Sylvia Wong

Sylvia completed her BSc and PhD degrees in Computer Science at the University of Birmingham. Her doctoral degree was sponsored by the Overseas Research Studentship (ORS) Award administered by the CVCP (now Universities UK). Upon completion of her doctorate, she worked at the Department of Information Technology at the Masaryk University, Czech Republic, teaching natural language processing and Prolog programming. She collaborated with Professor Karel Pala in knowledge representation and concept organisation in WordNet-like lexical databases. Since 2006, Sylvia's research interests have shifted to Engineering Education research, especially in the area of assessments and feedback and effective use of computing technologies to aid learning and teaching in the Higher Education context.

Sylvia joined Aston University in 2001 where she has taught a range of undergraduate programming-related courses, including software engineering, data structures and algorithm, Java programming, client-side Internet computing and natural language processing. She supervised PhD students. 

Sylvia has a strong interest in promoting student learning and improving student learning experience. In 2017/8, she was the Acting Associate Dean for Learning and Teaching at the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Chair of the school's Learning and Teaching Committee.

Sylvia is the Deputy Dean International for College of Engineering and Physical Sciences (EPS). She works closely with the university’s International Team to develop and nurture international partnerships with Higher Education Institutions in different parts of the world. Sylvia has worked on various British Council funded collaborative projects between Aston University and other international organisations, including a 4-year Creative Spark project with Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology under the Higher Education Enterprise Programme, two Gender Advancement for Transforming Institutions (GATI) projects with India and Brazil, and led a two-year Going Global India Partnership project with Symbiosis Institute of Technology in Pune, India.

My current research is in the areas of Computing Education, E-Assessment and Knowledge Representation. I am interested in areas of Technology Enhanced Learning and Assessment, Knowledge Representation, Terminiology, Word Sense Disambiguation and Machine Translation. My doctorate research was in the area of Computational Linguistics involving Lexical-Functional Grammar and Machine Translation. 

My current teaching duty includes:

CS2DSA Data Structures and Algorithms in Java 

CS4330 Data Structures and Algorithms

I supervise individual student projects at Bachelor's and Master's level in the areas of information system development and natural language processing.

I was the Year Tutor for the BSc in Computing Science Stage 2 programme until 2019/20. In 2016/7, I was the Deputy Postgraduate Programme Director for Computer Science programmes. From 2017/8 to 2023/4, I have been the Programme Director for MSc Computer Science -- a conversion MSc degree programme.

• BSc with First Class Honours in Computer Science / Software Engineering (University of Birmingham)

• PhD in Computer Science (University of Birmingham)

• Associate Certificate in Teaching & Learning (Aston University)

• Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching & Learning (Aston University)

• 2017 – to date: Senior Lecturer in Computer Science, School of Engineering & Applied Science, Aston University.

• 2001 – 2017: Lecturer in Computer Science, School of Engineering & Applied Science, Aston University.

• 2000 – 2001: Lecturer in Information Technology, Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, Czech Republic.

• 1999 – 2000: Teaching Assistant, Masaryk University.

I had been a Senior Fellow of the HEA since 2016.

I became a Principal Fellow of the HEA in 2024.

Phone number: 0121 204 3473
Email: [email protected]
Room Number: MB 265G