Iain Williamson

Profile

Iain Williamson, PhD Research Student

After a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt at a first degree, at the end of which the Dean of the Faculty of Science at his first university described him as "the weakest student that this university has seen in all of its long history", Iain decided to devote himself to a life of practical achievement. He pursued a variety of careers, taking in wall-painting conservation and architectural restoration, but his earlier failure evidently continued to rankle him. After many years idly toying with equations during his lunch break, he finally decided to bite the bullet and return to full-time education.

Thanks, in no small part, to the almost infinite patience and support of his long-term partner, Iain (finally) obtained a first degree in Mathematical Sciences from the Open University in December 2003. Perhaps (were he aware of it) to the surprise of the above Dean, Iain did quite well and went on to obtain his Masters award from the University of Luton in 2005. After a spell working for the Department of Computing & Information Systems, he began his PhD in September 2006.

The title of Iain's research topic is "An Expert Authoring Framework for Computer Based Assessment". The work takes in machine representation of conceptual knowledge systems, generalised logic and artificial intelligence. The intention is to produce systems that will guide authors through the process of setting assessments and, possibly, automatically generate assessments from underlying knowledge representations.

During his spare time, Iain conducts a continuing campaign of restoration against a house that could most charitably be described as 'affordable' as well as conducting frequent disputes with his two children upon a variety of bewilderingly small topics. In the evenings, he enjoys struggling to stay awake long enough to get any work done.