On Thursday, 19th June 2013, Olivier Szymanezyk, a PhD games computing student at the Lincoln School of Computer Science travelled to Leicester to represent the University of Lincoln at the East Midlands Engineering and Science Professionals (EMESP) Masters Prize.
“It was most honourable to have been appointed by a panel of University of Lincoln academics as the representative of the University of Lincoln for the EMESP Masters Prize Event”, says Olivier, “This was a fantastic opportunity to show my work – I highly enjoy talking about my interdisciplinary crowd simulation research, and this was a great opportunity to do so. Furthermore, this was a most well organised event to see research presentations from other EMESP Masters Prize candidates from a wide array of research fields.”
Olivier was awarded the prize as the University’s representative, for his project and presentation, which, in the view of the EMESP Masters Prize 2013 judges and the evidence of its content, was of a high standard and has the potential to make commercial impact. Pictures of the award can be seen below – more pictures of the event will follow shortly.
As described on their homepage, the EMESP provides a voice for the engineering and science profession in the East Midlands. It aims to make people aware and appreciative of the contributions of engineering and science to the economy, prosperity and quality of life. The yearly EMESP Masters Prize aims to link research with industry, allowing prosperous candidates to show their research, ideas and innovations in front of a well-chosen panel of industry experts and academics.
Upon his arrival, Olivier was warmly welcomed by the EMESP Chairman, Ian Treacy, who introduced him to other Masters Prize University representatives. This was shortly followed by a twenty minute presentation of each candidate of their ongoing work. Presentations were most interesting and included talks about blood clotting countermeasures, climate change dwelling adaptations, big data visualisations and novel approaches to the control of quad-rotor helicopters. Olivier talked about his games computing related work on the verification and validation process of simulated crowds for serious applications and video-game environments.