Dr Amel Bennaceur

Co develop and support the dissemination of developmental resources for Computer Science teachers in Portugal and EU

In the last decade, the role of software engineering has changed rapidly and radically. Globalisation and mobility of people and services, pervasive computing, and ubiquitous connectivity through the Internet have disrupted traditional software engineering boundaries and practices. People and services are no longer bound by physical locations. Computational devices are no longer bound to the devices that host them. Communication, in its broadest sense, is no longer bounded in time or place. The Software Engineering & Design (SEAD) group at the Open University (OU) is leading software engineering research in this new reality that requires a paradigm shift in the way software is developed and used. This platform grant will grow and sustain strategic, multi-disciplinary, crosscutting research activities that underpin the advances in software engineering required to build the pervasive and ubiquitous computing systems that will be tightly woven into the fabric of a complex and changing socio-technical world. In addition to sustaining and growing the SEAD group at the OU and supporting its continued collaboration with the Social Psychology research group at the University of Exeter, the SAUSE platform will also enable the group to have lasting impact across several application domains such as healthcare, aviation, policing, and sustainability. The grant will allow the team to enhance the existing partner networks in these areas and to develop impact pathways for their research, going beyond the scope and lifetime of individual research projects.

REASON will develop a comprehensive toolbox of general principles, mathematically based notations and models, reasoning methods, and systematic approaches enabling autonomous systems to operate with unprecedented levels of resilience. Analogous to the adaptive toolbox widely hypothesised to underpin human decision-making under uncertainty,17 our REASONing toolbox will allow autonomous systems to decide and perform resilience-enhancing actions safely, securely and observant of relevant social, legal, ethical, empathy and cultural rules and norms. Using the REASONinig toolbox, autonomous systems will proactively quantify and reduce uncertainty, predict and preempt disruptions, seek assistance from and co-operate with humans and peer autonomous systems, and provide assurances to instil stakeholder trust. The REASON vision will be delivered by a team of Computer Scientists ( CS ), Engineers ( Eng ), sychologists ( Psy ), Philosophers ( Phil ), Lawyers ( Law ), and Mathematicians (Math) with an extensive track record of leading large research programmes and of delivering research in all areas of the project.

The STRETCH team at the Open University, University of Exeter, and Nottingham Trent University are proposing to develop a novel multi-platform digital intervention addressing isolation and loneliness of older adults exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis. This app facilitates a) expression and logging emotions to increase feelings of control, b) visualization and analysis of personal support networks to increase resilience, c) enabling individuals to communicate their emotions and feelings of loneliness with family and friends to provide a reliable source of emotional support, d) analysis of these data to offer personalized insights. We expect this app to have concrete benefits on feelings of loneliness, social efficacy and security which in turn will have measurable long-term health benefits.