Dr Ian Williams

Dr Williams teaches on a spectrum of applied computing courses covering both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. These include:

• MSc Digital Broadcast Technology
• MSc User Experience Design
• BSc (Hons) Digital Media Technology
• BSc (Hons) Sound Engineering and Production
• BSc (Hons) Music Technology
• BSc (Hons) Digital Film Production
• BSc (Hons) Visual Effects

Dr Williams’ also supervises both undergraduate and postgraduate projects, as well as PhD research in the fields of computer vision and HCI. He welcomes new applicants wising to undertake research programmes in HCI for Augmented Reality, Computer Vision and Virtual Reality systems.

• Visual Computing (Digital Image and Video Processing)
• Mixed and Augmented Reality
• Virtual Reality
• 3D Interaction
• User Interaction
• Feature Extraction
• 2D and 3D Image Segmentation
• Pattern Recognition

• PhD in Computer Vision and Image Processing
• BSc (Hons) Media Technology
• Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Authority (SFHEA)

PhD completions

• Dr Hsein Kew, “The Sonification of Spectroscopic Data”. Awarded March 2022
• Dr Samuel David Smith, “Improved Surface Segmentation in 3D Data”. Awarded August 2021
• Dr Alan Josef Dolhasz, “Illumination and colour Matching in Interior Scene Compositing”. Awarded July 2021
• Dr Muadh Al-Kalbani, “Freehand interaction in Mixed Reality”. Awarded February 2019
• Dr Gregory Phillip Hough, “Towards Achieving Convincing Live Interaction in a Mixed Reality Environment for Television Studios”. Awarded July 2015
• Dr Ryan Ian Stables, “Probabilistic Methods for Humanisation in Digital Music” Awarded, May 2013

Current PhD supervision and Director of Studies

• Ms Andreea Blaga, “A Taxonomy for Natural Freehand Interaction for Virtual Reality”
• Ms Becky Spittle, “Redefining Interaction Paradigms for Augmented Reality”
• Mr Mathew Randall, “Online Dynamic Warping for Onset Character Manipulation”
• Mr Bharat Pundyal, “Supporting Coding for physically Impaired users”
• Mrs Farkahandah Komal, “Using eye trackers to support creative tasks for physically Impaired users”

Dr Williams is continually seeking to recruit and support future PhD students, both on a part-time and full-time basis. For more information please email ian.williams@bcu.ac.uk.

Publications

B Spittle, M Frutos Pascual, C Creed, I Williams. “A Review of Interaction Techniques for Immersive Environments” IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) 2022. (impact factor: 4.579).

B Spittle, W Xu, M Frutos Pascual, C Creed, I Williams. “Socially Distanced: Have user evaluation methods for Immersive Technologies changed during the COVID-19 pandemic?” IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) 2021. (CORE rank A*)

A Blaga, M Frutos Pascual, C Creed, I Williams. “A Grasp on Reality: Understanding Grasping Patterns for Object Interaction in Real and Virtual Environments” IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) 2021. (CORE rank A*)

M Frutos Pascual, C Gale, J Harrison, C Creed, I Williams. “Character Input in Augmented Reality: An Evaluation of Keyboard Position and Interaction Visualisation for Head-Mounted Displays” IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 2021 (Best Paper Winner) (Core rank A)

A Blaga, M Frutos-Pascual, C Creed, I Williams. “Freehand Grasping: An Analysis of Grasping for Docking Tasks in Virtual Reality”. IEEE Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR) 2021 (Core rank A*)

F Aziz, C Creed, M Frutos-Pascual, I Williams. “Inclusive Voice Interaction Techniques for Creative Object Positioning”. ACM International Conference in Multimodal Interaction (ICMI) 2021 (Core rank B)

A Dolhasz, C Harvey, I Williams, “Perceptually-Informed No-Reference Image Harmonisation”. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer 2020. (impact factor: 1.363)

Al-Kalbani, M. Frutos-Pascual, M, Williams I, “Virtual Object Grasping in Augmented Reality: Drop Shadows for Improved Interaction”. IEEE Journal of Computer Graphics and Applications, 2020. (impact factor: 1.725).

B Paudyal, C Creed, M Frutos-Pascual, I Williams. “Voiceye: A multimodal inclusive development environment”. ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS). 2020 (Core rank B)

A Dolhasz, C Harvey, I Williams. “Learning to observe: Approximating human perceptual thresholds for detection of suprathreshold image transformations”. IEEE Conference on Computer vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2020. (Core Rank A*)

S Smith, I Williams. “Efficient One-to-One Pair Matching for 2-D and 3-D Edge Detection Evaluation”. International Conference on Visualisation, Imaging and Image Processing (VISAPP) 2020. (Core Rank C)

A Blaga, M Frutos-Pascual, C Creed, I Williams. “Too Hot to Handle: An Evaluation of the Effect of Thermal Visual Representation on User Grasping Interaction in Virtual Reality”. ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2020 (Core Rank A*)

C Creed, M Frutos-Pascual, I Williams. “Multimodal Gaze Interaction for Creative Design”. ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2020 (Core rank A*)

M Frutos-Pascual, JM Harrison, C Creed, I Williams, “Evaluation of Ultrasound Haptics as a Supplementary Feedback Cue for Grasping in Virtual Environments”. 2019 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, 310-318 (Core rank B)

M Frutos-Pascual, C Creed, I Williams “Head Mounted Display Interaction Evaluation: Manipulating Virtual Objects in Augmented Reality”. IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 287-308 (Best Paper Winner) (Core rank A)

Al-Kalbani, M. Frutos-Pascual, M, Williams I, “Virtual Object Grasping in Augmented Reality: Drop Shadows for Improved Interaction”. VSGames 2019.

Al-Kalbani, M. Williams I and Frutos-Pascual, M, “Freehand grasping in mixed reality: analysing variation during transition phase of interaction”. Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, 2017. (CORE rank B)

Dolhasz, A. Frutos-Pascual, M. and Williams, I. “Composite Realism: Effects of Object Knowledge and Mismatched Feature Type on Observer Gaze and Subjective Quality”. IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) 2017. (CORE rank A*)

Randall, M. Williams, I and Athwal, C. “A Predictive Approach to On-line Time Warping of Motion Sequences”, IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) 2017. (CORE rank A*)

Blaga, A. Frutos-Pascual, M. Al-Kalbani, M and Williams, I. "Usability Analysis of an Off The Shelf Hand Posture Estimation Sensor for Freehand Physical Interaction and Egocentric Mixed Reality". IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) 2017. (CORE rank A*)

Al-Kalbani, M. Williams I and Frutos-Pascual, M, “Improving Freehand Placement for Grasping Virtual Objects via Dual View Visual Feedback in Mixed Reality”. VRST '16 Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, 2016. (CORE rank A)

Hough, G.; Williams, I.; Athwal, C., "Fidelity and Plausibility of Bimanual Interaction in Mixed Reality," in Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions on , vol.12, no.99, pp. 1377-1389 (impact factor: 4.579)

S. Smith and I. Williams. “A Statistical Method for Improved Surface Detection”. Signal Processing Letters, August 2015 vol. 8, pp 1045-1049 (impact factor: 4.68)

Al-Kalbani, M. Williams I and Frutos-Pascual, M. “Analysis of Medium Wrap Freehand Virtual Object Grasping in Exocentric Mixed Reality”, Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2016 IEEE International Symposium on, Merida, 2016. (CORE rank A*)

Dolhasz, A. Williams I and Frutos-Pascual, M. “Measuring Observer Response to Object-Scene Disparity in Composites”. Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2016 IEEE International Symposium on, Merida, 2016. (CORE rank A*)

Smith, S. Williams, I. “A Statistical Method for Surface Detection”, Eurographics Workshop on Visual Computing for Biology and Medicine, 2015

Al-Kalbani, M. Williams, I. “Accuracy assessment of freehand grasping interaction for mixed reality”, Eurographics Workshop on Visual Computing for Biology and Medicine, 2015

G. Hough, I. Williams, C. Athwal. “Measurements of Live Actor Motion in Mixed Reality Interaction”. IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality. Munich, Germany.2014. (CORE rank A*)

G. Hough, I. Williams, C. Athwal. “Measurement of Perceptual Tolerance for Inconsistencies within Mixed Reality Scenes”. IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality. Munich, Germany.2014. (CORE rank A*)

I. Williams, D. Svoboda and N. Bowring.” A Performance Evaluation of Statistical Tests for Edge Detection in Textured Images”. Computer vision and Image Processing, Elsevier, 2014, vol. 122 pp 115-130. (impact factor: 3.876)

G. Hough, C. Athwal and I. Williams. “ScaMP: A Head Guided Projection System”. ACM Designing Interactive Systems'12. Newcastle, UK. 2012 (CORE rank B)

G. Hough, C. Athwal and I. Williams. “Advanced Occlusion Handling for Virtual Studios”. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer 2012. Pp 287-294 (impact factor: 1.363)

I. Williams, B. Shirvani, J. M. Mourier. “Measurement of Cold Rolled Steel Sections Using Digital Image Processing”. Journal of Key Engineering Materials, Trans TechPublications,2011vol. 473 pp 949-956 (impact factor: 0.45)

I. Williams, C. Athwal and J. Foss. “Developing Real-time Virtual Environments from Video Data”. IET Seminaron Video Data Analysis, IET, London 2011

R. Stables, J. Bullock and I. Williams. “Perceptually Relevant Models for Articulation in Synthesised Drum Patterns”. 131st Audio Engineering Society Convention, New York, USA. 2011.

I. Williams, D. Svoboda and N. Bowring. “A Novel Performance Metric for Greyscale Edge Detection”. In the Int. Conf. on VISAPP-International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications 2010. (CORE rank C)

N. Bowring, I. Williams, C. Johnson and J. Jaiswal. “Fatigue crack, squat and wheel burn detection by a multi-scale statistical image processing technique”. In proceedings of the 33rd Annual General Meeting of the British Institute of Non-Destructive Testing.

I. Williams, D. Svoboda, N. Bowring and E. Guest. “Statistical Edge Detection of Concealed Weapons Using Artificial Neural Networks”. In Proceedings of SPIE-IS & TElectronic Imaging. Vol. 6812. Bellingham, Washington: SPIE, 2008. p.68121J-1-12,12pp.ISSN0277-786X.

I. Williams, D. Svoboda, N. Bowring and E. Guest. “Improved Statistical Edge Detection Through Neural Networks”. In 10th Conference on Medical Image Understanding and Analysis 2006. ISBN:1-901727-31-9.P.56-60

D. Svoboda, I. Williams, N. Bowring and E. Guest. “Statistical Techniques for Edge Detection in Histological Images”. In1st Int. Conf. on VISAPP-International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications 2006. ISBN:972-8865-40-6.P.457462.

I. Williams, N. J. Bowring, E. Guest, P. Twigg, Y. Fan and D. Gadsby. “A Combined Statistical/Neural Network Multi-Scale Edge Detector”. In 5th IASTED Visualization Imaging and Image Processing Conf. 2005. ISBN:0-88986-528-0.P.480-266.

D. Gadsby, P. Twigg, N. Bowring, and I. Williams. “Ultra Wide band positioning for intelligent security systems”. The Journal for the Institute of Measurement and Control. 2005. vol.38, pp.140-146