Dr Marco Palomino

Marco Palomino's research lies on the area of natural language processing and, particularly, sentiment analysis, the process of computationally identifying and categorising opinions expressed in text. Recently, Marco and his students have participated in the SemEval competition, an ongoing series of evaluations intended to explore the nature of meaning in language.

Marco has the following responsibilities at the University of Plymouth:

Qualifications

PhD in Computer Science
Downing College, University of Cambridge
I investigated the fastest way to crawl the Web with the smallest amount of computational resources. I designed and implemented a prototype, Web crawler that preserved an up-to-date index of Web pages without making a priori assumptions about the way the Web changes.

Background

• I used to be a research fellow at the University of Exeter Medical School. I was part of the European Centre for Environment and Human Health in Truro (Cornwall, UK). My research focused on the acquisition of real time, Web-based information on emerging trends, opportunities and constraints that might affect the probability of achieving management goals and objectives.
• Previously, I worked as a visiting lecturer for the University of Westminster, where I was responsible for the Web Mining module.

Research Areas

• Web-based horizon scanning: A systematic examination of information to identify potential threats, risks, emerging issues and opportunities, allowing for better preparedness and the incorporation of mitigation and exploitation into the policy making process.
• Web crawling: Search engines make use of large indices of word occurrences on Web pages to cross-reference Web sites to keywords. Such indices are maintained by crawlers, a special kind of computer program that browses the Web autonomously. I have reviewed several alternatives to split a crawler's work into multiple processes, and examine their weaknesses and strengths experimentally.

Professional membership

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (Advance HE)
• Professional Member of the British Computing Society (MBCS)

Roles on external bodies

• Chair of the Southwest Branch Committee of the BCS
• Member of the Reviewer Board of the Mathematics journal (ISSN 2227-7390) - Impact Factor: 2.258 (2020)
  
• Member of the Reviewer Board of the Big Data and Cognitive Computing (BDCC) journal (ISSN 2504-2289)
  

Teaching interests

Academic Year 2019-2020

Undergraduate modules

• ISAD157 - Databases: Analysis, Design and Development (Module Leader): An introduction to the analysis and design concepts that are essential for developing and implementing databases.

Postgraduate modules

• SOFT562 - Software Development and Databases (Module Leader): A postgraduate module that provides knowledge and skills in software development and database design.

Academic Year 2018-2019

Undergraduate modules

• ISAD156 - Databases: Analysis, Design and Development (Module Leader): An introduction to the analysis and design concepts that are essential for developing and implementing databases.

• SOFT165 - Programme Introduction and Web Development: An introduction for first-year undergraduate students to the concepts, study methods and technical content relevant to their programme.

• ISAD251HK - Database Applications Development (Module Leader): An introduction to server-side applications and multi-user, networked databases. This module is offered, exclusively, to students registered with the Hong Kong University School of Professional and Continuing Education (HKU SPACE).

• PRCO304HK - Computing Project (Module Leader): A module where students tackle a major computing-related problem in an approved topic area relevant to cybersecurity. This module is offered, exclusively, to students registered with the Hong Kong University School of Professional and Continuing Education (HKU SPACE).

Postgraduate modules

• SOFT562 - Software Development and Databases (Module Leader): A postgraduate module that provides knowledge and skills in software development and database design.

• AINT514 - Computer Science Workshop: A workshop-based module that presents an overview of cutting-edge computer science topics through the research expertise and interests of the academic staff.

Research interests

I have carried out research work on the following subjects:

• Sentiment analysis: The process of computationally identifying and categorising opinions expressed in a piece of text. The most basic task in sentiment analysis is classifying the polarity of a given opinion (i.e., determining whether an opinion expressed towards a particular topic or entity is positive, negative or neutral).
• Web-based horizon scanning: A systematic examination of information to identify potential threats, risks, emerging issues and opportunities, allowing for better preparedness and the incorporation of mitigation and exploitation into the policy making process.
  
• Web crawling: Search engines make use of large indices of word occurrences on Web pages to cross-reference Web sites to keywords. Such indices are maintained by crawlers, a special kind of computer program that browses the Web autonomously. I have reviewed several alternatives to split a crawler's work into multiple processes, and examine their weaknesses and strengths experimentally.
• Keyword extraction: The automatic identification of terms that best describe the subject of a document.
  
• Java-Based Distributed Object Systems: Under the supervision of Dr Stephen Gilmore, I implemented a distributed object management system that can be regarded as an extension of Babylon, a fully functional prototype system designed for the implementation of distributed Java applications. My work enhances Babylon with user-level components to assist with monitoring the progress of executing applications, and was developed to accommodate the more stringent Java 2 security model. It also improves the performance of Babylon by freeing it from its dependence on Sun's implementation of Java Remote Method Invocation.

Research groups

• Big Data group
• Centre for Health Technology

Links

Google Scholar Citations: Marco Palomino.