Zoomposium 10: 28 October 2020
Published: 28 October 2020
Dr BERNHARD SCHMIDT: 'Polymer Chemistry in Aqueous Environment and Polymer Hybrid Materials' Dr MIZA MOREAU: 'From paricular to general: social and environmental prospects of small-scale appropriation of urban space' Dr OANA ANDREI: 'Temporal Usage Analytics for Interactive Systems'
Watch Zoomposium 10 (password &^13w58E)
Speakers:
Dr Bernhard Schmidt, School of Chemistry
'Polymer Chemistry in Aqueous Environment and Polymer Hybrid Materials'
Polymers play an important role in everyday life with applications ranging from consumer plastics to biomedical technology. Research in polymer chemistry is relying increasingly on interdisciplinary collaborations to generate impact and address societal relevant applications. In the Schmidt group, various directions are investigated. On one hand, water-soluble polymers are investigated for phase separation behavior in aqueous environment with the target of biomedical applications. On the other hand, polymer hybrid materials are fabricated to combine the favorable processing properties of polymers with inorganic materials such as metal-organic frameworks and carbon nitride. These inorganic materials introduce new features like defined porosity or photocatalytic properties to polymers.
I am looking for collaborators, who are interested in polymer materials or need tailor made polymers for their applications.
Dr Miza Moreau, School of Geographical and Earth Sciences
'From particular to general: social and environmental prospects of small-scale appropriations of urban space'
Ambitious plans are being proposed to turn sidewalks into gardens and streets into bike highways to create more socially and environmentally just post-Covid cities. These (and other) changes to the public realm should be made with a contextual understanding of physical space, activity patterns, and social implications. Studying urban form (morphology) in relation to how people appropriate space reveals unknown activities, needs, and possibilities for that space. In my research on residential laneways, I have combined morphological analysis with ethnographic observations to examine under what conditions individual laneways were appropriated into valuable common spaces. Identifying like conditions in other parts of the laneway network reveals possibilities for large scale changes.
Dr Oana Andrei, School of Computing Science
'Temporal Usage Analytics for Interactive Systems'
I am a Lecturer in the School of Computing Science and the Centre for Computing Science Education. My research expertise is in modelling complex systems as abstract mathematical entities amenable to a rigorous analysis of their properties. Currently my work focusses on data-driven formal methods for interactive systems: I am developing temporal usage analytics based on inferring software usage models from user-generated time-series and then characterising these models using probabilistic temporal logic properties and behavioural distances.
I am looking to collaborate with mathematicians to identify different types of probabilistic models useful to model an interactive system’s usage and with people who are interested in characterising and predicting usage behaviours from data streams. I have developed a recent interest in computational social science, human-computer interactions, human-robot interactions, and sensor systems.
First published: 28 October 2020