Background: Simulations are a useful resource for learning A-Level Physics. Part of my current research involves re-creating some original physics experiments from the 1920's - 30's where the apparatus no longer exists. This project is suitable for anyone who is considering entering the teaching profession, as a teacher of computing. You will work with teachers and/or A-Level physics students supported by a tutor from the Institute of Educaton. You will use the Unreal engine and write code in C++ using our Simulation Framework code base.

Aims: (i) To create a simulation of one or more physics experiments, (ii) To create associated learning resources, (iii) To evaluate these resources with students and/or teachers.

Objectives: This project could run as 'Action Research' where you iteratively design, build and test (evaluate with students and or teachers) your product.

Lit. Review: There is a huge amount of journal articles available. Many focus on physics simulation, others focus on the use of game engine technology in education.

Secondary Data: Other simulation resources.

Primary Data: Evaluation of your simulation and associated resources. This could be via a focus group, or via questionnaires.

Technology: Unreal-4 (lab machines) or Unreal-5 using our MAS22 softwareEv framework.

Ethical Approval: Requires enhanced Ethical Approval since this project involves collecting data from people.

We assume that technologies will improve our lives, work and quality of life. For many people such benefits are undoubtedly true. However, does this apply to everyone? A House of Lords report in 2023 proposed that the "digital divide is undermining efforts to improve UK productivity, economic growth and socio-economic inclusion" and that groups likely to be most effected included the elderly, with 31 per cent of people aged over 65 not using the internet at home, compared with only 4 per cent of those aged 35-44 (https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5803/ldselect/ldcomm/219/21902.htm ).  

A useful project would be to explore options for research in this area. Perhaps formulate a survey strategy, questionnaire, workshop, or proposed data sources that might be used for subsequent exploration. Proposals would need to be informed by background research and considerate of research rigour and ethics. 

The Internet of Things and Digital Twins are becoming hot industry topics. It would be great for us to build our capabilities in these fields, with a view to expanding our teaching and research options. A useful project would be to explore low cost (even free!) options to that would enable academic researchers and students to explore topics such as medium/long range wireless networks (such as LoRa), IoT system simulation, or Digital Twin development. 

ChatGPT has been in the news since it was released in November 2022. It has been the object of a lot of hype (a user-friendly combination of Google and Wikipedia; the ability to collate and draw conclusions from mountains of data) as well as disaster predictions (the end of traditional academic assignments).

But what can it do? And how do people see it? There are many questions that could be asked.

When given a complex prompt (more than just a request for factual information) ChatGPT will give a different response each time it is asked. Investigate the variations in response to the same prompt delivered repeatedly. Do the responses converge or diverge? You will need to generate several suitable prompts, and investigate the responses to each over an extended period of time.

Because it is designed to do nothing more than deliver plausible-sounding text, ChatGPT has (as yet) no concept of truth or factual accuracy. This means that it will sometimes produce factually inaccurate statements (‘hallucinations’) not derived from its training data (the Internet as at Summer 2021 – which probably contained more than a few inaccuracies, both accidental and deliberate). If these ‘hallucinations’ are uncritically added to the pool of (mis)information available to humanity, they will act like ‘fake news’ and pollute our data sources. How frequent are these hallucinations? Do they occur more frequently in some subject areas, and less frequently in others?

What do people think of ChatGPT? Does their opinion depend on age/gender/educational background…? Will it be a tool to make life easier? Or a threat to privacy? What evidence is there to support each of these two opposing positions, or any other position on ChatGPT?

Investigate how ChatGPT compares with Google Bard, Microsoft Bing (or any other easily available AI chatbot). On what sort of tasks do they perform differently, and how, and why? Are the differences significant/important? You may find it best to investigate and compare performance on a small number of tasks.

Investigate the proliferation of various website security/cookie/privacy policies.

How are they affecting the user experience?

How are they affecting the browsing experience?

Does this have a detrimental impact for organisations and e-commerce?

Do you have a solution? What does the literature tell you? I have "heard" rumours about a single sign-up universal system that would enable users to accept preferences one time only.

There are a number of approaches you could take to this project but it would probably fit a theoretical approach.

Create either a "forum" or a website where musicians can upload and share their music across campus.

Requirements would include an upload tool, metadata about the type of music and include a "find a musican" "search for a musician".

Video upload would also be a thought.

A number of DBT (prototype) project ideas exist within the following...

When a flood warning is issued in your area, how do you know whether your exact location is safe?

The UK Met Office provides free access to their web API: DataPoint which gives general weather forecast, including extreme weather event warnings.  The UK Environment Agency provides free access to their real-time flood monitoring API, which gives detailed data from its flood monitoring stations.  Both sources also give historical data, which could potentially be used in conjunction with the Environment Agency flood maps to estimate level of risk for any given location.

How feasible is it to estimate the likelihood of flooding at a specific location within mainland UK at any given time?  How accurate might that estimate be?  What apps already exist that provide some or all of these features?

If you discover that flooding or getting cut-off by flooding at your exact location is imminent, how do you know where to escape to?

It may be possible to invert the above search to find areas within a given region that are least likely to be affected by flooding.

How do you work out the best means and route of escape to a specific safe location?

A number of open source route planning web APIs are freely available to use.  Open route service is one interesting example, as it provides a host of features including elevation information, which could be used as a crude input to a real-time(ish) flood map estimate.  In a flood emergency, there is likely to be an increase in road traffic on (potential) routes out of flood zones.  Moreover, the drivers are likely to be in heightened states, which may increase risk of traffic incidents.  When planning a motor-vehicle escape route, it makes sense to also consider real-time traffic data.  A number of freely available traffic web APIs are available, including TomTom.  The traffic and flood data could possibly be combined to produce a list of places to avoid as input to the route planner.

How feasible is it to estimate the nearest safe locations when flooding is imminent?  How feasible is it to estimate the best escape route?  What apps already exist that provide some or all of these features? 

Background: Energy production is clearly in the public eye at the moment. While there are short-term issues, clearly a long-term vision needs to be developed to reduce dependency on oil and gas. This project will look at one or more possible future energy sources, from a technical perspective.

Wind and hydro power are now well-established as alternative energy sources. Solar-PV has had a limited success in contributing to a serious energy budget. Recent research is focussing on wave and tidal energy sources, this makes sense since the oceans are so vast and powerful. This project will specifically focus on wave and / or tidal energy.

Aims: (i) To research and understand models of wave/tidal energy production. (ii) To develop a simulator of the chosen model, to allow exploration of the model’s features. (iii) To subject the chosen model to a quantitative (scientific) analysis.

Objectives: I would expect a discussion of current alternative energy sources and to relate wave/tidal to these. The rest are for you to decide but these must be linked to your simulator, and primary data collection.

Secondary Data: Data from research papers on wave/tidal energy installations and their results. The US ‘National Renewable Research Laboratory’ (NREL) has a number of useful projects which you should know about.

Primary Data: Measurements from your model, how much energy it develops from specific wave/tidal data (from your Lit. Review).

Ethical Approval: Straightforward. Does not involve people.

Background: Game and Simulation levels can get very large, it soon becomes laborious for the level designer to populate the level with assets, especially buildings in the Editor by hand. The process can be made hugely more efficient by creating buildings and towns procedurally, using code. This of course requires designing building elements (walls, floors) which seamlessly join together. Also, there must be a sufficient range of elements to create a number of different buildings, e.g., a block of apartments with different layouts and number of rooms.

Aims: (i) To develop a C++ framework to deploy with Unreal 4 or 5 to allow architects to rapidly design and create a building, an estate or even a city. (ii) To get an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of your framework using human participants.

Objectives: for you to decide but I would expect you to conduct a study of design principles for buildings, perhaps looking at floor-plans of buildings available from estate agents. Another ‘deliverable’ is full documentation allowing future level developers and researchers apply your framework (otherwise, what’s the point?)

Lit. Review: There are a number of journal articles available. Other valid source of information are Wikis. Blogs, GDCs and current (Unreal 4, Unreal 5) information about procedural buildings.

Secondary Data: Frameworks, algorithms and code developed by others.

Primary Data: Evaluation of your framework by yourself, using objective measures such as lines of code, code complexity, time saved by using a procedural approach

Research Questions: for you to decide but must be linked to your primary data collection.

Technology: Unreal-4 / 5

Ethical Approval: Straightforward since no human participants are involved.

Government agencies are increasingly making data available to the public and researchers. Examples include higher education data published by HESA, socio-economic data published by ONS, and health data published by NHS. Such data might provide a useful source for analysis, research and planning. A project could investigate what data is available in a certain field, and then explore how it might be used, for example by being prepared and interrogated using Python or R. Alternatively, a potential use could be decided, such as predicting the number of total hip and knee replacement operations needed in the next ten years, and then looking at how this might be predicted and what existing data might be used.