Elena Punskaya 
Professional Experience - Previous Appointments - Research - Teaching - Publications
Position: Affiliated Lecturer and Fellow at Christ's College.
E-mail: op205 at cam.ac.uk
You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however. Richard Bach, Illusions
Professional Experience
2015 – now, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Anidium Limited, a digital health startup, developing a simple and affordable solution for Atrial Fibrillation detection – a key heart rhythm condition associated with high risk of stroke and heart failure. 2013 – 2015 Director of Innovation, establishing and leading the VASCO Innovation Labs in Cambridge. 2005 – 2013 Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Cronto Limited, the pioneer of visual transaction signing, acquired by VASCO Data Systems in 2013. Led the company and technology from inception to millions of customers. Realisation of the complex product set including mobile applications, consumer electronic devices and server-side software. Prior to Cronto, Elena also led Statistical Research team in the life sciences startup and another Cambridge University spinout – BlueGnome (acquired by Illumina)Previous Appointments
Originally trained in the field of applied mechanics, Elena gained an MPhil and PhD in Information Engineering from the University of Cambridge ( St. John's College). She then held a Junior Research Fellowship and later a Fellowship at Homerton College, University of Cambridge, and worked as Research Associate and, later, Senior Research Associate in the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge.Research Interests
Bayesian statistical inference, probabilistic data modelling, simulation-based methods for scientific computing, such as, Sequential Monte Carlo and Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, and applications in the areas of digital communication, signal and image processing, robotics, data mining, machine learning and pattern recognition, engineering for life sciences, finances and security.Teaching
Selected Publications
Journal Papers
- E. Punskaya, C. Andrieu, A. Doucet and W.J. Fitzgerald, "Particle Filtering for Demodulation in Fading Channels with Non-Gaussian Additive Noise," IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 579-582, 2001.
- E. Punskaya, C. Andrieu, A. Doucet and W.J. Fitzgerald, "Bayesian Curve Fitting using MCMC with Applications to Signal Segmentation," IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, vol. 50, no. 3, pp. 747-758, 2002.
- E. Punskaya, A. Doucet and W.J. Fitzgerald, "Particle Filtering for Joint Symbol and Code Delay Estimation in DS Spread Spectrum Systems in Multipath Environment," EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing, no.15, pp. 2306-2314, 2004.
- S. Herbert, S. J. Murdoch and E. Punskaya, "Optimising node selection probabilities in multi-hop M/D/1 queuing networks to reduce latency of Tor," IET Electronics Letters, vol. 50, issue 17. pp. 1205-1207, 2014.
Book Chapters
- C. Andrieu, A. Doucet, E. Punskaya, "Sequential Monte Carlo Methods for Optimal Filtering," in A. Doucet, N. de Freitas and N.J. Gordon, editors, Sequential Monte Carlo Methods in Practice, New York: Springer-Verlag, 2001.
- E. Punskaya, A. Doucet, W.J Fitzgerald, "Particle filtering methods for Digital Communications", in The Telecom Handbook, 2006.
Selected Conference Papers
- E. Punskaya, C. Andrieu, A. Doucet and W.J. Fitzgerald, "Particle Filters for Demodulation of M-ary Modulated Signals in Noisy Fading Communication Channels," in Proc. IEEE Conf. ICASSP, 2000.
- E. Punskaya, C. Andrieu, A. Doucet and W.J. Fitzgerald, "Particle Filtering for multi-user detection in fading CDMA channels," in Proc. IEEE SSP 2001.
- E. Punskaya, A. Doucet and W.J. Fitzgerald, "On the use and misuse of particle filtering in digital communications," invited paper, in Proc. EUSIPCO 2002.
- E. Punskaya, A. Doucet and W.J. Fitzgerald, "Particle Filtering for Joint Symbol and Parameter Estimation in DS Spread Spectrum Systems," in Proc. IEEE Conf. ICASSP, 2003.
Patents
- A.Craig, N.Haan, E.Punskaya and S.S. Tham, "Metabolite Profiling Normalisation", EP 06117553.5, July 2006.
- I.Drokov, E.Punskaya, E. Tahar, "Multi-factor user authentication on mobile devices", EP 05257924.0, December 2005.
Thesis
- Sequential Monte Carlo Methods for Digital Communications, PhD thesis, Cambridge University Engineering Department, 2003. Also available as .ps (5,3 MB) .tar.gz (1,7 MB) .zip (1,7 MB).
- Bayesian Approaches to Multi-Sensor Data Fusion, MPhil thesis, Cambridge University Engineering Department, 1999. Also available as .ps (2,7 MB) .tar.gz (740 KB) .zip (740 KB).
Selected Technical Reports
- Particle Filtering for Optimal Detection in Fading Channels, (with C. Andrieu, A. Doucet, W.J. Fitzgerald), CUED/F-INFENG/TR 384, 2000.
- Bayesian Segmentation of Piecewise Constant Autoregressive Processes using MCMC, (with C. Andrieu, A. Doucet, W.J. Fitzgerald), CUED/F-INFENG/TR 344, 1999. .ps (1,6MB) .tar.gz (395KB) .pdf (513 KB)