Welcome everybody to the next talk, wire plumber 0.5 from Ashok Siddiputu. Please give a warm round of applause right now and then we can start. Thank you. This is what I'm going to talk about. Hello, I'm Ashok. My world has been revolving around this pipeline wire plumber since about two years. And prior to this, I was working for Qualcomm. I was mostly writing audio software chipset and I was there for over a decade. Then I wanted to try pure open source and that is the reason I'm here. Other than other than work, I have two small children. Most of my time goes there.  I'm based out of Hyderabad, India. These are the topics. So first let me introduce Piper to you. So Piper is basically a next generation audio and video server. It greatly enhances the way audio and video is handled by Linux. For example, video, audio and video didn't have a unified API. Piper filled that gap many more. And then it supports traditionally what was supported by Pulse Audio, the standard desktop API, and then Jack, the pro audio API. So Piper kind of supports both of them put together. And it not just supports the functionality, it also has a thin emulation layer. So all the legacy apps which were using these Pulse Audio and Jack can seamlessly transfer switch to Piper and it would just work just like that. And it is very low latency. That's one of the important things. So that is made possible by very clever usage of buffers and very responsible usage of memory. It uses dynamic memory, but not every time. It's in a very, very nice way in my opinion. And that is how very low latency thing is realized. And that is how it is able to basically replace Jack. And it is actually another very important thing is it is known for its exceptional performance. Let's say I mean anything very intense. Let's say some video is running video capture is going on and let's say some video processing is going on. So if you do a top when Piper is running with all these things, you would see sticking to the bottom of the CPU that that initially surprised me. And anybody new to Piper will definitely be surprised with that who has experience working in video and audio frameworks. So it is known for exceptional performance and has been doing that since two or three years. And its design is very modular. This is one thing I boast about to my colleagues from previous companies. One exceptional thing is the object extraction. So be it client, be it devices, be it apps, be it ports, links or whatever, everything is object inside. Everything is object inside the Piper. That is a very powerful abstraction in my opinion. It gives a lot of flexibility. I'm going to talk more and more about that as we follow. And another modular, another aspect of the modular design is so there are so many parts within Piper like the Piper API, the Piper demon, the spa system. And then you have the session manager. Don't worry if you don't understand them. So but what I'm trying to say here is there are so many parts which are very clearly defined and basically they all of them sort of fall in place and work in very cohesive manner. So all of them can be you if you want, you can replace all those parts with your own implementation. So that flexibility is also there. So, so it's a very it's extremely modular. So the next thing is it is graph based processing. So I just talked about object representation and wire plumber is all about Piper is all about connection of those objects series of objects is connected to graph is realized. So it's very easy to visualize. And then the next thing is security. So, it's it's a major advancement or on top of, let's say pulsar you. So, again, back to the objects. So basically Piper has a permission system. You can you can basically define which objects access which objects. So that's sort of a permission system. It is it is you can say it's losing like the file permissions Linux file permissions. So you can define all those things. You using this paradigm. So it's very easy for a containerized applications are running in container environments to access audio and video. So it was not possible with Pulsar you. So now, since we are going to have more and more containerized world, it is going to be sort of easy. And then it has very rich set of tools. There are so many tools I have not used myself all of them. So very tools in house developed by Piper and Piper. I mean tools developed by the community external projects and the community is very, very vibrant in my opinion. So that's Piper. So this is Piper and action. So in middle you have Piper process. And then you have apps on the top which are represented by the green boxes here. And you have devices are APS here, which are represented by the purple blocks. And yeah, these are all the these are all the objects which I was talking about now. And the connection between the objects. These connection is how the graph is realized. This orange boxes here is the audio parts of the graph and the light blue boxes here are the video boxes. And so if you see the small boxes within this bigger boxes, they are ports on the nodes. And they're also again represented as objects and ports are connected with links. Right. So this is sort of how Piper looks in action. And you have this Piper pulse which is emulation layer for pulse audio. And then you have this session manager, which I'm going to talk more about. So Piper session manager is the one which is orchestrating the whole whole symphony here. And you have guys like well and well and composite trying to capture the screen. So that brings me to the session manager part of Piper that is wire plumber. So before we jump into wire plumber, so let's let's see what what is the session manager. So session manager is the one which controls the control path. It's not really concerned about the data path. It enumerates all the Piper object. Piper is all about objects. So session manager enumerates all of them, keeps them ready so that clients can access them and manipulate them. And it also creates a few objects like the devices and metadata devices as in the audio and video devices. The API to create them actually is in Piper but wire plumber sort of triggers the creation of them. And session management includes all these things. It manages the device profile. So devices have profiles. Let's say Bluetooth. Bluetooth has A2DP and HFE profiles. Now you have to select one profile for your use case. So it does that for you. And the device hardware routes. So on a device you can have speaker path, headset path, mic path, whatever. So you need to select them. So session manager does that. And you have you also have to manage the device preferences. Let's say you go to something like GNOME settings and select one device for audio playback, audio capture. Another device for video playback, video capture. So all of that you select them and wire plumber is the one which is actually session manager is the one which is actually managing the show behind the scenes. And all of these settings will have to be remembered across the reboots. Let's say if you have a requirement like that. So you can even you can even do that session manager does that for you. And all in last but not the least the most important task is it basically links the objects to create the graph. Which is which is which is what session manager is mainly about. And pipe where started with a it's a native session manager called pipe wire media session. But now wire plumber is the default session manager for the pipe wire. So that is kind of deprecated right now. This is session manager. And what is wire plumber, which is the default session manager for pipe wire. So a white wire plumber, let's say it's have several parts. The first part is the live wire plumber API. So this is the API which enumerates the objects and provides the API for you to access. So how it does it is it wraps the pipeline API, which provides you the objects and it provides a very high level and more convenient API to you. It is it is very, very much convenient. If you if you don't have wire plumber dealing with pipe wire is not that easy. So wire plumber provides that convenience to you. And it is geo object based. So it live wire plumber is sort of written in C. So it provides you the native C APIs. But if you want any other APIs that are available through the geo object introspection, any other bindings, any other language bindings. Now wire plumber demon is the next part. So wire plumber demon runs on top of the API and does the actual session management. What number demon again has two parts modules and the law scripts we call them components put together modules extend the live wire plumber API. And they either after extending the API either they have either they have their own functionality or they export or other APIs. Another set of APIs specific to the purpose, which can be either used by the wire plumber clients or the law scripts. So basically module is extension of the live wire plumber API. And next comes the most likable part of wire plumber in my opinion that is law scripts. So all the session management is actually done in a scriptable language. I personally like this very much. So it makes it law scripts make it very, very easy to manipulate the whole graph. So you have all the objects available in a scriptable language, you can get the handles of any objects and you can do whatever you want in a scriptable language. So wire plumber 0.5 is the next major release that we have been working since quite some time. So I'm going to talk about that next. So we are basically bringing in a new configuration system into the wire plumber as part of the 0.5 release. And it's a configuration system, not the scripting system. We are only changing the configuration system. Scripting system is Lua. We like Lua, we love Lua. So the scripting system is going to stay with Lua, but we were using it for config as well, which has some drawbacks. So these are the drawbacks. So configs are static and they're difficult to override. Let's say user wants, there are default set of configurations and user wants to override them. It's not, it's not very easy. You can do it, but it's not elegant or intuitive. And it is different from PipeWire. So PipeWire's brother is wire plumber and PipeWire using one configuration system and its brother is using another configuration system is not good. So and clients can't access configs. They don't have a mechanism. So you are defining configurations, but let's say if a client wants to access and take some decisions, it's not, it's not there. So we are moving to something called spa JSON. It's a, it's a native configuration system of PipeWire. It is much more intuitive. I'm going to show you the syntax in a little while and it, it supports split file configuration. So your configurations need not be in one single file, but it can be spread across the file system. You can logically group them and you can spread it across and you can even override them. I'm going to talk about them. You can override. So let's say there are default settings. You can override them. So what are the features of the configuration system that you're bringing here? The configurations can be dynamic. You can change them runtime. You change them runtime, wire plumber applies it live. I think users are going to really like this. And configurations can be overwritten. The default configurations and user would like to basically change one configuration, try something. You can do that in a very easy manner. And then extensions. You can, there are, there are some, I mean, so there is a certain difference between overheads and extensions. Overheads are meant for simple configurations like the Booleans, the strings, the integers. Now, there can be configurations which are complex. I'm going to show you that like, for example, the alzap properties.  Or you can even define rules. I'm going to show you that. So for that kind of complex configurations, it makes sense to extend them.  Default properties, you would like to add one more property instead of completely overriding them. So you can, you can do that. And conflicts can be persistent across the reboots. And clients can create and access conflicts at will, which is not easy with lower previous configuration system. So I'll, here, I'll show you how the syntax looks like. So here, so, so this is the name of a config. And equal to, and then, and then the value. So like, for example, the device default volume. This is the, this is the configuration. So all the devices will start at this volume. So if you want to, let's say, change that you want to keep it 0.5 or one or let's say you want to max it out. Now you can, you can, this is the configuration for you. So this is a, see, look at the syntax, right? It's very, very easy. So name of the configuration equal to and the value. You don't even have to say whether it is float or whatever. It'll be wire plumber will make up internally. And this is a, this is a Boolean property, true false. And this is an integer property. And this is a string property. So these are, these are simple properties. These are the complex properties I was talking about. So let's say rules. We are saying alza rules. Let's say if a alza sound card, any alza sound card carries this name. Notice the wire, notice the wild cards here. So carries this name. I want to apply these properties. So you can do that. So these are the, these are the sort of properties which can be extended, not, not overridden. So you would want to probably add one more property to this list. So you can do that. Going back. So now, now that I've shown you the syntax. So there are different types of configurations. One is dynamic configurations. So dynamic configurations are the ones which make sense to be changed on time. And these are examples is let's say the default volume. Now. These Jason configurations will be copied into a metadata SM settings, metadata. So this is pipeline metadata. Piper has a API with which you can change it runtime. So that is how you change them using the pipeline metadata API. And the WP settings API is the API with which you access them. Like, for example, there are clients. There are modern modules, modules and scripts. They would like to know what the value of setting is. This is the API for them. This, this is, this is a part of the liberal plumber API and subscribe. Let's you subscribe a callback so that you will get, you would get to know if a configuration is changed so that you can take that action. Now lower lower scripts use this API use this API to know the latest, I mean know if a configuration changes. And next set of next type of configurations is the static configurations. Like, for example, the, the rules here, they don't make sense to be changed dynamically. Doesn't make much sense. You can build a case for it, but it doesn't make much sense. So they will never be copied to metadata. Instead, they will be in Jason and WP conf is the API to access them. Get gets the value of the configuration. Apply rules is the one which lets you apply these rules. You would give it the device name and it will check if it's device name is this and it'll apply these properties for you. So that's the type of configuration. So I have a, we have come up with a blog post as well. If you want more in depth details, this is this for you. And so all in all, we think we have built a solid configuration system into wire plumber. And wire plumber being a control path manager session manager. So we think it is very much relevant to the embedded world so that they can use this configuration system and then basically customize and use it to their needs. So next thing I'm going to talk about is the event dispatcher another key piece of technology that we are bringing in for point for release. So, so what is the problem that we're trying to solve here. So prior, so wire plumber cannot prioritize between pipeline signals. Let's say a Bluetooth device is connected. So a device added signal is sent by the pipeline to session manager, which is wire plumber. Now, at the same time, some node property has changed somewhere. So no property changing is really insignificant event, but device addition is an important event. So why plumber should give more priority to device change event and then process it and then enumerate the device so that it shows up in the GUI GUI and then the user can use it. The user is anxious is connected device, but why plumber may not be able to do it. It may give importance to the it may start the processing of the node change node property change event first and then only are not only then it may come to the device added event. So it cannot guarantee why plumber is kind of blind today. So, so that is the problem. So the next problem is the signal handler. So the same signal handers within the signal. You cannot really prioritize. Let's say the same going back to the same example of Bluetooth connected. Let's say a Bluetooth device is connected. First you want to select the device profile and then create the device nodes monitors are a class of scripts which create the device nodes monitors create the device nodes, but monitors cannot really wait today. They cannot wait for the device profile to be selected. So they go ahead and create the device nodes and then device profile selecting script comes up and then it selects a different. Let's say let's say Bluetooth is connected in a2dp. Now let's say a voice call is going on. HFP is the right profile for it. So device profile if it selects the HFP. Now the monitor has already created a2dp device nodes and then and then the profile HFP profile is selected. Right. So monitor what it does it destroys the created a2dp device nodes and then creates the HFP nodes. So this is redundant. This is this is not how it should be. And not just this. There are so many race conditions and redundant processing, which I just described. I didn't probably give an example for race conditions, but you can imagine right. So this sort of a processing led to many race conditions. So, so how are we solving it is even dispatcher. So there are two parts to it. First is events. So what are events? So let's say a pipeline generates a signal. Right. Now wire plumber converts it into a new entity that we're calling events and it assigns a priority to it and pushes it onto a stack. Right. Even dispatcher wakes up, picks the highest priority event and then sort of runs one after the other one at a time one at a time. Now, so events are basically prioritized by first signals and there are hooks hooks are the new handlers for these events. So, so whenever even happens, hooks get a chance to run because they declare interest on that event. And then they run and they are collected. So whenever there is a new event, it collects all hooks which are interested in it and then execute them. They're sorted by priority. So, so we're talking about a two dimensional priority scheme here. Hooks, which are the event handlers have a priority and then events themselves have a priority. So these two layers of priority that we have. We think is effectively going to solve the problems, the scheduling problems and hooks can be icing as well. You can have a hook wait for certain event to happen. Then only we want the next hook. So I will show even if it is the knife, if you think they're confusing. So I haven't I have some slides for you to where I'll explain how the events are created how, how they fall in place. So let's take the example of again the same Bluetooth auto switch. So let's say Bluetooth device is connected. It is an A2DP mode and I'm just bringing up a zoom app. So zoom app needs HF needs the Bluetooth to be in HFP mode, not the A2DP mode. So we'll see how events events and hooks fall into place to realize that. So left side you have events and right side you have hooks. So let's say zoom app has just started and it starts input client node so that it can record the audio. So Piper knows that a node is created and it generates a signal and why plumber captures it and converts it into event. And it assigns a priority, which is 130 here. And these are all the hooks which are interested in this event. So they are all these yellow boxes and their priority decision is from left to right. And you have all these event handlers or hooks. And then it creates the output client node. So that so that it can actually play the audio which is coming from the other side. Right. And these are the hooks which are interested in it. Now, so you have two events. So carrying the same priority. So I would so even dispatch takes the one which came in first, which is this one. And this is the first highest priority hook for this event. And it sort of runs it. So the execution of this is done. So this hook is responsible for checking the correct profile. And then if the profile is not correct, it changes it to the right profile. So it changes it from A2DP to HFP. So when that happens, it creates Piper creates another signal saying device profile has changed. So and it carries higher priority. Right. Now, at the end of this hook at the end of each hook wire bumper checks to see if there are any higher priority events. If there is one, it will stop the processing of this event and the hook chain and then jumps to the. This is the hook corresponding to it and it jumps to the next event. So so this is the prioritization scheme preemption scheme that we've introduced as part of event dispatcher is going to solve many, many problems. So it is going to continue with the execution of this event and this hook. So this hook is done. So after the hooks are done, event will be discarded and it is going to. So the device profile has changed. This is going to create even more events. So Bluetooth A2DP device has to be cleaned up. It is it is no good. It is not needed in this current situation. And these are the hooks which will actually clean up and HFP device nodes have to be created. This is the sync node and these are the hooks. And this is the this is the source node and these are the hooks. So so all the needed events are hooks are in place. So so so event dispatcher is going to resume the execution with this event here and with this hook. Sorry. And then it is going to follow up with this hook. Sorry. I'm not going to explain what each and every hook of this is done probably in the interest of time. So the last one is the rescan hook, which I'm going to talk about. So it. So what are we trying to do here? It is a new node that has been added. So the linking script will have to connect this new client that has been added, which is nothing but the zoom app with the playback device with the capture device here because it is actually trying to capture the audio. So linking that the rescan trigger hook here tries to do that. So it will not do it directly. Instead, it will create another event. This is not an event which is generated by pipeline. This is an event that is generated by internally by wire plumber. And why is it doing it?  Device profiles will have to be selected. All of that done. All of when all of that is done, then only it makes sense to link. So it sort of postpones. It sort of creates an event and postpones it for it to happen late in the later stage. So this is the hook which actually does the linking and and so now that they're in place. So the event is discarded because all the hooks are done. So then it takes up this hook, this event and this hook gets a chance to run first, followed up by this hook and then there is a rescan trigger again. So this rescan trigger will try to see if there is a rescan event and it finds one and it reuses it. This is where we are saying that it avoids the redundant processing. So there is going to be one rescan event only towards the end of the entire processing chain and that rescan event will link the things. As opposed to today, we try to rescan every time. Everybody has noticed that we try to see if we can link it, we try to link it. Some condition is not met and we come back as opposed to the current system that we have here, which doesn't even try to link. It waits for its chance to run. After that this event will be done coming back.  This hook, this rescan trigger will again reuse this rescan event here. And this hook will be discarded. So this hook next is this priority and this priority and then this hook. This hook and rescan trigger will reuse this hook. And this hook is discarded. This restore hook and then this one. And now all the nodes, all the pipeline signals which are needed to perform the zoom app playing and recording at the same time. All the signals are in place. They're processed in order by the wire plumber. Now it's the time to link them, right? So linking has been done and rescan event is done. So I hope this slide has given a fair idea of what events and hooks are. And we have a blog post if you're interested in depth details, we can go. So I think with the new prioritization scheme, which is quite simple and tailored to the needs of the pipeline, we think it is going to be very relevant because it is avoiding all the hacks, it is avoiding all the hooks, all the redundant processing. So it is very relevant to the embedded use case. And wire plumber scripts, the lower scripts that I was talking about. So I'm going to talk about the wire plumber scripts with event dispatcher. So event dispatcher transform the lower scripts. So lower scripts are more about hooks and events now. And that is the reason they look completely different. So they are much more modular, more extensible and very less redundant processing. We don't have any instances of redundant processing as of now. So no redundant processing and the basically all hacks are simply they disappeared. They're just gone. So here is an example, the policy node dot Lua. This is the main linking script. Main linking script which actually links, let's say the apps to the devices. So it is notorious for being complex, full of hacks. And it's not very readable. So we have broken it down into all these scripts here. Each of these scripts will have their own hooks which are sort of these are the hooks waiting all these events to happen. So that and these are the well defined tasks meant for that hooks. So I'll not probably go into the details of what each of those hooks does. So maybe a high level details. So the RISCAN dot Lua here is the one which responds to the RISCAN trigger that I talked about in the previous slide. So it responds to that and it pushes something called select target. So this select target is the so there are a bunch of hooks which are basically interested in the select target. They have very clearly defined priority and priorities is from top to bottom. So so there are different ways of selecting the target and so all these things. Let's say user is interested in adding his own method of selecting the target. Right. So all he all he has to do is come up with a small lower script, which a small hook, which a small hook and then just define the priorities, read of the priorities and he can even read of the priorities in the same file. It doesn't have to touch anything in the in the default number code. It doesn't have to do it. So so that is how it is extensible and all that modular extensible redundant processing is very less and all that. And and we are doing many more things. We are actually working on log enhancements and then we are we are we are enhancing our code to handle filters and then the component loading is much more robust now. And we are also enhancing our tests and then we are we are we are bettering our camera support. I'll not probably go into each of them in the interest of time. And what this is the status of the wire number point five all features are up and running and there is a branch running if you're please try and give us feedback. We are likely to release it sometime this year. Very likely. Yeah, that's it. Thank you. So if you have any questions. Yeah, please raise your hands. So with the old implementation have problems linking to devices. So an application shows up as a new note. And I basically picked the policy script and we wrote it to allow linking it to multiple devices. But doing that doesn't work right now. Because if I try to link the first one that basically I'm not quite sure where all the details but basically blocks waiting for the ports to show up. But the next, when I try to link the next one, it thinks it's something already linked and it tries to link immediately and that fails. So will the new port new versions new stuff help with that so I can link immediately link to devices and then basically wait both wait for for the note for the ports to show up. That would be really good. So one app linking to multiple devices is it right. Yeah, that's not a general. I mean, the desktop policy we have doesn't cater to that use case. Yeah, of course, but I modified the policy and right now I need to basically wait for the first link to be done before I can start linking trying to create the second link because otherwise the second link will fail. Yeah, and I'm hoping that with the new schema with the with events that I can do that easier. Yeah, definitely like for example you have modified the whole code rate. So that is going to be much more easier for you. So the way that the scripture laid out if you can go back to the slides, like with the with a list of scripts so the way that this works is that it tries to do it exactly like it was before so it selects one target device for each application. And it takes it through the hook chain. But in your case what you would need to do is to override the last part so we change the override basically the link target to a script which is the part that links to the device and then come up with some other code that does it and it goes to both. Probably, though that having said that probably an easier way to do it would be to to insert a look back device in the in like in between something that that is there to to to funnel the the application and then split it to the different devices that would be easier to to work with in the logic, I believe. The device I'm talking about already is a look back. So I have multiple applications that target multiple streams and so it's already quite complex I would probably need to add another layer of look back devices I'm not sure if that works. So we do have a question from the virtual audience. In your opinion is pipe wire wire plumber ready to handle video streams in end products. Sorry, what. The question was, is pipe wire and wire plumber are both in conjunction able to handle video streams in end products. Yeah, definitely. I think so as well. And we have another question using why that wire plumber is it possible to create virtual devices to exchange video frames between applications like some kind of video for Linux to definitely that's one of the use cases. Yes. Are there any other questions. Hi, I have a question on the upgrade path for the config and how it will work. Will you keep any old you are config stuff. Will we swap to Jason and not have a choice. If it is about the backward. Sorry, I could not complete. Is it about the backward compatibility with. Yeah, on the config fast. No, we are not going to do that. Okay, so it's going to be deleted and yeah, the box was competitive. And do we have time or someone else. We can talk. Thanks. So I have not really a question, but I wish when you do that switch from the lower base configuration to SPI Jason. I would really love an extensive documentation as well on how the Jason should be structured and how what the available configuration items and such are. Sure. Sure. Yeah. So this does basically connect all the different parts of audio and video streams, but who does like the actual audio and video processing is it then G streamer or something like this. You can do it in G streamer, but you can do it in do it in Piper as well. So Piper itself has like audio and video filtering. Yeah, it can do it. It can do it. So you can, you can, it's a very simple again. You built a object or not, which does this processing and you can have a number connected in the in the graph, as simple as that. So also for video hardware offloading, you would need a driver for the specific chipsets then. Yeah, yeah, I mean, if it is if the processing is happening in, let's say hardware, yes, the node will have to probably manage that complexity. Any further questions? Let me check the virtual audience again. Yeah, we don't have any further questions. Thank you very much. And thanks for the time.


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Great, thank you. So welcome everyone to our UCL graduate open event. We're going to be talking today about the MSc in physics and engineering and medicine by distance learning. And it's nice to meet you all. My name is Billy Dennis. I am the distance learning tutor in the department of medical physics and biomedical engineering. I'm also the postgraduate taught programs deputy director. So I oversee our other MSc and MS programs as well. Someone who you might have met last week if you came to our talk about the about our other MSc and MS programs was Professor Elias Taxidis. He is the postgraduate taught program director. So he oversees everything including our distance learning course. So some other people that you might meet if and when you're joining our program might be Professor Andy Nisbet who's our head of department. I've already described Elias and myself and then there's Dr. Martin Fry who's the postgraduate admissions tutor. So he's the person you'll be setting your applications to make in the case for joining the program. On top of that some two other important people to see are Dr. Katharina Vega who's the organizers the research projects for the department in postgraduate programs.  And then Hallie Cook who's our senior teaching and learning administrator who handles all of the admin responsibilities for the courses selecting modules and exams and all kinds of other things like that as well. So you'll get a chance to meet them hopefully at some point when and if you decide to join us. Just like to start with a little discussion about the department in general. Elias covered a lot of this in his talk last week when we discussed all the postgraduate programs. So if you want to look more you can see what he said there. I think that video will be on YouTube. The main strength of the department and this is a focus of many departments here at UCL is that we are really a research led department. We produce excellent research and that's what you'll be exposed to in terms of teaching and in terms of the research projects you'll be doing as part of your master's course. Another advantage of our department is that we're relatively small number of students compared to the number of researchers which means that you get more personal time with the researchers when you're studying with us. And so equally we know our students very well we're very proud of that and particularly on the distance learning course where you get a bit more personal tuition than the many other programs here at UCL. We're very proud to get to know our students and sort of advance their careers through the MSc programs. And then lastly being that we're a department with strong clinical applications we've got lots of links to local hospitals here in London. London's a city with a wide variety of large hospitals and small institutions that cover specialisms in clinical care. And our research groups and our teaching integrate nicely into all of those different hospitals and departments so that's another the sort of key strengths of our course and program is that are these three things. So a quick tour of the numbers in our department of other people here we've got around 50 academic staff who are permanent including six teaching specialists of which I'm one. On top of that we've got around 120 post doctoral research staff so those are the people that will organize your research projects and perhaps teach you through your courses. On top of that we have around 270 undergraduate students in in mostly in two different programs the medical physics program and the biomedical engineering research undergraduate programs. And then we have about 90 postgraduate taught students total which includes students studying physics and engineering and medicine but also newer programs that will be set up in the last years in in artificial intelligence and medical robotics and medical imaging as well as well as our MRes programs. And then on top of that we've got about 180 PhD students so you can see the ratio again of numbers of research staff and students is very high. And so hopefully that's a for some of you that may be a career progression for you to think about our research groups of sort of touted how how strong they are and how we're very proud of it. These are sort of a not all encompassing list of the different research groups that you'll find in our department. Particularly strong in most of these areas of medical imaging is a is a major focus here in the department and lots of different modalities are included in that MRI ultrasound optical techniques as well as electrical impedance tomography and even some electron microscopy in there as well. The radiation physics groups that look at x-ray imaging as well as radiotherapy treatments cancer treatments generally and and other advanced radiation effects. We also have groups that look at implanted devices that you might use on patients etc including electrical stimulators and newer modulation which is stimulating parts of the brain to accept perhaps more drugs or activate certain areas of the brain. And also a large group that looks at optical and photoacoustic monitoring of the body, which can cover a wide range of areas. Computing is a major part of the department as well naturally as we as we advance into the 21st century now we're looking more and more at techniques that can make use of that high processing power of computers to make ourselves faster and do more than we've ever done before. And so that in actually all of these groups tend to integrate amongst all the other research topics there are some pure computing groups in the department but some most of them are applied in terms of taking the techniques of advanced AI and and imaging processing and taking it into the sort of applied methods of perhaps radiotherapy or all these different groups. So there's a wide range of different research being done here and these are all subjects that you might be interested in as you study an MSc with us or take your research projects. Just to give you a quick history of the program. First of all the origins of our MSc program come from 1958, which was the world at the time the world's first masters degree in radiation physics which was based at the University of London. It was response to the windscale fire disaster that happened here in the UK, which was a nuclear power station fire that led to radiation outputs that was a very famous in the news at the time. And one of the one of the fathers of our department really father figures of our department so Joseph Rockblatt was was essential in setting up a radiation physics program that had an aim of having a sort of more humanitarian outputs. So Joseph Rockblatt is famous for getting the Nobel Prize, the Nobel Peace Prize to do with his leadership of the nuclear disarmament campaigns and treaties across the world. And so, although he worked on the nuclear bomb and the in the United States in the Second World War. He was the only scientist to actually leave that program based on ethical issues and he then pursued a career into humanitarian uses radiation physics, which sort of led to the medical programs in some way that we found here in London. So we were based at the University of London over the years, UCLA has merged with a number of different departments, the Middlesex Hospital, UCLA to form our current department so the prestige and the origins of that course, the knowledge that was passed down and the people who taught it are based on this original course. In 2011, the distance learning routes that I'm going to be talking about today was open designed to replicate the on campus MSC but online. The purpose being to allow students who needed more flexible circumstances to be able to study the MSC as well without having to come to London, and our first graduates were in 2013. At the time we only had part time students are there in recent years we have a good mix now part time and full time distance learning students. In 2015 we were accredited by the Institute of Physics and Engineering and Medicine IPM, which is currently the only distance learning course in the UK to be accredited that is still the case that it was in 2015 we've just been re accredited last month by IPM for another term of three to five years. And so we're still currently the only distance learning course that have been accredited by them. And then some little notifications here in 2018 and 2019 we received UCL teaching awards for personal tutoring. And so we're very proud of the provision that we also provide for our distance learning students. We've been running this program for around 12 years as you can see now, we're very experienced that giving good support to our students and our students do very well at the end of the day. Many of the marks and the students get when they graduate are as good and better than any of the students here on campus and we've had the MSC best student award given to distance learning students twice in the last five years. So hopefully that might be one of you in the future as well. And a quick overview of the program. So the fit the degree title is MSC Physics and Engineering and Medicine by distance learning. And this is actually the radiation physics, the IPM accredited stream of our MSC here we've got engineered biomedical engineering streams, and there's radiation physics stream but the distance learning program is the radiation physics stream. In terms of times complete the degree, a large emphasis and a large strength of the program is that you can study it flexibly. This means in a number of different ways but the first way is the time you can take to complete your MSC. If you study it full time then you'll complete the degree in one year so starting in September this year, you'd finish by August 2024. A common way that student study is to split that over two years, this might be for a student who's working full time in a job. It's got some support perhaps from their job some time for them to spend studying or they're studying in the evenings and weekends. And that's called part time so you complete the degree over two years spreading the module study out over that time. And as I said the degree is fully flexible and so we've got this up to five years maximum flexible study option where you can choose any number of modules that you might want to study each year. And, and it's flexible so if you maybe take three modules in your first year, and then second year you suddenly have a situation in your life, which means you can't study that year you can take a year out and study again in your third year fourth year and then complete the degree later. It's fully flexible you can choose any number of modules each year, and it's just there for those students with more complicated circumstances that normal university programs wouldn't be able to support you to complete your studies so this is a major strength of the program allowing you to complete your studies when, when you might not have been able to otherwise. And studying by distance learning, you can study alone. Many students will do this you'll feel like this sometimes perhaps sitting at home or your computer studying. But there's also group work as part of the msc as well and we encourage our students to interact with each other as much as possible get a bit of a collaborative atmosphere for you guys to learn together. It's up to you as a student ultimately there is one module which I'll talk about a bit later that requires you to work in a group with other students. So that flexibility so you can study at your own pace and complete your work when you're when you're ready to. On top of that there's opportunities for you to visit UCL's campus here in London and come and speak to our lecturers come and speak to the supervisors, or to come and get some clinical work experience at some of our partner hospitals and clinics. That's still open to you as a distance learning student by no means compulsory many of our students are live in countries that are a long way from the UK so perhaps that isn't ideal but there's still opportunities for you to do that, even though you are a distance learning student. So a quick example of the kind of student profiles that we might see and perhaps this will be you'll be able to see yourselves as some of this in some of these profiles. This first student is a typical example of someone studying perhaps part time Charlotte, and she's got a background in a physics degree. And she's currently working full time in a hospital as a clinical scientist in training. So if you're looking to get a career in the hospital as a medical physicist, then this is perhaps what this is what Charlotte is as well. So she's interested in using the degree to gain her certificate as a hospital clinical scientist and so worker giving her perhaps one day off a week or sometimes not even that and so she's going to study the msc part time and complete in two years. A very common one and we've actually got one of our current students who fits this profile who's going to talk to us a bit later about his experience with this with this career route. So next we might be like way rent here who's perhaps got a background not in physics but in mechanical engineering so we've got students of lots of different backgrounds join our program. They might be working in a full time job again so they need the flexibility of studying by distance learning or with a few number of modules per year, but they've got less available study time and Charlotte so rather than completing the msc over two years. They might take a third year studying slightly fewer modules each year, but still allowing himself to complete the program then. So in which case he study on the three year flexible program. And this might be typical of some of our students who are not currently working in in clinic environments but are looking to change their career and join the subject area of medical physics and biomedical engineering. I think perhaps Vishi is more like you someone with a computer science or engineering related degree. They're not working full time, but they're looking for the flexibility of being able to study at home that comes with distance learning and maybe there's a financial aspect as well. We realize it's quite expensive coming to move to London live in London for a year while studying. So you can save a good amount of money by studying by distance learning and still get the exact same qualification and get a really good experience out of it as well. It might be not necessarily looking for a career path in hospitals but might be thinking about becoming a researcher. So perhaps in that case, the one year msc full time would be the best option. And so these are perhaps the three most common examples of students who join our msc program by distance learning. I wrote about flexible study I've said this a few times already but the the aim of the program is to really give every student the opportunity who would not normally be able to to study and complete an msc in a specialist area that they're interested in. The program is designed to be fully flexible, you can join the course with that up to maximum five year program as I said, and choose any number of modules each year. How it works is that you would enroll on new modules in September at the start of each year, and you commit to those modules so you might say right, you meet with me at the start of the year and we have a discussion about how much study time you have, you think per week available. And then I'll recommend the number of modules you take and then you study those for that year. You don't need to commit to year two or year three or year four, you can decide at the start of each September, how many modules you'd like to take that academic year. So, as life circumstances change, I don't know, maybe you need to take some maternity leave maybe you change job and there's been a change in work pressures, then you can change your plans as well in terms of numbers of modules. Generally, for our students, that option of doing up to four or five years is used as a backup where a student might need to take a year out or they really need to slow down their study rate due to available study time but there are students who plan from the start to do five years and take a smaller number of modules each year. Finally, so that's a one flexible aspects of study but another major one is that the entire degree is available asynchronous study, which means that you study at different times asynchronous, meaning that you don't need to attend any live lecture here in London or online. You can study entirely what time suits you so for a student who's in working a normal job they can study their lectures at 8pm to 10pm in the evening and that's absolutely fine. It's asynchronous meaning those materials are always available for you to study when you'd like. I'm going to talk about exactly how that works in a bit. The modules of the MSc. I thought I just quickly explain. You've got the list of modules here that you will need to complete to complete your degree. Given that there are students with different study paths, some studying over one year or two years or three years as I said, we have a recommended route where we recommend that students in their first year no matter what will take the ionizing physics and the medical imaging with ionizing radiation modules. Those modules include some foundational materials that will be useful in the future modules that you study later in the future years. And then in your final year we recommend that's the year that you take your master's research project your individual project and your group research project which is this medical device enterprise scenario with the aim being that you've got all the material you have in your modules and then you're applying it into your research project so you take those research projects last. And then in the middle here will depend on your circumstances but you've got options of which modules you'd like to take in which year. So, maybe if you are studying the MSc in a single year you take all of these modules in one go. If you're studying over two years then you'd start with these first two modules, and then you could choose biomedical optics and MRI you could choose computing and medicine you could choose biomedical ultrasound you can choose the modules that you would like and each individual year, and sort of make your decisions based on that. How does a typical year work studying by distance learning well I thought I'd take you through the whole process from sort of start in September to the end of your exams. You start off in September here at UCL we tend term sensor start actual lectures start in October each year so September is an induction time. During that month you'll meet your course mates online and you'll meet your personal tutor which at the moment is me. Then we'll have a discussion about how much study time you've got on your choose your modules for the year, picking out which ones you think you'd be most interested in. The induction program itself includes a tutorial basically that teaches you the basics of how the course works studying by distance learning. There are more and more students with experience in distance learning in recent years, partly due to the pandemic. Well I know a lot of university courses had to sort of emergency come up with a with a way of studying online when we couldn't meet up in person. That is likely to be slightly different to how we study here on the course is a say I'm a see was designed from the start to be a distance learning program so we put in a lot of extra provisions to look after you and to make methods to help you study that we know succeed so this induction will give you a taste of how to do that basically and rather than just tell you about it, you'll learn by doing by me giving you a tutorial exercise for you to complete. As part of that tutorial exercise you'll be required to watch some lecture videos and study those take some notes you'll be required to go to the UCL online library, find some research textbooks, or some research papers that will help you solve some problems. To collaborate with your peers, your fellow distance learning students and I'll show you the different ways that we communicate with each other and make it easy for you to talk to your fellow students even if you know you're working in a full time job and therefore might not be available at the same time. And it will give you an example of solving some problems so this tutorial is an exercise where then you'll answer some questions and you'll submit that work online.  And by doing this introduction tutorial they'll get a good idea of all the sort of techniques you'll need to study successfully by distance learning. So this is our induction, it doesn't count for anything that induction, but it's just showing you the course in the first week of term. Then week by week, how does it work studying so when October starts we start to get into the modules themselves and the lecture materials. Broadly each module is divided up into sub topics, which are based around the recorded lecture videos that are done every year here on campus on the same MC program. So these topics give you a nice guide of what you need to complete each week, essentially. So we give you this weekly study guide that you can see on this little diagram at the right here. It gives you the week plan on the 7th of October you're supposed to complete the lectures on photon interactions and by the 2nd of December you're doing proton interactions. You can see week by week we break down each module into small chunks so you know I need to watch this lecture and I need to study these materials and complete these exercises. So roughly, if you're part time studying on the MSc, then it's around one to two hours of videos lectures per module per week. If you're full time you need to double this, but it's worth saying that that's only a part of your studies on the MSc, we do not recommend studying passively passive learning where you just watch a video or you just read a textbook. It's not one of the better ways of learning something, it's not the best way of memorizing or developing new skills. Much better is for you to take an active approach by having something that you do with the knowledge that you've just learned so you watch a video and then you do an activity which helps solidify your understanding. So a major part of the course as well as the lecture videos are the self study problems. So these are opportunities for you to share work with other students and get feedback on on on your understanding from the tutor. So here's an example of one of our little forums where a student has submitted a little piece of work here. You can see they've marked themselves anonymous so you don't need to even admit that it was you, perhaps if you're worried about the quality of your work, and they said please have a look and comment thanks so they've uploaded this little ultrasound example. So let's go in there and give them some feedback on it and other students can see that at the same time, you can talk to each other and hopefully solve problems together and work through your problems. So that's one of the things we encourage you to do to stay active in your studying, as well as the lecture videos there are additional reading and online ebooks and research papers and exam papers for you to have a look at as well.  And it's worth saying that the variable study rates is pretty normal with our students so if you particularly with part time students but often with sometimes a full time students as well you've joined our distance learning program to give you the flexibility that you need to study So if you miss a lecture or if you find that you're very busy one week, you can easily catch up hopefully later so as I said variable study night is normal but to keep you on target for the exams at the end of the year, the things that count. There are three tutorial deadlines that are your checkpoints to complete your studies as you study throughout the year. So let's have a quick look at those so each module that you'll study has three fixed tutorial review tasks so you'll do one in November, one in February, and then one in March. And these are very similar to the kind of tutorials that I described from the induction program they sometimes count towards your final module monk. But often they are actually informal of formative exercises where they're just there to help solidify your understanding and to, you know, to give you the education which will be useful for you in your future careers. There are a range of tasks you'll see there so some are direct mathematical problem solving. Some of them are literature reviews, some of them are data analysis using research data, some of them will be using pieces of research software and doing a bit of programming as well. Computer programming and then some are exam question paper practice. So this is my name the main aims with these tutorials is first of all to solidify your understanding of the material you've just studied. Second of all to make sure that you are prepared for your assessment so you can get really good marks at the end of it we obviously care about you doing well in your degree I'm sure you do. And then finally to give you this sort of rounded education that you can use in future and some of that the easiest, the easiest application of that will be in your master's research projects in your final year. So it actually applies to everything so when we're teaching you things, asking you to do exercises about literature reviews or using a research software we're trying to give you tools that you can use later. And they may not be directly related to an assessment you do on the course, but hopefully something is very useful for you as you study. So again all of these exercises you submit the marks by myself and then they'll be returned to you. And then we have a meeting the following week again wherever you review the exercise. I answer any questions you guys you have got about any of the problems, and we can just review generally how you're doing on the course. So these regular checkpoints are really nice way for you to check whether you've understood everything and whether you're going to succeed on the course. So we found with the students that keep up with these. They're the students who do really well on the course. It's worth saying that although these are sort of fixed tutorials and in the schedule. These are not the only opportunities for you to speak with me your tutor. I'm available throughout the year and often I have relationships with my students where I'll have regular email conversations with them on a weekly basis it sort of depends students are students. It's not a small problem perhaps oh I didn't understand that concept the lecturer said I'm working on this problem sheet and I don't know how to do it will have regular conversations by email. Some students will email me and say can we have a chat in person usually online and discuss a particular problem that's all fine as well these checkpoints are just there to make sure that you're keeping up with the material as much as anything else. So if you've got extra issues you'd like to discuss and understand and gain understanding, you can always ask for an extra tutorial so it's worth saying that's not limited. These are two examples of an example of the tutorials, you might be given so this was a tutorial that's using filtering and the frequency domain so a way of doing an image processing tool to to find some extra information out from that image. And then doing some more complicated morphological operations on an electron microscope microscope picture here of other series of nerve cells. So there's a wide range of activities you'll find here hopefully very interesting and hopefully very useful. Great. And then at the end of the year, you'll have your most of your assessments so your exams in term three which are generally set in May or June. In term three so these exams should be identical to the on campus exams that are taken by students that study here in London, and they usually set in a local exam center to you, depending on where you are in the world. So if you live in the in England then you'd be expected to come here to London, some exams that the world of assessment is slightly changing at the moment due to the due to the pandemic sort of where we where we had a lot of exams moved online. There's a mix currently of exams that are being taken online and a mix of exams that are being taken in person. So it's usually one of those two but I can't tell you for sure what next year will be exactly but it will be the same assessment that you take. So that's the first student studying in person here in London. Most modules have also got a small coursework component in them that's usually around 20% of the module that you take during the study year so not in, not at the end of terms, not not in term three. The courses are usually integrated into your tutorial exercises so we're not trying to over assess you the most coursework the reason we have them in courses is to give you an opportunity to check your understanding as you study during the year. And so it's serving a lot of the same purposes as the tutorials so sometimes you'll find there's a coursework in place of one of those main tutorials instead. So this is something again you do in your final year of study and there's two main research projects you'll do. One is your individual research project which is worth for taught modules so it's four times the weight of a normal module so it's a big component of the MSc. And then there's also the group research project that you'll do, called the medical device enterprise scenario. I'll start with the individual projects. So in ways that distance learning students will take research projects. They, depending, it really comes down to the opportunities you've got in your local environment so if you're one of those students that already works at hospital, then it makes good sense to actually develop a local project at your hospital. You can do a piece of research that really impacts what your currently your job is. So that's one opportunity and then the idea is that we develop that project with you and we find a specialist here in the department who's, who's got the same expertise that you'll need to give you the support and go through the project and so you get a supervisor hopefully locally in your workplace and then you get a supervisor here from UCL in the department. So the next chance for you to do a research project is just to sign up to the list of masters project proposals that are given every year here and here in the department. In September, academics in the department are asked to propose masters research projects that will be based on their own work obviously and then you just apply for those projects as if it was a job basically. So you can join those lists many of those projects you'll be able to study even though you are distance learning. They probably won't involve data collection, and they may not involve direct action with patients but there will still be a number of projects in there which will be appropriate for a distance learning student. So those are the two main ways find a local project or just do a project with us at UCL. Individual projects has assessments throughout the year that are sort of like our tutorials giving you regular checkpoints reports that you write to make sure that you're steadily working throughout the year as well. And then hopefully like any of our students really particularly but particularly at master's level, we're looking for you to do, you know, novel, excellent research that you could publish and share elsewhere. Many of our students on the master's programs do stay for PhD and we're often you should not discount that probability for yourself or possibility for yourself if you are studying distance learning. Finally, you'll also have your group research project which is called the medical device enterprise scenario. This is a group project where you as distance learning students will be working in a group with the students here on campus. This is a group of around six students five or six students. At the start of the year we give you a problem to solve. It might be a particular area of need in our subject area on your ask to make an event, not sorry not make, but to invent a new medical device that can solve that problem in some way. In the group you'll have students with lots of different backgrounds, some are mechanical engineers, some are electronic engineers, some might be computer scientists, some are physicists. And so between you you've got a lot of collective knowledge that you can actually bring to bear on the problem and come up with some really good solutions. So you can see here on the screens two examples of recent problems that were given to students one was to make technology for the visually impaired or the hearing impaired. And this is an example of one of the devices they made that year. They made a braille mouse, which is very interesting kind of like an electronic computer mouse, where they run this mouse over a book or any kind of writing, and it can read it and transpose it into braille using these buttons that you can see on the top of the mouse here. Those that we raised or that we lowered in order to translate what's being read underneath into braille. Really interesting device actually. A couple of years ago when COVID was much more prevalent here in the UK, we also had a task to come up with COVID support devices for patients. This is an example of a device that one group made, which was an electrical muscle stimulator that you applied to the abdomen to help patients who are very weak from COVID and unable to cough up the sputum that they had perhaps in their lungs at the time. So this is the muscle stimulator that stimulates the muscles, contracts them and can support a weak patient, allowing them to hopefully cough in a better way. So these are, you know, these are full research projects fully backed by the science that came from researching other people's work and coming through all the details that are needed to make that device. The end of the project is you make a business plan that you could hand to an investor to make this medical device yourself. As a distance learning student, it can be full intimidating, perhaps to not be in the same place as someone when you're working on a group project, but it's designed in such a way where every group member has their own individual responsibility in the group. So perhaps you'll be in charge of the device, perhaps you'll be in charge of the finances of that device, perhaps you'll be in charge of what legislation you need to pass or you'll be looking at the rest of the market is this device unique and what needs are there in the market. How many people could you sell this to? So, although it's a group project, within that everyone has their own responsibilities, and that allows you to come together to make something really interesting. It's really your chance to apply all that you've learned into a new creative area. So it's kind of unique in the MSC where we're not teaching you what to do here. This is very much your own project for you to take away and try and come up with something fantastic. You can see the picture on the left here is a lecture that we gave at the start where we're going through the new problem task for the year. And we've got Dr. Martin Fry on the screen who is joining online. And if you look at my laptop, you can see lots of people joining on Zoom as well. These are the distance learning students as well as the students here on campus attending the lecture at the same time. So we're very used to integrating you guys as distance learning students with our campus groups as well. Final few things, when you're thinking about your research projects have been the hardest thing to do really is to work out what subject you're most interested in. It's such a broad subject area, and many of you might have money interests but if you're trying to come up with an idea specifically what you think would be best. One good way to do that it would be to listen to the department's podcast which is Runtgen's radio, named after the man who discovered x-rays. And there's a range of episodes there, interviews given with our researchers and there's no prior knowledge required. You don't need to understand how ultrasound works to hear Dr. Ellie Martin talk about her amazing research, you can just listen to the episode and find out all you need. And there's a big range of those episodes there and there'll be new ones coming out over the coming year as well. So if you want to get an idea of what research topics might be interesting for you, I'd strongly recommend having a look at that. It's nothing too technical, it really is for interest, very friendly, interesting discussions. We try to make it like a radio episode really. The final thing to say really as a distance learning student is that you are still very much a member of the department and you've got full access to all the things that students do when they work on and they study on campus with us. We want you to feel part of it. You can email and speak to your lecturers online, that's absolutely expected. You can join our monthly lunchtime research seminars and find out specifically what's being done in the department this month. You can use the UCL careers resources and support teams to help yourself find jobs for when you finish the course or during the course if you're a part-time student. And you can come and visit London and see the department, meet your professors, meet your research teams. That's an opportunity for you all the time. You are a distance learning student, but you've got full opportunity to join UCL and join the campus at any time you really like. It doesn't even just include our department. There's so much interesting work being done here at UCL. It's a university in the top 10 of the world for the last 20 years or so. It's a fantastic opportunity for you even outside of your studies to learn about new things and get involved with new groups. So I strongly encourage you to make use of that even as an online participant in the course. Our careers team, I think I just quickly mentioned are terrific here in the UCL engineering department. They really are super supportive. They'll find you jobs. They'll find you schemes for you to join. They'll help you with your CVs. They'll help you with your writing for applications, something that many engineers are not very good at. We recommend you make use of them basically. What careers do our students go on to do? Well, in theory, anything because an engineering degree allows you says that you can apply problems into new areas, which is what any employer really wants. But typically many careers from our master's programs, they will end up as clinical scientists in hospitals, which is Matt's career goal we're going to talk to in a moment. Maybe a medical startup company. There are graduate schemes in the major medical companies, the radiotherapy device machines, perhaps it's on a medical imaging devices, etc. Many of our students, of course, continue the research into PhD programs either here at UCL or elsewhere. And there's lots of opportunities for you. And you should consider those certainly as a as an online student. Finally, a couple of things about the course and how to get onto the course, the entry requirements of the course, the minimum requirements are a two one UK bachelor's degree or an overseas equivalent in in physics, engineering, computer science, mathematics or other closely related disciplines. So you can see we've got students with lots of different backgrounds in terms of their degrees. And if you do have a two two, and we do consider joining the course as well, in which case that we may require you to come for a short interview or short online interview with us just to check whether you think this is the degree that's appropriate for you. And we're looking for students with, in that case, perhaps with a bit of extra experience where possible, perhaps you've done some shadowing perhaps you've done some you've been working in hospitals recently as well some idea that you'll be suitable to study on the course. And then finally, the finance of the program and the UCL course fees are up here, you can see for 2324. Someone might be interested in the UK postgraduate student loan scheme. And there's also UCL scholarships that you can apply for on an individual basis on the UCL website but if you go to our prospectus you'll find links to both of these things there as well. And that's the end of my presentation for the moment. I might perhaps and ask some questions that you guys have got I'm just going to can see some questions are coming in in the chat already. But I think if we've got Matt, pal, who's one of our current students might hear from him first so I'll stop sharing my screen for a moment Matt either. Yeah, I'm here. Hi Matt nice nice to see you thanks for coming. Matt is one of our current msc students he's a first year on the part time track and he's currently working in a clinical environment so Matt could you perhaps start introduce yourself and say what your current job is before we get to the msc. Yeah, sure. Like they said my name's Matt I'm currently working in house at the valindra cancer centering Cardiff as a trainee clinical scientist in radiotherapy physics but not via the traditional STP training scheme route, but more of an in-house approach via the route to or STP equivalent scheme it's not yet decided but yeah. And so how did you come to join our msc program and clearly can you explain the significance of that for your career. Yeah, the, I don't believe it's compulsory to study an msc on the current scheme that I'm training under but it's highly highly recommended and very hard to do without that. As Billy said, this msc is the only IPAM accredited one in the country and I personally found that really valuable and that reputation and that standard of tutorship is really important in order for me to meet those research and circumstances of my training. It was this this course was recommended to me by my line manager here at work, but I was also aware of the reputation of UCL's course as being one of if not the best. And could you perhaps tell us which modules you're studying this year just for some context for everyone else. Yeah, sure. I'm studying for modules this year I'm on the part time two year radiation physics stream. At the moment I'm studying the ionizing physics or as a radiation physics module, imaging with ionizing radiation. MRI and biomedical medical imaging sorry, and the clinical practice module. And one thing I quite like about this style of teaching is that so the stream the part time stream is that all of the modules run concurrently which Billy might have already mentioned but previously my experience of studying before this this msc was in my third year of uni at Lancaster during COVID, where the modules weren't studied concurrently but I quite like that so that they're all finishing around the same time.  Yeah, great.  Have you had a thought about about that yet. I've been watching lots of trainees around me doing their research projects but it certainly looks at a very busy time of year and I'm looking forward to it but yeah a little nervous as I'm sure everyone. Your plans to a local one though do you think. So yeah, the, the staff here at Valindra are putting together some master's project titles. Currently I think. And so, hopefully in the next few months I should know what local opportunities I'll have. And I think, I think that's the route I'll be going down yeah. Yeah, great. Last question before answering. See if our attendees have got any questions. Do you have a favorite modules so far, feel free to say my module. Don't do that for you. Anyway, like you said they're broken down into lots and lots of sub topics. The one that's been most useful for me so far in terms of like the relevance to the work I'm doing in radiotherapy here at work is your module it's, it's as such, probably more interesting but I do really like. I think it's about MRI really useful. Sorry, really interesting. Something that I wouldn't thought I would enjoy as much as I have. And also in the second half the clinical practice module, you start learning about a lot of standard anatomy which I personally was really looking forward to a quite likely biological side of things. So, yeah the only one I've not listed there is imaging which I guess is a little bit mean but yeah I know that they're all good. So we've got a question from Tim in the chat which I think perhaps you might be able to help with as well. He said, and would you say roughly for someone working full time that one day of, of a working week could be dedicated to a part time and this would be enough time for lectures excluding projects and coursework time. So I'll start off by saying that is one of the ways that students do study if they're part time, if they're, if they've got that option with work they can have the extra day. But many students don't do that they only study and they work a five day normal week and then they have studies but Matt, could you perhaps say your experience with this. Yeah, and thankfully my department have been really generous I get at the moment Tuesdays and every week allocated to, you know, my MSc study, and I, depending on the day I usually will be able to ring friends ring friends that whole time but sometimes that's not always possible but the one day a week is depends on depends on the person I guess depends on how, how much you can or want to get done in that whole day. I've personally found that I'll do one day a week I'll work that full day, watching the lectures and doing the self study problems and things like that but then are difficult to estimate a number of hours it varies week by week, but there is additional time that I spend watching lectures outside of that day. Which I personally don't really find much of an issue that the content is directly relevant to my job and that's such really interesting. And it doesn't doesn't feel much for sure to spend. I'll just stay behind at work a few, few hours after my shift ends or, you know, a Saturday morning or something like that. But it doesn't, it's not much longer than the one day, I don't think. I think that that's generally from feedback from other students I'd say that's fairly typical I mean it is, it is a masters program still so in two years it's a busy, it's going to be a busy two years and you'll need some focus certainly you need to take some personal time to study that's, that's true of a full time student that's actually as well so it's not a nine to five job doing a masters anyway, you know there's extra work required and it's a for that for that particular time it can be quite busy but but yeah it's, that's the part of the course rigor as much something else. Great another question saying do you get access to the university libraries and workspaces as a remote students, I periodically do work in London and have family there so could use time on campus effectively. Yes that is true you do you do have access to that so as a distance learning students, you actually don't get automatically a student card we don't send you one because you need to be assigned your student card in person here in London. However you don't need your student card to study by distance learning normally. If you want to come to campus in London then you can come and get one there's basically a building in the open part of the campus where you get yourself a student card. And once you've got that you've got full access to the whole of the university in terms of libraries the students, the student center the main student center where there's loads of study space for group work and things like that but also our department and the research groups that are there as well. So yes, you absolutely can. And we've got distance learning students who do that on a fairly regular basis, we've even got a couple of students who work here in London. So, although it's a distance learning student but studying around the corner, as it were, but they still need the flexibility due to their work so that's something that we can provide them. Next question was, would chemistry degree be considered. I currently work as a trainee clinical scientist. Yes, yes we do absolutely consider people with chemistry degrees. The main thing for you to look out for ready when joining the courses to be aware that there is a significant mathematical component of the program, you'll need to be able to do problem solving on on a fairly mathematical way. If not, you do not require the sort of intense derivations that you'll find in a physics degree, however, so a good understanding of basic mathematics of calculus, exponential functions and generally problem solving is what the most important bit. So chemistry degrees are definitely considered yeah and we've got students who've come from chemistry backgrounds on the course this year. Okay. If there's any more questions there. If anyone thinks of any questions in retrospect feel free to get Billy to forward the questions to me or take my email and I'll answer any questions anyone thinks of, if need be. Yes, absolutely there's there's details on our department website for where you can send emails to ask questions about the course they'll generally come to me. If you're a distance learning student but it's all on the prospectus page so recommend having a look up there as well if you've got any questions. Otherwise, I don't think, oh wait a minute, here's one more question great. So in terms of the computing module. Do we need any prior knowledge of a programming language, EG Python. So the answer to that is no the module that you're referring to is computing in medicine. That's a compulsory module on the course. And that is a course that teaches you to program in MATLAB to go from absolute basics up to some really quite advanced image processing tasks. So it's designed to be for students who've never programmed before actually 10 or 12 years ago I did this MSc myself. And I was the same I've got a physics degree I'd never done any coding, and I'd learned to code from that and now I'm pretty familiar with with the process we need. In terms of Python with there are a lot of people use Python now. And there's lots of people use MATLAB in our subject area, although they are very much sister languages I find so once you've learned to code in one it becomes very easy to code in the other. So no prior knowledge required absolutely. You know that is I would say more than 50% of the students on that module have never coded before at all. So that's the answer to that one. Matt, Matt's not done that one yet I think that's next year isn't it for you Matt. It is yeah and I, I too don't have. Well, I did a little bit of Python at uni but not much that I can retain knowledge of or have practiced since then so I was starting from fresh as well. I mean, I think a lot of people find it intimidating sometimes to do programming if they've never done it before but actually what it is is a window for you to see a new world of how to solve problems in in our subject area is just, it's a shortcut machine. So once you've learned to do it and once you're into it is actually really interesting and really I find it fun as well to do so. Yeah, don't be afraid of programming it's going to be a major part of all our lives in technical engineering type subjects so embrace it and you know take it on. Okay, great. I don't think there's any more questions but if you do have them then you can email me. Naomi's kindly put the link in the chat for the email address to make contact with us. Other than that, you know, good luck if you're going to make an application and you'd like a, you'd like some advice or if you're worried about it then you can email us as well. And, you know, have a have a good time this this the deadline for the course is the 30th of June so you do have some more time but I would advise applying earlier if you can. You know there's a certain number of places on the course and there will be some administrative things for you to get through as well but if you've got questions again do send it to us. Other than that thank you very much for attending and hopefully I'll see some of you next year.