to meet and work with peers from other institutions, and to discuss research with industrial engineers.

The event was facilitated by a team from The Collective.

Over the past 18 months, HiPEDS has been working in partnership with dunnhumby to conduct research into re-programmable hardware. The result is the discovery of a unique approach detailed in this article.

Congratulations go to our student Miguel Cacho Soblechero on winning the Qualcomm innovation fellowship.

Miguel was one of five winners, giving his presentation on “Sense-aware System-on-Chip for ISFET diagnostic platforms”.

The 2020 University Challenge competition was won by the Imperial team, including HiPEDS’ Connor McMeel, who got 100% of his starter questions correct.

The team got to the final by the short path – no defeats. The team won against Brasenose College – Oxford, Trinity College – Cambridge, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Durham University, and St John’s College – Oxford before besting Corpus Christi College – Cambridge in the Final.

Imperial HiPEDS, Cambridge Sensor, Nottingham Horizon CDTs
April 30^th – May 2^nd 2019 Chicheley Hall, Milton Keynes

In early May 28 PhD students from three CDTS based at Imperial, Cambridge and Nottingham participated in a two-day creativity sandpit, spread across three days. We were very fortunate to welcome to the event industry engineers who each presented a challenge, which the students would work on during the event.  The challengers were from McLaren Applied Technologies, Blue Bear Systems Research, and The Trade Desk. Each gave a stimulating briefing for their challenge: Use of sporting data to attract new audiences and deliver new levels of engagement; Use of swarms of UAVs in rapid disaster relief; Using bidding data to help advertisers plan and optimise campaigns, and help users to have better advert seeing experiences. Together with academics from Imperial, the challengers participated as mentors throughout the sandpit, giving valuable guidance and feedback. The underlying theme of the workshop was reflecting on various activities, all of which can enhance creativity in different ways.

During the first day, the students learned about the challenges, started asking questions and having initial ideas, got to know each other, and built Rube Goldberg contraptions for popping party crackers. There was also an activity to demonstrate different aids to being creative. On the second day they constructed mind maps and thought of potential solutions ideas for the problems before forming small groups to work on one of the problems for the remainder of the workshop. After initial presentations and feedback from everyone, the mentors ran a “test lab” to help the students challenge themselves further about their ideas. On the final half-day, the students presented their ideas for final feedback and then gave an elevator pitch to conclude.

Students appreciated the chance to discuss research ideas from an industry perspective and to work on real industrial challenges. The aims of the sandpit were several: to give them an opportunity to reflect on their own approaches to creative thinking, enable them to meet and work with peers from other institutions, and to discuss research with industrial engineers.

The event was facilitated by a team from The Collective.

HiPEDS PhD student Miten Mistry has been selected to display a poster at the House of Commons, as part of the STEM for BRITAIN 2019 poster competition for early-career researchers. Miten’s research, joint with BASF, Dr Ruth Misener and Dr Dimitris Letsios integrates data-driven models into larger decision making problems.

STEM for BRITAIN is a competition designed to promote Britain’s early-stage and early-career research scientists, engineers, technologists and mathematicians; through presenting and discussing their research with Members of both Houses of Parliament at Westminster.

Further details about the competition can be found here: http://www.setforbritain.org.uk/background.asp

First year PhD student Johannes Wiebe recently presented at PSE@ResearchDayUK and won 2^nd place presentation prize.  The PSE@ResearchDayUK is a 1-day annual meeting for process systems engineering researchers in the UK. Typically, Third and fourth year PhD students are invited to submit an abstract and (if accepted) speak at the conference. So this is a great achievement for Johannes.  Further information about the event can be found here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/research-centres-and-groups/cpse/pseresearchdayuk/PSE@ResearchDayUK—–2018-Handout.pdf

Workshop in Ethics and Responsibility in Research and Innovation

In a half-day workshop members of the 2017, 2016 and 2015 cohorts of the Centre for Doctoral Training in High Performance Embedded and Distributed Systems (HiPEDS) discussed questions and issues around societal and ethical implications of research in engineering disciplines.  The group of PhD students reflected on their own research areas and explored potential risks that may occur as a consequence of their research outputs.  They also discussed what responsibilities each individual researcher might need to consider.  The goal of the workshop was to develop a HiPEDS Code of Conduct that summarises these thoughts, and to develop a structure and format for future CDT workshops on this topic, addressing these issues in a way that is relevant to HiPEDS students.

The HiPEDS Code of Conduct is a list of principles and ideals that the students found important to highlight, and would be useful to take into account in daily research practice:

1. Being responsible, e.g. with data privacy, security, confidentiality
2. Conducting transparent research
3. Engaging with the public, supporting education and outreach
4. Consider risks, foresee risks, be clear about risks
5. Consider environmental impact, aim for sustainable solutions
6. Benefit Society; weigh benefits and risks
7. Be humble, in your self-assessment of your work and its impact
8. Intellectual honesty
9. Be clear and careful about assumptions and limitations

Imperial HiPEDS, Cambridge Sensor, Warwick Urban Science
May 15th – 17th 2018 Eastpark Conference Centre, Bracknell

In beautiful weather mid-May 28 PhD students from three CDTS based at Imperial, Cambridge and Warwick participated in a two-day creativity sandpit, spread across three days. We were very fortunate to welcome to the event industry engineers who each presented a challenge, which the students would work on during the event from the Royal Mail, ARUP, and Greater London Authority. Each gave a stimulating briefing for their challenge: Optimising (both environmentally and financially) country–wide mail delivery, new commercial ventures for empty van space utilisation; Flood-defences in a coastal city in times of climate change; Tool for linking London Boroughs cultural activities and maximising participation through suitable advertising and social media. Together with five academics from Imperial, Cambridge and Warwick, the challengers participated as mentors throughout the sandpit, giving valuable guidance and feedback. The underlying theme of the workshop was reflecting on various activities, all of which can enhance creativity in different ways.

During the first day, the students learned about the challenges, started asking questions and having initial ideas, got to know each other, and built Rube Goldberg contraptions for popping party crackers. There was also an activity to demonstrate different aids to being creative. On the second day they constructed mind maps and thought of potential solutions ideas for the problems before forming small groups to work on one of the problems for the remainder of the workshop. After initial presentations and feedback from everyone, the mentors ran a “test lab” to help the students challenge themselves further about their ideas. On the final half-day, the students presented their ideas for final feedback and then gave an elevator pitch to conclude.

Students appreciated the chance to discuss research ideas from an industry perspective and to work on real industrial challenges. The aims of the sandpit were several: to give them an opportunity to reflect on their own approaches to creative thinking, enable them to meet and work with peers from other institutions, and to discuss research with industrial engineers.

The event was facilitated by a team from The Collective.

Wednesday 5th April saw the finals of the Imperial 3 minute thesis competition. PhD students nominated from departments across the College were invited to the final competition. The format is that each student is briefly introduced by the chair person. They then have up to 3 minutes to deliver a pitch about their research. They have no notes, one slide (which is behind them) and a massive clock that ticks down the three minutes.

The College webpage for this year’s competition contains links to watch some of the talks, and I’m sure you’ll agree they’re all very good.  HiPEDS CDT nominated Nicolas Moser, a third year research student of HiPEDS based in Electrical and Electronic Engineeringt, and we were delighted when he was awarded third place, and also won the “people’s choice” award. Congratulations Nicolas! You can see Nicolas’s pitch either from the website above, or here: