Community Updates
Highlights from workshops, media moments, and research showcases across the IoT Garage network.
Charith Perera attended the Unveiling the Horizon for the Future of the Internet workshop at Swansea University’s Bay Campus. Sessions explored technological advancements, cybersecurity, and the evolving digital landscape through community consultation and expert contributions, featuring interactive discussions with a diverse range of speakers.
Yasar Majib (researcher) visited Danau Girang Field Centre in Borneo to deploy a multi-model AI system that identifies and counts wildlife in camera trap images while sharing knowledge with staff and students.
We showcased the work of six researchers during the PETRAS We Are Connected 2024 event, focused on the future of IoT and cybersecurity. The exhibition brought together academics, industry leaders, and government officials for interactive demos and thought-provoking talks.
Charith Perera delivered a talk at the joint workshop hosted by Cardiff University and Dalian University of Technology, centred on Smart and Healthy Buildings aimed at achieving a zero-carbon future. The session highlighted the role of sensors in securing modern infrastructures and mitigating threats in physical environments.
We received HEFCW ODA funding to develop a multi-model AI system that accurately identifies and counts wildlife in camera trap images. The CamTrap.AI project combines ensemble models to process large datasets efficiently and improve species identification for conservation work.
Our IoT research group focused on three key themes this year, with researcher Kira Nurse launching new projects. Nada Alhirabi completed her doctoral research on privacy-aware IoT applications, and Yaser Awwad earned his research degree researching anomaly detection with smart cameras in low-light conditions. We showcased work at Wales Tech Week and ACM Ubicomp, hosted the PETRAS Regional Showcase “Connected Spaces,” and explored collaborations during the UW-NPS Research Station visit. Funding highlights include Google Research Scholar support for neurodiversity, UK Defence and Security backing for the Edgy Organism project, and EPSRC PETRAS funding for a smart-city demonstrator, alongside the team completing CyberASAP with the CASPER Shield.
Congratulations to Nada Alhirabi for passing her doctoral viva with minor corrections. Her thesis, Designing Privacy Aware Internet of Things Applications, introduces the PARROT tool to help developers integrate privacy considerations into IoT design, reducing errors and fostering collaboration with legal experts.
Congratulations to Yaser Abu Awwad for passing his research degree viva with minor corrections. His project, Anomaly Detection on the Edge using Smart Cameras under Low-Light Conditions, also contributed to the Connected Communities in the Rural Economy (CoCoRE) 5G Wales Unlocked programme.
Bayan Almuhander (researcher) presented the Privacy Cube at Wales Tech Week 2023. The tangible device helps people manage IoT privacy preferences in shared smart-home spaces, while the event celebrated emerging technology leaders from across Wales.
Reem Aldhafiri (researcher) presented the poster Privacy Assistant: An accessible privacy management tool for older adults at the Health and Care Research Wales Conference 2023 in Swansea Arena. The conversational assistant supports people with low digital skills in configuring smart-home privacy settings, aligning with the event theme “People make research.”
Welcome Kira Nurse, a new researcher co-supervised by Charith Perera and Georgina Powell. Kira joins the project Tangible Interfaces for Assisting Young People with Neurodiversity Towards Better Understanding Online Harms, led by the School of Psychology.
Nada Alhirabi (researcher) presented the full paper PARROT: Interactive Privacy-Aware Internet of Things Application Design Tool at Ubicomp 2023, demonstrating how PARROT helps developers design privacy-aware applications with real-time feedback on potential violations.
Bayan Al Muhander (researcher) presented the poster Interactive Privacy Management: Towards Enhancing Privacy Awareness and Control in Internet of Things at SOUPS 2023, highlighting five key privacy factors—type, usage, storage, retention period, and access—for effective IoT privacy notices.
Reem Aldhafiri (researcher) presented the poster Enhancing Privacy Awareness and Digital Skills in Smart Home Device Users with Privacy Assistant at the Cyberpsychology Section Annual Conference 2023 in Newcastle upon Tyne, highlighting how Privacy Assistant supports older adults with smart-home privacy settings.
We hosted the PETRAS Regional Showcase and Networking event, themed “Connected Spaces,” bringing together projects and interdisciplinary initiatives from across the consortium at Cardiff University.
Nada Alhirabi (researcher) served as a programme ambassador at the SPRITE+ Conference in Belfast’s Titanic Centre, joining sessions that featured expert talks, lightning presentations, posters, and workshops on digital trust, privacy, and security.
Charith Perera joined a Cardiff University delegation to the University of Wyoming–National Park Service Research Station at AMK Ranch to explore collaborative projects under a new strategic partnership covering research, seminars, and staff and research exchanges.
Hakan Kayan, Yasar Majib, and Mohammed Alosaimi attended PETRAS’ “Living Securely in the Internet of Things” IET event, showcasing research on IoT cybersecurity alongside discussions on privacy, ethics, and trust with partners across academia, industry, and government.
Naeima Hamed (researcher) presented the poster FOO: An Upper-Level Ontology for the Forest Observatory at ESWC 2023, outlining the Forest Observatory Ontology for integrating wildlife datasets through a reusable semantic model.
Charith Perera, Nada Alhirabi, Hakan Kayan, Yasar Majib, and Suhas Devmane joined the PETRAS Health Care and Wellbeing event on future IoT and cybersecurity challenges in healthcare, exploring the role of collaborative academic–industrial research.
We received EPSRC PETRAS funding to create an augmented-reality smart-city demonstrator using Lego, capturing the collective impact of more than 150 PETRAS projects for public engagement.
EPSRC PETRAS awarded funding to host a regional showcase and networking event in Cardiff, convening partners to share project outcomes and explore new collaborations.
Norah Albazzai (researcher) presented Camera-Assisted Training of Non-Vision Sensors for Anomaly Detection at IoTDI 2023, demonstrating how camera-labelled data can strengthen anomaly detection for edge sensors.
Mark Butterworth (researcher) visited the Danau Girang Field Centre to investigate long-range communications for wildlife monitoring, testing whether low-power ionospheric signals could notify researchers of triggered traps without daily manual checks.
Charith Perera attended the UKRI sandpit on low size, weight, and power (SWaP) computing for defence and security, collaborating with interdisciplinary teams to scope novel project ideas.
Charith Perera received a Google Research Scholar Award to advance tangible interfaces that help neurodiverse young people understand online harms, supporting early-career faculty pursuing world-class research.
At IEEE PerCom 2023, researchers Atheer Aljeraisy, Reem Aldhafiri, and Hakan Kayan showcased work on CANELLA, the Privacy Assistant, and CASPER respectively, demonstrating privacy-aware IoT design and anomaly detection for industrial robotics.
Charith Perera, Yasar Majib, and Hakan Kayan presented the CASPER Shield at CyberASAP Demo Day, showcasing real-time anomaly detection that fuses cyber and physical signals to protect smart environments.
Our IoT group focused on three thematic areas in 2022. We nearly completed a 170-device smart home lab, deployed a 35-node edge sensing network on Abacws’ fifth floor, ran DGFC placements for field researchers, and produced a six-week cyber-physical smart home dataset with BRE (funded by PETRAS). The team progressed through CyberASAP commercialisation and expanded the Edge Analytics module with partners in India and Egypt.
Charith Perera shared lessons from the International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces, sparking discussion on how innovation spaces and makerspaces can enhance teaching and research within Cardiff University’s School of Computer Science and Informatics.
Charith Perera visited the International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces (ISAM) to explore makerspace ecosystems and plan facilities that will support Cardiff University’s future teaching and research needs.
Charith Perera toured Georgia Tech’s Aware Home to gather insights for Cardiff’s smart-home development. The visit focused on applying best practices from the Aware Home Research Initiative to authentic living-lab environments.
We held a smart space workshop at BRE to understand industry perspectives on IoT and cybersecurity. Discussions covered cyber-physical security, resilience, supply-chain trust, Industry 4.0, policy, and standardisation priorities.
Our CASPER project progressed to CyberASAP Phase 2, backed by DCMS and Innovate UK. Charith Perera, Yasar Majib, and Hakan Kayan are developing a proof-of-concept anomaly detection framework that protects built environments by fusing cyber and physical signals.
Welcome Rayan Binlajdam, a new researcher co-supervised by Charith Perera, Oktay Karakus, Pablo Orozco-terWengel, Benoit Goossens, and Omer Rana. Rayan’s project develops a Forest Health Index by integrating heterogeneous datasets.
Welcome Siyuan Li, a new researcher supervised by Charith Perera and Yuhua Li, working on low-cost adaptive mobile sensing within buildings to enhance smart-building deployments.
Nada Alhirabi presented Privacy-Patterns for IoT Application Developers at Ubicomp 2022, demonstrating how the PARROT tool helps developers apply privacy laws and design patterns.
The 2021/22 IoT module culminated in hands-on development projects. Congratulations to Group 18 for winning the competition with creative smart connected solutions—setting a benchmark for future cohorts.
Naeima Hamed and Omar Mousa visited Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC) to test semantic data integration and linked-data tooling with bioscientists, advancing Forest Observatory and observatory-EUD projects.
Ruslan Levond and Jacob Harkins undertook DGFC placements to test their dissertations: Ruslan’s acoustic IoT edge device for species classification and Jacob’s animal movement prediction model for anti-poaching.
Yasar Majib and Hakan Kayan joined the Infosecurity Europe exhibition at ExCeL London as part of CyberASAP, connecting with industry partners and investors to progress CASPER’s commercial pathway.
Cardiff University hosted the PETRAS Smart Space Workshop, gathering industry, government, and academic partners to discuss resilience, trust, and cybersecurity challenges across smart homes, buildings, and cities.
Welcome Fatmah Alqarni, a new researcher supervised by Charith Perera and Omer Rana. Her research explores how novice software engineers can learn Privacy by Design and privacy laws through AI-mediated exploration.
The CASPER team received Innovate UK funding to join the CyberASAP cohort, supporting Charith Perera, Yasar Majib, and Hakan Kayan as they explore commercialisation pathways for cyber-physical anomaly detection.
Charith Perera joined the EPSRC circular economy community engagement workshop to discuss how engineering research can enable circularity, connect stakeholders, and surface future research priorities.
The team demonstrated CoCoRE project outcomes at the UK 5G Showcase, highlighting how 5G connectivity supports rural economies, public services, and citizen wellbeing.
We hosted a CoCoRE-funded hackathon exploring how 5G connectivity can serve rural economies, public services, and wellbeing. Students extended existing scenarios and devised new services based on project datasets.
Charith Perera took part in the UKIERI-DST UrbanCPS workshop on engineering privacy-aware urban-scale cyber-physical systems, convened by the University of Surrey and IIT Kharagpur.
Our research group expanded across privacy, data observatories, ResilientSensing.AI, and IoT learning technologies in 2021. We launched a 100+ device smart-home lab, kicked off the Forest Observatory programme, completed a PETRAS-funded BRE secondment, and co-developed an Edge Analytics module module with IIT Ropar and IIIT Kottayam.
British Council Going Global India funding supports an Edge Analytics module module co-developed with IIT Ropar and IIIT Kottayam, led by Omer Rana.
The ICE-ODS project, funded through PETRAS ISPEF and led by Pete Burnap, extends Integrity Checking at the Edge (ICE) into an operational decision-support prototype with Thales UK.
A new EPSRC international partnerships project (led by Omer Rana) strengthens collaboration with VortexIoT, Danau Girang Field Centre, and Universiti Malaysia Sabah.
Welcome Mohammed Alosaimi, joining the research programme to develop an evaluation framework for anomaly detection within built environments (supervised by Charith Perera and Omer Rana).
Welcome Suhas Devmane, beginning a research project on Talking Buildings and pattern-of-life analysis, supervised by Charith Perera and Omer Rana.
Welcome Azhar Alsufyani, starting a research project on context-aware cyber-physical security at the edge for smart homes with Charith Perera and Omer Rana.
Placement students Akin Kaki, Mary Zacharias, and Osian Morgan joined Data Observatory and ResilientSensing.AI initiatives, focusing on smart-home testbeds and anomaly detection on constrained devices.
Welcome Norah Albazzai, commencing a research project on tiny cameras for smart-home anomaly detection with Charith Perera and Omer Rana in collaboration with BRE.
Welcome Abdulaziz Aljohani, joining the research programme (with GCHQ collaboration) to build self-configuring IoT architectures for anomaly detection.
Welcome Yaser Awwad, starting an research degree on video analytics for edge anomaly detection in smart cities with Charith Perera and Omer Rana.
Welcome David Winter, beginning an research degree on AI-assisted personalised blended learning for IoT education (supervised by Charith Perera, Kathryn Jones, and Omer Rana).
Charith Perera presented at the Joint Cyber Security CDTs Summer School 2021, sharing findings from the GCHQ National Resilience Fellowship alongside EPSRC CDT cohorts.
The Scalable Circular Supply Chain for the Built Environment project, led by Yingli Wang, unites Cardiff and Newcastle researchers with industry partners such as HS2, Arup, and Celsa Steel to progress circularity in construction.
The Resilient Built Environments (ResBE) PETRAS secondment sees Charith Perera working with BRE to add resilience layers to smart buildings throughout a 12-month collaboration.
Mahmoud Barhamgi, Charith Perera, and Basel Katt announced a Service Oriented Computing and Applications special issue on Privacy Management in Cyberspace.
Welcome Wael Alsafery, beginning a research project on sensing-as-a-service within buildings towards collaborative service design, supervised by Charith Perera and Omer Rana.
Welcome Omar Mousa, joining the research programme focused on end-user development for linked-data observatories in partnership with School of Biosciences and DGFC, supervised by Charith Perera and colleagues.
The team restructured around four build-driven IoT themes—Privacy Fluid, Data Observatories, ResilientSensing.AI, and Learning Technologies for IoT—with six researchers and a research degree student joining the effort. We launched a new taught-pathway IoT module despite COVID-19 disruption, and Charith Perera was awarded a GCHQ National Resilience Fellowship kicking off in January 2021.
The six-month CyPhyRadar fellowship explores how low-cost multi-sensors can detect anomalous behaviour in smart buildings to complement network traffic analysis. Charith Perera joins GCHQ and The Landing as a National Resilience Research Fellow to prototype a secondary protection layer for BMS networks.
We welcomed four researchers expanding our IoT portfolio:
Luke Jones presented the PizzaBox tangible ordering system at ACM UbiComp 2020, showcasing how embodied interaction can reshape food ordering and support healthier choices through playful IoT artefacts.
Charith Perera contributed to the EPSRC Identifying challenges for a Sustainable Digital Society workshop, shaping priorities for future research calls spanning infrastructure, skills, and responsible adoption.
Together with Jason Wiese, Jacky Bourgeois, and Gerd Kortuem we organised the Building a Research Agenda for Shared Smart Spaces workshop for ACM UbiComp 2021, using design jams to frame methodologies and open questions around shared IoT environments.
Naeima Hamed joined the team to advance semantic data integration for the Forest Observatory early-warning system supporting anti-poaching interventions in partnership with DGFC.
We are co-chairing the Privacy Management in the Cyberspace workshop at IEEE ICDM 2020, collecting advances in data protection techniques that raise user trust across online ecosystems.
Mahmoud Barhamgi, Michael N. Huhns, Pınar Yolum, and Charith Perera announced a special issue on Human-Centered Security, Privacy, and Trust in the Internet of Things for ACM TOIT and invited community submissions.
The Connected Communities in the Rural Economy (CoCoRE) collaboration investigates how 5G can tackle rural isolation, improve farm security, and support tourism across Wales through resilient IoT deployments.
Hakan Kayan joined to research CASPER—Context Aware Security for cyber-physical edge resources—while Asma Irfan began work on perceived-value-driven behavioural energy interventions using interactive AI in office buildings.
Our first full-year report chronicles five IoT research themes, six new researchers, eight student projects, and a PETRAS catalyst initiative on Integrity Checking at the Edge. The team also delivered publications and hosted two CUROP students.
Matthew Nunes joined as Research Associate on the PETRAS-funded Integrity Checking at the Edge (ICE) project, analysing composite vulnerabilities across factories and water treatment systems while applying AI at the edge for transparent assurance.
Bayan AlMuhander began researching interactive privacy preference management for shared IoT spaces under the supervision of Charith Perera and Omer Rana.
At the Health and Care Innovation Expo in Manchester, Charith Perera delivered a SETsquared innovation workshop session exploring IoT opportunities aligned with the UK Government’s Healthy Ageing Challenge.
Rhys Beckett showcased IoT Skullfort, exploring how embedded IoT augmentations transform cosplay interactions and community experiences.
Cardiff’s CUROP programme supported Ruslan Levond on the Living Edge Laboratory and Michal Malecki on the IoT Lab Book project, building early proof points for edge infrastructure and education tooling.
Charith Perera visited Danau Girang Field Centre, Sabah, to co-design sustainable IoT infrastructure supporting wildlife researchers, travelling across multiple sites to gather requirements firsthand.
Final-year students Jack Burkett and Karan Juj spent three weeks at DGFC deploying anti-poaching tracking prototypes, interviewing staff, and mapping future IoT research needs.
Our GCRF workshop on sustainable IoT infrastructure for wildlife conservation convened partners from Danau Girang Field Centre, Vortex IoT, and Cardiff biosciences, culminating in a published facilitation report outlining opportunities.
The EPSRC and Digital Catapult-backed Quarriable Smart City Data Markets residency embeds semantic enrichment into SynchroniCity, enabling businesses to query urban data marketplaces with richer context.
Atheer Jeraisy started a project on motivating software engineers to deliver privacy-aware IoT applications through reusable components and gamification.
Emad Aliwa began collaborative research with iPoint on detecting in-vehicle cyber-attacks using CAN bus analytics at the edge.
GCRF funding is enabling paired workshops in Sabah and Cardiff to scope IoT infrastructure that supports wildlife protection, in partnership with Omer Rana, Pablo Orozco Ter Wengel, and Benoit Goossens.
The Edge Living Lab capital award equips campus spaces with distributed Raspberry Pi and Arduino hardware, unlocking latency-sensitive experimentation in cybersecurity and real-time analytics.
EPSRC renewed the PETRAS National Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems Cybersecurity, with Cardiff leading the Integrity Checking at the Edge catalyser alongside Pete Burnap.
Areej Alabbas joined to research optimal placement and scheduling of security-aware service function chaining in IoT environments.
Charith Perera, Mahmoud Barhamgi, Massimo Vecchio, Júlio Cezar Estrella, and Kuo-Hui Yeh co-edited an MDPI Sensors special issue on IoT middleware platforms and sensing infrastructure and invited contributions from the community.
Lamya Alkhriji joined to explore privacy-aware IoT application design tools that augment software design processes.
Christoph Quix, Matthias Jarke, Albert Bifet, Miguel Correia, and Charith Perera organised the first Data Science for Industry 4.0 workshop at EDBT 2019, highlighting cross-domain challenges for industrial data science.
Nada Alhirabi began doctoral research on interactive methods to embed privacy into IoT software design processes.
