Ursula Martin

Ursula Martin CBE MA PhD FIMA FBCS FIEE CEng

Professor of Computer Science, Queen Mary, University of London

Ursula.Martin at qmul.ac.uk
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road
London E1 4NS
UK

Director of the impactQM project at Queen Mary University of London (2009-2013), Vice-Principal for Science and Engineering at Queen Mary University of London (2005-2009), and a Professor of Computer Science in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science (2003 - ).

I am a member of the U K Defence Science Advisory Council, serve on the 2013 RE F panel for Computer Science, and am a member of the Executive Committee of the UK C omputing Research Council, a joint panel of the IET and BCS.

I held a joint appointment with the University of Cambridge and Intel Research Cambr idge (2003-2005), and was a Professor of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews 1992-2002, the first female professor in the University since its foundation in 1411: my time in various roles in this small Department saw it rise to be in the top 5 of several major league tables for UK computer science departments. I earlier held posts in London, Manchester and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and spent made sabbatical visits to SRI International in Menlo Park and to MIT. I have an MA from Cambridge, and a PhD from Warwick, both in mathematics. Throughout my career I have been involved in numerous activities to encourage women in computing and mathematics.

Research

I am a member of the Theory Research group at Queen Mary. The group has a world-lea ding reputation for fundamental theoretical work, with practical impact on understan ding and creating robust reliable software. The group comprises 30 academic and rese arch staff, and formed around a third of QMUL's RAE 2008 Computer Science submission , ranked 8th in the UK for output quality. Recent strategic investment has included a new Professor, Byron Cook (a joint appointment with Microsoft Research, who also s ponsor O'Hearn's chair through the Royal Academy of Engineering); and 3 new lecturer s. The group holds 8 competitive external fellowships from EPSRC, Royal Academy of E ngineering and Royal Society; 14 million UKP in external funding, including 10 milli on UKP from EPSRC; and 800K UKP from industry and UK and US government agencies. Maj or EPSRC projects include two multimillion programme grants (O'Hearn, Cook; Curzon), and a major Knowledge Transfer grant (Martin).

I have three current main research projects:

Computational logic for control. Working with Rob Arthan, Paulo Oliv a and Erik Mathiesen I developed a new approach to reasoning about control systems, based on developing a new form of Hoare logic that could be applied to block diagram s used in engineering design. A pilot study was funded by Qinetiq, and as part of h er PhD Ruth Hardy developed a system for reasoning about Nicholls plots, traditional ly used in design verification.

Crowdsourced math: doing mathematics on the web. The overarching goal is to advance mathematical knowledge by developing new ways to use the internet to solve mathematical problems, drawing together techniques from co mputational mathematics, logic, artificial intelligence and sociology, to understand mathematical practice in the internet age, in both academia and industry, and devis e suitable software tools to support and enhance it. There is strong potential for i mpact on areas such as engineering design, software verification, and security appli cations. I am particularly interested in the use of the internet for collaborative mathematics, and how to adap t single user software to crowdsource solutions to mathematical problems. This is co llaborative work with Alison Pease and other researchers in Edinburgh, where I am sp ending a sabbatical 2011-2012.

Knowledge transfer through impact impactQM is a a major four year c ross-institutional knowledge transfer project. With 3 million UKP from EPSRC, match ed by contributions from external partners, this focusses on development of young st aff, interdisciplinary work, and a broad range of industry links going beyond tradit ional IP exploitation. We aim to change the way we approach knowledge transfer, thro ugh encouraging links with users of research that go beyond traditional IP generatio n, and explore all forms of impact, and help us build long term relations with exter nal stakeholders. Graduate students and young staff in the Faculty are all eligible for a fully funded internship, with around 40 a year taking up the opportunity. Out comes have included new research, new links, and permanent jobs in industry. My co- PIS on the project are William Marsh, Edmund Robinson and Alice Sullivan. As part of the project we are exploring a range of novel techniques for capturing impact, in collaboration with Athen Ma and Raul Mondragon of Queen Mary, EPSRC, and the Media- X lab at Stanford.

Other research has included the mathematics of termination, novel unification algorithms, practical exploitation of symmetry in computation, and combining computational logic and computational mathematics.

Links

impactQM

Theory Research group

EPSRC g rants

Publications at Microsoft Academic Research