Fellowship focus: Producing voice-centred experiences at the cutting-edge of spatial audio technology.
Harry Yeff (aka Reeps100) is an award-winning voice performer whose work has amassed a global following with over 100 million online views. Continuing a long-standing collaboration, he will work with Dr De Sena to create striking new live audio compositions in which Harry’s beats and voice are dynamically positioned in 3D space. Using room acoustic models, the composition will create the illusion that the space is changing, while lighting elements will add to the visual experience. This ground-breaking technology will be presented at a concert at the 27th International Conference on Digital Audio Effects in September 2024.
Fellowship focus: Exploring the psychology of ableism by developing a satirical series of ‘unproductive’ participatory and therapeutic art activities.
This residency will use humour, irony and exaggeration to challenge prejudicial attitudes towards disabled and neurodivergent people, and compare exaggerated claims – such as the ‘triumph over adversity’ trope – with Simon’s lived experience of bipolar depression and hypomania. He will work with academics in the School of Psychology to develop a performance-lecture about the use of satire in disability and neurodivergence-related art, and initiate a series of satirical ‘art therapy’ exercises. Collaborating with Professor Tischler he will conduct research on the factors that produce ableism and develop critical analyses on concepts such as ‘ecophobia’ (fear of one’s environment).
Fellowship focus: Developing a creative piece of music representing the unseen consequences of global warming on the UK tick species Ixodes Ricinus.
Understanding tick dynamics and population changes is crucial to developing effective control strategies. The focus of this Fellowship will be looking at tick dynamics in a novel way, using mathematical modelling and field recording to create a musical sentence which represents the ideal lifecycle of the tick. This can then be modified depending on different parameters, generating the first sonic projection of the impact of global warming on ticks, and creating a model that could in the future help us comprehend fluctuations in tick populations on local and global scale.
Fellowship focus: Investigating a system to help understand and classify ‘inflectional morphology’ (the way words are formed in certain grammatical categories).
Inflectional morphology (such as how we would expect the past tense to be indicated with the addition of ‘ed’ at the end of a verb) is hugely complex, and mapping out how it varies requires advanced techniques to measure both within and across languages. Dr Carroll and Dr Beniamine aim to develop the world’s first detailed typology for this variation, which will include a large-scale classification of languages and samples from the lexicons of a range of languages representing the world’s inflectional diversity.
Fellowship focus: Furthering and promoting the use of AI, big data and informatics to improve animal health and livestock production.
This Fellowship will bring together Professor Rosa’s vast experience in developing tools for the analysis of livestock data with Surrey’s capability in veterinary and human health informatics. As well as establishing strong interdisciplinary links, the objective will be to conduct useful joint research in vet informatics. Professor Rosa will share insights into his research via a series of research seminars, and deliver two workshops for researchers in animal and vet sciences, statisticians and data scientists. Another aim will be to advance the level of machine learning techniques among Surrey’s vet students.
Fellowship focus: Developing animal-inspired gliding robots to monitor the ecosystem.
Robots that can launch, glide and perch like animals could allow us to monitor and protect ecosystems in inaccessible areas such as forest canopies, but developing these robots is challenging because we know surprisingly little about the gliding behaviours of animals in the wild. Dr Khandelwal will bring eight years of experience studying flying lizards in the Indian rainforest to inform the design of a new bioinspired gliding robot in collaboration with Dr Siddall (an expert in robotic systems) and an interdisciplinary team of biologists, conservationists and engineers. A key aim will be creating a framework for deploying robotic systems in real-world conservation tasks.
Fellowship focus: Exploring the strategic and business value of Generative AI technologies and how they affect people’s trust in organisations.
Summary: Gen AI (Generative AI) technologies such as ChatGPT have attracted significant attention but, as yet, organisations are struggling to leverage them. In this Fellowship, Professor Mikalef will combine his experience in Information Systems with Dr Ioannou’s expertise in privacy and trust to develop a framework that demonstrates the impact of Gen AI on trust among internal and external stakeholders and – in turn – on an organisation’s overall performance. Outcomes will include a lecture, research seminar and a collaborative research project focused on a comparative case study of two organisations deploying Gen AI.
Fellowship focus: Translating research on the impact of feedback in education into practice, and establishing an international Feedback Lab.
Much research has been undertaken – by Professor Lipnevich, Professor Winstone and other academics worldwide – into the way students engage with feedback and the effects of praise on student performance. This Fellowship is aimed at developing a strategy to translate this research into educational practice. It will include the development of a book for educators, visits to local schools to gain teachers’ input, a masterclass and research seminar led by Professor Lipnevich, and the launch of ‘The Feedback Lab’ – an international community of early career researchers working in this field.
Fellowship focus: Solving a fundamental problem in computer vision by developing a method for segmenting objects found in images in real-world scenarios.
At present, computer vision systems are able to segment predefined objects (for example they can be trained to recognise ‘dogs’ and ‘cats’) but often fail when confronted by new classes of object (such as ‘pandas’). Associate Professor Zhang will spend two months at Surrey with the aim of building a new multimodal framework that combines images, text and sound, and enables systems to adapt quickly to new or poorly-trained classes of object. The Fellowship will include the establishment of a research network with China University of Petroleum and a jointly-organised seminar on computer vision and AI.
Fellowship focus: Combining multidisciplinary knowledge on wind flows over forested hills with advanced data analysis to improve weather and climate environmental modelling.
Understanding wind flow and turbulence over hills and forests enables us to model scenarios such as heat damage to crops, wildland fire behaviour and pollutant dispersal – but current models often lack the complexity needed. Using numerical simulations and Surrey’s EnFlo meteorological wind tunnel, Associate Professor Banerjee and Dr Iacobello will conduct numerical experiments, collect data to validate new hypotheses, and test their theories on the land-atmosphere exchange when complex terrain and vegetation canopies are present. The Fellowship outcomes will include a seminar series and a short course of lectures for PhD and postdoctoral researchers.