Dr. Subramanian Ramamoorthy (Ram)

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Subramanian Ramamoorthy will be joining the School as a Lecturer, in September this year.

Ram comes to us from the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin, where he recently obtained his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering, under the supervision of Prof. Benjamin Kuipers. Previously, he graduated with an ME degree from the University of Virginia in 1999, and a BE from Bangalore University in 1996.

From 1999 to 2007, Ram was a member of the research and development team at National Instruments Corp. in Austin, Texas, working in the areas of computer vision, motion control and dynamic simulation.

He is primarily interested in the use of intelligent computing and machine learning to solve problems involving complex dynamical systems. He has made contributions to robotics and autonomous agent design. He is also interested in using similar techniques to address questions involving integrative and systems approaches to biology.

Welcome to Peggy Seriès

Peggy Seriès joins Informatics this month as a lecturer, working in our Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation.

Peggy started her higher education with a degree in Engineering from the Institut Supérieur d'Électronique de Paris (ISEP) and an MSc degree in Knowledge Based Systems from the University of Sussex in 1996. In 2002, she received a PhD in Computational Neuroscience from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris). Her PhD was supervised by Dr Y. Fregnac and Dr J. Lorenceau.

She has held postdoctoral positions at the University of Rochester (NY, USA) with Prof. A. Pouget, and at the Gatsby Unit (UCL, London) with Dr P. Latham. Until May next year Peggy will be spending most of her time on a fellowship at NYU, working with Prof. Eero Simoncelli, but she will be making a number of visits back to Edinburgh during this time.

Peggy's primary research aim is to understand how sensory information is encoded and transmitted in the collective activity of large populations of neurons in the brain. She is also interested in understanding how neural activity gives rise to perception and behavioral performance, and how it can be decoded by experimentalists. To investigate these questions, she employs mathematical models and simulations and focusses on the processing of visual information in the cortex.

Networking appointment - Dr. Mahesh Marina

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Mahesh Marina to a Lectureship in the School. He will be joining ICSA in November 2006.

Mahesh Marina is currently a research staff member in the UCLA Computer Science Department working with Prof. Rajive Bagrodia on the WHYNET wireless network testbed project.

Mahesh received his B.Tech. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Regional Engineering College (now National Institute of Technology), Warangal, India, in 1998; M.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1999; and his Ph.D. in Computer Science, under the guidance of Prof. Samir Das, from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 2004. His primary research interests are in the areas of networked & distributed systems with emphasis on wireless mesh, ad-hoc and sensor networks, and performance evaluation. His other research interests include algorithms, and the use of information and communication technologies for development.

Taku Komura appointed to a Lectureship

Taku Komura will join IPAB in February 2006

Taku received his received his PhD (2000), MSc (1997) and BSc (1995) in Information Science from the University of Tokyo. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at RIKEN, Japan to simulate various human motion using the musculoskeletal model.
He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Engineering and Information Technology at City University of Hong Kong.
His work spans computer graphics, robotics and biomechanics, and his interests include human motion analysis and synthesis, physically-based animation and real-time computer graphics.