Dr. Alexandra Cristea: homepage in the UK

Dr. Alexandra I. CRISTEA
Associate Professor, founder and coordinator of the IAS group at the
Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick
Research fields: Adaptive Systems, Adaptive Hypermedia, User Modeling, AI, Semantic Web &
Knowledge Computing, Neural Networks, Education
A[Dot]I[Dot]Cristea[At]warwick.ac.uk or acristea[At]dcs.warwick.ac.uk

In 2006 I came to Warwick from the Eindhoven University of Technology, with which I have been affiliated for 5 years, working in the area of Adaptive Hypermedia, and especially authoring thereof, as well as Semantic Web technology. Previously, I have been affiliated with the University of Electro-Communications, for 6 years, where I was working on Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence technologies applied in Education and Distance Learning. I started my academic career at the University Politehnica of Bucharest, where I was working on parallelization of Neural Networks. Strange as it may seem, all these subjects are related, they still interest me, and I am happy to continue working on integrating them.

PHD RESEARCH and MSC BY RESEARCH: I am interested in supervising research on intelligent techniques, adaptive hypermedia, information retrieval applied on semantic web, social web and education. In this context, especially research on adaptation languages and authoring is currently of interest. See what my PhD students are/ have been doing, as well as my current projects and papers.

SHORT TERM PROJECTS (for Warwick students only): if you want to perform a project in your third year, or a group project in your fourth year, or a Master project during your Taught Master, related to one of my projects (currently, GRAPPLE and ALS, see below)send me an email. To give you some ideas, here are some sample projects .

MSC IN COGNITIVE SYSTEMS: check out this new interesting MSc opportunity, a joint effort between the Computer Science and Psychology departments at Warwick, with courses and projects from both departments.

Tracks, Workshops organized:

ECTEL'09 workshop A3H: 7th International workshop on Adaptive and adaptable Authoring ;
ECTEL'09 demonstration chair ;
ECTEL'08 workshop IGACLE: Individual and Group Adaptation in Collaborative Learning Environments;
Adaptive Hypermedia'08 workshop A3H: 6th International workshop on Adaptive and adaptable Authoring ;
Hypertext'07 trackPractical Hypertext;
User Modeling'07 workshop A3H: 5th International workshop on Adaptive and adaptable Authoring ;
Hypertext'06 workshop APS: Joint International Workshop on Adaptivity, Personalization and the Semantic Web ;
ICALT'06 workshop AWELS: 1st Workshop on Adaptive Web-Based Education and Learning Styles ;
AH'06 workshop A3H: 4th International workshop on Adaptive and adaptable Authoring ;
AIED05 workshop A3H: 3rd International workshop on Adaptive and adaptable Authoring ;
AH 2004 workshop A3H: 2nd International workshop on Adaptive and adaptable Authoring ;
WBE 2004 workshop + papers and questionnaires : A3H: 1st International workshop on Adaptive and adaptable Authoring ;

Research & Projects, chronologically:

Research papers
PhD students
I am leading WP3 on authoring of adaptive e-learning and hypermedia environment in GRAPPLE EU FP7 STREP project(1/02/2008-30/01/2011) and a local site here .
Socrates/Minerva: ALS: Adaptive Learning Spaces (1/10/2006-30/04/2009) that I am leading and a local site here
PROLEARN (1/01/2007-31/12/2007): a local site and The Prolearn Network of Excellence
I was leading the ADAPT EU Socrates/Minerva project (1/10/2002 - 30/04/2005)
adaptive authoring of adaptive hypermedia:

MOT online (My Online Teacher; pronounced 'moh', like the French word for 'word;); download current version here or here
papers here ; in more details:

theoretical framework: the semantic layers: LAOS (WWW'03 paper); the adaptation layers (including adaptation language definition): LAG (UM'03 paper)
implementation papers: first (educational) MOT paper (ITCC'03) ; MOT automatic linking paper (ITC'03)
MOT evaluation papers: URD evaluation (CATE'03) ;

I was also somewhat involved in the AHA! system

current download version here
some reference papers on previous versions of AHA: 2000 (1) ; 2000 (2) ; 2000 (3) ; 1998 (1) ; 1998 (2) ;
the AHA system is loosely based on the AHAM reference model for adaptive hypermedia (see also newer version '99 )
the new AHA developments are towards generic (i.e., application independent) and open (i.e., allowing external information sources) adaptive functionality; also, richer UM should be allowed (for this, the W3C standard on RDF will be used)

other separate User Modelling (UM), Distance Education & Learning research:

· a presentation at TUE on this subject ( Concept Mapping - based, Collaborative Distance Authoring)
· Directory for articles on this subject; the system parts can be found at:
coming: My English Teacher (under construction..);
My English Teacher: Teachers Site(also: under construction..);
MyET new;

· PhD thesis ( I did my thesis in Japan, at the University of Electro-Communications in Toyko, Graduate School of Information Systems Laboratory of AI & Knowledge Computing, under the supervision of professor Toshio Okamoto.

Subsymbolic Knowledge Extraction Environment for a Time-Series prediction parallel Neural Network (some condensed info about my thesis)

· Older research:Stock Exchange Forecasting with the help of Neural Networks; Generalities

Office Hours:

These are my office hours, unless I'm away (as known by the Secretariat) or other unforseen changes occur. Please make an appointment in advance via email, to avoid dissapoitments of double booking:

10:00-11:00, Wednesdays

10:00-11:00, Thursdays

Info about my countr(ies):

I actually am both Romanian and Dutch now.

Info in The Netherlands, the land under the sea

Romanian painted monasteries

Some information about my country, Romania

Some information on the German highschool Bucharest (my generation: 1977-1989)

Some information on the Computer Science Department of the University "Politehnica" of Bucharest, to which I used to belong

Romanian universities

Romanian press (most of it in Romanian language- but not all !!)

Other useful sites:

search engines

bookstores on-line: Bookpool, for discount technical books, and Amazon.com

universal currency converter- isn't that helpful?!

codes for international telephone calls- this always comes handy!

Office address:
Department of Computer Science, Room 321
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
tel.: direct:(+44) 24 765 73774; secretary: (+44) 24 7652 3668
fax: +44 24 7657 3024

A[Dot]I[Dot]Cristea[At]warwick.ac.uk