| P. Wallis, Tremarden, Dale End, Bradwell, S33 9HP, UK |
| Phone: +44 (0)143 3620889, or Mobile: 0791 0059 137 |
| email: pwallis@acm.org |
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| 2013 - | Visiting Research Fellow | Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Metropolitan University |
| 2006 - 2012 | Senior Research Fellow | Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield |
| 2003 - 2005 | Managing Director | Ramjet Software Pty Ltd |
| 2001 - 2003 | Software Consultant | Agent Oriented Software Pty Ltd |
| 1995 - 2001 | Research Scientist | Defence Science and Technology Organisation, Australia |
| 1989 - 1995 | PhD Student | Dept of Computer Science, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia |
| 1989 | Research Assistant | Department of Computer Science, University of Queensland |
| 1983 - 1988 | Student | Flinders University, South Australia |
| 1981 - 1983 | Technical Assistant | Department of Chemical Engineering, Adelaide University |
| 1976 - 1981 |
Apprentice | Weapons Research Establishment, Australian Defence Forces |
| FP7-ICT call3, Cognitive Systems and Robotics | Principle Investigator |
|---|---|
| Social Engagement with Robots and Agents (SERA) | |
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With OFAI (Austria - coordinating partner) University Twente
(Netherlands) and University Duisburg-Essen (Germany). The primary objective of the SERA project was to gather recordings of genuine human-robot interaction and then, hopefully, develop some kind of explanatory theory based on real data. Payr and I set out to use qualitative methods but we broadened the range of methodologies under investigation - the Twente people are classic HCI, and those at Duisburg-Essen have a psychology background. Our technique has been to put a Nabaztag "internet connected rabbit" in older people's homes with the ostensive purpose of encouraging exercise. We have collected 300 or so video recorded interactions with associated logs and post event interviews. Although we have not reached consensus on methodology, we have a follow-on proposal in train for the next round of EU funding. | |
| EPSRC Digital Economy: Feasibility Studies in novel ICT developments | Co-investigator |
| Engineering Natural Language Interfaces: can CA help? | |
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April 2008 to March 2009 with Mark Hepple as Principle
Investigator. Joint work with Newcastle's Department of Education
Communication and Languages Science. In 2000 my team at Defence Science in Australia was given the task of developing a dialog system for a ECA acting as a virtual assistant in a data cave. We conducted a Wizard of Oz study and found, using a semistructured interview technique, that our subjects needed far less semantics, pragmatics and world knowledge than expected, and focused their effort on being polite and generally managing social relations. Interviewing people about commonsense behaviour (as opposed to expert behaviour) turns out to be problematic and the ethnomethodological version of Conversation Analysis appeared to be a strong contender for an alternate methodology. One result from this work was inter annotator agreement of over 95% on adjacency pairs and insertion sequences. A trivial result according to reviewers but perhaps a solid basis for machine learning of more interesting relationships. | |
| FP6-ICT | Facilitator |
| Companions | |
| In 2004 we moved to the UK for my wife's post doc, and I was given a desk at Sheffield University, Department of Computer Science, where I started writing papers and proposals with Yorick Wilks. I had admired Yorick's work from a distance since my PhD on lexical semantics and it was an honour to work along side the group and indeed the Department. After the unsuccessful Copain proposal, we received 13m euro from the European Commission for the Companions IP. As "Facilitator," my role was to identify problems and potential stoppages and report them. Unfortunately the project was heading for disaster (funding was ultimately suspended while management issues were sorted out) and I left to pursue independent funding as described above. |