Communicating Research (Workshop 5)

This workshop focused mainly on securing of funds and grants for research projects. There are several important things that we as the researchers have to be cautious of. The following sections highlight some of the learning points from the workshop.

About title of the proposal:

Clearer, bigger picture, easily understood

Structure of proposal:

• summary
• introduction
• literature review
• approach

Proposal omits results and discussion. Some planning and capacity such as budget, track record are needed. A discussion using the analogy of wheels was given as follows:

• big picture (need for efficient locomotion)
• the question (can the wheel provide efficient locomotion)
• paradigm (proof of concept, experiments, metrics, benchmarks)
• specific goals
• approach

Sometimes it is useful to get the best structure from question to answer:

Step 1: interpret the question

Step 2: subgoals

Step 3: choose methodology

Formula to writing summaries:

• Background (why is it significant)
• Question (what are you doing)
• Approach (how are you doing it)
• Outcome (where the result will lead to / where will it get us)

After all, it is the funding organizations that will be the main readers at the point of the fund application. Hence, it is the prime concern to make sure they (which could normally be non-expert in our field) are presented with easily understood contents.

Milestone Workshop by Prof Sue McKemmish + Pecha Kucha (Presentation of local HDR students' projects)

In conjunction with Prof Sue's visit to Sunway campus, we had a chance to be briefed on the PhD milestone, and to meet up with Ms Cassandra the Graduate Student Services manager. The workshop is pretty much self-explanatory based on the following diagram. Some questions were raised regarding the courses (FIT5144 & FIT6021) compulsory to the students, and how would the timeline be affected with the inclusion of these courses. We were told that an extra period of 3 months is eligible for those taking the courses - if extension is needed. This has made most of us relief as the works from those courses have taken up quite some significant time out of our research activities.

In another session named as Pecha Kucha (a presentation style based on 20 slides per 20 seconds) was the students' presentation of their research projects. Each of the students was given 20 seconds to present the current stage of their research to the audience, which was inclusive of most of the HDR students, some lecturers from the school as well as the Deputy Head of School, Prof Sue herself, and Ms Cassandra. Based on my presentation, I received an important feedback from Prof Sue, in which she suggested I could consider to include my end-user (the Blind and Low Vision) along the prototype development phases. The point was taken and now it has formed part of my research methods. I appreciate the session.

Overall, the meeting and the workshop has offered us a platform to know more about some policies and procedures important to our PhD milestone.

Series of Mathworks' Webinars

Based on my previous positive experience with Mathworks online seminar series, I joined other 3 seminars from 13th August to 1st September. I summarized them in the following sections.

Integrating MATLAB into your C/C++ Product Development Workflow (13th August 2015)
As I will be coding my prototype mainly using C/C++ in Robot Operating System and Linux (specifically Ubuntu), I found the highlights of this seminar are definitely helpful. At the early stage of my research, I prefer to use Matlab for prototyping. However, due to the needs of implementing the actual working application on an embedded platform for my wearable technology, I have to eventually switch from Matlab code to C/C++. So this seminar has shed some lights on the integration of my Matlab code into the development workflow. Technically, I can tackle the issue from both ways - either by generating C code from Matlab code to seed new designs; or integrating my existing C code into Matlab for simulation or prototyping. These could have made things much more faster and easier for me.


PID Control Made Easy (18th August 2015)
A proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controller is a control feedback mechanism commonly used in industrial control processes or systems. I have enrolled into this seminar mainly due to the belief that I might eventually be using some sort of control mechanism in the prototype to provide feedback to the blind and low vision users. This is something I am going to implement at the very end of the prototype development. The seminar introduced Matlab Simulink Control Design toolbox as a straightforward and partly automated process to tune PID controllers. The environment also allows automatic code generation to deploy PID controllers. I am seeing that the techniques learned here might be relevant in designing my HCI feedback control.

Signal Processing and Machine Learning Techniques for Sensor Data Analytics (1st September 2015)
This is the most relevant topic for me among all the series from Mathworks seminars. My project application needs the joint use of signal (image) processing and machine learning techniques on real-time and sensor data. Based on the speaker, MATLAB can speedup the development of data analysis and sensor processing systems. This is achieved by having a full range of modelling and design capabilities within a single environment in Matlab. In the seminar, an example form a classification system for human activity is shared and discussed.

Having acquired some skills from these seminars, I am looking forward to putting them into good use of my research project.

Image Processing Webinar

(23/7/2015)

So this is my second series of the Mathworks webinar. This time, we have had Brett Shoelson (a PhD and the Principal Application Engineer for Mathworks, specialized in image processing) to conduct the seminar on image processing by using an example form a research work in Finding Parasitic Infections with Matlab. 

Somehow the example from this seminar is more relevant in biological science (Parasitic Infections), however, the algorithm and techniques involved are absolutely relevant to computing and IT. We were introduced to some typical real-time challenges in the discipline, and some discussions about the possible approaches in dealing with them.

The part that I am really benefiting from this seminar is the techniques from computer vision and machine learning, which were used to automatically recognize (quantify as per said by the speaker) the target in the image set. In my own project, I will be focusing on computer vision to acquire real-time ground data, and this data will be then processed by some means of image processing probably involving machine learning. I downloaded the example codes and hopefully they will be pointing me to some relevant solutions for my project.

A Webinar on Data Analytics with MATLAB

(17/7/2015)

I am an experienced user of Matlab - a high-level language and interactive environment for rapid scripting and algorithm testing (at least that was how I have used Matlab all the while for the past 10 years).

A few weeks ago, I was notified about a webinar from Mathworks (the company that developed Matlab) on the topic of Data Analysis. The advertisement caught my attention with the following short description: "Using Data Analytics to turn large volumes of complex data into actionable information can help you improve engineering design and decision-making processes... and so on"

So I signed-up the seminar, and wow! I have actually learned some new and interesting techniques from it.  It was a short 1-hour session, but the pain is the time difference between my local zone and the organizer's zone in the United State (for me that was some time in the midnight).

Let's get back to the topic, so I have got a chance to learn techniques for exploring, visualizing and combining complex multivariate data sets, which I don't normally perform using Matlab. Another technique which could be closer to my current research project is prototyping and testing predictive models using machine learning methods. This is something advance and new to me, and to pick up the skill is luckily not that hard. To conclude, this was a really useful online seminar, at least technically.

PS: Following this, I have signed-up for more webinars from Mathworks. More to come in my next post.

Communicating Research (Workshop 3)

Following the previous workshop, this workshop 3 of the series highlighted the communication of our research to the non-academia (outside academia). Since we knew already what, when and where to publish our works, now we are encouraged to communicate to some other audience.

The focus of communication should consider the following two things:

1. How much details does your audience want?
2. Which part of your story would your audience want to hear most?

The first impression is also critical. As such, there are a few things that we have to make prominent in order to invite or retain the readers. The order follows as the main title, section headings, first text box and finally the rest of the information.

In this workshop, we were having some fun time by firstly criticizing some past poster, and next, revising our abstract for the industry audience. One of the techniques to draw the attention of the industry audience is to highlight the outcome or the potential product of the research. The workshop has reminded me again and again on the importance of knowing our audience before the writing to achieve the best readership.

Ethics Workshop 2

The workshop started with a recap on activity we did in the last workshop - a short discussion on the ethical issues surrounding our very own research.

We were then introduced to the topic on human research and the ethics involved. This has made me re-think about my research. It happens to be that my research project involves human subjects - to be specific, the blind and low vision people.

Thanks to this workshop, we were provided with some insights about the institutional review as well as the Monash review framework. The application procedures, processes and requirements of Monash review were shared and I find it really helpful. At least, we are assured that there is a system to screen our research before the human subjects are tested such that it is ethical.

I like the idea that ethics review is a discipline of good research. So, taking the learning points from the workshop, I have to be certain that I know what I am doing, and why I am doing it, and why I am doing it in a particular way.

Reflexive / Reflective Research Practice

Some honest declarations:
... even I have read through some related sources to gain more insights about the reflexive/reflective research, what I am able to share in the following paragraphs are just some points touching the very surface of this topic. It will be easier to build the point of reference if we have some ideas about the philosophy of scientific research and methodology such as positivism, social constructionism and critical realism.

Back to the topic:
The term "reflexive/reflective research" means a research involving the researchers to acknowledge their own experiences and produce the outcomes of the finding based on their contexts. There is a complex relationship between the processes of knowledge production and the contexts of such processes, as well as the knowledge producer (the researcher).

Based on the descriptions in the paragraph above, thus a "reflexive/reflective research" has to be carefully interpreted and reflected. This implies that interpretation of the researcher is very important because it forms the fundamentals of the research idea, and eventually the outcomes of the finding. Thus all the interpretation backdrop that set the reflexive/reflective research such as perception, cognition, theory, language, text, politic and culture should be given great consideration.

Again, as referred to the definition, the ability to acknowledge the researcher's own experience also indicates that the researcher should be aware of his/her own thoughts, feelings, culture, environment and social background, such that he/she can ideally come closer to the rigour, and hence a good quality research.

Now that I have briefly shared the very nature of "reflexive/reflective research", we may take a look at the four elements in reflective/reflexive research suggested by M. Alvesson & K. Sköldberg (2009).

The 4 elements of reflective/reflexive research:

1. Systematics and techniques in research procedures
2. Clarification of the primary of interpretation
3. Awareness of the political-ideological character of research
4. Reflection in relation to the problem of representation and authority   

In which if we can emphasis these elements in any reflective/reflexive researches, we can render the quality of the outcome, and of course the research itself.



Bibliography:

• Mats Alvesson & Kaj Sköldberg (2009) Reflexive Methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Research, SAGE. 
• Etherington, Kim (2004) Becoming a Reflexive Researcher - Using Our Selves in Research, Jessica Kingsley Publishers Ltd.

Communicating Research (Workshop 2)

So in today's Communicating Research workshop 2, we have 3 invited guests.

We started off with the panel discussion by 2 speakers, in which we were given the overall idea of academic journal vs conference papers.

We learnt about getting constructive feedback from the peer reviews, and how should we react to the comments made by the reviewers. Some discussions about taking criticism were in place. One good thing that I have learnt form the speakers is to separate/filter the comments from the reviewers to check if some comments are similar from different reviewer, hence we can treat them accordingly. Writing for journal/conference can brush up our skill in preparing our thesis.

In the Q&A, we have some insights on the following matters:

• suggesting the right people as the reviewers; 
• the readership of our paper;
• about the importance of citation of our paper;
• about authorship and publication; 
• about paper of good impact factor

Later we have another speaker on the topics of preparing and publishing our paper. In the context of publishing our research, we have to be clear about the scope, the reader, and especially ourself. We are writing from the point of knowing the outcome of our research at the time of publishing. Global significance, disciplinary significance, and technical significance are the 3 key areas that we can look at our project scope. Adding with the consideration of how much should we write about the literature review, the technical approach being used and the design of evaluation, a paper is good to go.

When our paper is reviewed and feedback is provided to us, we still need to communicate with the editor by reacting accordingly to the reviewer's feedback. For example, we might need to make corrections, or re-explain a context using different frame of understanding, or even refine the sentence due to language issues.

The above learning points are just some to be mentioned in this blog. Indeed, I really learned a lot. To conclude, this session is particularly very helpful for me.

Ethics Workshop 1

Here is my reflection on the Ethics Workshop 1.

My research is technically surrounding a robotic system, but since I am building the robot for a particular group of users (for my case, my subject is the visually impaired people), I have to be really careful in term of ethical practice.

From this workshop, I realise that the entire design of my research should have proper consideration of the ethical practice even at the very starting point of the research work. Questions begin to fill up my mind - how should I use the data collected from my project group; what should be declared in the consent form; what are the agreement needed; what could be accepted from the point of legal, ethical vs moral practise; did I miss out any approbation and so on...

So my next task is to identify those information needed to help me answer my questions. Since I am working on my project at Malaysia, I would like to find out more about legal issues related to my subject. Apart from this, I would also like to look into some articles to gain more insights about the known ethical practice involving this particular group of people. Morally, as long as I concern the work is done following our current social values or principles of conduct, the work should be well accepted. This shouldn't be a problem as I know my country well. But I anticipate possible challenges if my work to be extended to another country.

Anyway, this session has allowed me to think more in-depth on the issues of not only ethical practice, but also the legal and moral perspective of them.

Communicating Research (Workshop 1)

This workshop has helped us to plan our research publication in a manageable and organised manner. There are several learning points that were emphasised - the publication strategies, identification of journals / conferences, issues surrounding intellectual property, authorship, and the handling of data.

Firstly, in term of choosing conferences/journals, we were advise to consider some publishers with good quality, hence our paper should be describing some works that are impactful in the related area. In order to get our paper accepted, we should understand the needs / requirement of the publisher of the target discipline. In short, we have to have a plan for publishing our work.

Next, we came to learn as well the matters surrounding data authorship, ownership and responsibility. Before this, I have thought of "who is responsible for data?". From this session, I have a clearer picture of managing it. The important part is to know clearly publishable vs non-publishable data. We have to identify as well the ownership of the data, such that we don't get into IP trouble. Some methods can be followed to make sure we are in the safe position to utilise the data.

Last but not least, managing of the bibliography is another important technique. We review others' works, such that we have to acknowledge works that have been done before us, and point out clearly the parts that we are contributing. We have to be careful of failing into plagiarism even on our very own work that have been submitted to elsewhere.

Finally, at the end of the workshop, I am thinking of looking into the CORE website to identify some high impact conferences / journals for my research area. Thanks to this session, now I am more prepared to produce a "trouble-free" paper. ^o^

Skill & Knowledge Gap Analysis (targeting my PhD Research)

After some discussion with my supervisor, the following table and chart should be good enough to reflect the said gap analysis targeting my PhD research involving robotic system.

Introduction and FIT5144 Induction Session

Hello everyone,

Greetings from Malaysia! I am Kuan Yew. I come from a background of IT and I have worked mainly in the area of machine learning and artificial intelligence. My PhD research focuses on the  developing of a robotic system as an assistive technology to the visually impaired people. This research will be looking at both the technological and the social-psychological aspects of the related areas.

Apart from my involvement in computing or IT related areas, I am also a certified soft skill trainer – conducting mainly motivation or teambuilding to coporates around Malaysia. Yes, you heard it right, I am passionate in personal / character development; for nearly a decade of my stay in Malaysian Borneo – the State of Sabah – I enjoyed my voluntary efforts to motivate the native youths in rural and mountainous villages.

Regarding the induction session, of course it is very helpful. We get to know about various resources available to us, which is really important in assisting us throughout our research / study. Other talks have enlighten us with useful tips and guidelines. Appreciate the well-prepared and informative slides shared during the induction. I can continue to study the important details from those slides again whenever they are needed. Indeed, I look forward to hearing from more seminars / workshops in the near future.

Final thought, being able to undertake this PhD degree is like a dream coming true for me – I am really grateful! Although on the other hand, I have to overcome the challenge of parenting my new born baby and to make a well-balanced living. This journey is going to be tough, but it will be very fulfilling and rewarding.