Final year computer science projects

This term I'm supervising 5 final year student projects. They have one term (just over 3 months) in which to really create something they can be proud of. It's not long, especially when they have to get to grips with new terminology, new equipment, reading and research, specification, design, implementation and experiments, testing, documentation and reflection. They're also asked to keep progress diaries or blogs and use version control to manage their projects.

I've very excited about the projects this year, they're all diverse and fun:

• Using information theory and machine learning to recognise quality control issues in next gen sequencing lanelets (together with Joshua Randall, Sanger Institute)
• Analysis of the content of NLW's digitised newspapers collection
• Modelling insect choice among plants (together with Lizzy Donkin and John Warren in IBERS)
• A model of the brain of C. elegans that we can play with as a talking point in AI discussions with the public.
• Using image processing and microscope webcams to determine the growth of yeast in microtitre plates.

Hopefully, we'll have some good results by May!