New technology, including intelligent search engines, a device that translates foreign chat shows into English and a machine that creates 3D models from photographs are to be displayed at an open evening for the local business community.

The University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering is opening its doors to the high-tech business community on Wednesday (November 29th), to showcase and encourage investment in some of its latest research in Information Engineering.

Companies in and around Cambridge are invited to send representatives to the free event, where they will be able to meet the staff, PhD students and post-doctoral researchers behind some of the department’s latest work, and take part in networking sessions. There will also be an opportunity to view demonstrations in an exhibition area.

“This will be a unique opportunity to get a real feeling for the work in the Information Engineering Division, meet the people involved and hear about the very latest developments taking place,” Steve Young, Head Division, said. “We very much hope that as many members of the local technology business community as possible will join us.”

Among the featured items will be:

• A new speech translation tool, which translates audio tracks containing foreign speech into English. At the moment it is being developed to create English transcripts from Arabic and Chinese broadcast news and talk shows.

• A new method of detecting areas of stiffness in the body, which could signal developing cancer, using an ultrasound scanner.

• A framework for a more intelligent internet search tool that would understand how humans learn concepts and generalise. This would allow surfers to search more accurately for anything from scientific articles to images and movies.

• Bayesian Object Tracking; new technology which allows the user to detect the movements of highly manoeuvrable and unpredictable objects, such as people or vehicles, even when they are in a densely-populated or cluttered area.

• The Digital Pygmalion Project; a method for developing 3D computer models from 2D photographs of objects or sculptures. This system was recently used by the artist Anthony Gormley to scale up a sculpture (pictured) from life-size to more than 25 metres high.

The event has been organised in partnership with the Cambridge Network team, and it is hoped that it will be the first in a series of open sessions revealing to companies in and around Cambridge the latest research of the University’s largest department.

To register or to view a full programme, visit the Cambridge Network website by following the link to the right of this page.

The Department and Cambridge Network are grateful to Hermann Hauser at Amadeus Capital for inspiring and sponsoring this event.

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