Dr. David Newton

Current positions

Senior Lecturer

Biography

Educated locally at De La Salle Sixth Form College, Pendleton, Salford. Graduated with a First class Hons degree in 1986 from the Department of Computer Science, University of Keele.

PhD by research into Coding Theory awarded by Salford University in October 1989.

Appointed lecturer at the University of Salford in October 1989. Presently a Senior Lecturer within Computer Science and Software Engineering in the School of Computing, Science and Engineering.

Following 1995, with an already high teaching portfolio and already Course Leader for Computer Science and Computer Science & Information Systems Hons degrees, I took on extra administrative duties including Industrial Placements Officer, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of Quality for Computer Science. In 2007, I became Head of Computer Science for two years until the departments merger into a bigger unit.

Other recent (2010 onwards) significant contributions:

My role of Erasmus coordinator has expanded significantly over the years and with the links have come attendance opportunities for staff and students from Salford. These include the opportunity to participate in a European network of placement opportunities.

I have also coordinated Salford's involvement in a three year Intensive Programme of Study which started in 2010. This is a two weekly event bringing together students & staff in a multi-national programme on a particular topic. The IP that we, Computer Science, are involved in is a new IP on E-Discovery. The programme in its first year was held in the Netherlands and brought together 8-10 students from seven different European universities (in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Croatia & Spain). We sent 11 students to this event last year and two staff accompanied them as per EU requirements. Salford hosted this event in early February 2012.

Nearer to home, I brought the Drupal Camp NW to MediaCity in November 2012. Drupal is a content management system (CMS) written in the PHP programming language and a Drupal Camp is a community-based event focused on learning and sharing for Drupal enthusiasts, especially for newbies who have special sessions just for them. Thirty of our students attended as well as industry experts from across the UK and beyond.

I also arranged in November 2012 with one of the co-organisers of HackManchester (which is a very heavily over-subscribed coding competition and is a part of the Manchester Science Festival) that this could be held at MediaCityUK. The main event itself is sponsored by various, prestigious cutting edge companies. 250 attendees and another 100 for the awards show, there was a huge amount of interest and coverage. The university's involvement and support of the local tech community will generate a lot of approval and interest from local businesses, freelancers and those interested in the industry and community.

Areas of research

Deep Learning, Malware Detection