University of Liverpool

I’m leaving Northern Ireland, and I’m moving to Liverpool. Via Portsmouth. I have spoken with a few people about the situation I find myself in, and a few more people about my decision, but I want to get it all down somewhere. Where did this come from? The short answer is that a series of unexpected events mean that it makes sense to move my research. Recently, my PhD supervisor, Prof Alan Marshall, was offered a research Chairship at the University of Liverpool, which he gladly accepted. It’s a great move for him (Another Russell Group, one of the original ‘redbrick’ universities, etc etc), but that’s his life not mine so all it does is provide an option. (Disclosure: I also work with Alan on his spinout Wireless Security company, TOM Ltd) ...

So today is my last official day in the University of Liverpool office. Time for a bit of reflection. This is a self indulgent “For the sake of history and my bad memory” post so feel free to skip it. It’s just over two years since I left Belfast, and in those two years, life got weird(er). TL;DR for my own benefit in years to come: Worked for DSTL for a while on autonomous maritime systems Went to the Bournemouth Airshow Studied FPGA programming at Cambridge Coordinated a Raspberry Pi Outreach programme between Farset Labs, W5, and Digital Circle (along with the inimitable other Andrew; Mulholland) Spoke at TEDxBelfast and the All Island Innovation Conference Built a green field network research lab from scratch (it’s still not finished) Joined the Liverbeards Contributed to a joint project using atomic clocks for submarine location Went to GDC in San Francisco as part of an InvestNI organised Trade Mission Visited the Microsoft and Google campuses in SF Visited Noisebridge (and didn’t get involved in any drama…) Presented some research at Stanford Played with the Intel Galileo Went to Prague Got my first paper rejection Met the Queen, Prince Phillip, the Duke of York and a load of interesting entrepreneurs at Buckingham Palace Participated in VC negotiations and biz dev for a small tech firm Spoke at Ignite Liverpool (The video doesn’t do the animations justice…#cringe) Drank my way around Manchester with a load of beards Secured funding for a Farset Labs Raspberry Jam outreach programme Saw Dylan Moran Live Presented at a defence conference Attended a death metal gig in a suit Lost my passport and poster on the way to present at another defence conference… Took part in the Worlds Biggest Catwalk Presented at TrustCom in Helsinki Played glow-in-the-dark-haunted-house-mini-golf as part of what goes down in history as the most random night of my life… Was named Liverbeard “Beard of the Month” (well, I was leaving, they had to give me it sometime… :p ) Participated in a mayoral discussion on smart cities Got the most unheard of submission extension Finally got rid of a collection of “joke” twitter accounts I’d wired up to IFTTT ages ago and forgotten about… (Sorry QUB…) Got a trim from barber-to-the-stars, Cutthroat Pete Entered and won my first “food challenge”; a hot-wings challenge (and didn’t cry about it afterwards), also earning my second consecutive Liverbeard-of-the-month-status. Discovered far too many awesome bars in Liverpool Made some amazing friends I won’t be able to get rid of for the rest of my days Managed too many Undergrad, MSc and MEng projects That’ll do. ...

Update: I got asked to do a simplified version of this post for the University of Liverpool, it lives here (Backup) I’m technically in a third year of a PhD, and most of the time, when someone asks me what it is I’m actually doing, I fluff it and say something about “autonomous submarines” or “collaborative autonomy” or “Emergent properties of communities” or something similarly vague. In the spirit of setting the record straight in a less-academic way, I thought it’d be worth while to edit a presentation I recently made to the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence last month in Stanford and make it a little more digestible. ...