The KMi Maven of the Month initiative originated back in 1995, as a collaboration between the Knowledge Media Institute and the BBC’s Open University Production Unit. It was one of the first Internet Radio in the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_talk_radio), that used state of the art technologies (for the time…), including RealAudio, CU-SeeMe, Netscape browser and chat windows, as well as standard telephone landlines. …
I have an exciting story to share about a recent event where I was invited to deliver a guest lecture on the future of Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies in India. It was an online event organised by the Youth United Council of India (Tamil Nadu Branch). Due to the higher number of registrations received (more than 1000), the…
We are excited to hear that Prof Peter Scott, who was KMi Director from 2007 to 2015, has been announced as President-designate of Athabasca University. In the announcement video, Peter said, “AU’s Imagine plan has created a fantastic new platform for change, so I will be joining a team that is already well on its way along this journey.” On hearing the news, KMi’s current director John Domingue reflected that: “Peter…
Since the pandemic the Admin Team have been working from home, like most staff and students at the Open University. Now we are permitted to meet, last week the team took the opportunity to all meet in person for the first time since March 2020. Their team building afternoon took place aboard Electra, The Milton…
What can you tell us about your role? I work on all kinds of projects with the researchers here at the OU; this means I can be working on project spec and design, frontend and backend web development, electronics and other physical computing projects – whatever development is needed. What are you working on right…
What could you tell us about your research? My research is about intersectionality in hate speech detection, focusing on "Misogynoir" – a particular kind of hate that black women experience. Moya Bailey coined the term "Misogynoir" to describe "the specific hatred, dislike, distrust, and prejudice directed toward Black women". It is misogyny against black women…
This week’s Spotlight Interview features Kaushal Kumar, a recipient of our Summer Scholarship, who tells us about the 6-week project he is doing in KMi. Kaushal is a Sixth Form Student studying Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Further Maths and he starts his final year in September. He hopes to study either Mechanical Engineering or Main…
In this week’s summer series of Spotlight Interviews with KMi people, Pasquale Iero tells us about his work in KMi What is your role? I joined KMi as a Research Assistant in 2019 after nearly two decades of working in the software industry. I support the researchers in the Open Blockchain Research Team. My tasks may…
As part of our summer series of interviews with KMi people, this week’s spotlight falls on Zeeshan Jan, PhD Student What are you researching right now? I am in the final phase of conducting my research about the academic peer-reviewing process, which is thesis write-up. The peer-reviewing process is perceived as the backbone of academic…
As part of our summer series of interviews with KMi people, this week’s spotlight falls on Audrey Ekuban, who tells us about her PhD research on privacy in Educational Analytics. What can you tell us about your PhD research? I am exploring the solution space of Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning with the intention of creating a usable framework for Educational Analytics. What is Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning? Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning is an emerging suite of techniques that enables a machine learning…
