CMV MVL Alumni

Professor John Henderson

Professor Henderson has been Professor and Honorary Consultant in Paediatric Respiratory Medicine at the University of Bristol since March 1995. Prior to this he was a Consultant Paediatrician at Southmead Hospital, Bristol. He has had a distinctive, extensive and accomplished medical career. Since 1981 he has been a co-applicant on funding bids with a total value in excess of £21 million.

He has an unusual combination of both a clinical and academic skill base and has achieved significant advances in various aspects of research and teaching in paediatric respiration. Professor Henderson is co-director of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), which has studied 14,000 children and their parents.

ALSPACs important findings are a premier resource in the field of child breathing and asthma. Professor Henderson has been a co-investigator on a number of collaborative CMV projects and funding bids.

Mr. Robert P. Warr

Robert Warr was a consultant plastic surgeon at Frenchay Hospital Bristol. He holds the position of honorary senior lecturer at the University of Bristol, and was a visiting senior research fellow at UWE Bristol. His primary research interest is in the application of novel cutaneous imaging modalities in medicine. His MBBS was gained from Southampton University in 1989.

One of his clinical interests is skin cancer, and at Frenchay he ran an early diagnostic service for malignant melanoma. In 2001, he was awarded a Doctorate in Medicine from the University of Bristol entitled “The Detection of Minimal Residual Disease in Malignant Melanoma Using Biological and Molecular Markers”.

Lynn Williams

Lynn has been a Registered nurse for 18 years and worked both clinically and in research and audit. Her main experience is in the field of gastroenterology where she has been a specialist nurse, ward sister, research nurse and database nurse.

She worked part time for the CMV on the PhotoDerm project recruiting, consenting and imaging participants via clinics at North Bristol NHS trust and kept the data acquired up to date and securely maintained according to relevant regulations.

Lynn works as a research nurse in the field of dementia with an honorary contract via the University of Bristol.

James Jackman

Former lecturer James Jackman received a BSc in Mathematics and Physics from the Open University in 2005, and an MSc in Astrophysics from University College London in 2007.

His PhD was from Cranfield University, where he studied infrared guided missiles to develop countermeasure techniques for aircraft. On completion of his PhD, he continued the same research as a postdoc then joined the University of Oxford in 2012. From 2013 to 2014 he worked as a Senior Lecturer at University Technology Malaysia.

James joined the CMV in January 2015 as a Lecturer in Engineering; and under took several projects in the area of machine vision. One was using a pixel-level colour constancy algorithm for use in surveillance applications. The aim was to use an illumination invariant feature to improve image segmentation for object classification. He also purchased a hyperspectral camera for use primarily in surveillance but which has many other applications, such as remote sensing of vegetation and medical diagnosis/monitoring.

David Williamson

David Williamson was a former Research Associate in 3D Computer Vision. Following a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science at the University of Leeds in 2011 David continued to a research internship in the university's Biosystems Research Group and an EPSRC-funded MSc by Research working on a computational model of the neuromuscular system in the nematode worm, C. elegans. He then worked for Silsoe Livestock Systems, Ltd as a research assistant based at the University of Stirling's Institute of Aquaculture, providing computer vision-based automated monitoring of aggressive behaviour and fin damage and carrying out field work on commercial Scottish salmon farms as part of a DEFRA-funded study.

David joined the Bristol Robotics Laboratory's Centre for Machine Vision in October 2014 to work on 3D face recognition, and was involved in several other projects and bids on surface inspection and agritech.

Jiuai Sun

Former lecturer Jiuai Sun joined the laboratory in 2003, where he commenced work on a DPhil degree which he completed in 2007. His work was based on the fundamental methodology of photometric stereo and its application to skin surface inspection.

Jiuai Sun also holds a PhD degree in Biomedical Engineering from Shanghai Jiaotong University, China. His interests are broad and include electronics, optics and computing techniques applicable to healthcare and industry.

His work at UWE mainly concerned genuine recovery methods on skin conditions for purposes ranging from dermatology to cosmetics. He left the university in 2014 to return to his native China.

Dr. Yijun Xiao

Knowledge Transfer Partnership Associate, Aralia Systems

Dr. Xiao joined the laboratory in July 2011 to work on a knowledge transfer project to extract demographic information from video and assess viewer behaviour of cinema audiences. The work was carried out jointly with Aralia Systems Ltd. Prior to this, he worked as a postdoc at the University of Glasgow, the University of Edinburgh and University College London. He obtained a PhD in Computing Science in 2006 from the University of Glasgow. His interests include computer vision, graphics, psychophysics, image processing, signal processing and machine learning.

Katy Tarrit

Former research student Katy Tarrit successfully completed a Bachelor of Physical Chemistry in 2007. She then went on to gain a Double Diploma in 2010, completing two degrees in parallel. The first Diploma was an ESTIA Engineering degree with the following options: MPA (Control of the Automated Processes) and Intensification Mechatronics (the use of image processing to control a robot). The second degree was a Master of Science in Software Techniques for Computer Aided Engineering at Cranfield University (United Kingdom), specialising in Digital Signal and Image Processing.

Then industry beckoned and Katy took up an internship with Telerad. The project involved the design of an algorithm for the detection of simultaneous transmissions during a conversation between pilot and air traffic controller. After finishing her six- month internship, Katy continued to work for the company for a further three months, adding to her two other internships done and accruing 14 months of industrial experience.

In 2011 Katy was offered a PhD studentship at the laboratory, which she duly accepted. Her area of research is concerned with 3D Scene Understanding for Visual Surveillance. The project is in collaboration with a well established security company. Katy completed in 2014.

Jahanzeb Ahmad

Former research student Jahanzeb completed his Bachelors of Science in 2005 in the field of Computer Engineering from COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT), Abbottabad Pakistan. Upon graduation, He had the opportunity to work as a research assistant at CIIT for a year, where he worked on fusion techniques for face recognition. He then moved to Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden and completed his Masters in Communication Engineering in 2009. Before moving back to Pakistan, he worked in Sweden for six months, where he developed FPGA-based JPEG graphic processing unit. In June 2009 he joined Iqra University (IU) in Karachi, Pakistan as a Lecturer. He left IU to join the laboratory in September 2010. His current research interest is in fusion of 3D/2D technologies to improve the 3D modelling of human skin and internal organs. Jahanzeb completed in 2014.

Ali Sohaib

Former research student Ali graduated from Air University Islamabad with a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering in 2006 and attended the University of Liverpool, UK where he received a Master of Science degree in Microelectronic Systems and Telecommunication in 2008. He also worked in collaboration with Proudman Oceanographic Lab during his Master’s project on real-time visualisation of oceanographic data.

At UWE Bristol he specialised in skin reflectance modeling, and his research interests included computer vision, medical imaging and analysis, 3D surface imaging and real-time vision systems. He completed in 2013 and now works as an assistant professor at COMSATS Islamabad, Pakistan.

Pilar Sepulveda

Former senior research development manager Pilar Sepulveda was Senior Research Development Manager at the laboratory between January 2010 and December 2012, where she helped to boost the lab's successful collaborative research portfolio, especially in medical applications.

Pilar received an MBA from the Warwick Business School in 2010, a PhD from the University of Nottingham in 1996 and a BEng in Materials from the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), São Paulo state, Brazil in 1992. Pilar brings a wide knowledge of the UK public funding environment gained through eight years of work at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and strong project management experience including accreditation in OGC Management of Risk (MoR®) and Managing Successful Programmes (MSP®).

Prior to this, Pilar carried out a successful portfolio of research in porous ceramics and biomaterials for bone and tissue engineering at Imperial College London, Institute of Nuclear and Energy Research/University of São Paulo (IPEN) and Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar). Pilar's research led to numerous journal and conference publications, book chapters, invited talks and a patent on foamed sol-gel glass.

Zhao Liu

Former Research Student Liu completed a BEng in Measuring Control Technology and Instrumentation at Tianjin University, China in 2006. Upon graduation, she had the opportunity to work as an assistant engineer at the China National Academy of Nanotechnology for a year, where she worked on the driving circuits of red lasers and DFB lasers. In 2007, she started her MSc in Vision and Robotics under the European Erasmus Mundus program at Heriot-Watt University UK, Universitat de Girona Spain, and Université de Bourgogne France. Liu joined the lab at UWE Bristol in 2009, and the focus her research is on computer-aided diagnosis of skin cancers. She completed in 2012.

Shahzad Anwar

Former Research Student Shahzad joined the laboratory in October 2009 as a researcher. His project is an investigation of 3D texture analysis for visual texture pattern analysis and to research into innovative machine vision techniques for capturing and analysing three-dimensional (3D) skin surface texture, in order to provide an additional indicator of the presence of skin cancer. The project started with colour (albedo) texture and plans to extend to 3D data. New photometric stereo methods will be used for capturing the 3D surface data and advanced artificial neural network techniques will be employed for pattern recognition and modelling. He has worked in image processing specifically on texture analysis for segmentation and classification. This research was to investigate a different filter and wavelet packet based feature extraction technique, both in the compressed and the uncompress domain. Shahzad's interests are in image and signal processing and renewable energy. He completed in 2012.

Scott Mandry

Former research associate Scott Mandry joined the Machine Vision Laboratory in June 2009 as a Research Associate, investigating imaging for medical applications, primarily working on the NORM Project, yielding many publications which should be available shortly. Prior to this role, Scott held a two year post as a Research Assistant in the University of Bristol Particle Physics group (2006-2008), developing and integrating a data acquisition system to test novel silicon sensors for the future International Linear Collider, in testbeams at DESY. The results of this work can be seen here in the journal NIM.

He obtained his MEng (Hons) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in 2000 (University of Bristol), a first class BSc (Hons) in Physics in 2005 (University of Bristol), and outside of academia has three and a half years experience in professional electronics design in the fields of Fibreoptics, Rail Systems, Semiconductors, and Robotics.

Scott has extensive expertise in Electronics/Software/FPGA-Firmware development, uses systems-based approaches to tackle multidisciplinary projects, and knowledge of physics to obtain precise measurements and technical analyses. He specializes in the languages of VHDL, Verilog, LabVIEW, C, and VBA.

Following his time at the MVL, Scott will be starting in September 2011 a joint PhD studentship with University College London and the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich, Germany. He will be investigating “Diagnostics for a proton-driven plasma wakefield experiment,” which is planned to take place at CERN.

Raphael Wedowski

Former Research Student Raphael started his studies at the Baden Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University Mannheim, Germany and graduated with a first class honours degree in Engineering from the UWE Bristol  in 2007. He was recommended to take on research studies and consequently joined the Machine Vision Laboratory where he is studied for a PhD.

His project is partly funded by industry and was concerned with the inspection and reverse engineering of specular objects in an industrial environment. The objective was to generate isolated data of surface morphology and reflectivity of specular materials while they are on-line. The contents of his thesis also very well describe his interests which can be summed up as reflection models and three dimensional real time processing as well as manufacturing and quality control.

Rafael F V Saracchini

Former visiting research student Rafael is a PhD student at the State University of Campinas - Unicamp (Campinas, Brazil). He obtained his BSc. in Federal Fluminense University (Niteroi, Brazil) in end of 2005, being invited to start his PhD studies in Unicamp in 2007. Since 2003 he works with gauge-based photometric stereo methods to recover information such as surface inclination from digital images and published few papers and posters in this area. His research interest areas are three dimensional data recovery through digital images using Geometric and Photometric Stereo. He joined the MVL in December of 2009 and aims to develop and improve robust methods to recover tridimensional data in non Lambertian surfaces like human skin and glossy/specular surfaces, contributing with current MVL projects like Photoface.

Yu Zhou

Former research student Yu Zhou (Kyle) obtained his first degree in Automatic Control from the Harbin Institute of Technology, China in 2003. In 2005, he obtained his second degree in Control Science and Engineering, again from Harbin Institute of Technology. Yu Zhou joined the Machine Vision Laboratory at UWE Bristol in April 2007 and completed his PhD in March 2010. His project was about skinmetrics (the word was coined by himself). The principal aim of skinmetrics is to extract geometrical, reflectance and biological information about the skin using machine vision techniques. This work built upon earlier work in the laboratory, aiming to further develop techniques for distinguishing melanoma from benign lesions.

Yi Ding

Former research student Yi Ding (Robin) was born in China. Robin gained his Masters degree from the Centre for Image Communications, University of Bristol in 2005. In his research, he proposed a novel virtual viewpoint synthesis technique which can be used for digital interactive and immersive TV broadcasts. With strong interests in 3D pattern analysis, simulation and recognition, Robin joined Machine Vision Laboratory subsequently working on 3D computer assisted diagnosis of malignant melanoma (MM). During his work, he pioneered a new computer vision technique based on the analysis of 3D skin surface texture, the new "3D malignant melanoma indicators" for diagnosing MM in addition to the established ABCD features. This new technique not only attracted interests from clinicians, but also was validated through clinical trials with the local hospitals. His research findings have been reported in medical journals and conferences such as Skin research and Technology and a MICCAI workshop.

Having successfully gained his PhD in 3D medical image analysis in 2009, with a thesis entitled "Obtaining 3D malignant melanoma indicators through the analysis of surface normals from photometric stereo", Robin joined Toshiba medical system corporation (China) as a senior research engineer. He is now leading the research and development of state-of-the-art 3D image analysis technologies to be used for the world's most advanced X-ray, CT and MR systems. The projects he currently working on including 3D non-rigid registration, 3D brain segmentation and 3D computer aided diagnosis of lung cancer.

M. Sreenivasa Kumar

Former research student Kumar gained a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from S.V.University, Tirupti, India, an M.Tech in Design of Machines and Mechanisms from VNIT, (formerly REC, Nagpur), Nagpur, India and a PhD in machine Vision from UWE Bristol. Kumar's PhD work was concerned with realising low-cost hand-held 3D metrology systems.

Kumar worked as a lecturer, associate professor and professor at various institutions in India and as visiting lecturer at UWE Bristol, during his research period. He is presently the principal at Rajamahendri Institute of Engineering and Technology, India. Kumar has 20 years teaching & research experience and has 18 publications to his credit in international conferences, national conferences and journals.

Jason Lee

During his time at the Machine Vision Laboratory, Jason’s work focused on the application of machine vision technologies to the analysis of natural materials, including the classification of construction aggregates and the detection of tooling defects in polished marble and granite. After completing his PhD, Jason embarked on a career in the IT sector. He now works closely with some of the world’s leading software companies to provide authoring and consultancy on new technologies.

Orhan Dengiz

Born in Ankara, Turkey, Dengiz received his bachelor's degree from Middle East Technical University (METU) in civil engineering in 2000. In August 2000, he joined Auburn University's Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering as a graduate student. He received a master's degree in 2002, and PhD degree in 2007.

Dengiz has worked on inter-disciplinary projects that involved materials science, computer and machine vision, and industrial engineering. In 2004, he spent one month at the Machine Vision Laboratory, UWE Bristol.

Dengiz's research involves application of computational techniques such as heuristic optimization algorithms and artificial intelligence tools in areas of manufacturing, system reliability design, automated vision systems, wireless telecommunication network design and automation problems.

After completing his doctoral studies, Dengiz returned to Ankara-TURKEY, and he has been working as a manager in a private group of companies operating in construction, energy and recycled synthetic textile production areas.

Helen McNally

Senior research nurse

Helen is a Senior Research Nurse and was a Visiting Research Fellow to the MVL. She was seconded to the MVL in a collaboration between UWE Bristol and the North Bristol NHS Trust.

Helen has been nursing for 25 years. Much of that time has been spent in the field of kidney dialysis and transplantation, and includes 13 years running clinical trials involving NHS patients.

As the devices produced in the Machine Vision Lab are now being trialled on NHS patients to establish their efficacy etc, Helen's role was to act as an expert resource to the lab team and be responsible for the set-up and running of the trials, including data collection, in accordance with local, national and international policies and legislation.

Since leaving the MVL, Helen has become a senior research nurse in microbiology working on modifiable factors in blood stream infections.

Carolyn Smith

Research administrator

Carolyn Smith is an experienced Research Administrator with North Bristol NHS Trust and was seconded to MVL for collaboration with UWE Bristol.

Carolyn's role was to ensure that the administrative side of clinical trials was undertaken in accordance with research governance regulations. This involved submitting applications to local and UWE Bristol Ethics Committees and ensuring that all approvals were communicated to the relevant bodies. She also had to ensure that all data was collected and stored in accordance with the Data Protection Act and conformed to UWE Bristol and NBT policies. Finally, she ensured that site files and all relevant documentation were completed in accordance with local, national and international legislation.