The University of Warwick is consistently ranked highly both nationally and internationally. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, Warwick was ranked seventh overall in the UK, with 65% of the University’s research rated as internationally excellent or world-leading. The Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick offers undergraduate, taught masters and research degrees in Computer Science. The four research groups in the Department cover Computational Biology and Bioimaging, Performance Computing and Visualisation, Foundations of Computer Science, and Intelligent and Adaptive Systems.
The Intelligent and Adaptive Systems research group (IAS) comprises 14 academics and research staff and 19 research students with expertise in Educational Technology, Empirical Modelling, andPersonalisation and Adaptation. Recently the group has been a coordinator or partner in EU projects, including the ProLearn Network of Excellence, GRAPPLE (FP7 STREP), ALS (Socrates-Minerva) and MALog (Lifelong Learning). Additionally, members of the group have provided consultancy to the ICS Subject Centre of the UK Higher Education Academy.
People
Alexandra Cristea is associate professor and co-ordinator of the IAS research group. She is Director of Graduate Research in the Computer Science Department. Before joining Warwick she held research and teaching posts at the Eindhoven University of Technology, at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo and at the Politehnica University of Bucharest. Her research interests include web research, social and semantic web technologies, adaptive systems, authoring of adaptive hypermedia, user modelling, intelligent tutoring systems, concept mapping, and artificial intelligence, having published over 170 articles on these subjects. In addition to extensive involvement in international conferences, as organiser, invited speaker, panelist, and programme committee member, she is a UNESCO expert for adaptive web-based education. She is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, and an IEEE and IEEE CS member. She received her PhD at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo and two MScs and BSs at the Politehnica University of Bucharest. She is leading the work package on Weblog structure and semantics in the BLOGFOREVER EU FP7 project.
Mike Joy is associate professor in the IAS research group and leads the Department’s research in educational technology. He has Masters degrees in Mathematics from Cambridge University and in Post-Compulsory Education from the University of Warwick, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of East Anglia. His research interests also include computer science education, object oriented programming, declarative programming, mobile computing and Internet software, and he is actively engaged with leading conferences and journals in his field. He is a Chartered Fellow of theBritish Computer Society, a Chartered Engineer, a Chartered Scientist, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a Senior Member of the ACM.
Karen Stepanyan is a postdoctoral researcher in the IAS research group, specifically appointed for the BlogForever project. His primary research interests are concerned with: social computing, Web 2.0, online communities and networks, collaborative and technology-enhanced learning. His PhD thesis (Brunel University) focuses on participant engagement in online learning environments (including blogs) and employs Social Network Analysis (SNA) as one of the core employed methods. He has been involved in research of Web 2.0 phenomenon and development/application of open source web solutions since 2004.
