Agnese secures 2nd place at the 2020 OU poster competition

Great result of Agnese Chiatti, PhD student in KMi and member of the Intelligent Systems and Data Science group, at the 15th Edition of the Postgraduate Research Student Poster Competition, which was held earlier today at The Open University. Agnese submitted a poster entitled “Robots with Common Sense – Improving Sensemaking in Service Robotics”, which was ranked 2nd out of 39 entries in the Judges’ Choice category. The poster summarises her research on “Robots with Common Sense”, which aims to improve the ability of robots to make sense of complex everyday environments.

The award ceremony was hosted by Vice Chancellor of The Open University, Prof Tim Blackman, and by Dr Lindsay O’Dell, Academic Director of the Graduate School. The PGRS competition has grown to become a valued tradition at the OU, providing a forum for PhD students to showcase their research to a broader audience, while also being exposed to the work of colleagues from other Faculties and Departments.

However, this year, the ceremony took place in an unconventional setting: online, through a video conference meeting. Indeed, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the Department for Academic Professional Development (APD) wanted to ensure that the event would go ahead. As emphasised by the APD organising committee, this effort was possible thanks to our own Chris Valentine, Project Officer at KMi, who single-handedly implemented the official website for this year’s poster competition. Through the website, students could load their posters and multimedia submissions (a short video pitching their research topic), while the other members of the OU could vote for the Community Choice poster and video. A separate jury of members of the OU staff selected three posters as Judges’ Choice. Posters were judged not only based on their balance of text and imagery, but, most importantly, based on how effectively they could convey research topics in a way that was accessible to people outside the field.

A full-size version of the poster can be found here, while more details about the competition can be found here.