Dr Chris Willcocks

Personal web page

(email at christopher.g.willcocks@durham.ac.uk)

Biography

I am an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at Durham University and a member of the Innovative Computing Group (ICG). I cofounded the research spinout company Intogral Limited which deploys deep learning models in the area of medical image computing. Previously I worked as a PDRA for Newcastle University, Durham University, and have been a visiting scholar at both the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). My interdisciplinary research focuses on providing elegant solutions to computationally expensive or ill-defined problems within computer science, physics, biology and chemistry. My theoretical interests are in:

• Machine learning
• Computational geometry
• Generative models
• Level-set methods
• Meta learning

Please visit my website for more information.

Teaching

I teach the year three deep learning submodule and the year two cyber security submodule. Slides and other material are available in the teaching section. Past teaching:

• Deep Learning (2019-present)
• Cyber Security (2017-present)
• Machine Learning (2018)

Professional Activities

• Area chair of the BMVA 2020 Conference.
• Invited speaker at the 2020 Cyber Operational Conference.
• Invited speaker and visiting faculty at Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), 13th Aug 2019.
• Chair of BMVA symposium of ‘Deep Learning in 3-Dimensions’, 20th Feb 2019.
• Speaker on BBC Sunday Politics discussing Cyber Security spending in public bodies.
• Invited to present at Durham Celebrating Excellence research exhibition.
• Member of W3C Web Assembly.
• Reivewer for IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.
• Reivewer for IEEE Transactions on Image Processing.
• Reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.
• List of seminars.

Research Groups

• Innovative Computing

Selected Publications

Journal Article

• Willcocks, Chris G., Jackson, Philip T.G., Nelson, Carl J., Nasrulloh, Amar & Obara, Boguslaw (2019). Interactive GPU Active Contours for Segmenting Inhomogeneous Objects. Journal of Real-time Image Processing 16(6): 2305-2318.
• Shuaa S. Alharbi, Chris Willcocks, Philip T.G. Jackson, Haifa F. Alhasson & Boguslaw Obara (2019). Sequential graph-based extraction of curvilinear structures. Signal, Image and Video Processing 13(5): 941-949.
• Nasrulloh, A., Willcocks, C., Jackson, P., Geenen, C., Habib, M., Steel, D. & Obara, B. (2018). Multi-scale Segmentation and Surface Fitting for Measuring 3D Macular Holes. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging 37(2): 580-589.
• Akcay, S., Kundegorski, M.E., Willcocks, C.G. & Breckon, T.P. (2018). Using Deep Convolutional Neural Network Architectures for Object Classification and Detection within X-ray Baggage Security Imagery. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security 13(9): 2203-2215.
• Willcocks, Chris, Jackson, Philip T.G., Nelson, Carl J. & Obara, Boguslaw (2016). Extracting 3D parametric curves from 2D images of helical objects. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 39(9): 1757-1769.
• Willcocks, Chris G. & Li, Frederick W.B. (2012). Feature-Varying Skeletonization. The Visual Computer 28(6-8): 775-785.

Conference Paper

• Matthew Roberts, Chris Willcocks, Anna Leone & Boguslaw Obara (2018), Deep learning for the classification and clustering of museum collections, Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists. Barcelona, Spain.
• Chris G. Willcocks, Jonathan Frawley, Gregoire Payen de La Garanderie, Habib Maged, Geenen Caspar, David Steel & Boguslaw Obara (2018), Macular hole and edema segmentation with 3D image-to-image networks, International Society for Eye Research Conference. Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK.
• Medhat, Fady, Mohammadi, Mahnaz, Jaf, Sardar, Willcocks, Chris, Breckon, Toby, Matthews, Peter, McGough, Andrew Stephen, Theodoropoulos, Georgios & Obara, Boguslaw (2018), TMIXT: A process flow for Transcribing MIXed handwritten and machine-printed Text, IEEE International Conference on Big Data. Seattle, WA, USA, IEEE.
• Carl J. Nelson, Chris Willcocks, Philip T.G. Jackson, Philippe Laissue & Boguslaw Obara (2016), Application of high-speed level set segmentation to light sheet fluorescence microscopy, Light Sheet Fluorescence Microscopy International Conference. Sheffield, UK.
• Nitin Mukerji, Carl J. Nelson, Chris Willcocks, Philip T.G. Jackson & Boguslaw Obara (2016), Real-time segmentation of brain vasculature and identification of anomalies in magnetic resonance angiography, European Congress of Neurosurgery. Athens, Greece.

Doctoral Thesis

• Chris G. Willcocks (2013). Sparse Volumetric Deformation - Animating and rendering huge amounts of volumetric data using GPGPU computing. Durham University. PhD.

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