2024
APR 2024
PETRAS Future Internet Workshop
Charith Perera attended the Unveiling the Horizon for the Future of the Internet workshop, a series dedicated to exploring challenges and priorities for future UKRI initiatives, held at Swansea University's Bay Campus. This event facilitated discussions on technological advancements, cybersecurity, and the evolving digital landscape through community consultation and expert contributions. The workshop featured a diverse range of speakers and interactive sessions.
FEB 2024
PETRAS We Are Connected 2024
We showcased the work of six PhD stundets in the PETRAS We Are Connected 2024 event. The event was themed around the future of IoT and cybersecurity and showcased the latest research and innovation. The event aimed to bring together academics, industry leaders and government officials, enjoy an exciting, interactive exhibition, and hear informative, thought-provoking talks.
Exhibition Demo Reel
JAN 2024
CU-DUT Joint Workshop
Charith Perera delivered a talk at the joint workshop hosted by Cardiff University and Dalian University of Technology in China, which was centered on the development of Smart and Healthy Buildings and Cities aimed at achieving a Zero-Carbon Future. This talk highlighted the crucial role of sensors in enhancing the security of modern infrastructures. It delved into the importance of these sensors in detecting and mitigating potential threats in physical spaces, contributing to safer and more secure urban environments.
JAN 2024
HEFCW ODA
We have received funding from HEFCW ODA to develop a multi-model AI system to accurately identify and count wildlife in camera trap images. The "CamTrap.AI" project seeks to develop a semi-automatic wildlife image classification system using ensemble learning. It aims to efficiently process large camera trap image datasets for wildlife conservation. The project will integrate multiple image classification models to improve accuracy in identifying wildlife species.
Forest Observatory
2023
DEC 2023
Technical Report
This year, our IoT research group focused on three key themes, with PhD student Kira Nurse initiating projects in these areas. Nada Alhirabi completed her PhD on Privacy-Aware IoT Applications, and Yaser Awwad achieved his MPhil with a project on Anomaly Detection using Smart Cameras in low-light conditions. Our students presented their work at various conferences, including Wales Tech Week and ACM Ubicomp. We hosted the PETRAS Regional Showcase "Connected Spaces" and engaged in potential collaboration talks at the UW-NPS Research Station. Funding successes include support from the Google Research Scholar Program for a neurodiversity project, the UK Defence and Security for the Edgy Organism project, and EPSRC PETRAS for an AR-driven Smart City Demonstrator project. Additionally, team members completed the CyberASAP program, presenting the CASPER Shield.
Annual Report
DEC 2023
Viva Defence (PhD)
Congratulation to
Nada Alhirabi for passing her PhD with minor corrections. Nada worked on
Designing Privacy Aware Internet Of Things Applications. Nada focuses on enhancing privacy in IoT development. It introduces a user-centric tool, PARROT, designed to simplify and integrate privacy considerations into IoT application design. The research demonstrates that PARROT effectively reduces privacy errors and increases developers' privacy awareness during the design phase. This is achieved through an interactive methodology that facilitates early collaboration between developers and legal experts, aligning with privacy-by-design principles.
PhD Project
NOV 2023
Viva Defence (MPhil)
Congratulation to
Yaser Abu Awwad for passing his MPhil with minor corrections. Yaser worked on
Anomaly Detection on the Edge using Smart Cameras under Low-Light Conditions. He also worked closely on Connected Communities in the Rural Economy (CoCoRE) 5G Wales Unlocked.
MPhil Project
5G Wales Unlocked
OCT 2023
Wales Tech Week 2023
Bayan Almuhander (PhD Student) presented Privacy Cube in Wales Tech Week. Privacy Cube is a tangible device that facilitates interactive privacy preferences management of IoT devices in shared spaces such as smart homes. Tech Week showcases technology and champions the industry on the global stage. It connects, promotes and develops Wales as a centre of expertise for enabling and emerging technologies and their applications for today's business and society.
Wales Tech Week 2023
Project Page
Demo
OCT 2023
Health and Care Research Wales Conference 2023
Reem Aldhafiri (PhD Student) presented her poster title
Privacy Assistant: An accessible privacy management tool for older adults at the Health and Care Research Wales Conference 2023. We developed Privacy Assistant, a novel conversational interface designed to help people in social care settings with low digital skills to understand and configure their privacy settings on voice assistants. The Health and Care Research Wales conference took place on 12 October 2023 at Swansea arena. The theme of this event was People make research.
Project Page
Conference
OCT 2023
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Kira Nurse supervised by
Charith Perera (Computer Science), and Georgina Powell (Psychology) who will be working on
Tangible Interfaces for Assisting Young People with Neurodiversity Towards better Understanding Online Harms project. This project is led by School of Psychology.
PhD Project
OCT 2023
Ubicomp Conference
Nada Alhirabi (PhD Student) presented her full paper titled
"PARROT: Interactive Privacy-Aware Internet of Things Application Design Tool" at Ubicomp 2023. In this paper, present an interactive IoT application design tool - PARROT (PrivAcy by design tool foR inteRnet Of Things). This tool helps developers to design privacy-aware IoT applications, taking account of privacy compliance during the design
process and providing real-time feedback on potential privacy violations.
Designing PbD IoT Application
AUG 2023
Poster@SOUPS
Bayan Al Muhander (PhD Student) presented her poster paper titled
"Interactive Privacy Management: Towards Enhancing Privacy Awareness and Control in Internet of Things" at SOUPS 2023. In this paper, we examine existing web, mobile, and IoT visualisation approaches. Following that, we define five major privacy factors in the IoT context: (i) type, (ii) usage, (iii) storage, (iv) retention period, and (v) access. We aim to highlight key approaches that developers and researchers
can use for creating effective IoT privacy notices.
Privacy Toolkit
JUL 2023
Cyberpsychology Section Annual Conference
Reem Aldhafiri (PhD Student) presented her poster
Enhancing Privacy Awareness and Digital Skills in Smart Home Device Users with Privacy Assistant: A Conversational Interface for Older Adults at the Cyberpsychology Section Annual Conference 2023 held at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne. Cyberpsychology is a scientific inter-disciplinary domain that focuses on the psychological phenomena which emerge as a result of the human interaction with digital technology, particularly the Internet.
Project Page
Conference
JUN 2023
PETRAS Regional Events
We organised the PETRAS Regional Showcase and Networking event. The event was thematically titled “Connected Spaces”. Its primary objective was to create a confluence of various PETRAS projects and interdisciplinary initiatives within the university.
Event Page
JUN 2023
SPRITE+ Conference
Nada Alhirabi (PhD Student) attended SPRITE+ conference at the TITANIC Centre, Belfast as a PhD Student Ambassador. The programme included a range of activities, including talks from expert fellows, lightning talks from community members, posters from early-career researchers, presentations from clusters of sandpit-funded projects, and thematic workshops. SPRITE+ brings together people involved in research, practice, and policy with a focus on digital contexts.
SPRITE+ Conference 2023
JUN 2023
AMK Ranch (U. Wyoming) Visit
Charih Perera visited The University of Wyoming-National Park Service (UW-NPS) Research Station as part of a Cardiff University delegation to explore potential research collaborations. Cardiff University has signed a new Strategic Partnership Agreement with the UoW to enable collaborative research projects, an annual series of seminars, conferences and workshops, staff and PhD student mobility and collaborative education programmes.
University of Wyoming
AMK Ranch
UW-NPS Station
JUN 2023
PETRAS IET Event
Hakan Kayan, Yasar Majib, Mohammed Alosaimi attended PETRAS Living Securely in the Internet of Things, An open, free event showcasing the best of PETRAS's cutting edge research on IoT cybersecurity, and related issues of Privacy, Ethics, Trust, Reliability, Acceptability and Security. The event aimed to bring together PETRAS's expansive network of academics, industry leaders and government officials, enjoy an exciting, interactive exhibition, and hear informative, thought-provoking talks.
MAY 2023
PETRAS Health Care and Wellbeing
Charith Perera, Nada Alhirabi, Hakan Kayan, Yasar Majib, Suhas Devmane attended PETRAS Health Care and Wellbeing event titled
Future Challenges of IoT and IoT-Cybersecurity in Healthcare & Wellbeing, and the Role of Academic/Industrial Research.
MAY 2023
EPSRC PETRAS in Lego
We have received funding from EPSRC PETRAS to develop an Augmented Reality Driven Smart City Demonstrator using Lego towards Public Engagement. The project aims to capture the overall contributions made by over 150 projects funded through PETRAS Hun and the centre over nearly a decade. PETRAS is a consortium of 24 research institutions and the world's largest socio-technical research centre focused on the future implementation of the IoT.
Project Page
Demo
MAY 2023
EPSRC PETRAS Regional Showcase
We have received funding from EPSRC PETRAS to host a Regional Showcase and Networking Event at Cardiff bringing regional partners together. Its primary objective was to create a confluence of various PETRAS projects and interdisciplinary initiatives within the university.
Regional Networking
MAY 2023
Poster@IoTDI
Norah Albazzai (PhD Student) presented her poster paper titled
"Camera-Assisted Training of Non-Vision Sensors for Anomaly Detection" at IoTDI 2023. In this paper, we propose a new approach to training non-vision sensors using a tiny camera and a pre-trained MobileNetV2 model. Data from non-vision sensors are labelled based on the image classification from the tiny camera, and an anomaly detection model is trained using these labelled data.
Augmenting Anomaly Detection with Tiny Cameras
APR 2023
Postgraduate Research International Experience
Mark Butterworth (PhD Student) visited www.dgfc.life to gain international research experience and conduct series of field studies. Communications in the jungle is notoriously difficult and
Mark visited DGFC to test his hypothesis that the ionosphere can be reliably used to send
relatively low power signals. The idea is this can be applied to avoid having to check each trap
every day and instead, only the triggered traps would send a signal.
Forest Observatory Low-PowerIoT for Harsh Environments
APR 2023
Sandpit: Low SWaP
Charith Perera attended a 5-day interactive interdisciplinary sandpit to develop novel low size, weight and power (SWaP) computing projects for UK defence and security applications. This sandpit activity intended to bring together new collaborators from across a range of disciplines in UKRI's remit to solve complex and evolving research challenges within low SWaP computing for defence and national security applications.
Sandpit Call
APR 2023
Google Research scholar Award
Charith Perera received funding from Google to work on Tangible Interfaces for Assisting Young People with Neurodiversity Towards better Understanding Online Harms. The Research Scholar Program provides unrestricted gifts to support research at institutions around the world, and is focused on funding world-class research conducted by early-career professors.
Project Page
Google Award List
FEB 2023
CyberASAP Demo Day
Charith Perera,
Yasar Majib (PhD Student) , and
Hakan Kayan (PhD Student) attended CyberASAP demo day and presented CASPER Shield. CASPER Shield looks for abnormal occurrences using first-hand cyber and physical data rather than relying on insecurely transmitted, manipulable second-hand data. It deploys AI-based algorithms to discover anomalies in real time, based on the behaviours of devices and occupants. CyberASAP is funded by the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and delivered by Innovate UK KTN and Innovate UK, in partnership.
CyberASAP
Project Page
Demo
2022
DEC 2022
Technical Report
This year, our research group focused on three IoT themes, with three PhD students undertaking related projects. We've nearly completed a Smart Home lab with 170 devices and deployed a 35-node IoT edge sensing network on Abacws' 5th floor. Two BSc students gained international experience at DGFC, testing their dissertation projects, while two PhD students conducted user studies there. We created a 6-week Cyber-Physical Smart Home dataset in collaboration with BRE, funded by PETRAS. Our progress in the Cyber Security Academic Startup Accelerator Programme (CyberASAP) explored commercialization opportunities. We developed an 'Edge Analytics' MSc module with IIT Ropar and IIIT Kottayam, receiving further funding for its expansion with Galala University, Egypt, funded by UK-Egypt TNE. The IoT module for BSc and MSc students included practical systems development coursework.
Annual Report
DEC 2022
COMSC Away-day
Charith Perera presented an introductory session at the COMSC Awayday. The COMSC Awayday comprised several themes, including one dedicated to brainstorming and gathering ideas around creating innovation spaces to support and enhance teaching and research experience among staff and students. The introduction to the session presentation comprises the lessons learned from Charith Perera's visit to International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces (ISAM) conference. Makerspaces are one of the most common innovation spaces in university settings which provide facilities ranging from 3D printing, laser cutting, woodcutting, steel cutting, circuit fabrication, etextile and so on.
COMSC
NOV 2022
PETRAS ResBE Presentation
Mary Zacharias (Research Assistant) and
Charith Perera presented the final output of the ResBE project. PETRAS funded the ResBE project under the Opportunity Fund s heme, which aimed to capitalise on the fellowship received by Charith Perera from GCHQ. Charith Perera was seconded to the Building Research Establishment (BRE) during this project. In close collaboration with BRE, we conducted a series of small projects comprising data analysis and developing AI-driven tools to help ongoing research around smart homes and buildings.
PETRAS Center Demo
NOV 2022
ISAM-2022 Conference
Charith Perera visited the International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces (ISAM), the preeminent annual meeting for the academic makerspace community. Higher education maker spaces impact the efficacy of student learning in fields that include science, engineering, mathematics, music, entrepreneurship, medical/biomedical, architecture, mathematics, literature, and more. This visit aimed to better understand the makerspace ecosystems and how to develop a makerspace at Cardiff University within COMSC to facilitate our ongoing and future needs.
ISAM 2022
NOV 2022
Georgia Tech Aware Home Visit
Charith Perera visited Georgia Tech's Aware Home to support ongoing smart home development at Cardiff University. The Aware Home Research Initiative (AHRI) at the Georgia Institute of Technology is an interdisciplinary research endeavour aimed at addressing the fundamental technical, design, and social challenges for people in a home setting. Aware Home is a 3-story, 5040-square-foot facility designed to facilitate research while providing an authentic home environment.
Aware Home
OCT 2022
BRE Smart Space Workshop
We organised a Smart Space Workshop at The Building Research Establishment to better understand the research landscape from BRE engineers' point of view. BRE is a centre of building science in the United Kingdom, owned by a charitable organisation, the BRE Trust. Throughout the workshop, we discussed future challenges of IoT/cybersecurity in smart places and the role of industrial research. We focused on cyber-physical security, resilience and trust in s supply chain, construction, industry 4.0, policy, standardization and more.
PETRAS Center
OCT 2022
Innovate UK CyberASAP
Our project has graduated to the CyberASAP Phase 2 programme funded by DCMS/Innovate UK to develop a Proof of Concept (PoC)/Feasibility Study. Over five months period
Charith Perera,
Yasar Majib,
Hakan Kayan will go through this program. our project aims to develop and commercialize a resilient cyber-physical anomaly detection framework to detect cyber-physical malicious activities within built environments (i.e., smart homes and buildings).
CyberASAP Phase 2
OCT 2022
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Rayan Binlajdam (supervised
by
Charith Perera, Oktay Karakus, Pablo Orozco-terWengel, Benoit Goossens and Omer Rana) who will be working on
Integrate a Heterogeneous set of Data towards Developing a Forest Health Index
project.
PhD Project
OCT 2022
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Siyuan Li (supervised
by
Charith Perera, and Yuhua Li) who will be working on
Low Cost Adaptive Mobile Sensing within Buildings towards Augmenting Smart Buildings project.
PhD Project
SEP 2022
Poster@Ubicomp2022
Nada Alhirabi (PhD Student) presented her poster paper titled
"Privacy-Patterns for IoT Application Developers" at Ubicomp 2022. In this paper, we present the findings of a controlled study and discuss how this privacy-preserving tool increases the ability of IoT developers to apply privacy laws (such as GDPR) and privacy patterns. Our students demonstrate that the PARROT prototype tool increases the awareness of privacy requirements in design and increases the likelihood of the subsequent design to be more cognisant of data privacy requirements.
Designing PbD IoT Application
AUG 2022
Undergraduate IoT Projects
So pleased to see the creative work done by IoT module students this year (21/22). Congratulations to this year's winners: Group 18 (Suhail Ahmed, Thomas M John, Jack Sanderson, Gabriela Kurteva, Joseph Bywater, Tafadzwa Machengo, Olly H.). This was the first time we ran the IoT module with hands-on development due to COVID. Hope this inspires the future cohorts to come.
Demo School of Computer Science and Informatics
Internet of Things: Systems Design
JUL 2022
Postgraduate Research International Experience
Naeima Hamed and
Omar Mousa recently visited www.dgfc.life to gain international research experience. As part of the dissertation, Naeima is working on semantic data integration towards forest observatory based app ecosystem. Omar is making linked data discoverable through end-user development (EUD) techniques to support bioscience and wildlife research in the context of data observatories. They went to DGFC to work with bioscientists and wildlife conservationists to test their project and learn more about the domain.
Forest Observatory Semantic Data Integration For Forest Observatory End-User Development For Linked Data Observatories
JUN 2022
Undergraduate International Experience
Ruslan Levond and
Jacob Harkins recently visited www.dgfc.life to gain international work experience. As part of their dissertation, Ruslan developed an IoT Edge device to capture and classify species using sounds to support wildlife conservation activities. Jacob developed a technique to predict animal movements using collar data to help fight poaching and save animals. They went to DGFC to work with bioscientists and wildlife conservationists to test their project and learn more about the domain.
Forest Observatory
JUN 2022
Infosecurity Europe
Yasar Majib and
Hakan Kayan attended Infosecurity exibition. Infosecurity Europe is the biggest cyber security event for the information security community, took place at ExCeL London from 21-23 June 2022. This visit was part of the CyberASAP program which provides assistance on commercilisation cyber security solutions.
CyberASAP
JUN 2022
PETRAS Smart Space Workshop
We hosted PETRAS Smart Space Workshop at Cardiff University by bringing a number of industrial, government, and academic partners. Over the course of the day, we discussed future challenges of IoT/cybersecurity in smart places and the role of academic/industrial research. We focused on resilience and trust in smart homes, buildings and cities. The PETRAS National Centre of Excellence aims to ensure that technological advances in the IoT are developed and applied in consumer and business contexts, safely and securely.
PETRAS Center
APR 2022
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Fatmah Alqarni (supervised
by
Charith Perera, and Omer Rana) who will be working on
Facilitating Novice Software Engineers to Learn Privacy by Design and Privacy Laws through AI-Mediated Exploration and Design Activities
project.
PhD Project
APR 2022
Innovate UK CyberASAP
We have received funding from Innovate UK to go through the CyberASAP program designed to help academics commercialise their ideas. Over four months period
Charith Perera,
Yasar Majib,
Hakan Kayan will go through this program.
CyberASAP
MAR 2022
EPSRC Circular Economy Workshop
Charith Perera attended an EPSRC workshop at
Circular economy community engagement. The objectives of the workshop was to: (1) increase the awareness and understanding of the role of EPS research in delivering a transition to a circular economy, (2) increase the awareness and understanding of how to embed circularity in EPS research, (3) encourage interaction between a wide range of stakeholders and partners with expertise or interest in the circular economy, (4) identify research challenges and opportunities that could be developed as future priorities and develop understanding of the support needed to ensure research in the area delivers maximum impact.
MAR 2022
UK 5G Showcase
We attended UK’s 5G Showcase to demonstrate the work we did in the CoCoRe project. This two-day physical conference and exhibition curated to demonstrate the benefits emerging from the UK’s 5G Testbeds & Trials Programme and to matchmake with investment and partnership opportunities to accelerate the move to market adoption. The event was targeted at senior stakeholders from the investment community, government, industry and the public sector, from the UK and across the globe.
UK 5G Showcase CoCoRE Project
FEB 2022
CoCoRE Student Hackathon
We organised a hackathon to identify how 5G connectivity can support the rural economy, public services and citizen well being (e.g. healthcare) for rural communities in Wales. Hackathon was funded by 5G Unlocked (CoCoRE) projects. Students developed additional scenarios based on or extended the use cases that have already been developed and identified how the data being produced from the project could be used to develop additional services. Thanks to Yaser, Ioan, Irene and Amir for their support in organizing.
5G Wales Unlocked
JAN 2022
UKIERI-DST UrbanCPS Workshop
Charith Perera attended the UKIERI-DST UrbanCPS workshop on
Engineering Privacy Aware Urban Scale Cyber Physical Systems organised by University of Surrey, UK, and IIT-Kharagpur, India. To address the emerging challenges, this UK-India Partnership Development workshop brings together subject experts and researchers from India and the UK, to creatively expand our understanding of Engineering Privacy Aware Urban Scale Cyber Physical Systems.
UrbanCPS Workshop
2021
DEC 2021
Technical Report
This year, our research group expanded around three IoT themes: Privacy Fluid, Data Observatories, and ResilientSensing.AI, plus an additional theme on Learning Technologies for IoT. We've welcomed eight PhD and one MPhil students undertaking projects in these areas. Notably, we established a Smart Home lab with over 100 devices for practical research. We also launched the Forest Observatory Interdisciplinary Research program (forest-observatory.org), addressing global challenges like deforestation and climate change, with funding from GCRF and EPSRC. A year-long secondment at the Buildings Research Establishment (BRE), funded by PETRAS, and a new MSc module on 'Edge Analytics', developed with IIT Ropar and IIIT Kottayam and funded by the British Council, are among our key initiatives.
Annual Report
NOV 2021
British Council Going Global India
We have received funding from British Council Going Global India Exploratory Grants Program to develop an MSc module on Edge Analytics in collaboration with two leading Indian Universities, the Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar, India and Indian Institute of Information Technology, Kottayam, India. The project is led by Omer Rana.
Edge Analytics
NOV 2021
EPSRC PETRAS ISPEF
Integrity Checking at the Edge (ICE) for Operational Decision Support (ICE-ODS) project will integrate the outcomes of the PETRAS-funded “Integrity Checking at the Edge (ICE)” project, into a prototype operational decision support mechanism at Thales UK. This project is funded through PETRAS Internal Strategic Projects & Engagements Fund (ISPEF). The project is lead by Pete Burnap.
EPSRC ICE-ODS
OCT 2021
EPSRC International Partnerships
This project aims to strengthen international collaborations by setting up a series of collaborative projects across partners (VortexIoT, Danau Girang Field Centre, Universiti Malaysia Sabah). The project is led by Omer Rana.
EPSRC Forest Observatory Project/
OCT 2021
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Mohammed Alosaimi (supervised
by
Charith Perera, and Omer Rana) who will be working on
Developing an Evaluation Framework for Anomaly Detection within Built Environments project.
PhD Project
OCT 2021
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Suhas Devmane (supervised
by
Charith Perera, and Omer Rana) who will be working on
Talking Buildings: Understand Pattern of life project.
PhD Project
OCT 2021
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Azhar Alsufyani (supervised
by
Charith Perera, and Omer Rana) who will be working on
Context Aware Knowledge-driven Cyber-Physical Security at the Edge for Smart Homes project.
PhD Project
JUL 2021
Placement Projects
Welcome to four new placement students:
Akin Kaki (who will working on Data Observatory programme),
Mary Zacharias (who will working on ResilientSensing.AI programme focusing on smart home testbeds),
Osian Morgan (who will working on ResilientSensing.AI programme focusing anomaly detection using resource constrained tiny devices). project.
Placement Projects
JUL 2021
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Norah Albazzai (supervised
by
Charith Perera, and Omer Rana in colloborations with Building Research Establishment (BRE)) who will be working on
Explore the Role of Tiny Cameras Towards Augmenting Anomaly Detection within Smart Homes project.
PhD Project
JUL 2021
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Abdulaziz Aljohani (supervised
by
Charith Perera, and Omer Rana in colloborations with GCHQ) who will be working on
Self-Configuring Internet of Things Architecture for Context-Aware Anomaly Detection Towards Rapid Deployments project.
PhD Project
JUL 2021
New Starter
Welcome to new MPhil student
Yaser Awwad (supervised
by
Charith Perera, and Omer Rana in colloborations with CoCoRE project and its partners) who will be working on
Video Analytics towards Anomaly Detection on the Edge for Smart Cities project.
PhD Project
JUL 2021
New Starter
Welcome to new MPhil student
David Winter (supervised
by
Charith Perera, Kathryn Jones, and Omer Rana) who will be working on
The Impact of AI-Assisted Personalised Blended Learning Towards Addressing the Challenges in Disparity of Capability within Large Student Cohorts: Internet of Things Education project.
PhD Project
JUN 2021
Summer School Talk
Charith Perera gave a talk at Joint Cyber Security CDTs Summer School 2021. The summer school aimed to explore the complex challenges around resilience and to facilitate the interdisciplinary interactions that this problem space demands. The talk was based on the work conducted as part of the GCHQ National Resilience Fellowship. This event was jointly organised by EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training in Cyber Security.
(University of Bristol, University of Bath, RHUL, University of Oxford, UCL)
MAR 2021
EPSRC Digital Economy Sustainable Digital Society
Scalable Circular Supply Chain For the Built Environment multi-disciplinary project (combining expertise in business models, sustainable supply chains, civil engineering/ built environments, and computer science) brings together a team from academia (Cardiff and Newcastle Universities) and industry (HS2, Arup, Celsa Steel, RPL, SeroHomes, DXC, Galia Digital) utilising prior experience from a number of collaborative research projects with industry (including a blockchain pilot with UK Construction Smart Contract Committee). The project is lead by
Yingli Wang from Cardiff Business School.
EPSRC Scalable Circular Supply Chain Project
MAR 2021
EPSRC PETRAS Secondment
Appointment
Resilient Built Environments (ResBE) is a 12 month secondment project funded by EPSRC PETRAS.
In this secondment, we aim to explore how to add layers of resilience to built environments in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT).
Charith Perera will be working with a team at the Building Research Establishment (BRE) over the next 12 months. The Project set to start in July
EPSRC PETRAS2 ResBE Project
JAN 2021
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Wael Alsafery (supervised
by
Charith Perera, and Omer Rana) who will be working on
RSensing as a Service within Buildings Towards Data-Driven Collaborative Service Design project.
PhD Project
JAN 2021
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Omar Mousa (supervised
by
Charith Perera, Omer Rana, Pablo Orozco Ter Wengel, and Benoit Goossens in colloboration with School of Biosciences and Danau Girang Field Centre) who will be working on
End-User Development for Linked-Data Observatories project.
PhD Project
2020
DEC 2020
Technical Report
The research group is now restructured around three research themes (and an additional theme dedicated to enhancing teaching and learning experience) related to the Internet of Things (IoT) with a significant emphasis on build-driven research method: (1) Privacy Fluid, (2) Data Observatories, (3) ResilientSensing.AI, (4) Learning Technologies For Internet of Things. Six PhD students and an MPhil student have started working on these themes this year. We designed, developed, and published an IoT module (online:
link ) to be delivered at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level. Most of the BSc and MSc projects got affected by COVID-19 as we were unable to conduct evaluations. GCHQ has awarded Charith Perera a National Resilience Fellowship. Projects will start in January 2021.
Annual Report
NOV 2020
GCHQ National Resilience Fellowship
Appointment
CyPhyRadar: Detecting Cyber Attacks Using SecondaryInternet of Things Sensors in Smart Buildings is a six month project funded by GCHQ. This fellowship aims to explore how can we use low-cost multi-sensors (e.g., temperature, vibration, motion, etc.) to detect anomalies in a given environment to detect potential cyber attacks against ICS. Malicious actors always try to find sophisticated ways to carry-out attacks. To prevent attacks that evade NTA, we aim to develop a secondary layer of protection based on physical behaviour to mitigate the weaknesses of NTA. It is important to note that our intention is not to ignore NTA based techniques. Instead, our objective is to add more resilient to BMS network by adding a secondary protection layer of security.
Charith Perera will be working with a team at GCHQ and The Landing as a National Resilience Research Fellow over the next six months.
GCHQ CyPhyRadar Project
OCT 2020
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Mark Butterworth (Part-time) (supervised
by
Charith Perera, Omer Rana, Pablo Orozco Ter Wengel, and Benoit Goossens in colloboration with School of Biosciences and Danau Girang Field Centre) who will be working on
Low Power IoT Infrastructure for Harsh Environments project.
PhD Project
OCT 2020
New Starter
Welcome to new MPhil student
Dominic Fonseca (supervised
by
Charith Perera, Georgina Powell, Omer Rana, and in colloboration with iPoint) who will be working on
Predictive Edge Analytics for Sanitary Facility Monitoring project.
MPhil Project
OCT 2020
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Reem Aldhafiri (supervised
by
Charith Perera, Omer Rana and Petroc Sumner in colloboration with School of Psychology) who will be working on
Cyber Physical Privacy for Ageing and Learning Disabilities project.
PhD Project
OCT 2020
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Yasar Majib (supervised
by
Charith Perera and Omer Rana in colloborations with Building Research Establishment (BRE)) who will be working on
Context Aware Security for Smart Homes using Cyber Physical Data Analysis project.
PhD Project
JUN 2020
EPSRC Workshop
Charith Perera attended the EPSRC workshop on
Identifying challenges for a Sustainable Digital Society.
The objectives of the workshop were to: (1) Establish the main research challenges and opportunities within the EPSRC "Sustainable Digital Society" priority area, (2) Discuss the current capabilities in the UK to create a Sustainable Digital Society and pinpoint any gaps, (3) Produce a list of priorities and sub-priorities for research that will be used to develop a targeted call, (4) Generate output that will inform future Research Council strategy.
MAY 2020
Shared Spaces Workshop@Ubicomp
We (
Charith Perera, Jason Wiese, Jacky Bourgeois, Gerd Kortuem) are organising a workshop titled
"Building a Research Agenda for Shared Smart Spaces" at ACM Ubicomp 2021. This workshop explores how to leveragethe Internet of Things technologies and data-driven approaches todesign interactions specifically for shared smart spaces. We will use design jams as a key activity to explore and build up potentialdesign guidelines and methodology for shared smart spaces, and toidentify open research questions relating to shared smart spaces. Please consider attending. Look forward to meeting you in Cancun, Mexico.
ACM Ubicomp 2021
APR 2020
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Naeima Hamed (supervised
by
Charith Perera, Omer Rana, Pablo Orozco Ter Wengel, and Benoit Goossens) who will be working on
Semantic Data Integration for Forest Observatory based
Early Warning System Towards Poaching Activities Piction project.
PhD Project
APR 2020
PMC Workshop@ICDM
We (Mahmoud Barhamgi, Xiangliang Zhang,
Charith Perera, Chia-Mu Yu) are organising a workshop titled
"Privacy Management in the Cyberspace" at IEEE ICDM 2020. The goal of this workshop is to collect recent advances, innovations and practices in data and knowledge engineering for building security and privacy protection systems, techniques and solutions that provide effective data and privacy protection for users and contribute to increase their trust in the cyberspace. Please consider submiting a paper.
IEEE ICDM 2020
MAR 2020
ACM TOIT Special Issue
We (Mahmoud Barhamgi, Michael N. Huhns, Pınar Yolum,
Charith Perera) are organising an special issue titled
"Human-Centered Security, Privacy, and Trust in the Internet of Things" in
ACM TOIT. Please consider submitting a paper.
Submit Now
FEB 2020
DCMS 5G Programme CoCoRE
Connected Communities in the Rural Economy (CoCoRE) is a collaborative project to be
delivered by experts at Cardiff University is aiming to unlock the potential of 5G technology in rural Wales. The
project will assess how state-of-the-art technology can improve various aspects of life, from tackling rural
isolation, to improving farm security and bolstering the tourism industry.
InnovateUK PETRAS2 CoCoRE Project
JAN 2020
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Hakan Kayan (supervised
by
Charith Perera and Omer Rana) who will be working on
Context Aware Security for cyber Physical Edge Resources
for industrial control systems (CASPER) project.
PhD
Project
JAN 2020
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Asma Irfan (supervised
by
Charith Perera and Omer Rana) who will be working on
Interactive AI Technologies for Perceived-Value-driven
Behaviour-Based Energy uction in Office Buildings project.
PhD
Project
2019
DEC 2019
Technical Report
Our first annual report is out!. Internet of
Things Research and Teaching: Vision and Mission Annual Report (2019). The research group is structured around five
research themesrelated to the Internet of Things (IoT) with a significant emphasis on build-driven research method:
(1) Design-Time Privacy and Security, (2) Run-Time Privacy and Security, (3) Data Marketplaces, (4) Sensing
Infrastructure, (5) Learning Technology. Six PhD students have started working on these themes, including two
affiliated PhD students. Three MSc students completed their dissertations. Five BSc students completed their final
projects including two publications. A postdoctoral researcher started working on a PETRAS Catalyst project
(Integrity Checking at the Edge). We hosted two Cardiff Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (CUROP)
summer students.
Annual Report
NOV 2019
New Starter
Welcome to
Matthew Nunes who will be joining us as
new Research Associate to work on EPSRC PETRAS 2 Funded Catalyser
Integrity Checking at the Edge (ICE)
project. The two year ICE project will study the factories and water treatment systems of the future, undertaking
composite vulnerability analysis of interactions between edge devices, cloud platforms and legacy systems. This
vulnerability analysis will be complemented by the use of AI at the edge of such systems to create and improve
methods to demonstrate transparent processes mapping of data flows to expected activity at the periphery of
integrated systems with advanced visualisation methods, and provide security and resilience assurances for critical
infrastructures of the future.
EPSRC PETRAS2 ICE Project
OCT 2019
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Bayan AlMuhander
(supervised by
Charith Perera and Omer Rana) who will be working on
Interactive Privacy Preferences Management in
Shared Spaces in Internet of Things project.
PhD Project
SEP 2019
NHS Expo Talk
Charith Perera gave a talk at SETsquared Innovation Workshop at Health and Care Innovation Expo 2019 held at the Manchester Central Convention Complex. The NHS Expo is the biggest NHS-led event of the year attracting around 5,000 people from the NHS, social care, local government, the third sector and the commercial sector. The Innovation Workshops brought together 50 participants made up of businesses, academic researchers and NHS organisations, to explore and develop collaborations around Government’s Healthy Ageing Challenge.
AUG 2019
Summer Projects
Two second year students completed their summer projects and research training funded by the Cardiff Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (CUROP).
Ruslan Levond worked on "Living Edge Laboratory" project, and
Michal Malecki worked on "IoT Lab Book" project.
Living Edge Laboratory
IoT Lab Book
JUL 2019
DGFC Visit
Charith Perera visited
Danau Girang Field Centre in Borneo to discuss and co-design sustainable Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure to augment the capabilities of bioscience researchers, wildlife officers, and law enforcement officers. During the 14 day visit, Charith travelled across Sabah, Malaysia, visiting Kota Kinabalu, Mountain Kinabalu, Sandakan before reaching Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary where DGFC is located.
JUL 2019
Global Opportunities Fund
Global Mobility Field Visit
Two of our final year undergraduate students (
Jack Burkett and
Karan Juj) visited
Danau Girang Field Centre in Borneo for three weeks. During their visit, they worked hand-in-hand with both bioscience researchers and field centre staff to test the solutions they developed to address some of the challenges faced by wildlife researchers. As part of the final year project, Jack developed a
Low-Cost SMS Driven Location Tracking System for Anti-Poaching Investigations. Karan developed a
Low Cost SustaiExploring the Suitability of BLE Beacons to Track Poacher Vehicles in Harsh Jungle Terrains. They also interviewed a number of staff members and researcher at DGFC and produced a report by identifying the major challenges they face and outlining potential technical solutions and research directions.
Tracking Poachers using BLE Beacons Project
Tracking Poachers using GPS/SMS Project
MAY 2019
EPSRC RiR
Appointment
Quarriable Smart City Data Markets project
(2019-2021) has been jointly funded by EPSRC and Digital Catapult, London. The funding was given to initiate a
project affiliated to H2020 funded SynchroniCity project. SynchroniCity project aims to create a data marketplace
that facilitates businesses to develop IoT- and AI-enabled services to improve the lives of citizens and to grow
local economies. This project aims to enrich data with semantic capabilities using ontologies and reasoning
techniques by allowing data consumers to query data semantically.
Charith Perera will be working with SynchroniCity team at
Digital Catapult as a Researher-in-Residence over the next 2.5 years.
EPSRC Quarriable Smart City Data Markets
Project
APR 2019
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Atheer Jeraisy
(supervised by
Charith Perera and Omer Rana) who will be working on
Motivating Software Engineers to Develop
Privacy-aware Internet of Things (IoT) Applications through Reusable Privacy Components and Gamification
Techniques project.
PhD Project
APR 2019
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Emad Aliwa (supervised
by Omer Rana and
Charith Perera) who will be working on
Detecting In-Vehicle Cyber Attacks through Controller
Area Network (CAN) Bus Data Analytics on-the-Edge project. This is a collaboration with iPoint
PhD Project
MAR 2019
GCRF Facilitation
We have received funding to conduct two
workshops in Sabah, Malaysia and Cardiff, UK in order to explore challenges faced by Sabah Wildlife. Our overall
vision is to develop a sustainable Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure to augment the capabilities of bioscience
researchers, wildlife officers, and law enforcement officers. This is a colloborative research effort with Omer
Rana, Pablo Orozco Ter Wengel and Benoit Goossens.
GCRF Sustainable IoT Infrastructure
FEB 2019
EPSRC ECR Capital Award
We have received funding to set up a new
Edge Computing infrastructure called
'Edge Living Lab'. It enables us to develop a new class of applications
(and underlying computational analysis algorithms) that are ‘latency-sensitive’. The laboratory will enable us to
carry out internationally leading research in cybersecurity, real-time data processing and communication networks.
The laboratory will be realised by a combination of Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards, that are distributed across
open spaces and existing laboratories.
EPSRC Edge Living Lab
JAN 2019
EPSRC PETRAS2
EPSRC has renewed the PETRAS Research Centre for
another five years (2019-2023). The PETRAS 2 National Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems Cybersecurity has a
strong focus on Edge computing. Cardiff University will deliver one of the Catalyser
Integrity Checking at the
Edge (ICE) project. PETRAS 2 is a 14M GBP inventment by EPSRC which brings 12 universities together to address
the challenges related to privacy, security, trust in IoT. This is a collaboration with Pete Burnap.
EPSRC PETRAS2 ICE Project
JAN 2019
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Areej Alabbas
(supervised by Omer Rana and
Charith Perera) who will be working on
Optimal Placement and Scheduling of Service
Function Chaining (SFCs) under Security Constraints project.
PhD Project
2018
DEC 2018
MDPI SENSORS Special Issue
We (
Charith Perera, Mahmoud Barhamgi, Massimo Vecchio, Júlio Cezar Estrella, Kuo-Hui Yeh) are organising an special issue titled
"Internet of Things Middleware Platforms and Sensing Infrastructure" in
MDPI SENSORS. Please consider submitting a paper.
Submit Now
DEC 2018
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Lamya Alkhriji
(supervised by
Charith Perera and Omer Rana) who will be working on
Augmenting Software Design Processes using
Automated Privacy-aware Internet of Things Application Design Techniques project.
PhD Project
NOV 2020
DSI4 Workshop@EDBT
We (Christoph Quix, Matthias Jarke, Albert Bifet, Miguel Correia,
Charith Perera) are organising a workshop titled
"First International Workshop on Data Science for Industry 4.0" at EDBT 2019. The workshop aims at bringing together researchers from different domains and to discuss the challenges for data science in industrial settings. The workshop will provide a forum for the presentation of recent research results, work-in-progress reports, vision papers, and an attractive keynote speaker. Please consider submiting a paper.
EDBT 2019
OCT 2018
New Starter
Welcome to new PhD student
Nada Alhirabi
(supervised by
Charith Perera and Omer Rana) who will be working on
Interactive Design Method for Augmenting
Software Design Process Toward Privacy-Aware Internet of Things Application Designs project.
PhD Project
