The Department of Computing is pleased to announce the recent award of two EPSRC CASE scholarships with Thales UK Research and Technology (TRT) and Intellas as industrial sponsors. The two scholarships were awarded via the Digital Systems Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) through open competition on behalf of EPSRC.

The following quotes are from the Digital Systems KTN, Thales UK Research and Technology and Intellas UK Ltd:

1. Mr Tony Dyhouse, Cyber Security Director, Digital Systems KTN:

The Digital Systems KTN is pleased to be able to offer CASE awards on behalf of the EPSRC.  By enhancing the co-operation between industry and academia they provide a catalyst for innovation. We would like to express congratulations to University of Surrey who actively pursue these awards with quality proposals with industry partners. The work undertaken by these partnerships is leading edge and carefully chosen to benefit the UK populace in the future.

2. Professor Chris Firth, Chief Scientist at Thales UK Research & Technology

Thales UK's research & technology facility has a long history in information security and communications research and is sponsoring a PhD project on identity management in partnership with the Department of Computing at the University of Surrey.

Professor Chris Firth comments that the University of Surrey's Computing Department has world-class research expertise in multimedia security, and formal methods.

With the rise in identity theft and the ever-expanding number of applications on the Internet, the security and usability of identity management solutions is becoming a pressing concern for both Thales's customers as well as society as a whole. This research project will enable us to investigate and develop new approaches to this problem.

3. Dr Godfried Williams, Executive Director at Intellas UK Ltd, Canary Wharf

Intellas UK Ltd, the artificial intelligence in information security and computer forensics company is sponsoring an Industrial led EPSRC funding project on image forensics in partnership with the Department of Computing at University of Surrey.

Dr Godfried Williams comments that the company believes the University of Surrey's Computing department, has a pool of world class researchers on image forensics, machine learning and computational intelligence. It is for this very reason that the company chose the department as its research partner to explore novel and innovative techniques for the company's forensic project on bootleg images from museums.

Supervisors and PhD Students:

The two PhD Supervisors for the EPSRC CASE Thales project in the Department of Computing are Dr Helen Treharne and Professor Anthony TS Ho. Mr Evangelos Aktondianakis will commence his PhD studies in July 2011. Evangelos will be based initially at TRT for three months and will be under the guidance of Dr Adrian Waller of TRT. He will then return to Surrey in October 2011.

For the EPSRC CASE Intellas Project, the two PhD supervisors are Professor Yaochu Jin and Dr Johann Briffa. Mr Wissam Albukhanajer has already commenced his PhD studies in January 2011.