Category: Conferences & Events

Cohort 3 student Tim Arueyingho had this to say about the experience:

‘I participated in the 4th African Human-Computer Interaction conference held in East London, South Africa. Firstly, I actively engaged in the doctoral consortium, meeting new people and gaining fresh insights into thepossible direction of my doctoral research. I also presented a short paper/note titled ‘Exploring the Nexus of Social Media Networks and Instant Messengers in Collaborative Type 2 Diabetes Care: A Case Study of PortHarcourt, Nigeria’ during the conference. At the summer school co-design academy, I learned aboutAfrocentric perspectives in co-design, the state of the art in co-design, and distinct approaches to organizing adesign workshop. My team generated lo-fi prototypes to address a design challenge.

I intend to conduct several co-design workshops in the next phase of my study. Participating in the summerschool and receiving external advice on my PhD work were among the expectations that were met.’

Cohort 4 student Yujie Dai attends the UKHSA conference in Leeds. This is what she had to say about her experience:

‘The conference was about a hot topic Antimicrobial Resistance Issue, which is highly relevant to my project. People from the NHS, UKHSA, universities and industry attended. We exhibited an e-poster and I made lots of new connections with people. I contributed in some data analysis for our results and during the presentation. It helped me to extend my networking and provided more insights for my PhD project.’

Cohort 4 student Fin Schofield had this to say about his experience:

‘ Hanna [Isotalus] and I were attending the World Sleep Congress 2023 – hosted by the World Sleep Society in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. This event brought together academics, clinicians, and industry representatives from around the world to deliver seminars and workshops at the forefront of circadian and sleep science. This year, there was a profound emphasis on technologies – and how they can be applied to the management and measurement of sleep. Showcases ranged from virtual pets to aid sleep management in an engaging way to AI models for sleep tracking using just sound recordings on a smartphone.

I presented a poster based a systematic scoping review undertaken as part of my PhD project initiation. In this poster, we examined how there are a lack of technologies being designed or trialled for the management of sleep in ADHD. At the conference, there were several researchers who touched on the same concepts. With technology playing an increasingly important role in all aspects of sleep, the poster prompted conversation on how can we design technologies for sleep that are based on scientific understanding, but remain engaging and applicable to their users.

Several seminars at the conference were a touchstone for the way in which the field values technology as a means of advancing sleep medicine. Attending WSC at the beginning of the PhD was a great opportunity share how I hope to contribute to that. It has equipped us with many different ideas and potential approaches to explore, whilst still showing us there a plenty of questions that remain unanswered about sleep in ADHD!’

Cohort 2 student Neshika Wijewardhane had this to say about her experience:

‘The conference was 4 days long with over 200 participants at the New York University Abu Dhabi. Participants included micro and nano robotistic, clinicians, engineers, and physicists, across all research careers, masters, and PhD students, to professors and industry partners. Each day started and ended with 3 plenary talks from leaders in the field with a series of parallel talks in the middle from the authors of the submitted papers. The general themes of the talks included swarm robotics, medical applications for micro-robots, automation and characterisation, and control by optical, thermal, and mechanical stimuli. I presented my paper entitled ‘Modular Wavelength Adaptation of the Dynamic Optical MicroEnvironment’ about our robotic device the DOME, which can now irradiate a select population of cells with light, this has applications for increased wound healing and cancer therapies. Between sessions, there were breaks and lunch which led to interesting conversations between new peers. As this was my third conference it was great to catch up with colleagues and friends I had met in the previous conferences, especially from the last MARSS. I had the opportunity also to sightsee around Abu Dhabi, visit the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and go to the desert.’

Cohort 2 student, Mairi Deighan co-designs a Workshop Series focusing on Virtual Reality Applications for Young People with Cancer based at 1 Cathedral Square.

She had this to say about her experience:

‘[There were a] series of 4 workshops with young people (aged 16-25) living with cancer. The young people joined as co-researchers on my PhD project to help design novel VR applications for young people going through cancer treatment. Together, we identified challenges in the oncology pathway and then developed ideas of how VR could be used to overcome some of these challenges. The young people trialled and evaluated VR applications and used featured from their favourite VR experiences to design their own apps.

I ran the co-design workshops as the main study of my PhD. Between workshops I developed prototypes of the young people’s VR ideas and helped them iterate on their designs.

This workshop series forms the main study of my PhD and I plan to publish 2 papers on it. Firstly I will present the ideas and designs of the young people in a medical VR related journal. Then I will publish a second paper reflecting on using co-design as a method of developing VR applications for healthcare. I have also been invited to Vmed (virtual medicine conference) in LA next year to present this work.’

Cohort 2 student Neshika Wijewardhane presented a Flash Talk and a Poster entitled ‘Shrinking the Cutting Edge: Making Small-Scale Medical Robots for Humans’ and received a prize for ‘Best Flash Talk.’

Cohort 1 student Marceli Wac participates in a WISH (Workgroup for Interactive Systems in Healthcare) at CHI Conference 2023 in Hamburg, Germany.

This involves a broader group of University of Bristol students and comprised of a Poster Presentation and a short paper. Marceli explains that this is an ‘Ancillary research avenue for my [his] PhD Thesis.’

Cohort 2 student, Sam James attends the CHI Conference submitting a paper entitled: ‘Chronic Care in a Life Transition: Challenges and Opportunities for Artificial Intelligence to Support Young Adults With Type 1 Diabetes Moving to University’

Cohort 3 student Eszter Vigh submitted two Workshop papers entitled : ‘Bridging HCI and Implementation Science for Innovation Adoption and Public Health Impact’ and ‘Intelligent Data-Driven Health Interfaces’

Cohort 3 student Tim Arueyingho submitted a work-in-progress paper entitled ‘Afro-Centric Collaborative Care: Technology Support for Type 2 Diabetes Management in Port Harcourt Nigeria’

Cohort 1 student Romana Burgess attends the 16th EAI International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare in Thessaloniki, Greece. This is what she had to say about her experience:

‘It was a small scale conference with around 50 attendees, including a mixture of PhD candidates, masters students, and professors from across Europe, Asia, and America. The conference was generally concerned with the intersection between technology and healthcare. Some of the works presented covered topics such as wearable devices for tracking and monitoring, activity and gesture recognition, and human-centred design for healthcare solutions.

I presented my paper “A quantitative comparison of manual vs. automated facial coding using real life observations of fathers”; this work comprised a validation study on a facial classification software, which we used to classify fathers facial expressions during interactions with their infants. We evaluated whether the computational classification was comparable to that of a human coder. On day 2 of the conference, I gave a roughly 25 minute presentation of this work to the other attendees. The paper is due to be published in the conference proceedings in the coming weeks.

The paper served as software validation work in advance of my final project, which involves linking facial expressions to depressed mood and other mental health issues. So this study (and it’s acceptance to the conference) was vital for the end goal of my overall PhD.’

https://pervasivehealth.eai-conferences.org/2022/

Cohort 2 student Immi Biswas had this to say about her experience:

‘I was a speaker, and I presented my PhD project which is a part of NHS run clinical trial Rested Study investigating remote sleep monitoring in patients with Neurodegenerative diseases.

It helped me to put some of my initial research findings to the research community to make people more aware of the importance of understanding user experiences to better plan clinical trials in the future. This activity is having a positive impact on the study design and enabling me to gather richer data.’