Student Project of the Year

Dimitrios Georgoulas, Aston University - Agent-based system for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) offer the potential for people and machines to interact with their environment in a revolutionary way, but their commercial use has been hampered by energy constraints of sensors and difficulties reprogramming the network.

Dimitrios Georgoulas has addressed these issues with a novel intelligent agent-based middleware for WSNs, In-Motes.

Mobile agents are injected into the network, then migrate and clone across it following specific rules and application-specific tasks. Each mote is given a degree of perception, cognition and control.

A tailored application, In-Motes Bins, is proving its worth in a commercial environment: it is been used successfully by a Birmingham branch of Oddbins to monitor environmental conditions in the wine store.

Simon McCarthy, University of Kent - Kent IT Clinic

The Kent IT Clinic (KITC), based at the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus, provides consultancy, computer systems support and software development services to small and micro-enterprises in Kent.

KITC consultants are undergraduate IT students whose work is mentored and supervised by the KITC co-ordinator.

The clinic provides high-quality technical services to small businesses and non-profit organisations at an affordable cost, while giving students practical commercial experience that counts towards their degree and enhances their CVs.

The largest single project this year was for Rochester Cathedral. KITC student consultant Simon McCarthy recommended that Rochester implemented a Microsoft Exchange system running on Windows Server 2003 and helped with system installation and setup.

Moono Bwalya, University of Westminster - Data mining on the web

Moono Bwalya’s project to assess and improve web-based data mining is a comprehensive piece of research that analyses the various concepts and tools available, and presents a design for a more effective web-usage mining architecture and tools.

Bwalya points out that in a physical store, CCTV cameras can be used to monitor shoppers’ behavioural patterns and data analysed to present stock in a way that maximises sales.

His design would allow similar information to be gathered about visitors to online stores, including who they are, what products they are looking at, what time they visit and for how long they look at a page, rather than how long they leave it open.

Cliff Goodwin, Staffordshire University - Computer-based learning for Staffordshire Police Special Constabulary

Staffordshire University’s Cliff Goodwin created a working prototype of a computer-based learning package for Staffordshire Police Special Constabulary.

The project covered research into off-the-shelf and bespoke multimedia applications, selection of an appropriate multimedia design methodology, as well as the design, implementation and testing of the system.

The application was built on a standalone machine using MX Macromedia Director and a video camcorder. It has met all of Staffordshire’s requirements for content, usability, functionality and security and the application looks likely to be manufactured and distributed in Staffordshire Police’s various divisions.

The application has also been demonstrated to the Police Authority, which is in talks about commercialisation and widespread adoption across UK forces.

Technology start-up of the Year

Chronicle Solutions

Chronicle Solutions is the supplier of netReplay, an innovative enterprise network content appliance that allows organisations to monitor all network traffic easily and in real time, helping to mitigate the legal and commercial risks associated with di gital communications and the internet.

The product can capture and index all user communications including email, web mail, instant messages, blog posts and voice over IP conversations. It draws attention in real time to any transgressions of acceptable usage policy, breeches of confidential information or illicit activities, ensuring regulatory compliance and protecting against data theft by insiders.

The product reduces the time of conducting investigations from days to minutes and increases staff productivity by reducing non-business-related activities.

Secerno

Secerno’s ground-breaking security technology, developed by Oxford University’s Dr Steve Moyle, provides dynamic protection against threats to any digital asset by understanding normal usage and blocking abnormal behaviour.

Detecting security vulnerabilities in applications and databases has traditionally been a slow, hit-and-miss process akin to finding a needle in a haystack.

Secerno’s technology changes all that through the use of innovative machine learning techniques that go far beyond traditional pattern-matching. It does not require any agents to be placed on the database or applications, so there is no performance overhead.

The company’s first commercial product is Secerno.SQL, for SQL Server databases, but the technology could be applied across all applications.

StreamShield Networks

StreamShield’s novel approach to content security enables ISPs to remove spam, viruses, other malware and illegal or inappropriate content before it reaches business customers.

This opens up the potential for a new breed of clean internet services, which reduces the requirement for organisations to deploy costly in-house content security systems.

At the heart of the solution is the CSG-3100, a carrier-class content security gateway, which houses the company’s silicon-based content processing engine StreamScan.

StreamShield has also recently become a Cisco Technology Developer Partner, one of a select group of organisations that Cisco views as having complementary products to its own solutions.

See www.computing.co.uk/awards for more information.