Inference Group
Research activity report, January 2000 - David MacKay
Error-correcting codes
IBM Research labs, Zurich, have given us
a $40,000 award with no strings attached. They are also
interested in supporting a PhD student who would work in Zurich for
x months per year, where x
is being negotiated. I hope to have this
student start in September 2000.
Lucent (Bell labs) have developed a chip for use in disc drives
based on the error correcting codes that we have been working on.
I am asking Lucent for support similar to IBM's.
I am still talking to Nortel, and to another company called Tandberg TV,
about industrial collaboration.
Matthew Davey defended his thesis in December 1999.
We have submitted a paper on a method for communicating
over channels with synchronization errors, a long-neglected
research area.
Simon Wilson now says he will submit his thesis by February 2000.
Latent variable models
James Miskin continues to work on
blind signal separation, including deblurring of
images. He is working on data from various sources, including
Toshiba's Cambridge laboratory.
Human-computer interfaces
David Ward is improving the adaptive language models for
our gesture-driven computer interface, Dasher. He has made a prototype
coupled to an automated dictation system so that experimental tests
can easily be made.
Alan Blackwell, a postdoc in the Rainbow Group
at the Computer Laboratory, has joined the project, and
has helped us to assess the useability of
the interface. Depending on the outcome of these experiments, we
may try to spin off the software into handheld computers and/or
computers for disabled people.
Once the finger-driven version of the interface is
working well, we will continue work on the eye-driven version
using the eye-tracker that has been loaned to us by ASL.
Teaching Physics
Sanjoy Mahajan continues to develop Physics teaching methods;
his test groups include high school students, first years
and second years. He collaborates with Mazur and Hestenes in the USA.
We plan to create hands-on Physics exhibits
(`plors', as found in the Exploratorium)
and test their effectiveness
as teaching aids in local schools.
Other topics
- Empirical Modelling of non-linear relationships
- Harry Bhadeshia of Materials Science continues
to use our neural network and Gaussian process
software.
- Quantum computing
-
The new PhD student who was to work on quantum error-correction
did not come.
Plans for next year
I hope to recruit two PhD students, one funded by IBM, and
one supported through the Mott system; and perhaps one postdoc.
David MacKay <mackay@mrao.cam.ac.uk>
Last modified: Fri Jan 7 21:46:07 2000