Top highlights from the iSchool Conference 2019

Now the dust has cleared from the 2019 iSchool Conference, we’ve had a break and come up with some interesting findings from the presentations at the event.

The conference boasted a wide range of disciplines that PhD students from the iSchool are researching. The day kicked off purely with quantitative research, followed by mixed methods methodologies and ending with some thought-provoking qualitative research presentations. Here are our top highlights:

Recommendation Systems in Drug Design

The morning began with the first presentation by Gianmarco Ghiandoni, a 3rd year PhD student in the Cheminformatics research group. The study looks at De Novo design, a branch of cheminformatics dealing with the design of molecular structures. Gianmarco adapted  methods that are widely applied for recommendation purposes on human data - for example by companies such as Google, Amazon, or Netflix - to the computational drug design processes, where chemical and biological data are mainly used to drive decision making. Results are very encouraging since the designed compounds resulted to be easier to be synthesized and the speed of the design algorithm increased significantly.

Data Visualisation for lead optimisation

Jess Stacey from the Cheminformatics research group presented research on the work undertaken in her PhD. She presented the first section of her thesis that involves generating a new visualisation for chemical structures in a hope that better relationships can be extracted. The workflow and decisions made to create this were shown along with a video demo of the visualisation tool.

Knowledge transfer from the perspective of a “Quadruple Helix”:  The banking sector in Bahrain 

Another highlight of the day was the presentation by Hooreya Ali, 2nd year PhD student from Information, Knowledge and Innovation Management research group. Hooreya presented her work on exploring the interactions involving key “Quadruple helix” actors in the banking sector in Bahrain, and the role intermediaries take in mediating power asymmetry.

An investigation of the role of social media in Saudi students’ transition to study in the UK

The number of international students around the world has significantly increased and it is expected to reach eight million by 2025. During their transition period, international students face various challenges, such as loneliness, anxiety and depression. In this study, Anas Alsuhaibani, a 1st year PhD student from Digital Societies research group, showed how social media helps students maintain their wellbeing and provide international students with necessary information.

The Use of Social Media for Sousveillance: A Palestinian Case Study

Jenny Hayes, a 1st year PhD student from the Digital Societies research group presented her research on the investigation into Palestinian activists’ use of sousveillance on social media as a means for countering state surveillance and official narratives and providing evidence of human rights abuses. Jenny works on a new perspective on how social media can be used for sousveillance by examining its use in one of the most extreme surveillant societies.

Informal Caregivers perceptions of Assistive Technologies of people with dementia

In this project, Liliana Sepulveda from the Information Systems research group (who is in her writing-up year), reveals the lived experiences of informal caregivers of people with dementia who use Assistive Technologies (AT) as part of their caring role in Mexico. Liliana’s findings suggest that Mexican cultural values influence how carers perceive their experience with technology. The study provides detailed user profiles for future designers and developers of dementia-related AT.

Mapping and Aligning Large Knowledge Bases 

Another great highlight was the presentation by Omaima Fallatah, 1st year Information Retrieval research group student. Omaima focused on the introduction of a novel ontology matching approach targeted towards large, automatically constructed, inadequately structured and multi-domain Knowledge Bases.

The quantified runner: digital understanding, memory and identity in leisure

This session done by Lee Pretlove, first year PhD student from Digital Societies Research group, explored understanding the value of self-tracking data amongst participants of a UK running community. Lee’s study investigates whether the data will be of use both in the short term and the long term and whether participants have any particular attachment to the data.

After such a fun, thought-provoking and information-filled event, the votes were counted and the award for best presentation went to Liliana Garcia for her work on the use of Assistive Technologies by Informal Caregivers. Though it should be noted that all presentations were the best in their own way. Congratulations and thanks to everyone who took the time to submit their abstracts and put together a presentation that made the event a great one.

We look forward to next year’s conference.

Naveendra Weerakoon and Marc Bonne (iSchool Conference Committee)


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