Major Grants and Funding
Deep Discoveries: Towards a National Collection (TANC)
AHRC (2019-2021). £534k. Co-Investigator (CI).
Deep discoveries was a 2 year AHRC funded cross-disciplinary project exploring the potential for creative visual search technologies to create a virtual national collection, at a time that the global pandemic accelerated digital transformation of the UK's cultural heritage institutions. We partnered with the V&A museum, the National Archives, the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh and many other commercial and smaller archive partners to create decentralized search platforms for discovering cultural hertigage content.
DECaDE: Centre for the Decentralized Digital Economy
EPSRC (2020-). £10M. Principal Investigator (PI).
DECaDE is a 5 year programmatic investment by the EPSRC exploring the potential of AI and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) (aka Blockchain) to transform our digital economy. It is a virtual research centre comprising multiple centres across difference disciplines from AI, to Cyber-Security, to Business, to Law and over 30 commercial partners. Please check the DECaDE centre website for much more information.
ARCHANGEL: Trusted Archives of Digital Public Records
EPSRC (2017-2019). £487k. Principal Investigator (PI).
The aim of ARCHANGEL is to ensure the long-term sustainability of digital archives though new machine learning (ML) distributed ledger technology (DLT) to create a plaform that ensures integrity of archive content, whilst maximising its impact through novel business models for commodification and open access e.g. via smart contracts on the DLT platform. Project partners: The National Archives (UK), Tim Berners-Lee's Open Data Institute, Guardtime LLC.
TAPESTRY: Trust Authentication and Privacy over a Decentralised Social Registry
EPSRC (2016-2019). £1.06m. Principal Investigator (PI).
TAPESTRY explores deep learning and distributed ledger technology (DLT) to develop novel mechanisms for secure identity assurance online. TAPESTRY will de-risk the UK Digital Economy by enabling people, businesses and services to connect safely online via trusted interactions. Project partners: University of Surrey (CVSSP and Centre for Cyber-Security), University of Dundee, Northumbria University. TAPESTRY Project website
Co-operative Models for Evidence-based Healthcare Redistribution (CoMEHeRe)
EPSRC (2017-2019). £420k. Technical Lead, Co-Investigator (CoI).
CoMEHeRe aims to transform personal healthcare for the benefit of individuals through the use and management of biometric information created by wearable devices. To do this it will combine data from an individual's wearables with DLT (blockchains) and machine learning to securely store and access data to enable the individual to share and benefit from their generated information. Sharing will be with state and private healthcare providers to enable more targeted, personalised patterns of treatment. Other benefits may arise from the individual participating materially in new markets created through the monetisation of this data. Project partners: BioBeats, AXA/PPP, Guardtime LLC.
TOTAL CAPTURE for Real-time Animation
InnovateUK (2016-2018). £0.7m. Surrey Principal Investigator (Surrey-PI).
TOTAL CAPTURE will develop new rapidly configurable/deployable performance capture technologies for the movie industry. Project partners: University of Surrey (CVSSP), The Imaginarium Studios, Numerion.
Charting the Digital Lifespan (CDL)
EPSRC (2013-2016). £893k. Surrey Principal Investigator (Surrey-PI).
CDL sought to improve digital literacy through novel technologies that enable users to reflect upon their use of social media. Novel technologies for sense making (e.g. content classification) were developed using deep learning over crowd-annotated Facebook content. Project partners: University of Dundee, University of Surrey (CVSSP), Newcastle University, Notting University. CDL Project website
REFRAME: Location Performance Capture for Real-Time Enriched Media
InnovateUK (2014-2016). £1.22m. Co-Investigator (CoI).
REFRAME is developing new video based performance capture (motion capture) technologies for use in the movie and broadcast sectors. Project partners: University of Surrey (CVSSP), BBC, The Imaginarium Studios, Imagineer Systems (BostonFX). REFRAME Project website
RE@CT: Immersive Projection and Delivery of Interactive 3D Content
European Commission FP7 (2013-2015). €4.6m. Co-Investigator (CoI).
RE@CT developed technology for building interactive animatable characters from multiple view-point video and performance capture. The work resulted in several publications including at SIGGRAPH (2015) and Eurographics (2014). Project partners: University of Surrey (CVSSP), Vicon, BBC, INRIA (Grenoble), Fraunhoffer HHI, Artefacto. RE@CT Project website
ACTION-TV: User InterACTION Aware Content Generation and Distribution for Next Generation Social TeleVision
European Commission FP7 (2014-2016). €4.05m. Co-Investigator (CoI).
ACTION-TV explores new forms of interactive television through virtual embedding of audiences within TV broadcast content enabling novel social experiences. Project partners: University of Surrey (CVSSP), Disney R&D Zurich, Fraunhoffer HHI, and others. ACTION-TV Project website
Digital Dance Archives (DDA)
AHRC (2010-2012). £429k. Co-Investigator (CoI).
DDA developed novel visual search technology to search over 100 years of archival dance footage (image and video) within the National Resource Centre for Dance (NRCD) archives. Project partners: University of Surrey (CVSSP and Department of Dance, Film and Theatre), NRCD, Coventry University. Digital Dance Archives website
iTrace (aka Spot The Difference!)
JISC (2011-2012). £45k. Surrey Principal Investigator (Surrey-PI).
iTrace was a prototype cloud based tool for large-scale visual search. It was applied to detect visual plagiarism in art student coursework, in a similar vein to text based plagiarism detection using in TurnItIn. The system was trialed at 4 higher educational institutions. Project partners: University of Surrey (CVSSP), University of the Creative Arts (UCA, Farnham), Visual Arts Data Services (VADS). iTrace Project website
Reverse Storyboarding for Sketch based Video Retrieval
EPSRC First Grant (2006-2008). £120k. Principal Investigator (PI).
This EPSRC first grant (aka New Investigator Award) explored the use of sketches to search large video datasets and kick started my subsequent research into sketch based visual search. Project partners: None.