The International Congress on Cyberspace Intelligence and Health 2025

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Prof.Chris Nugent
Head of School of Computing, Ulster University

Topic: Lessons Learned from the Development and Evaluation of Human Activity Recognition Solutions

Abstract: Advances in computational power, high speed communications, artificial intelligence and low cost sensing devices are providing us with the tools and platforms required to make a step change across a wide range of IoT-based application domains. Smart environments have already established themselves as appropriate tools for tracking inhabitants and profiling behavioural trends. At the core of this process is the fundamental task of identifying the individual activities that each inhabitant is undertaking and subsequently building a deeper understanding of likely future activities, in addition to analysing any potential deviations from the normal. Whilst approaches to human activity recognition have yielded high levels of performance, many lessons have been learned over the years and new research directions continue to emerge. In this presentation, an outline of the approaches we have adopted over nearly two decades of research will be summarised and considered, followed by a proposal of potential new research topics based on those lessons learned.

Biography: Chris is a full Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Head of School of Computing at Ulster University.

His research interests include the development and evaluation of technologies to support pervasive healthcare within smart environments. Specifically, this has involved research in the topics of mobile based reminding solutions, activity recognition and behaviour modelling and more recently technology adoption modelling. He is the director of the Pervasive Computing Research Centre, the co-Principal Investigator of the Connected Health Innovation Centre, the Principal Investigator at Ulster for the PWC Advanced Research and Engineering Centre and co-Investigator for the BT Ireland Innovation Centre.

In 2024 he was recognised on Stanford's top 2% most highly cited scientists and is currently ranked No. 1 internationally on Google Scholar for citations in the area of Ambient Assisted Living. In 2016 he was awarded a Senior Distinguished Research Fellowship by Ulster University.

Since 2008 has served as an Associate Editor for the Editorial Board of the IEEE Engineering Medicine and Biology Conference, Healthcare Information Systems Theme and he is currently serving as a member of Ireland’s Commission on Care for Older People.