I am a senior lecturer in the School of Computer Science at The University of Manchester, and a member of the Advanced Interfaces Group. My research interests are in the area of Human Computer Interaction, Visualisation, 3D Graphics and Distributed Systems.

Research

My research interests are centred around the design of advanced interfaces for computer systems. In particular I am interested in scientific visualisation, and what is broadly termed 'virtual reality'. Much of my work has been based around the development of novel system architectures to make graphical interfaces and applications work. I am also interested in collaborative interfaces, which allow multiple users to work intuitively with applications and with one another.

Visualisation

My main focus for that past few years has been the design of computer architectures for scientific visualisation. At the one extreme, I have been looking at usability and performance, investigating GPU-based techniques for accelerated rendering and gathering use cases from different scientific disciplines, and at the other have developed ontology and knowledge-based techniques for managing the underlying data.

Teaching

In the School of Computer Science, I teach parts of COMP30071 (Advanced Computer Graphics), and COMP10502 (Fundamentals of Distributed Systems). I'm also the school's Second Year Tutor.

Publications

These are my most recent publications

P. McDermott and S. Pettifer. Extending collaborative tagging for use with scientific data. In Proceedings of e-Society 2009, March 2009.

C. D. Murray, S. Pettifer, T.L.J. Howard, F. Caillette E. Patchick, and Joanne Murray. Virtual solutions to phantom problems: Using immersive virtual reality to treat phantom limb pain. In C.D. Murray, editor, Amputation, Prosthesis and Phantom Limb Pain, page to appear. Springer, 2009. (in press).

S. Pettifer, D. Thorne, P. McDermott, T. Attwood, J. Baran, J. C. Bryne, T. Hupponen, D. Mowbray, and G. Vriend. An active registry for bioinformatics web services. Bioinformatics, 25, 2009. [ DOI | http ]

T. K. Attwood, D. B. Kell, P. Mcdermott, J. Marsh, S. R. Pettifer, and D. Thorne. Calling international rescue: knowledge lost in literature and data landslide! Biochemical Journal, Dec 2009.

S. R. Pettifer, D. Thorne, P. McDermott, J. Marsh, A. Villéger, D. B. Kell, and T. K. Attwood. Visualising biological data: a semantic approach to tool and database integration. BMC Bioinformatics, 16, Jun 2009.

S. Pettifer, D. Thorne, P. McDermott, T. Attwood, J. Baran, J. C. Bryne, T. Hupponen, and G. Vriend. The EMBRACE registry. EMBNet News, January 2009. [ .html ]

M. J. Herrgård, N. Swainston, P. Dobson, W. B. Dunn, K. Y. Arga, M. Arvas, N. Blüthgen, S. Borger, R. Costenoble, M. Heinemann, M. Hucka, N. Le Novère, P. Li, W. Liebermeister, M. L. Mo, A. P. Oliveira, D. Petranovic, S. Pettifer, E. Simeonidis, K. Smallbone, I. Spasić, D. Weichart, R. Brent, D. S. Broomhead, H. V. Westerhoff, B. Kürdar, M. Penttila, E. Klipp, B. Ø. Palsson, U. Sauer, S. G. Oliver, P. Mendes, J. Nielsen, and D. B. Kell. A consensus yeast metabolic network obtained from a community approach to systems biology. Nature Biotechnology, 26:1155 - 1160, October 2008.

Other Stuff

I teach and train at the Glossop Wado Kai Karate Club.

I'm a proud member of Project Steve (I'm Steve Number 1058).