Mr. de Quincey is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Greenwich, London (School of Computing and Mathematics), previously a Research Fellow at the City eHealth Research Centre (CeRC) at City University, London and a visiting researcher at the Knowledge Modelling Research Group in the School of Computing and Mathematics at Keele University. And he is working on a PhD in Computer Science under the supervision of Gordon Rugg at Keele University.
He has worked in the area of online human behaviour for 7 years, looking into the usability and impact of websites as well as uses of the information that they collect. This has involved investigations into the following areas: People’s perceptions of corporate and academic websites for organisations such as Securicor, Keele University and the Open University. One particular study lead to a 50% increase in student numbers in under a year.
Mr. de Quincey led and been involved in a number of studies into visualisation; the process of visually representing large amounts of data or code in order to identify trends and patterns. This has resulted in the production of software to visualise the data that is collected in web server logs to identify trends in online user behaviour and search. It has been successfully used to identify trends in searches for diseases on a healthcare digital library website.
Most recently, he led research that has investigated the potential of Twitter to detect disease outbreaks such as Swine Flu. By collecting messages on Twitter that contained the word “flu” we were able to demonstrate the potential that social networking sites have in monitoring epidemics and are now looking at how they can be used to direct appropriate information to the general public. Mr. de Quincey is also using the same approach to investigate the impact of the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
Press
• The Daily Telegraph: “Twitter could help health official track swine flu” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/swine-flu/6193551/Twitter-could-help-health-official-track-swine-flu.html
• The Times of India: “Twitter could help track swine flu spread” http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health/Twitter-could-help-track-swine-flu-spread/articleshow/5018126.cms
• The Health Protection Agency (HPA): “Social networking sites could detect flu outbreaks faster” http://www.hpa.org.uk/webw/HPAweb&HPAwebStandard/HPAweb_C/1252660057427?p=1231252394302
Awards
• Apple’s “Featured Web App” (April 2nd, 2008) and an Apple “Staff Pick” for “WebClipr” web application
• Bizcom 2008 Winner and National Finalist – Business Idea Competition
Selected Publications
• de Quincey, E and Kostkova, P. (2010). Early Warning and Outbreak Detection Using Social Networking Websites: The Potential of Twitter. In: Electronic Healthcare. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer . p21-24.
• de Quincey, E , Kostkova, P and Farrell, D. (2009) Visualising web server logs for a Web 1.0 audience using Web 2.0 technologies: eliciting attributes for recommendation and profiling systems. Workshop on Adaptation and Personalization for Web 2.0 in connection with UMAP 2009, June 22-26, 2009, Trento, Italy
• H Oliver, G Diallo, E de Quincey, P Kostkova, G Jawaheer, D Alexopoulou, B Habermann, R Stevens, S Jupp, K Khelif, M Schroeder, G Madle. (2009) A User-Centered Evaluation Framework for the Sealife Semantic Web Browsers. BMC Bioinformatics, Semantic Web Applications and Tools for Life Sciences, 2008, BMC Bioinformatics 2009, 10(Suppl 10):S14, doi:10.1186/1471-2105-10-S10-S1
• Ed de Quincey, Helen Oliver, Patty Kostkova, Gawesh Jawaheer, Gemma Madle, Gayo Diallo, Dimitra Alexopoulou, Michael Schroeder, Bianca Habermann, Khaled Khelif, Simon Jupp, Robert Stevens. (2009) Mining for Patterns of Semantic Link Usage: Do Domain Users Actually Like Semantic Browsing? wi-iat, vol. 3, pp.50-53, 2009 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Joint Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology, 2009
• de Quincey, E, Hawksley, C (2009) Collaborative learning inside and outside of a Wiki Environment In Novel Approaches to Promoting Student Engagement. HEA Subject Centre for Information & Computer Sciences
• Petre, M, de Quincey, E. (2006) A gentle overview of software visualisation Computer Society of India Communications. August, 6-11. ISSN 0970-647X
• Full list available at: http://www.eddequincey.com/?page_id=8#publications
Grants and Funded Projects
• Co-Investigator on NIH Grant to investigate the impact of healthcare websites on antibiotic prescription. Currently under review ($275,000)
• City Commercialisation Grant to fund an MBA student Summer Internship (£1,000)
• Funding for development of online games to teach differential equations in U.S. Universities ($1,000)
• Mercia Spinner Grant (£7,000) for research into the potential uses of elicitation methodologies including software developed as part of my PhD
• Collaborator on “Software Visualisation” project with researchers at the Open University (£1,000)
• Management of TE3 grant funded (£10,000) “Multimedia Marketing Resource Kit” project
• Developer of online resources as part of the TE3 grant funded (£1,000) “Virtual interviews with micro business entrepreneurs” project
