MSc Software Engineering: Dissertation
Supervisors and Project Ideas
2007-08
Stewart Green
1. Introduction
You will undertake an MSc Dissertation between June 2008 and November 2008 or May 2009. The details of the Dissertation are included in the Module Handbook. You should start now (September 2007) to try to identify your Dissertation project and Supervisor. This handout should helpyou, but you should also refer to the handout “Finding a Research Problem and Additional Guidance”.
There are a number of ways that you can identify a Dissertation project and a Supervisor
- You may approach one of the Supervisors in the lists (MSc Software Engineering Dissertation: Supervisors, below) with your own ideas. Together you may agree a project idea.
- You may submit a proposal directly to the MSc Software Engineering Dissertation module leader, who will discuss it with you and, if it is acceptable, allocate you a supervisor or direct you to suitable members of staff to talk to.
NB: To contact a potential supervisor, you should send an e-mail to the member of staff requesting an appointment, indicating times when you could be available.
3. MSc Software Engineering Dissertation: Supervisors
The staff listed below within the School of Computer Sciencehave been scheduled to act as Supervisors for students engaged on the MSc Software Engineering Dissertation (from June to November 2008 or May 2009). I have included the key areas of interest of these potential supervisors.
Stewart Green
Interests: Requirements engineering; modelling organizational processes; supporting organisational processes with computer-based systems; Business Process Modelling for Web Services; BPMN and BPEL
Nigel Baker &
Interests:
GENERAL: Distributed Systems, mobile communications, computer networks.
SPECIFIC: Wireless Network Optimisation, Network Simulation, OPNET, 3G
Multicast Broadcast Services, IP Multicast, Security.
Chris Simons3P21 (later 2P32)
Interests: Software design, metrics, evolutionary computing, genetic algorithms
Jin Sa
Interests: mobile processes;formal methods; swarm robotics
John Jabroo
Interests: software engineering; software design; Java
Mohammed Odeh
Please see the Software Engineering Research Group (SERG) page:
Interests include:
service-oriented software engineering, and in particular processes related to requirements engineering and service oriented modeling (including web services and SOAs)
Bridging the gap between business processes and systems with particular interests in business process modeling languages (RADs, UML-related, BPMN, BPEL, etc.) and business process architectures.
Ontology-driven requirements engineering, OntoREM.
Algorithms/tools for Software Cost Estimation.
4. Other Staff
Other members of staff who may be worth contactingby email with a view to discussing possible dissertations include the following:
Peter Hale ()
Areas of interest: the semantic web & e-learning; visualization; end-user programming; modeling; ontologies & taxonomies; e-science; web 2.0
Toby O’Hara ( or )
My areas of interest:
Audit and security
Rule based systems or adaptive systems
How Agile methodologies interface with requirements engineering, configuration management and project management
Metrics, especially code analysis e.g. Halstead.
Tools especially for things like release management and to a lesser extent configuration management.
Finally test script generators (RTTS) which are used in automated testing and stress testing.
Professor Alan Winfield ()
I’m happy to be approached for projects in the area of robotics, especially swarm robotics.
Students can look at my home page to get an understanding of my research interests.
I also have a specific topic for a research project that would suit a good MSc software engineering student. The project would be to implement, demonstrate and evaluate a robotics interface protocol (called the Common Interface Protocol or CIP), within the open source multi-robot simulator package Player/Stage. The project would suit someone familiar with Linux, with in interest in robotics and simulation.
Professor Ian Parmee ()
Professor Parmee is happy to supervise dissertation projects in the following area:
User-centric intelligent systems in design and decision support
John Betts ():
Chris Wallace ()
Praminda Caleb-Solly ()
Praminda would be happy to supervise dissertation projects in the following areas:
- Information visualisation
- Interactive evolutionary computation
- Computer-aided learning
Frank Maddix ()
Frank would be interested in supervising dissertations in the following areas:
-Portable computing solutions (PDAs, smartphones etc.)
-Local wireless networks
-User interface engineering on PDAs
-Through the web solutions
-Ubiquitous computing
-uPNP solutions
Dave Wyatt ()
My research interests include Evolutionary Computation (GA, GP, ES, LCS), Machine Learning (NN) and Artificial Life. In particular, my PhD applied an LCS system to an iterative Data mining task. However, my current interests are centred around the study of Language Evolution by means of multi-agent systems and any subsequent Emergent properties of these interactions. There are many interesting studies that could be replicated and perhaps even extended beyond the original definition at BSc or MSc level. Many have used Neural Networks, I would like to apply Evolutionary methods to the study and would be interested in any students who are would like to apply AI techniques to this interesting field of study.
Project Area: Java applications using Mindstorms Robots.
Supervisor:
I can supervise students who wish to develop applications using Java API on a
microcomputer (Hitachi 8300 series – known as the RCX microcomputer or just “the
brick”!). This comes as part of the Lego Mindstorms kit – a Technic lego set with >
700 pieces including cogs, wheels etc. The “brick” has 3 motor outputs and 3 sensor
inputs. See:
Lego Mindstorms
Maplin Mindstorm
The main aim here is to build programmable robots to perform a variety of tasks using
a reduced Java API including image processing, speech synthesis etc. This Java VM
is a cut down version of the full JVM but still includes many “standard” classes – and
includes threading. See:
There are a few books already on Mindstorms/LeJos
I have built a couple of simple robots that I have downloaded the Java VM
onto – and loaded some simple programs. Simon Ritter at Sun Microsystem has
developed Java classes for the Lego "brick" (the micro-processor with
Mindstorms) to use Speech Synthesis and Image processing (using a web
cam) - he is very keen on developing this software and will probably come to
talk to us next year.
n2.pdf
ter.html
There is information available to build many sensors for these robots (e.g.
compass, temperature). They can throw a ball and catch it, distinguish
colours, etc.etc. - many possibilities ... I can demo the little I have done
so far.
I would welcome a few java coders (or potential coders) for
projects developing these microcomputer java controlled robots - exploring
newer areas of the java API hopefully.
Proposer: Craig Duffy ()
My proposals are all in the gnu/linux operating systems porting area.
They are for students who are interested in low level operating system
and hardware programming for single board computers - ARM and 68000.
The OS is mainly Linux although they could also try RTEMS and ECOS.
The work requires strong linux/gnu/os skills, programming skills in C and
Assembler and good architecture knowledge.
Proposer: Chandrika Lakhani (chandrika.lakhani.uwe.ac.uk)
Projects in the following areas:
Software Design, particularly UML based projects
OO technologies, particularly OO database related projects
Teaching and Learning aids
Proposer: Dr Melvyn Smith ()
Dr Smith always has a variety of projects in the area of machine vision. Please e-mail Dr Smith to make an appointment to visit him in his research laboratory to discuss possible projects.