Dr Kate Macfarlane

Kate MacFarlane

Dr Kate Macfarlane SFHEA

Senior Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence

Dept. of Computing and Maths

My profile

Biography

My work in Computer Science focuses on Artificial Intelligence and developing human centred systems that apply AI and automation principles to solve real world problems in a way that helps society. This means that my work is naturally applied in nature. This is crucial when working with industry or research projects that seek to produce solutions to other problems. My primary research area focuses on the introduction and automation of safe interactions for vulnerable users in online settings. I am also interested in distributed systems, game technologies and computer architecture.

Academic Qualifications:

  • PhD: An Intelligent Multi-Agent System Approach to Automating Safety Features for On-Line Real Time Communications: Agent Mediated Information Exchange
  • Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE)
  • BSc(Hons) Degree: Computer Systems Engineering

Professional:

  • Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA)
  • Member of the British Computer Society (MBCS)

Invited Speaker:

  • MacFarlane, K. (2020) AI For Good, AI Tech North: Great Northern AI Summit.
  • MacFarlane, K., Vogelberg, KM., and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Team (2020) Trust Fabric: Building Confidence in Automated Business. Dynamo 20 Collaborating for Success Conference.

Reviewer Activity:

  • Editorial Board Member – International Journal of Automation, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (IJAAIML), (2020-Present)
  • International Program Committee Member for International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS), (2019-21)
  • Multimedia Modelling, Technical Program Committee Member, (2020 – 2022)

Get in touch

0161 247 2000
John Dalton Building

Projects

Current Project:

SafeChat: The current focus of this research project centres around emotion detection methods to inform autonomous decision making. Using natural language processing techniques in conjuction with deep learning models, I hope to enhance the accuracy of computer detection and understanding emotion expressed in written language.

Recently Completed Projects:

Innovate UK: Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Proforecast LTD. Kate MacFarlane (Principal Investigator / Knowledge Base Supervisor), and James Hennerley (Research Developer). This project aimed to develop predictive financial systems that use deep machine learning time series forecasting models to accurately predict cashflow and profit forecasting for small to medium enterprises as part of the Proforecast suite of budget and financial management applications. The project met all milestones three months ahead of time and the partnership was rated ‘Very Good’ after going through Innovates grading process.

Google Digital News Innovation Fund (DNI Fund): SMART – Social Media Abuse Research Tool. This project involved analysing Twitter feeds in an application environment, using machine learning techniques to create readable and meaningful metrics for reporters on the go.

Cyber Eyes Wide Open: This project focused on connecting creatives, academics, and cybersecurity companies with the goal of providing new perspectives on cybersecurity. This involved 8 creatives including artists, poets, and animators, 4 academics from Computer Science, Art, Design & Media and 4 cybersecurity companies supported by the Creative Fuse team at Sunderland University.

Internet Matters: Technological Family - this project researched into the near future for families and technology creating a scene-setter report ‘Living the Future: The Technological Family and the Connected Home’ that focused on home technologies likely to have an impact on families.

Research outputs

Full Papers

In production: MacFarlane, K. An Ensemble Machine Learning Approach to Autonomous Agent Decision Making: Rich Emotion Detection.

Hall, L., Paracha, S., Ure, C., Hagan-Green, G. and MacFarlane, K. Smashing that sense of security: collaborating with artists and cybersecurity practitioners to create cyber safety experiences for teenagers. IDC 2022 (Under Review)

Hall, L., Paracha, S., Mitsche, N., Flint, T., Stewart, F., MacFarlane, K., Hagan-Green, G. and Dixon-Todd, Y. (2021) When will Immersive Virtual Reality have its day? Challenges to IVR adoption in the home as exposed in studies with teenagers, parents, and experts. MIT Press PRESENCE special issue on User Experience and Engagement in the Reality-Virtuality Continuum (in press)

Hall, L., Paracha, S., Flint, T., MacFarlane, K., Stewart, F., Hagan-Green, G., and Watson, D., (2021) Still looking for new ways to play and learn… Expert perspectives and expectations for interactive toys. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction. p. 100361. ISSN 2212-8689

Book Chapters

MacFarlane, K., and Holmes, V. (2017) Multi-agent System for Safeguarding Children Online. In: Proceedings of SAI Intelligent Systems Conference (IntelliSys) 2016. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, 16 (16). Springer International Publishing AG, pp. 228-242. ISBN 978-3-319-56994-9

Short Papers

Seedall, M., MacFarlane, K., and Holmes, V. (2019) SafeChat System with Natural Language Processing and Deep Neural Networks. In: EMIT 2019.

Student Papers

Potts, Danielle , MacFarlane, K. and Hall, Lynne (2021) Support Rather Than Assault – Cooperative Agents in Minecraft. In: 33rd British Computer Society Human Computer Interaction conference, 19-21 July 2021, online.

Conference Presentations

MacFarlane, K. (2020) AI For Good. AI Tech North: Great Northern AI Summit.

MacFarlane, K., Vogelberg, KM., and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Team (2020) Trust Fabric: Building Confidence in Automated Business. Dynamo 20 Collaborating for Success Conference