Time: 3:00 - 4:00pm Speaker: Prof. Kaspar Althoefer and Prof. Trevor GrahamVenue: Francis Bancroft building, Room 2.40
The next colloquium The Institute of Applied Data Sciences will include two short talks from Turing Fellows, to be given by Profs. Kaspar Althoefer (School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science/School of Engineering and Material Science) and Trevor Graham (Barts Cancer Institute).
Talk 1: Title: Soft Robots Interacting with the World Speaker: Prof. Kaspar Althoefer Abstract: Over the last decade, there has been a renaissance in soft material robotics reviving and extending from early attempts in the 1980s and 90s, with current research interest in this area skyrocketing. Numerous roboticists worldwide have studied the field and making considerable progress, with flexible, continuum and soft robots emerging. Many researchers take inspiration from biology to create flexible and dexterous structures that can operate in complex environment. Because of their compliance, robots made from soft materials are considered much safer than their rigid component counterparts and can achieve high levels of safety just because of their material composition and without relying on complex code executing correctly. There is general consensus that pneumatically or hydraulically actuated robot arms made from soft materials have low computational requirements concerning the computation of the interaction forces when in contact with their environment. Soft robotics has been applied in a wide range of fields, including surgery, rehabilitation, domestic and manufacturing. In my talk, I will report on the work on soft and compliant robots conducted in our group. I will also highlight the need for force and tactile sensing to be integrated with such robots towards the creation of improved perception of robots physically interacting with their environment including humans. Talk 2: Title: Data Science of Cancer Genomes
Speaker: Prof. Trevor Graham (Barts Cancer Institute)
Abstract: Cancer genome sequencing is set to become routine across the NHS, with the intention that these “Big Data" will transform patient care. Clear clinical benefits can already be leveraged from genomic data, but it is increasingly evident that there is much more information encoded in the cancer genome than is currently extracted, and that this additional information has clinical value. In the colloquia, I will discuss our mathematically-led approaches for mining cancer genomic data. We find that the cancer genome is a remarkably rich record of the evolutionary dynamics of cancer development: in other words we are able to extract temporal data from measurements at a single point in time.