PhD Students

PhD Students

Howard Bowman

I am currently supervising a number of PhD students.

  • Srivas Chennu is studying temporal attention in humans. He is undertaking a combined EEG, behavioural and computational exploration of the spotlight of temporal attention. This is seeking to validate predictions arising from Bowman and Wyble’s Simultaneous Type, Serial Token model. Srivas is particularly exploring feature mis-bindings (also called illusory conjunctions). These arise when multiple salient items, each of which comprises a number of features, are presented in close temporal succession. Srivas is funded by the University of Kent. Srivas is jointly supervised with Dinkar Sharma in Psychology.
  • Kristina Dietz is working on recognition memory in humans. She has undertaken behavioural and EEG studies of the directed forgetting paradigm in recognition memory. This has particularly focused on the mirror effect, which is a well-known regularity of human memory. She is also exploring computational modelling in this context. Kristina is jointly funded by the Computing and the Psychology departments at Kent and is jointly supervised with Hannie van Hooff in Psychology.

 

Of my PhD students, the following have completed:

  • Maarten Steen worked on composition and consistency checking of partial specifications written in the process algebra LOTOS. More details of Maarten's thesis can be found on his web page. The title of his thesis was, "Consistency and Composition of Process Specifications" which he successfully defended in 1998. His examiners were Professors Guy Leduc and David Turner. He was funded by an internal UKC bursary: an EBSpratt award, with some extra financial support from British Telecom Research Laboratories.
  • Charles Briscoe-Smith worked on type management in distributed systems, with a particular emphasis on behavioural subtyping in a process algebra setting. He was funded by British Telecom and EPSRC case award.
  • Vikki Roberts (MRes Student) worked on neural network based computational modelling of human word reading. She particularly focused on localist (activation gradient) models of word reading, such as Davis' Solar model. She sought to show how such techniques can be used to model the Word Superiority Effect, which is one of the most significant phenomena in word reading.
  • Rodolfo Gomez worked on decision procedures for interval temporal logic and verification of real-time systems using timed automata. He began by considering how interval temporal logic could be related to WS1S (Weak Second Order Logic of One Successor). Then he looked at a number of different real-time extensions of communicating automata (including timed automata), explored the verification capabilities of such techniques and then investigated how to demonstrate timelock freedom in timed automata models. Rodolfo was funded under the Overseas Research Students Awards Scheme (ORS) and via the Computing Laboratory at Kent.
  • Kiran Kalidindi (see following: link 1 and link 2) worked on human reasoning, decision making and the role of emotions in these processes. He developed an abstract neural network model and a reinforcement learning model of the behaviour of normal healthy controls and a spectrum of patient groups on the Iowa Gambling task. He particularly focused on patients with lesions in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, both of whom are known to have decision-making deficits. Kiran was funded by the University of Kent Computing Laboratory.
  • Su Li (see following: link 1 and link 2) worked on the relationship between symbolic and sub-symbolic computation. In particular, he developed a communicating automata based model of neural networks and he explored how to use model checking to answer questions about the class of problems that neural network learning algorithms can learn. In addition, he developed formal methods-based models of how salient distracting items capture human attention, where salience is considered in a semantic and emotional sense. Su Li was partially funded by the University of Kent Computing Laboratory.
  • Patrick Craston worked on temporal attention. Specifically, he ran EEG experiments to understand the temporal dynamics of human attention and to validate predictions arising from (Bowman and Wyble’s) Simultaneous Type, Serial Token model of temporal attention and the attentional blink. These experiments explored the latency and magnitude of the P3 component of the Event Related Potential (ERP). Patrick was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Patrick was jointly supervised with Brad Wyble.

 

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Last modified June 2009.