Chris Greenhalgh's Home Page

My University home page

a more recent picture

Chris Greenhalgh is a Professor of Computer Science in the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham, where he is a co-leader of the Mixed Reality Laboratory and a member of Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute. He gained a first class BA (with distinction) in Electrical and Information Sciences from Cambridge University in 1991. He then worked in the data communications group at the GEC Hirst Research Centre for two years before moving to Nottingham, where he gained a PhD for his work with large scale collaborative virtual environments in 1997. His thesis was a winner of the 1998 BCS/CPHC Distinguished Dissertations in Computer Science competition. He has been a member of academic staff in the School of Computer Science since 1996. He has served as Senior Tutor and Director of Taught Programmes for the School, and contributed to theUniversity's adoption and use of Moodle, an open-source virtual learning environment.

Contents:

(I'm afraid some of this is pretty out of date...)

Research

Publications

See Google Scholar or ORCID (publications.html is out of date)

Current Interests

Professor Greenhalgh's research interests centre on interactive and multi-user applications and the technical platforms and tools that support them. In common with the Mixed Reality Lab as a whole, his focus is on supporting everyday activities and situations (including home, work, leisure and entertainment) with networked, mobile and embedded devices and systems. His particular concern is with software infrastructure, the development of deployable systems and empowering "ordinary" people to use and appropriate complicated technologies. He is currently involved in research on managing personal data and interactive music-based experiences.

Past Activities

Within the EPSRC-funded FAST IMPACt programme grant Professor Greenhalgh has created the Muzicodes interactive musical control system which underpins Climb!, an interactive multimedia work for Disklavier piano and electronics. He has also supported a number of adaptive mobile music experiences through the daoplayer app. As a co-investigator on the Databox project, he is developing and promoting new approaches to personal data management for research and for mental health. As a co-investigator in the Horizon Digital Economy Research Hub Professor Greenhalgh has worked on Personal Data Stores (PDSs), enhancing travel experiences and urban games. He led the development of the Equator Integrated Platform (EQUIP), the Equator IRC’s adaptive software architecture for ubiquitous computing and mobile applications. This was used to support high-profile public events and performances, including collaborations with performance artists Blast Theory (Rider Spoke, Day of the Figurines) and Active Ingredient (Love City, Exploding Places). He was technical director of the Digital Records for e-Social Science node of the National Centre for e-Social Science, with overall responsibility for the Digital Replay System (DRS) analysis tool (formerly known as Replaytool). He was the primary architect of three generations of the MASSIVE Collaborative Virtual Environment system, which underpinned many EPSRC and European projects. He has contributed to the architecture and development of the EPSRC funded myGRID e-science pilot project and to a range of e-science infrastructures that link mobile and ubiquitous devices with underlying grid architectures.

PhD Students

PhD students, present: 

and past: Annie Quandt (with Svenja Adolphs and Alex Lang), Michaela Hoare (with Steve Benford, and Nick Stevenson, Sociology & Social Policy), Tim Pearce (with Michael Brown, Horizon), Wenchao Jiang (with Tom Rodden and Joel Fischer), Jimmy Chim (with George Kuk and Jonathan Tan, Business School), Tom Lodge, Adriano Galati, Joel Fischer (With Steve Benford), Jitti Niramitranon (with Professor Mike Sharples, School of Education/LSRI), Sirisha Gollapudi (with Charlie Hodgman, School of Biosciences), Fernando Martinez, Bartosz Wietrzyk (Dr Milena Radenkovic), Alastair Hampshire, Milena Radenkovic, Jim Purbrick, Ivan Vaghi

System-related pages

Current:  Muzicodes and Climb! daoplayer and daoauthor (mobile music)

Past, oldest to most recent: MASSIVE-1, MASSIVE-2/CVE, MASSIVE-3, EQUIP, ECT and EQUIP2 on SourceForge The Digital Replay System (DRS) (on SourceForge), Ubicomp Lobby Service, Android base client (for Exploding Places android client), bigraphspace, OpenSharingToolkit

History

I obtained my PhD at Nottingham (in Large Scale Collaborative Virtual Environments). I mainly work in the Mixed Reality Lab and the Horizon Digital Economy Research Hub. In the past I have spent a lot of time designing/writing multi-user VR systems, especially doing system-level distributed, graphical and collaborative stuff. I then spent quite a lot of time working on Grid/e-Science. I have done quite a lot of work on replay/analysis tools for e-social science. Now I am mostly working on ubiquitous & mobile systems and applications/experiences.

I was a Co-I on EQUATOR. I also worked on the EPSRC/DTI Participate project (mass participation) and EU IPerG project (Pervasive Gaming). I was technical director of the National Centre for e-Social Science Digital Records node at Nottingham. I also had a little involvement in the EU Inscape project. I was PI for the EQUATOR-associated eScience project "Advanced Grid Interfaces for Environmental Science in the Lab and in the Field". Also on the eScience side, I led Nottingham's involvement in the myGrid EPSRC eScience Pilot Project (the application domain for which is bioinformatics). I was a co-investigator of the VidGrid e-social science pilot project. I was principle investigator of an EPSRC-funded project considering the realisation and use of persistence in CVEs. I was a co-investigator on the EPSRC-funded project Multimedia Networking for Inhabited-TV and was extremely heavily involved in the linked BT-funded project Network Architectures for Inhabited-TV. In my "spare time" I also had some involvement in the EU eRENA and COVEN projects. I also worked on the EPSRC-funded "HIVE" project which led to MASSIVE-3.

The MRL (and CRG before it) has a strong tradition of engagement with the public, especially through collaborations with artists and performers. Check out “Avatar Farm” (based on MASSIVE-3) and "Out Of This World" (MASSIVE-2), live, public Inhabited-TV experiments. Also DesertRain (MASSIVE-2), a mixed reality performance/installation, and Can you see me now? and Uncle Roy All Around You for more mobile/on the streets experiences (all joint with Blast Theory). More recently, Day of the Figurines (Barcelona, Berlin & Singapore, 2006) was been the first public outing(s) for EQUIP2, followed by Rider Spoke.

My PhD thesis was published by Springer (a consequence of winning the 1998 BCS/CPHC Distringuished Dissertations in Computer Science competition): "Large Scale Collaborative Virtual Environments", Chris Greenhalgh, ISBN 1-85233-148-8, London: Springer-Verlag, 1999. I suspect that it is no longer available. My submitted thesis (missing some corrections and an index compared to the springer one) is here.

Teaching

Projects

Here are some ideas for UG and MSc dissertations: Project ideas.

Modules

In 2017/18 I taught: G53PDC Parallel Computing and G52DSY Distributed Systems

In the past I have also taught:

Tutees

I am currently an UG tutor.

Admin

My school admin roles for 2017/18:

Some past roles:

Contact Details

e-mail: chris.greenhalgh@nottingham.ac.uk
URL: http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~pszcmg/
Paper-mail:
Prof. Chris Greenhalgh
School of Computer Science 
University of Nottingham
Jubilee Campus
Wollaton Road
Nottingham
NG8 1BB
United Kingdom