Paul Brown

Profile

Paul Brown is currently a PhD researcher applying ontology in the modelling of systems for safety analysis. Paul is keenly interested in expert-driven intelligent systems as well as being a passionate developer.

During his MSc at the University of Leeds, Paul was given the opportunity to work with LUCIE, a STRANDS robot, in order to investigate the possibilities of robots working in the service industry as wait-staff. This built upon his prior tinkering with various Raspberry Pi and Arduino robots including vehicles and arms. For "LUCIE The Robot Waitress" project, Paul utilised existing navigation tools, developed a simplified mapping process, and integrated them with a web-based UI that would allow for remote and local control over the robot. This UI allowed customers to order from LUCIE, who would then deliver their order when it was ready.

Prior to studying his MSc, Paul completed his NQT year at a prestigious secondary school where he headed up the Computer Science department. While there he experimented with adapting the SCRUM project management system to education and had particular success with it when used in an after-school club project. This project was an inter-departmental effort to celebrate Tim Peake's visit to the International Space Station. The computer science team were responsible for the payload and tracking of a weather balloon that reached the edge of space as it travelled across the width of England. The payload contained two Raspberry Pi computers, cameras and sensors, from which photographs, video and sensor readings were extracted and analysed.

Paul also pursues software development as a hobby. His Raspberry Pi projects include a self-watering IoT plant, an 8x8 LED arcade game machine, and a cluster distributed web server. Paul's first love in programming was in web technologies; he still enjoys working across the whole stack and maintains a few websites. More recently he has been working in Prolog and playing an active role in building the SWI-Prolog community, as well as evangalising the newer Tau-Prolog.

Research interests

Ontological Approach To Safety Model Development And Exploration covers a diverse range of topics that are sub-categorised.

Ontologies

• Constrained Ontology Authorship
• Ontology Authoring with an Intelligent Agent

Safety Analysis

• STAMP
• STPA
• Intelligent Tools

Model Exploration

• Intelligent Agent Guided Exploration
• Model Explanation

Qualifications

• MSc Advanced Computer Science, University of Leeds
• PGCE Secondary Computer Science and ICT, University of Cumbria
• BSc Business Systems Management, Kingston University