Lee Felton
Name: Lee
From: Flintshire, Wales
Degree: MComp Computer Science
Status: Lee was interviewed at the end of his fourth year
You took part in Genesys this year. Can you tell me a bit about that?
The first three weeks are spent on preliminary training to cover eXtreme Programming, skills for planning, project management, client skills etc. There is also a skills audit to chart your strengths and highlight any areas you need to work on. You´re assigned a project according to your skills, working in groups of four to six. Ours is a very creative group so we were assigned a graphics based job.
What did your particular Genesys project involve?
We took on a project for the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds. The museum has a forthcoming exhibition about the 100 years war including some 14th century illuminated manuscripts. We're producing an interactive DVD game to make the manuscripts more interesting to children. The game is going to be a role play game with DVD style chapters where players take the part of a knight and try capture the castle. We generated 3D graphic backgrounds then animated pictures of people from the manuscripts.
What else did you do in your fourth year, besides Genesys?
I also took some Advanced Research Topics, which are mini projects based around current research. For one of these I developed a computational model of DNA production, which is part of the research of the department´s Computational Biology Research Group. Several different proteins work in the DNA production pathway and influence each other by negative and positive feedback loops. It´s a complicated process and only a rough model currently exists. My simulation still needs refinement but that´s the case with most ART projects because they´re based around real ongoing research. I enjoyed A level Biology so it´s been good to keep up this interest through computational biology.
You graduate this summer - do you have any plans for the future?
Yes – I´ve already secured a job and will be working for Transport for London as part of their Information Systems graduate management scheme. There were several recruitment stages – an interview, presentation and assessment centre. They use eXtreme Programming - the same system we used in our Genesys project, which I think helped get me the job. Genesys is a big selling point to companies – you have a master´s qualification but Genesys also counts as a year´s work experience which is looked upon very highly by employers, and is unique to Sheffield.