Deborah Estrin to lecture on Wireless Sensing Systems

Professor Deborah Estrin of the University of California, Los Angeles, will give the 4th Campbell Lecture on Tuesday 1 May. This year’s lecture is sponsored by WiSET - Women in Science, Engineering and Technology, and the School of Electronics and Computer Science.

Professor Estrin’s lecture is entitled ‘Wireless Sensing Systems: From ecosystems to human systems’, and will focus on the way that sensing, computation and wireless communications have been combined in integrated, low-power devices, and networks of these devices embedded in the physical world. ‘Looking back over the past few years we have made significant progress towards the vision of programmable, multi-modal, multi-scale, and multi-use observatories,’ she says. ‘We have made our greatest strides in these applications using judicious application of server-side and in situ processing, mobility at multiple scales, and multi-scale data and models as context for in situ measurements.’

Professor Estrin will consider how these lessons and new technologies are now being applied to humans as well as natural systems, in particular by exploring use of the installed base of image and acoustic sensors that we all carry around with us – our mobile phones.

The lecture takes place at 3.30 pm in Bdg 67 lecture theatre, and will be followed by a reception in the level 4 coffee room of Bdg 32.

Tea will be available in Bdg 67 from 3 pm.

Professor Deborah Estrin holds the Jon Postel Chair in Computer Networks at UCLA and is Founding Director of the NSF-funded Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS). She has recently been awarded a 2007 Woman of Vision Award by the Anita Borg Institute.

Tickets are not required for this lecture and all are welcome.

The Campbell Lecture is an annual lecture which showcases successful international women scientists. The lecture is named in honour of Ishbell Campbell (1906-1997) who was one of the founding academics of the University of Southampton, a research chemist who was a committed teacher and inspiration for women in science.

The WiSET group, launched in 2002, has also been involved in a review of the promotion of women, including the funding of an Action Learning Set, a childcare survey and the development of mentoring networks. The Campbell Lecture represents a key part of a visibility project to show the high quality of women scientists both internationally and at Southampton at all stages of their careers.