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Academic appointments at Birkbeck

Computer scientist becomes professor in the School of Business, Economics and Informatics

Peter Wood

Peter Wood has been appointed Professor in Birkbeck’s Department of Computer Science and Information Systems.

He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Toronto in 1989, having previously obtained BSc and MSc degrees in Computer Science from the University of Cape Town (UCT). He then worked in the Department of Computer Science at UCT before joining King’s College London in 1998.

Professor Wood moved to Birkbeck’s then School of Computer Science and Information Systems in 2001 and was Head of School between 2006 and 2009. Recently he was appointed an Associate Editor of The Computer Journal, one of the longest-established journals in computer science.

Professor Wood’s research interests are in the area of data management, querying and analysis. His early work in proposing appropriate ways in which to query graph- or network-structured data has had significant impact in recent years, since it has become relevant to querying so-called semi-structured data, as well as data comprising the semantic web and social networks.

He has been working on ways to assist users in querying such data by allowing their queries to be interpreted in a flexible way. Other recent research has been in the area of combining recommendations for users and non-intrusive ways in which to elicit preferences from users when they are searching for recommendations.

Birkbeck’s Department of Computer Science and Information Systems is one of the longest-established computing departments in the UK, due to celebrate its 60th anniversary in 2017. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, the six-yearly audit of UK university research, 93% of the Department’s research outputs were judged in the top three categories - world-leading, internationally excellent or internationally recognised - placing it in the top 25% of Computer Science departments in the UK.

Other new appointments

Two further appointments have been made in the School of Business, Economics and informatics, in the Department of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics.

Maura Paterson - Reader in Mathematics

Newly appointed Reader in Mathematics Maura Paterson joined Birkbeck as a lecturer in 2009 following a PhD and postdoctoral work at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she studied after taking her first degree at the University of Adelaide in South  Australia.

Maura currently teaches Discrete Mathematics and an MSc module on the Mathematics of Communications, which covers information theory, coding theory and cryptography.

She said: “The module looks at how you can use mathematics to make communication more efficient, more robust and more secure.

“My research areas fit neatly into these teaching areas – I typically apply technologies from discrete mathematics to problems relating to the security of communications. I am currently looking at algebraic manipulation detection codes, which are designed to be used against adversaries who are trying to interfere actively in communications.”

Maura is on the editorial board of the international journal Designs, Codes and Cryptography, and her upcoming publications include a paper in the Journal of Mathematical Cryptology.

Emanuela Sciubba, Reader in Economics

Emanuela Sciubba, who has been made Reader in Economics, joined Birkbeck in 2005 as a lecturer, becoming a Senior Lecturer in 2012.

She obtained her first degree at the University LUISS Guido Carli in Rome, and an MPhil and PhD in Economics at the University of Cambridge. She was a research fellow at the Bank of Italy and at the Tinbergen Institute in Rotterdam, and joined Birkbeck from Cambridge, where she had returned to take up a lectureship at the Faculty of Economics and a fellowship at Newnham College.

Between 2009 and 2013 Emanuela was programme director for Birkbeck’s MSc Finance. From 2014 she has taken the lead in the design of a new and innovative Economics undergraduate degree which will launch in September 2015 and for which she will be Programme Director.

Her research interests are in economic theory and finance. Her main contributions are in the literature of market selection, where she studies which types of behaviour are favoured in financial markets and shows how incorrect beliefs and irrationality may in some circumstances result in faster wealth accumulation, thereby proving false the belief that smart money always dominates. This has important implications for market outcomes and helps our understanding of the 'irrational exuberance' that is often observed in financial markets.

Emanuela has a parallel and related interest in experimental economics where she has researched social networks and learning models. Pursuing both research agendas, she is currently working on macroeconomic implications of ambiguity aversion and on experimental evidence of unselfish behaviour in social networks.

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