Author: Monica Cano

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Lunchtime Lecture at the ODI: Using data to support citizen-centric sustainable urban development in Tanzania

Post by Roza Vasileva (2016 Cohort)

On January 26, 2019 I had an excellent opportunity to present my PhD research project. More specifically, I spoke about the findings emerging from my research interviews in Dar es Salaam with various stakeholders of the Tanzanian data ecosystem: government, donor institutions, local community organisers, start-ups, international experts and academia. This study aimed to understand what processes take place on the ground when people try to take advantage of data and technology to transform Dar es Salaam into a ‘smarter city’, and what the challenges are.

This was a public event as part of the ODI Fridays – free lunchtime lectures for everyone. Below is the video recording of the presentation.

–originally posted on Roza’s blog

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National Open Data Symposium in Oma

Post by Roza Vasileva (2016 Cohort)

On October 1-3, 2018, I had the pleasure to participate in the first National Open Data Symposium in Omanas a speaker on principles and benefits of Open Data. The presentation covered various definitions of open data, including examples in some key sectors such as health, education, transport, etc.

I was pleased to see representatives from five different sectors across government and private sector together, having a discussion, raising challenging questions. There are many agencies within the government, which have started publishing open data, and these efforts are a bit uneven. I think the most important thing about the symposium was that these agencies came together to start moving towards a collaborative approach to open data. This event sent a powerful message to the public, government and even international open data community that Oman strives to advance their open data agenda and has desire to bring best international practices in this process.

Being one of the international speakers in the event and having worked with the World Bank on open data in many countries, it means to me that Oman is really keen to learn from other international experiences and adopt best global practices in their approach to do open data and moving towards smarter future. We need to remember that we’re increasingly living in cities, and Open Data is key to creating a platform for smart cities. Citizen-focused smart cities increasingly use data analytics to improve service delivery to its citizens making them more accessible, engage with the communities, find joint solutions to most pressing urban issues, making our cities more livable and sustainable. As my own area of academic research lies in looking how open data can support smart cities, I want to see Oman open data use it for open urban innovations and delivering better services to its people.

Conversations evolved around how to make data more usable for the data users. Engagement with the consumers of the data was one of the key points that was raised throughout the symposium. I echo one of the participants comments that value of releasing open data comes from data use. One of the key elements to open data is adopting open license that explicitly gives permission to use and re-use data for any purpose, including commercial purposes. If the license does not exist on the portal and does not articulate those rights for data re-use, the users cannot be sure that they can use the data. This is one of the challenges Oman will need to address to enable the open data benefits, especially for economic growth that were extensively discussed at the Symposium.



-originally posted on Roza’s blog

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How to make a strong password

Post by Neeshé Khan (2018 Cohort)


Making strong passwords which are memorable are easier than you think if you ignore everything that you’ve been told and start to think of the reasoning behind the combination.

Yesterday morning I heard an advert by the UK’s National Cyber Security Center about setting better passwords. I went to the resources and ended up going down the rabbit hole to discover a range of resources on a variety of topics on ‘Get Safe Online’.

It’s a good starting point but very basic. If you know not to keep your dog’s name as a password, you won’t come out any better than when you went in. Personally, I’ve always found it a waste of effort with imposed slap-dash restrictions by IT teams or platforms to make me ‘secure’ (must be 8 characters long, include a special character etc). You can follow these rules but still be relatively vulnerable to hacks like the dictionary attack.

So, here’s some things I’ve learnt from various readings, discussions and from Dr Pound’s lectures at University of Nottingham that will help you understand how to make strong passwords rather than being told what passwords should contain.

1. Ignore what you’ve heard: Most common password is, believe it or not, ‘Pa55w0rd’. It meets the base requirements of being 8 characters long and contains a capital and a numeral. But, this would literally take no time to crack with a dictionary hack. But, if you ignore these requirements and change the way the same word is written to ‘pAssw*rd9’: first letter is not capital, ‘0’ turned to an asterisk and adding a ‘9’ because it’s conveniently next to the asterisk key. The strength of this simple memorable word changes to drastically more secure than what you started off with.

I’ve explained this in the parts below but just making a case here that keeping the word password as a password, isn’t all that weak, but it’s actually the combination that’s weak. In a similar way, you can keep words that are easy to recall by simply changing the combination of how those words are set. Always try to use three words as your password.

2. Don’t replace alphabets with numbers: You’re not any more secure by replacing the ‘e’ with a ‘3’, an ‘O’ with a ‘0’ or an ‘a’ with a ‘4’. When hackers attack, this is one of the first parameters they set as it allows an easy break when they’re racing against time. Instead, add it randomly into the word instead, ‘baseball’ to ‘ba9eb8ll’ where cracking time goes from something around the 10-minute mark to 3 months. Similarly, ‘p12345R6’ is much stronger than ‘Pa55w0rd’, although it’s the same word with ‘1,2,3,4,5, 6’ introduced and ‘R’ made into a capital letter than the ‘D’.

3. Capitals: Yes, they’re good but try not separating or ending words with them. This is because these parameters are set by the hackers when they attack i.e. words beginning/ending with a capital letter. See example 2 above for password where we made R capital instead of ‘P’ or ‘D’.

4. Special Characters: If you’re using a character like “_” or a “*”, use it in the middle of the word rather than to separate the words. Imagine the censoring of a r*de word. This means avoiding adding it at the start or end as the word won’t be well censored if you would see it anyway. Again, this helps to not get fished out at the start of a hack. Now, imagine updating the password to ‘pA*sw0Rd’ on the principles above.

5. Complexity: The complexity doesn’t have to be “letsthinkofacrazylongword” to keep us safe. You could use simple word combinations that are memorable without being vulnerable by using the tricks above. This also saved you the time taken to have to reset your password because it was so hard you forgot yourself an hour/day after setting it. I think we’ve all been there, right?

6. Prioritise Passwords: “Don’t keep the same password for everything” is obvious. What’s new is that you can actually prioritize the passwords you choose. This can be relatively easy by simply deciding how much information a platform holds about you and how valuable this information is to you. If there are pictures of you on a platform that can be used against you (snapchat/insta), that goes higher up on the priority list than an email account you don’t use very often. For low priority platforms use passwords that you wouldn’t mind resetting if you forgot them (which can take time). Equally, you won’t be at a great risk if your information was stolen or acquired by someone who isn’t supposed to have it.

7. ‘Call a friend’ option: Just that in this case the friend is still you, but through a different screen that you own. This is known as two factor authentication and great way to put in another loop to make sure others are kept out. Not every platform offers it and it could potentially mean that you might end up locking yourself out. For instance, if my online bank uses a text message with a code that I need to enter on to the platform, I could have changed/lost my phone number and not updated it for the bank. This means I have to go into the branch to prove my identity and provide new details. Another case could be Hotmail using Gmail to verify that’s it’s actually me IRL, but I might have forgotten my Gmail password too because it wasn’t my primary email. This will be quite difficult to correct because I can’t show up to Google HQ to prove it’s still my account.

8. Install that update: Yes, update your application or software. New patches/updates sometimes happen because they’ve found a weakness in the software, like the recent Whatsapp and Facetime bugs. Updates are rolled out to implement new software that gets rid of any backdoors that hackers can use to get in.

9. IRL: Yes, keep a note in the real world with your password(s). It’s like writing a diary so similar rules apply. Ideally, don’t give it the heading of ‘these are my passwords, keep out’, don’t stick them next to the device and don’t indicate which platform those passwords are for. It could be as simple as what appears to be a shopping list under your spice jars.

Resetting passwords is annoying but you’re better off doing it now than later.

—originally posted at https://neeshekhan.wordpress.com/

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My Journey to a PhD

Post by Abigail Fowler (2016 Cohort)


STEM “My Journey to a PhD” Talk, February 2019

I joined a Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) event at Loughborough Grammar School. I was happy to join in when I heard they were running STEM events for secondary school boys and girls. On a rather wet and windy day, I headed to the event hoping the pupils would enjoy my talk and have some interesting questions.

My talk covered My Journey to a PhD, my research, and a memory game to demonstrate working memory. The game involved seeing an image of items from around the home and kitchen for 10 seconds. Then having 10 seconds to write down as many items as they could remember. I took the items with me as a tactile version in case any blind or partially sighted pupils attended. Somewhat ironically I forgot to boil an egg to take with me to match the image, but improvised with an egg cup for the tactile version.

The talk went really well and the pupils loved the memory test. No one got all 14 items, and they all sighed when I put the image back up so they could see what they’d missed. The second test involved spotting what was missing from an image, and they all answered the moment the slide appeared. It was a simple but effective demonstration of how our ability to remember varies between tasks and this should be considered in design. I am glad I included a practical element as it is always great to get more interaction. The group had been hesitant to ask questions, so it was good to give them permission to get involved at the end of the talk.

My PhD is sponsored by the rail industry. It turned out that Network Rail provide funding for a STEM challenge. Pupils were eager to hear how they could work on projects of interest to Network Rail. I suggested they consider level crossings, and how to influence the behaviour of level crossing users, as this is an area of great interest to the rail industry.

During the day I got to hear some of the current ideas students had for their own STEM projects. These included how to detect when someone is having an allergic reaction to food and designing a water filtration system to provide drinking water. I was really impressed with the range of projects and their innovation.

I talked to the teacher afterwards, and they will be coordinating STEM events in the future across the region to raise awareness with pupils of opportunities and future careers in STEM. I welcome this programme, and the links that can be built between schools and universities to support pupils in their further education of STEM subjects.

—Originally posted at

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Survival Guide to starting your PhD

Post by Neeshé Khan (2018 Cohort)

I recently came back to university – almost ten years after I graduated. I decided to do a PhD. My jobs have been at prestigious companies with dynamic and intense environments, allowing me to be empowered and thrive at what I do. I decided to let go of lucrative pay and forge something for myself. I set out seeing the PhD as a stepping stone to get me to where I want to be. Of course, I didn’t expect this experience to be a breeze. I’m still fairly new, having just entered my second semester, but here are my top survival tips that might help you going through something similar.

  1. Manage your money – If you come from a working life, salary and money is more of a constant. Cycles that keep replenishing themselves, especially if you’re good at managing it. I am fortunate to get a stipend in the UK but it it’s a drastic difference to my usual monthly pay checks. It’s more important now than ever to stay on top of your finances as this might end up being a long journey if you decide to see if through to the end.
  2. Rely on your support networks – I have been doing this, a. lot. I ended up relocating and this means that I’ve ended up relying a lot more on my existing support networks for emotional support. Feel secure enough to say what you’re feeling without having to put on a brave face. A lot of insights can come out of frank, candid discussions and you might be surprised by some useful nuggets of advise that come your way.
  3. Forge new relationships – go out with your cohort! Life is extremely hectic in a new city, a new environment and doing new things all at once, I know. But don’t use that as an excuse to bail out of socials. It’s really helped me to form close relationships with some of my peers (many of whom are much younger) and even when talking doesn’t help (which for me does not work btw!), just having someone beside you, or having a short conversation with someone who’s company you enjoy or a lecturer, can go a long way to brighten your day and raise your sprit.
  4. Structure your days – I recently had a coaching session with a brilliant person and discovered that some of the source of my feelings came from a lack of structure during my evenings. While I’m good at structuring my day and prioritising, thanks to my work experience, I’ve been rather bad at structuring my evenings. I hadn’t noticed this at all. While it’s okay to put in a little extra as your learning the ropes, it’s also important to have structured evening and to keep yourself engaged in activities you did as part of your working life. So, go to the gym, go out for a meal (a table of one is just fine by me!), go to the theatre or have a karaoke night. But do something that keeps that structure for you.
  5. Reflect, re-evaluate and hang in there – This is a big one. I am quite introspective but it’s important to do little mental checks to see if your project is going in the direction (vaguely at least) that you set out when starting out with the PhD. Your dream can have different versions, sure, but the dream should still be there. If things are aligned, try to hang in there. Everything can seem hard at first but it gets easier.

I broke away from my usual topic pieces but I hope this is useful if anyone is going through something similar, within academia or not. It’s also good for me to have this to reflect back on in a few month’s time.

 

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The Moment – a movie you control with your mind

Post by Richard Ramchurn (2015 Cohort)

In October 2017 I set out to direct my second brain controlled film. For the previous two years I have been doing a PhD in brain controlled cinema, which has consisted of taught courses, ‘performance led research in the wild’ studies, a bit of my own practice and a lot of reading. The PhD has given me the time and resources to study and analyse how people came to interact with my first film The Disadvantages of Time Travel, and to read up on passive theories of control amongst other topics relevant to my field. All this has informed my practice and when it came to returning to the director’s chair it was with the foundation of that work. The process of making my second film The MOMENT required me to dedicate all of my time and resources to it, and being able to officially pause my PhD during that time was invaluable. The production was gruelling. For at least a month I worked 7 days a week on no more than 4 hours sleep a night. After the shoot a lot of the crew, the producer and myself went into a kind of freefall and took a few days to return to a semblance of our previous selves. The MOMENT is the largest project where I have been at  the helm, it had a crew of 28, and 9 professional actors and we worked to a budget of £54k.

Behind the scenes

I kept detailed notes as I went along, throughout all of production, which will be helpful when it comes to writing up the practice side of the thesis. Screenings of The MOMENT have been used to collect ‘in the wild’ data form the public focusing on their interaction with the brain controlled film. However the film itself has its own touring life and a sustainable tour is currently being planned throughout 2019.

Making of the MOMENT on Vimeo

A project of this scale needs a team behind it. It is worth mentioning that I have the privilege of having an excellent and engaged supervision team who have supported the process, and my producer and partner who have made the practicalities of this project possible. I also found additional partnerships in industry with Live Cinema UK who helped with exhibition and engagement with widespread cultural organisations.

Lessons learnt summary –

  • Make sure you have adequate budget and time.
  • Time spent planning is never wasted.
  • Pool your resources, work with people you trust and if possible have history.
  • An army marches on its stomach, keep your crew fed and watered.
  • Find all the support you can from within and outside the PhD structure.
  • Continue to make friends with organisations.
  • Engage with the press.
  • Talk about your work whenever you can.
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FINISHING UP AT CAMBRIDGE

Post by Kate Green (2016 Cohort)

So the Michaelmas term at Cambridge has come to an end which means that I have finished my 3 month internship with the Trust and Technology Initiative.

A lot has happened over the course of three months and I would like to take this time to reflect on some highlights:

The Trust and Technology Initiative Launch; I helped cover the photography of the event as well as presenting my research.

 

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MCCRC Symposium – organised by my colleagues, this symposium and workshop provided me with some insight into the legal side of privacy.

Value in Personal Data workshop at the Digital Catapult – I attended a brunch workshop that explored putting a monetary value on personal data.

Misinfocon – as part of Mozfest’s programme this conference explored minsinformation in today’s society. This was particularly interesting from a public health perspective and the impact of misinformation on epidemics. I wrote some reflections for the Initiative’s blog.

Hannah Fry talk – I attended Hannah’s talk on her recent book on algorithms.

 

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USB-C talk from Google – this was a little too technical for me, but it was interesting to learn about the challenges of USB-C in laptop design.

Lunchtime talk with Prof Simon Schaffer – who talked about Babbage who didn’t invent the computer, but in fact replaced them…

Aside from different events, I met lots of new people from different areas from sociology to law, to computer science, to psychology.

I think this was a good time for me to take three months away from my PhD and explore different (but not unrelated) areas. It’s given me some perspective and a sense of where my PhD fits in the wider context.

In terms of work, I first of all started to explore the personal data downloads from social media platforms. I looked at the ease of access, the file types and device compatibility. I was interested to see how personal data downloads might be useful for social media users who participate in online health communities.

While this area was interesting, I wanted to make sure that the internship had a tangible outcome that could be useful for my PhD. I began to explore my interview data from my first study and specifically focused on a question I asked around ‘trust’. I had not analysed this part of the study because I was unsure of its relevance and usefulness, however, whilst at the Trust and Tech Initiative I felt like this was an opportune moment to explore it. I am hoping to write the findings up more formally and submit it to a conference proceedings in 2019.

When I shared the findings with my colleagues at the Initiative and it was felt that my exploration of trust through a transdisciplinary lens could serve as a useful resource for others entering the conversation. I have been writing up a report that uncovers one approach to talk about trust in technology and I use online health communities as an example case study. Once it has all been tidied up and formatted into a well-designed document it will be published by the Initiative.

Overall I feel that the internship was a positive experience; however, I am looking forward to focusing back on my PhD. The break was welcomed and now I feel it’s done its purpose. 🙂

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From Nottingham to the shores of Lake Victoria

Post by Gregor Engelmann (2014 Cohort)

The best ideas often don’t emerge from a single person – they are often the result of collaborative innovation. Hackathons bring together like-minded people who bring together different skills, tools, equipment, and experiences to celebrate creativity, innovation, and technology.

I have recently returned from ExHack, a student hackathon held at the University of Exeter. Over the last 4 years, I have supported more than 45 Hackathons throughout Europe and North America through my work with Major League Hacking before joining the World Bank Group on a short-term engagement to support the Lake Victoria Challenge.

Hackathons – What are they?


Hackathons are collaborative programming competitions run over a short period of time (usually 24 to 36 hours). During the event, attendees are encouraged to work in small teams to turn tech-related ideas into prototypes before pitching their projects to judges for a chance to win amazing prizes. Beyond the material goal of winning prizes, Hackathons are about a culture of building, learning, and sharing. They provide attendees with a holistic view of everything that goes into working as a team and implementing an idea from scratch.

While I participated in Hackathons as an attendee during the time I worked on my MSc in Human Geography, I have since focussed more on the learning and sharing aspect of hackathon culture. Working with Major League Hacking, the official Student Hackathon League, I have traveled to over 45 Hackathons to empower, support, and mentor Hackathon organizers and participants over the last 4 years.

During the events, I routinely run workshops and help attendees brainstorm ideas for their projects and debug their project code. My engagement is often in the form of informal mentorship – Hackathons are not about reinventing the wheel. Instead, it is about sharing what myself and others have learned, what worked and what didn’t and getting folks to try out new technologies.

Hackathons are also great spaces for networking. The events are frequently organized by students and supported by a myriad of (tech) companies from local start-ups and initiatives such as the Digital Economy Network to global players such as Google, AWS or Dell. Through my work with Hackathons and my Ph.D. research focussing on the role of novel data sources in informing Urban and Transport planning in Tanzania, I have been offered the opportunity to be involved in organizing the first Lake Victoria Challenge in Tanzania.

Lake Victoria Challenge

The shores of Lake Victoria are home to over 30 million people, making it one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Delivering vital health supplies and other urgent goods is often challenging due to rugged terrain, the remoteness of island communities and limited road networks. Novel technologies such as cargo drones have huge potential to alleviate some of the supply chain burdens faced by communities and businesses in the region.

Over 280 attendees from 23 countries traveled to Mwanza, Tanzania on the shores of Lake Victoria for a three-day conference and flying competition in October 2018.

The conference brought together domain experts from health, technology, transport, and regulation to discuss the transformative opportunities of commercial drone technologies for the Lake Victoria region specifically and other regions more generally. The event focussed on three areas:

1. Technology: discussing the latest development in drone technologies and application,
2. Regulation: integrating regulatory frameworks for integrating drones into civil airspace, and
3. Architecture: envisioning the form and function of Droneports, which are the hub for commercial drone operations

During the conference I had the opportunity to present some of the research outputs of the N-Lab’s Z-Roads project, using surveying drones and machine learning for low volume road condition analysis, as part of the LVC technology track in addition to being involved in the organisation of the event.

Below is a highlights video of the event:

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Summer Scientist

Each year children and parents are invited to visit the University and play lots of free and fun games that help us with research. This past summer, Wendy Olphert (2015 cohort) enjoyed assisting in one of the activities at Summer Scientist 2018:

A bit of brainwave! –Wendy Olphert

I’m researching the role that digital technologies (such as mobile phones and the internet) play in the lives of people with a brain tumour – whether their symptoms create challenges for technology use, and whether using technologies can contribute to improving their quality of life.

At one level, this is quite an easy idea to communicate to people outside of an academic context – we readily understand that if we have a problem with our brain it could affect our ability to think or act – but to appreciate the range of impacts that a brain tumour could have on an individual’s life requires an awareness of what our brains do and how they work.  The brain is such a complex organ that scientists are still researching these questions.  But we already know a lot, and as I recently found out, even for young children it can be fun as well as instructive to learn about how brains work!

Over the summer I had a chance to assist in an event called Summer Scientist 2018.

This is a week-long programme run by the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham in the school vacation that has now run for several years.  Families are invited to bring their children (aged 4-11) to spend half a day at the University to play lots of free fun games and optionally to take part in some research activities – that were also designed to be fun and engaging. By taking part, children (and parents) get to learn about how the mind and brain work by experiencing real science first-hand.

University of Nottingham Psychology Science week. Photos by Alex WIlkinson of Alex Wilkinson Photography.

I was given responsibility for an activity on the theme of electroencephalography – how dull does that sound for young kids?!  But the organisers had found a clever and entertaining way to demonstrate the fact that the brain generates electrical impulses, using a special headset with a pair of furry (fake!) cat’s ears attached (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurowear). The headset picks up electrical activity from the brain which in turn moves the ears depending on your state of mind. When you are relaxed, the ears droop; when you are interested, the ears are alert – and when you are ‘in the zone’ the ears wiggle.  The kids had free choice over the activities they chose to take part in, and most were fascinated by the wiggly ‘cats ears’ and keen to try them out for themselves.

The children attending had a free choice over the activities they opted to do, and during the course of the two sessions in the day around 40 children of different ages came to the stand to try out the ears and, by doing so, learned about electrical impulses in the brain.  There was a mirror to look in; once I’d attached their headset, some found out that the more they giggled at their reflection the more the ears wiggled (and the more the ears wiggled, the more they laughed!) Others, especially one little boy of about 6, spent many minutes silently trying out different ‘brain activities’ such as thinking about exciting times such as parties, being calm, or trying to count backwards from 20, and clearly being intrigued to see the effects of his ‘brainwaves’ on the ears’ movement.

For the older children, and in some cases their parents, I explained how scientists can use the electrical impulses in the brain to find out more about how it works and what is happening when the brain is not working as it should – and that in turn gave me a chance to tell some of them about the research that I am doing.

I really enjoyed the day and it was clear that the kids had a great time too, as well as picking up lots of science along the way.  I felt that the whole concept of ‘Summer Scientist’ week really was a bit of a brainwave!