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PETRAS Academic Community Conference | Networking & Research Showcase

L I M

The PETRAS National Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems Cybersecurity was delighted to host the two-day PETRAS Academic Community Conference | Networking & Research Showcase on the 16-17 June 2022 in London’s Goodenough College. 

After more than two years of no in-person events, PETRAS was grateful to welcome over 80 leading academics from across the UK, with key industry experts and government representatives joining the evening networking event on Day 1. The event aimed to bring these communities together to seed innovative new ideas, to build on existing relationships and create a space for serendipitous collaboration opportunities.  

A highlight from Day 1 included over 20 engaging and informative project presentations from researchers, illustrating both the importance of their work and the high-quality social and technical research under the PETRAS programme. Attendees were asked to vote for the most inspiring presentation that communicated their research best to win the Director’s Prize. 

Dr Matthew Nunes (Cardiff University) of the ICE project was announced as the winner of the Director’s Prize by PETRAS Director, Professor Jeremy Watson. The ICE project studies water treatment systems and factories of the future, providing security and resilience for emerging technologies in critical infrastructures.  

After a short break, valued PETRAS User Partners (research collaborators) and key stakeholders in public and private sectors joined the Research Showcase & Networking session, 18:00-19:30. Amongst the 30 partners in attendance, organisations included Airbus, BSI, DCMS, NCSC, Ofgem, Local Government Association (LGA), RegenFARM Ltd and Siemens. 

PETRAS displayed academic posters showcasing over 20 research projects in a combination of physical and digital posters. During this networking session, attendees also had the opportunity to play with Prometheus, an interactive game looking at the sustainability and security of the IoT as part of the Edge of Tomorrow project led by Dr Adrian Gradinar and Dr Michael Stead (Lancaster University). Dr Mohamed Khamis (University of Glasgow), PT-Heat lead, also provided a demonstration on preventing users of thermal imaging cameras from using them maliciously.  

Energy levels stayed high on Day 2 despite the heat with an engaging agenda. Highlights included ‘Conversations | PETRAS and Beyond’, where the PETRAS Quintet engaged with attendees and kicked off with a discussion on Resilience: IoT and Edge technologies reduce/mitigate the impacts of socio-technical interventions due to failures and cyberattacks?  

One of the final sessions to round up the two-day event saw PETRAS Synthesis Fellows present their work to date and brought the PETRAS community together to reinforce the strengths that come with being socio-technical, while also exploring different mechanisms and ideas for future interdisciplinary collaboration. The PETRAS Synthesis Fellows consist of Joe Bourne (Lancaster), Dr Peter Novitzky (UCL), Dr Oktay Cetinkaya (University of Oxford) and Dr Gideon Ogunniye (UCL). 

The value of face-to-face meetings was demonstrated clearly with this two-day event and PETRAS looks forward to organising further events in the future. 

If you have any enquiries relating to this event or events more generally, please contact petras@ucl.ac.uk.  

Further information:  

  • Agenda available here. 
  • Details of the projects presenting their work and links for further information can be found here. 
  • Details of the Showcase & Networking session, including the posters is available here. 

Links to the physical posters:

Links to the digital posters: