Monthly OSSG Advocacy event
The OSSG advocacy team meets on a monthly basis to discuss our efforts.
Everyone is welcome to join the meeting which takes place before our monthly event.
Archives: Events
London Open Source Meetup for RISC-V
Our quarterly meetup for the London open source community, focusing on RISC-V and open source, hosted by the BCS Open Source Specialist Group and the UK Open Source Hardware User Group. These meetings provide an opportunity to share the latest ideas around open source in the RISC-V ecosystem, combined with plenty of time for networking. The theme for this quarter’s meeting is optimizing code size for RISC-V.
Due to COVID-19 this will again be a purely virtual meetup. We’ll be live streaming using BigBlueButton to provide a rich online experience for participants. As always the talks will be recorded for later upload to YouTube. You are invited to join and socialize from 18:00, talks will run from 18:30-20:00 with 30 minutes at the end for further discussion and socializing.
There is no requirement to register, you can just connect to livestream using BigBlueButton on this link. We are also recording the talks for later posting on our YouTube channel.
The livestream link will be open from 18:00 for networking, and the event will start at 18:30 prompt. We’ll keep the link open afterwards for discussion.
Not a BCS member? Don’t worry! Our monthly newsletter provides the latest news, information and events in the world of IT. We’re here to keep you updated! Sign up today at campaign.bcs.org/bcs-supporter. If you would just like to be added to the friends of the Open Source SG mailing list, then please send an email to ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk with subscribe in the subject. You can unsubscribe at any time by emailing unsubscribe-ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk.
Evaluating the proposed Zce extension
Ibrahim Abu Kharmeh, Huawei Bristol, UK
RISC-V is an open source fast growing ISA designed at the University of California, Berkeley. The ISA was designed to target various wide range of applications starting from HPC to Embedded Systems. For RISC-V to be competitive in embedded space, its code size density has to be at least on par or better than commercial alternatives.
While RISC-V contains several features like variable instruction length and compressed instruction that should help achieving that. Several benchmarks [1] indicate that RISC-V code density is worse than that of these alternatives. Luckily, RISC-V was designed to accommodate for extensions to enhance various aspects of its performance.
One of those extensions is Zce, this extension purpose is to help close the gap of code density with these alternatives. In this presentation, I will present the evaluation criteria used for comparison, review the main contributing factors to the worse code density performance, review the main Zce instructions for better code density (PushPop, TBLJAL and Multimove), and present their approximate savings.
References
[1] Perotti, Matteo, et al. “HW/SW approaches for RISC-V code size reduction.” Workshop on Computer Architecture Research with RISC-V (CARRV 2020)
Ibrahim has recently completed an Electronic Engineering MSc (Micro Electronics Stream) at the University of Southampton. During his masters degree, he researched the feasibility of implementing a NISC based processor for signal processing. He is currently working for Huawei Bristol where he is researching, modelling and benchmarking code size optimization for the RISC-V extension Zce. Previously, he worked as an embedded HW/SW design engineer for just over 2 years.
The LLVM inliner and MI: Mutual Inlining
Nidal Faour, Western Digital Corporation, Israel
I will be presenting the work done by Western Digital on the LLVM inliner and the solutions we are exploring to improve it.
Nidal Faour is a toolchain Engineer at Western Digital CTO group. Nidal started at Western Digital 10 years ago. After 5 years of experience in Embedded systems as a FW engineer, then over 4 years of experience in build systems he joined the CTO team, where he started working on the RISC-V toolchain and doing research on RISC-V code size and footprint for embedded systems.
The RISC-V Online Tutor
Fearghal Morgan, NUI Galway, Ireland
RISC-V Online Tutor provides structured, self-paced RISC-V architecture and applications training and reference. It uses the vicilogic platform (online learning, remote FPGA prototyping and course builder). The course browser transparently interacts with remote RISC-V FPGA hardware. Lessons control remote hardware input signals, probe internal RISC-V signals, and overlay signal state as widgets on interactive course diagrams. The strategy provides a visually-rich, interactive learn-by-doing experience.
Users learn RISC-V assembly, architecture design, RISC-V code HDL capture, pipelining and hazards, and introductory-level C to assembly. The platform can be used to extend training modules to support RISC-V training, e.g, on RISC-V extension hardware implementation.
The presentation describes the course structure, pedagogy examples, course build process, recent user experience, and analytics.
Fearghal Morgan is a lecturer/researcher in the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUI Galway), working in online learning and remote labs, reconfigurable computing and bio-inspired systems. Fearghal has worked in industry (ASIC and Comms design), along with 28 years in University teaching and research. Publications: Google Scholar
Inclusivity in Open Source
Our annual joint meeting with BCS Women Specialist Group is taking a wider view this year, embracing not just at Women in Open Source, but Inclusivity in general in Open Source. We have three leaders of international open source organizations, who will share their experience of getting to the top as members of under represented groups. Our speakers are rôle models for the engineering community, and we look forward to hearing their stories, and how they inspire the next generation.
Our MC for the evening is Prof Cornelia Boldyreff, who is also our final speaker.
AGENDA
18:00 – Feel free to join the online meeting to chat with other participants
18:30 – Presentations, each with Q&A
20:00 – Closing discussion
There is no requirement to register, you can just connect to livestream using BigBlueButton on this link. We are also recording the talks for later posting on our YouTube channel.
The livestream link will be open from 18:00 for networking, and the event will start at 18:30 prompt. We’ll keep the link open afterwards for discussion.
Not a BCS member? Don’t worry! Our monthly newsletter provides the latest news, information and events in the world of IT. We’re here to keep you updated! Sign up today at campaign.bcs.org/bcs-supporter. If you would just like to be added to the friends of the Open Source SG mailing list, then please send an email to ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk with subscribe in the subject. You can unsubscribe at any time by emailing unsubscribe-ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk.
Calista Redmond, CEO RISC-V International
Calista Redmond is the CEO of RISC-V International with a mission to expand and engage RISC-V stakeholders, compel industry adoption, and increase visibility and opportunity for RISC-V within and beyond RISC-V International. Prior to RISC-V International, Calista held a variety of roles at IBM, including Vice President of IBM Z Ecosystem where she led strategic relationships across software vendors, system integrators, business partners, developer communities, and broader engagement across the industry. Focus areas included execution of commercialization strategies, technical and business support for partners, and matchmaker to opportunities across the IBM Z and LinuxOne community. Calista’s background includes building and leading strategic business models within IBM’s Systems Group through open source initiatives including OpenPOWER, OpenDaylight, and Open Mainframe Project. For OpenPOWER, Calista was a leader in drafting the strategy, cultivating the foundation of partners, and nurturing strategic relationships to grow the org from zero to 300+ members. While at IBM, she also drove numerous acquisition and divestiture missions, and several strategic alliances. Prior to IBM, she was an entrepreneur in four successful start-ups in the IT industry. Calista holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Northwestern University.
Rob Knight, CTO, Enterprise Cloud Products at SUSE
Rob is SUSE’s CTO for Enterprise Cloud Products, and is responsible for SUSE’s overall strategy and vision for Application Delivery. He has been working with containers in production environments since before Kubernetes was released, and played a critical role in taking SUSE’s Application Delivery Solutions to market.
He’s been working in the Application Delivery space for over 12 years at a variety of companies, and speaks daily to customers, partners, press and analysts on the future of the Application Delivery marketplace.
Prof Cornelia Boldyreff, University of Greenwich
Cornelia is Visiting Professor at the University of Greenwich in the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences. She was previously the Associate Dean (Research and Enterprise) at the School of Architecture, Computing and Engineering at the University of East London from 2009 – February 2013.
Cornelia gained her PhD in Software Engineering from the University of Durham where she worked from 1992; she was a Reader in the Computer Science Department when she left. In 2004 she moved to the University of Lincoln to become the first Professor of Software Engineering at the university, where she co-founded and directed the Centre for Research in Open Source Software.
She has over 25 years’ experience in software engineering research and has published extensively on her research in the field. She is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, and a founding committee member of the BCSWomen Specialist Group, a committee member of the BCS e-Learning Specialist Group, and from 2013-2017 chaired the BCS Open Source Specialist Group. She has been actively campaigning for more women in STEM throughout her career.
Together with Miriam Joy Morris and Dr Yasmine Arafa, she founded the start-up, ebartex Ltd, and together they are developing a new digital bartering currency, ebarts.
Monthly OSSG Advocacy event
The OSSG advocacy team meets on a monthly basis to discuss our efforts.
Everyone is welcome to join the meeting which takes place before our monthly event.
Open Data in 2021
Open data is often under-represented in discussions about open source, so in this evening of talks we’ll have a set of speakers with talks focusing on open data.
Our MC for the evening is Simon Worthington.
AGENDA
18:20 – Feel free to join the online meeting to chat with other participants
18:30 – Short introduction (5 min) of the evening
18:35 – Presentations and questions
20:35 – Closing Discussion
Please register on Eventbrite for a free ticket: https://ossg180321.eventbrite.co.uk/. The link to join on our BigBlueButton instance will be sent to all registered attendees before the event. Each talk will also be uploaded to our YouTube channel shortly after the event.
Join the live presentation here: https://test.vi4io.org/b/jul-uhk-iht-bvf
Matthew Somerville – Behind the local lockdown tool
During the second half of 2020, various parts of the UK found themselves under various different sorts of local restrictions, which changed regularly. Originally done with a huge list of postcodes, then resolving to council and ward areas, these confusing, complicated changes lacked a straightforward way of finding out the current restrictions where you were. So I wrote a postcode lookup tool to look up local restrictions, which ended up being mentioned in Parliament. This talk will look at the open data behind the legislation and my tool, and some of the problems and issues faced.
Matthew Somerville is a senior web developer based in Birmingham. With mySociety, he is involved in many of the UK’s best known civic websites, such as FixMyStreet and TheyWorkForYou. Finding that there didn’t appear to be a comprehensive IMDb-style site for the theatre, he created Theatricalia, an online database of theatre productions. His bookmarkable version of the National Rail website provides constant positive karma, and his live map of the London Underground was described as “what IT was invented for” and “possibly the coolest use of the internet”. Outside of the internet and his house, he used to sing with the City of Birmingham Choir, and play violin in the South Birmingham Sinfonia, and hopes to do so again.
Sam Roberts – Open data and transparency
Sam will be discussing open data and transparency. The UK has a renewed focus on user needs, standards and quality of data. This entails a number of approaches that involve data and ways of working to ensure transparency, accountability and citizen participation inform the way that government prioritises open data. The presentation will involve UK and international case studies.
Sam Roberts is the head of Open Government and Open Data policy at the UK Cabinet Office (GDS) having previously worked across a number of prominent government areas, including information sharing legislation, international transparency, and youth policy. In addition to policy development, Sam is a trained agile delivery manager and has led the delivery of projects within multidisciplinary teams of Data Scientists, User Researchers, Content Designers, Product Managers, and Policy Advisers. Sam also leads a range of international work with the Open Government Partnership, OECD, and the Digital Nations.
Mike Jacklin – Opening up Britain’s transport data
Open data plays a key and evolving role in the public transport sector in Britain. Not only does it enable accurate passenger information to be widely distributed, but it is also being used to support the digital transformation of the industry.
Ito World is a major consumer of open data, and also builds platforms that help governments, transport authorities and operators to manage and distribute their data. Drawing on their work with leading journey planners such as Google Maps, as well as our work with the Department for Transport (DfT) developing the Bus Open Digital Service, Mike will share some of the experiences and lessons learnt – from both the data consumer and data publisher side.
Mike Jacklin is Partnerships Director at Ito World. He has overseen the growth in Ito’s work with journey planner clients such as Google and Apple Maps, as well as the platform side of the business, with clients such as the DfT, Transport for West Midlands, and Transport for the North.
Open Source in Automotive
More and more vendors and suppliers in the automotive sector utilize open-source software. On this thematic evening, we’ll look into various aspects of automotive.
Once again, due to COVID-19 it will be a purely virtual meetup. We’ll be live streaming using BigBlueButton to provide a rich online experience for participants. As always the talks will be recorded for later upload to YouTube. You are invited to join and socialize from 18:00, talks will run from 18:30-20:30 with 30 minutes at the end for further discussion and socializing.
In a change to our past practice, there is no requirement to register, you can just connect to BigBlueButton on this link.
AGENDA
18:20 – Feel free to join the online meeting to chat with other participants
18:30 – Short introduction (5 min) of the evening by Julian Kunkel and Daniel Broomhead
18:35 – Presentations
20:35 – Closing Discussion
We were live streaming via BigBlueButton and recording the talks for later posting on YouTube.
Note: Please aim to connect at the latest by 18:25 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt.
The videos are available in our YouTube playlist.
Automotive Penetration Testing with Open Source Software
In the recent years, automotive penetration testing became more and more important. We decided to contribute to an open source project to build a Swiss army knife for automotive penetration testing. This talk summarizes our journey in the world of automotive protocols and open source software development. We explain the automotive protocol stack, existing open source software solutions for different purposes and give some insights into the capabilities of our own tools. Finally, we discuss the importance for open tools for the security community as well as the benefits for OEMs and suppliers.
Nils Weiss is PhD students at the Laboratory for Safe and Secure Systems (las3.de) of the University of Applied Sciences in Regensburg. He is focusing on automotive security research since more than 4 years. After an internship at Tesla Motors, Nils decided to start with automotive security research. During his bachelor and master program, he started with penetration testing of entire vehicle. Besides penetration testing of automotive systems, he is contributing to open source penetration testing frameworks for automotive systems (Scapy).
Cross-platform open-source ECU diagnostic
With the ever increasing complexity and propriatary implementations of car diagnostic software, OpenVehicleDiag tries to provide a universal and open source tool for running car diagnostics, based upon the Passthru API, converting propriatary data formats into a common JSON schema. In the first part of this presentation, I will be discussing the process of creating an open source Rust based Passthru driver for Macchina’s M2 Under-the-dash ODB-II adapter, and the process of unoficially porting the API to UNIX systems. In the second half of the presentation, I will be discussing the process of creating OpenVehicleDiag using a Rust Passthru API backend and a JS Electron GUI, along with the process of converting Daimler CBF files into a common JSON format that can be applied universally to other OEM’s.
Ashcon Mohseninia is a computer science student at the University of Reading who has a passion for car hacking and open source software. Most noticeably known for installing a totally custom infotainment system on his Mercedes and reverse engineering its entire CANBUS network to achieve a ton of cool features that even modern cars lack. He got into open source car diagnostics after creating a custom Passthru API adapter from an Arduino in order to clear error codes from his car’s TCU after a simple mechanical fault rendered the car useless, and Mercedes attempted to charge a ludicrous amount of money to simply clear the error code stored on the TCU module. Visit his YouTube channel.
Open source Software in Automotive: A point of view from the car industry
Open source software is a big part of software development and despite initial historical pushback from the automotive industry, it is now becoming more and more common in the industry. During the course of the presentation we will analyse the current situation and approach to open source software in automotive, including what an automotive company looks for in it and its challenges. We will also briefly touch on the relationship between tier-1 suppliers and open source code, as opposed to in-house development directly by the car manufacturer.
Mario De Felice has been a Software Architecture Manager in Jaguar Land Rover for 6 years, mainly looking at connected car, audio and infotainment domains, where he has designed and developed amongst the others, the award-winning PIVI Pro Infotainment system, featured on the Land Rover Defender.
Prior to this engagement, he has worked in the research industry, starting with his PhD in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks between the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and collaborated with a few companies, like Toyota, Google and Telecom Italia.
Automotive Grade Linux: Driving Innovation and Collaboration
The Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) community consists of more than 150 companies across the automotive and tech industries who are working together to develop an open source software platform for all in-vehicle applications from infotainment to autonomous driving. Sharing a single software platform across the industry decreases development times so OEMs and suppliers can focus on rapid innovation and bringing products to market faster. Dan Cauchy, Executive Director of Automotive Grade Linux, will provide an overview of AGL, production use cases including Toyota and Subaru, the project roadmap, and how to get involved.
Dan Cauchy, Executive Director of Automotive Grade Linux at the Linux Foundation
Dan Cauchy has over 22 years of experience spanning the automotive, telecom, networking, and mobile business verticals. Prior to his current position, he was the VP and GM of MontaVista’s Automotive Business Unit (acquired by Mentor). During this period, Cauchy served on the Board of Directors of the GENIVI Alliance and was responsible for the creation of the GENIVI Compliance Program, which he chaired for three years. Cauchy has also held senior management and engineering leadership positions at Cisco Systems, Newbridge Networks (acquired by Alcatel) and Nortel, and his startup startup experience includes Atrica (acquired by Nokia-Siemens Networks) and BlueLeaf Networks (now Picarro).
London Open Source Meetup for RISC-V
We continue our quarterly meetup for the London open source community, focusing on RISC-V, hosted by the BCS Open Source Specialist Group and the UK Open Source Hardware User Group. These meetings provide an opportunity to share the latest ideas around open source in the RISC-V ecosystem, combined with plenty of time for networking.
Once again, due to COVID-19 it will be a purely virtual meetup. We’ll be live streaming using BigBlueButton to provide a rich online experience for participants. As always the talks will be recorded for later upload to YouTube. You are invited to join and socialize from 18:00, talks will run from 18:30-20:30 with 30 minutes at the end for further discussion and socializing.
In a change to our past practice, there is no requirement to register, you can just connect to BigBlueButton on this link.
The videos of the event are now available on YouTube.
Developing and testing TensorFlow Lite Micro edge AI algorithms on RISC-V and FPGAs
Michael Gielda, Antmicro
With the increasing demand for small and energy-efficient devices with AI capabilities, new tools and workflows are needed to develop so-called TinyML applications. In a project with Google’s TensorFlow Lite MCU team, Antmicro has been helping improve the CI infrastructure for one of the world’s most famous ML frameworks. TF Lite Micro users can now run their machine learning framework on virtual hardware for demonstration, CI and testing. Renode allows ML developers to repeatedly and reliably test various demos, models and scenarios on a variety of hardware, including a wide range of RISC-V platforms, both soft and ASIC implementation, e.g. the recently added Core-V MCU, while its co-simulation capability enables co-development with physical FPGAs, which can be used to build AI/ML accelerators. In collaboration with QuickLogic, Antmicro has also been enabling source FPGA tooling for the eFPGA found in the Core-V MCU, enabling users to kick-start flexible prototyping and pre-silicon development of ML-capable systems based on RISC-V + FPGA. Join the talk to learn more about the advantages of using Renode’s simulation, testing and CI capabilities for the development of machine learning applications.
Michael Gielda is VP Business Development and co-founder of Antmicro. With a background in both computer science and the humanities, he is an ardent believer in using open source to advance entire industries. Michael is vice-chair of Marketing in the RISC-V Foundation and Chair of Marketing and Outreach in CHIPS Alliance.
Expanding a RISC-V Processor with Vector Instructions for Accelerating Machine Learning
Pete Alexander, John Holden, Harry Cooper, Byron Theobald, Aaryaman Bhattacharya, Matthew Johns, University of Southampton
The open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture is gaining interest throughout industry and academia. One advantage of RISC-V is the ability to add custom instruction extensions to the processor targeting specific applications. This project has taken an existing core and designed an accelerator to handle vector instructions to speed up the inference of neural networks. As a benchmark, tinyMLperf has been used which has required vector instructions to be integrated into Tensorflow Lite for Microcontrollers. The goal is to show the benefits of custom instructions and stimulate similar work in the community.
This project has been completed by six fourth-year Electrical and Electronic Engineering students from the University of Southampton. This group project is required for the MEng degree and ran over 10 weeks in Autumn 2020. Each member of the team has different backgrounds, from digital design, to AI expertise, to compiler experience. The project has been supported by Embecosm.
Developing Diosix: An open-source RISC-V bare-metal hypervisor from scratch in Rust
Video Slides
Chris Williams, diodesign
Diosix bridges two interesting and emerging worlds of technology: Rust and RISC-V. As a bare-metal, type-1 hypervisor, Diosix strives to bring the security, reliability, and speed of Rust to the lowest levels of RISC-V systems. The result is the ability to run multiple guest operating systems, each secured within their own hardware-enforced virtualized environments, on a single RISC-V host.
This allows developers to build and test iterations of system and application software without having to reflash and reboot their in-development hardware, as well as run a mixture of isolated guests.
This presentation will walk through the architecture of Diosix, how it uses base RISC-V features to provide hardware-enforced virtualization, its progress in running guest operating systems such as Linux, and the project’s next steps. Source code and documentation can be found here.
Chris is a San Francisco-based technology journalist at The Register, a publication that covers enterprise IT, information security, and software development. He has worked in the media for the past 15 years as a writer and editor, and his background is in electronic engineering. To keep up with changes in the industry, Chris writes and shares open-source software in his spare time.
Open Source Video Games
By popular request, we provide a look at open source in video games. Two excellent talks one looking at the general area of opening up vidoegames, the second looking at cutting edge use of open source gaming to help children with ASD.
Once again, due to COVID-19 this will be a purely virtual meeting. We’ll be livestreaming using BigBlueButton to provide a rich online experience for participants. As always the talks will be recorded for later upload to YouTube. You are invited to join and socialize from 18:00, talks will run from 18:30-20:00 with 30 minutes at the end for further discussion and socializing.
In a change to our past practice there is no requirement to register, you can just connect to BigBlueButton on this link.
AGENDA
18:00 – Feel free to join the online meeting to chat with other participants
18:30 – Short introduction (5 min) of the evening by Mary Bennett
18:35 – Presentations
20:00 – Closing Discussion
We were live streaming via BigBlueButton and recording the talks for later posting on YouTube.
Note: Please aim to connect at the latest by 18:25 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt.
Opening Up Videogames
Lex Roberts
The National Videogame Museum’s most important maxim is ‘videogames are for everyone’. Empowering our audiences to play, understand and make videogames is at the core of everything we do. This is a behind the scenes look at how the NVM is using open source software, open hardware and open data to achieve those goals through game development, game interpretation, and game preservation, as well as its ambitions for the future.
Lex is part of the curatorial and exhibition team at the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield. They are an avid programmer and maker of things, both digital and physical. Lex helped establish the London chapter of the Code Liberation Foundation, which fosters the creation of games and creative technologies by women and non-binary people. They now sit on OpenUK’s museum committee, a not for profit organisation committed to develop and sustain UK leadership in Open Technology.
Virtual Social Robot Interaction for Enhancing the Social Skills of Children with ASD
Maha Hatem
Social skills training (SST) programmes are extremely important to train and enhance the social skills of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). SST programmes are designed to provide learning experiences to teach children the necessary skills to interact successfully with their social environment. Although traditional SST interventions were proven to be beneficial for children with ASD by many previous studies, their accessibility is limited. Physical social robots and virtual environments have been popular training tools for children with ASD in recent years. Studies have been conducted to evaluate their effectiveness in enhancing the social skills of children with ASD. The research presented in this talk investigates the potential of combining virtual environments with social robots as a novel approach to address some of their limitations and train the social skills of children with high-functioning ASD. A non-immersive (desktop) virtual reality environment that employs a 3D robot has been designed. The developed environment aims to enhance the social skills of children with high-functioning ASD through a social skills training programme guided by a parent or a teacher. The motivation of this research is providing a tool that can be widely accessible, cheap and easily used by parents and teachers either at home or at school. The designed training programme is adapted and modified from successful work has been done with physical robots (NAO, Zeno, and Qtrobot) to train the social skills of children with ASD. The developed training programme targets three social skills: imitation skills, emotion recognition skills, and intransitive gestures skill. Due to the current circumstances (COVID-19) and the closure of the schools and centres for autism, the experimental studies have been conducted on-line and onsite. The proposed tool has been launched on a website to make it accessible to a wider group and enable data collection over time. Questionnaires and observation sheet have been designed for data collection pre and post-intervention sessions. Ethical approval for this study was obtained from the University of Greenwich Research Ethics (UREC).
A preliminary evaluation has been conducted to ensure that the gestures produced by the virtual robot can be recognised by the children with ASD. Eight typically developed children without ASD (6-12 years) have participated in this preliminary evaluation, they have been asked to identify the meaning of the gestures demonstrated by the virtual robot in one of the training scenarios. The findings show that all the gestures had a consistency rate of 75% or above. That is an indication that the animated gestures performed by the virtual robot are recognisable and have a common interpretation. The evaluation process is still in progress with seven children with ASD. The emotion recognition training programme has been finished, and the participants showed improvement between the pre and post-tests in all phases.
Maha Hatem is a PhD candidate at the University of Greenwich, London. She is conducting research related to autism and how assistive technology can enhance their social skills. This developed tool is a free desktop virtual reality tool for enhancing the social skills of children with ASD. The tool is still in the evaluation process, and the evaluation is part of her PhD.