People

Prof. Melvyn L. Smith PhD, MSc, BEng, CEng, MIEE

Professor of Machine Vision

Tel: +44(0)117 32 86358
E-mail melvyn.smith@uwe.ac.uk

Melvyn Smith is a Professor of Machine Vision at the Bristol Institute of Technology and Director of the Centre for Intelligent Manufacturing and Machine Vision Systems (CIMMS) at UWE. He received his BEng(Hons) degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bath in 1987, MSc in Robotics and Advanced Manufacturing Systems from the Cranfield Institute of Technology in 1988 and PhD from the UWE in 1997. He acts as associate editor for four leading international journals, including Image and Vision Computing and Computers in Industry , and is a program committee member for two international conferences. He has published a book together with numerous book chapters, patents, and journal / conference papers in connection with his work. He regularly presents his work through invited seminars, as well as articles and interviews to the popular media. He has been a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College since 2003, served as European commission candidate evaluator for the Sixth Framework and is currently a programme and evaluator / review expert and monitoring expert for EU Framework 7 Programme. Prof. Smith is a Chartered Engineer and an active member of the IET.

Dr. Lyndon N. Smith PhD, MSc, BSc(Hons)

Reader in Computer Simulation and Machine Vision

Tel: +44(0)117 32 82009
E-mail: lyndon.smith@uwe.ac.uk

Lyndon Smith is R eader in Computer Simulation and Machine Vision and Co-director of the Centre for Intelligent Manufacturing and Machine Vision Systems (CIMMS) at UWE. Following a BSc(Hons) in Physics in 1986, he went on to obtain an MSc in Automation in 1988 and a PhD in computer simulation of a manufacturing process in 1997. In 1998 and 1999 Dr. Smith was Director of Computer Simulation at a research laboratory at The Pennsylvania State University in the USA . His research activities have resulted in the publication of over eighty technical papers and a book, as well as frequent refereeing of journal papers and the chairing of international research conferences in the USA and Europe . A major and on-going area of interest is research into novel vision based devices for skin analysis for providing indicators of the presence of melanoma. This has involved collaboration with a consultant plastic surgeon and has resulted in a successful DPhil and two on-going PhD supervisions. He has also authored successful grant applications from numerous organisations, including the EPSRC and the European Commission; and is on the editorial board of a number of international journals.

Dr. P. Sagar Midha PhD, BSc Eng(Mech), CEng, MIEE

Senior Research Fellow

Tel: +44(0)117 32 82629
E-mail: sagar2.midha@uwe.ac.uk

Sagar Midha is currently working in a part time role as senior research fellow. Prior to this he was a reader and research leader in the Faculty Computing Engineering and Mathematical Sciences (now part of the Faculty of Environment and Technology) and a Principal Engineer at PERA International at Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire. He received his BSc Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering from Punjab University in India and his PhD from Loughborough University in 1975. He has edited two books and published numerous journal and conference papers. Sagar developed several successful research proposals for funding and was a coordinator for two EU funded research projects. His pioneering work for collaborative links for postgraduate courses with India led to the development of Faculty's present international collaborative programmes.

Mr. Robert P. Warr BM MD FRCS FRCS(plas)

Consultant Plastic Surgeon

Tel: +44(0)117 97 53991
E-mail: robert.warr@nbt.nhs.uk

Robert Warr is a consultant plastic surgeon at Frenchay Hospital Bristol. He also holds the position of honorary senior lecturer at the University of Bristol and visiting senior research fellow at UWE. His primary research interest is in the application of novel cutaneous imaging modalities in medicine. His MBBS was gained from Southampton University on 1989. One of his clinical interests is skin cancer and at Frenchay he runs 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”.

Dr. Gary A. Atkinson PhD, MSci, MInstP

Research Fellow

Tel: +44(0)117 32 86361
E-mail Gary.Atkinson@uwe.ac.uk

Gary Atkinson completed an MSci degree in physics at the University of Nottingham in 2003. Upon graduation, he moved to the University of York to study for a PhD degree in the Department of Computer Science, under the supervision of Edwin Hancock. His research was concerned with improving shape recovery algorithms and reflectance function estimation for computer vision. Most of his work involved the exploitation of the polarising properties of reflection from surfaces. During his PhD research, which he completed in May 2007, Gary published in IEEE TIP, IEEE PAMI and CVIU. In addition, he presented his work at several international conferences including ICCV and CVPR. Gary has been working at the UWE Machine Vision Laboratory on a face reconstruction and recognition system since June 2007. He works in close collaboration with Imperial College. Gary is a member of the British Machine Vision Association, the Institute of Physics and the IEEE.

• Dr. Atkinson's personal webpages

Dr. Abdul R. Farooq BSc(Hons), MSc, PhD, CEng, MIEE

Research Fellow

Tel: +44(0)117 32 83879
E-mail: abdul2.farooq@uwe.ac.uk

Abdul Farooq is a post-doctoral research associate and a visiting lecturer in the Bristol Institute of Technology at the UWE, Bristol. His research is focused on developing new vision based techniques for the inspection of complex surfaces in real time. He graduated from University in 1990 with a first degree in Electronics and subsequently successfully completed an MSc in Systems Engineering (Robotics and Automation) in 1992. He then worked for a number of years as a Systems Engineer at a leading edge high-volume board manufacturing plant. His role involved elements of R & D, troubleshooting and PLC programming. Following this, Abdul was drawn back to academia and completed (with distinction) a further Masters degree followed by a successful PhD involving machine vision. Abdul has been involved with a number of successful projects within the group and is currently involved with two more. These are Application of Photometric Stereo in Dermatology and Stealthy Object Detection and Recognition. Abdul is a member of the IET and is a Chartered Engineer.

Dr. Jiuai Sun

Research Fellow

Tel: +44 (0)117 32 82069
E-mail: Jiuai2.Sun@uwe.ac.uk

Jiuai Sun joined the Machine Vision 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. Currently, his work mainly concerns genuine recovery methods on skin conditions for purposes ranging from dermatology to cosmetics.

Mr. Yu Zhou BEng

Research Student

Tel: +44(0) 117 32 83550
E-mail: Yu.Zhou@uwe.ac.uk

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 in April 2007. He is now working on the project of skinmetrics (the word was coined by himself). The principal aim of skinmetrics is to use computers to extract geometrical, reflectance and biological information about the skin using machine vision techniques. This work builds upon earlier work in the laboratory, aiming to further develop techniques for distinguishing melanoma from benign lesions.

Mr. Raphael Wedowski BSc(Hons)

Research Student

Tel: +44(0) 117 32 82629
E-mail: Raphael2.Wedowski@uwe.ac.uk

Born in Germany, Raphael started his studies in Engineering in 2004 at the Berufsakademie Mannheim, Germany. He completed his third and final year at the UWE, where he graduated with a first class honours degree in Engineering. It was here where he was drawn to the subject of machine vision and consequently joined the Machine Vision Laboratory as a research student in December 2007. His project is concerned with specular object recognition. The objective is to generate isolated data of surface morphology and reflectivity of specular materials while they are on-line.

Mr. Mark F. Hansen BSc(Hons) MSc

Research Student

E-mail: Mark.Hansen@uwe.ac.uk

Mark obtained his BSc Psychology (1997) and MSc Computer Science (1999) from the University of Bristol and worked as a software developer for just under a decade. Since November 2008 he has been studying for a PhD in 3D face recognition using a photometric stereo technique developed as part of the PhotoFace project at UWE. By bridging the gap between psychology and machine vision, he aims to develop novel face recognition algorithms inspired by human processes such as caricaturing and haptic face processing.

Mr. Scott R. Mandry MEng (Hons), BSc (Hons), MIET

Research Associate

Tel: +44(0)117 328 3550
E-mail: scott.mandry@uwe.ac.uk

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 , and supporting the Plagiocephaly Project . 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 and the Super Proton Synchrotron at CERN . 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 3½ 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.

Mr. Shahzad Anwar

Shahzad Anwar joined the Bristol institute in October 2009 as a researcher. His project is to research into innovative machine vision techniques for capturing and analyzing three-dimensional (3D) skin surface texture, in order to provide an additional indicator of the presence of skin cancer. Existing methods for detecting cancer (such as ABCDE rule), study 2D features; however further useful information can be obtained through analysis of 3D features such as skin 3D texture and morphology. The project starts with colour (albedo) texture and in next stage extend to 3D data. New photometric stereo methods will be used for capturing in 3D surface data and advance artificial intelligence techniques will be employed for pattern recognition and modelling.

He obtained a Masters in Electrical Engineering (Sheffield); He has worked in image processing specifically on texture analysis for segmentation and classification. This research was to investigate different filter and wavelet packet based feature extraction techniques, both in compressed and uncompress domain. Prior to this he obtained his MS Electronic Engineering (2004) degree from Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute, and BSc from Department of Electronics, University of Peshawar, Pakistan.

Shahzad's interests are in image and signal processing and renewable energy.

Carolyn Smith - Research Administrator

Carolyn Smith is an experienced Research Administrator with North Bristol NHS Trust and is currently seconded to MVL in collaboration between UWE and North Bristol NHS Trust.

Carolyn’s role is to ensure that the administrative side of clinical trials undertaken in accordance with research governance regulations. This involves submitting applications to local and UWE Ethics Committees and to ensure that all approvals are communicated to the relevant bodies. Also to ensure that all data collected and stored in accordance with the Data Protection Act and conforms to UWE and NBT policies. Also ensuring site files and all relevant documentation are completed in accordance with local, national and international legislation.

Dr Pilar Sepulveda, PhD BEng

Pilar Sepulveda has been a Senior Research Development Manager at the MVL since January 2010. She received her PhD from the University of Nottingham in 1996 and a BEng in Materials from the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), São Paulo, Brazil in 1992. She undertook post-doctoral research at Imperial College London and in Brazil, with main focus on the development of porous scaffolds for bone and tissue regeneration.

Her research led to numerous journal and conference publications, book chapters and invited talks as well as to a patent registration which was later licensed to Nova Thera, a spin-out by IC Innovations. Pilar also brings invaluable knowledge of the public funding sector gained through 8 years of work for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). At EPSRC, Pilar took various roles in peer review management, grant processing systems, corporate and programme strategy, and policy-making, all of which involved work with a wide range of stakeholders of government, academia and industry.

Pilar has strong project management skills including an 18 month secondment as Programme Office Manager for the RCUK Shared Services Centre Implementation Programme which will provide centralised services for seven Research Councils. Pilar has several Office of Government Commerce ( OGC ) qualifications including Prince 2, Management of Risk (M_o_R) Accreditation and Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) Accreditation. She is also due to complete an MBA degree from the Warwick Business School in 2010.

At the MVL, Pilar will be working to boost the successful research portfolio of the group in collaboration with North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT) and work to strengthen strategic, collaborative partnerships with industry, the NHS, other HEIs and other relevant bodies.

Mrs Helen McNally

Helen is a Senior Research Nurse and Visiting Research Fellow to the MVL. She is currently seconded to the MVL in a collaboration between UWE 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 12 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 is 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.

Rafael F V Saracchini PhD Student

Rafael is a PhD student from 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.