School of Computer Science Blog » Event

TayViz – The bi-monthly meeting of the Tayside and Fife network for data visualisation

Jakub Dostal — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:12:50 +0000

Talks:
Information Visualization Research in the SACHI group
Speaker: Aaron Quigley
Abstract:
Aaron will provide a quick overview of the incipient InfoViz research and prospects of the SACHI group.

A few examples of visualisation in computational systems biology of anti-inflammatory and anticancer drug actions
Speaker: Alexey Goltsov
Abstract:
Visualization is a key aspect in computational systems biology to analyse results of in silico modelling, generate and test hypothesises. Some examples of visualisation in computational systems biology of cellular response to drug intervention are discussed. First, the developed method of the complex dynamics visualisation of enzyme kinetics is discussed and illustrated with the dynamic visualisation of cyclooxygenase enzyme function and its inhibition by anti-inflammatory drug, aspirin. Second, 3D dynamic visualisation of thrombosis in blood vessel is demonstrated based on the developed agent-based model of blood clotting and anticoagulation drug effect. Third, visualisation in computational systems biology of cancer are discussed and illustrated with the visualisation methods of the determination of promising drug targets and analysis of changing sensitivity of tumor to anticancer therapy at different oncogenic mutations.

FatFonts: Combining the Symbolic and Visual Aspects of Numbers
Speaker: Miguel Nacenta
Abstract:
In this talk I present a new technique for visualisation that makes use of typography. FatFonts is a technique for visualizing quantitative data that bridges the gap betweennumeric and visual representations. FatFonts are based onArabic numerals but, unlike regular numeric typefaces, theamount of ink (dark pixels) used for each digit is propor-tional to its quantitative value. This enables accurate read-ing of the numerical data while preserving an overall visual context. During the talk, I discuss the challenges of this approach, it’s possible uses, and how to use it in visualizations.
Bio:
Miguel Nacenta is a Lecturer in the School of Computer Science. He is interested in new interaction form factors (e.g., tabletops, multi-touch, multi-display environments), perception, and information visualisation.

Helen Purchase on An Exploration of Interface Visual Aesthetics

Jakub Dostal — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:05:19 +0000

Speaker: Helen Purchase, University of Glasgow
Title: An Exploration of Interface Visual Aesthetics
Abstract:
The visual design of an interface is not merely an ‘add-on’ to the functionality provided by a system: it is well-known that it can affect user preference, engagement and motivation, but does it have any effect on user performance? Can the efficiency or effectiveness of a system be improved by its visual design? This seminar will report on experiments that investigate whether any such effect can be quantified and tested. Key to this question is the definition of an unambiguous, quantifiable characterisation of an interface’s ‘visual aesthetic’: ways in which this could be determined will be discussed.

About Helen:
Dr Helen Purchase is Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow. She has worked in the area of empirical studies of graph layout for several years, and also has research interests in visual aesthetics, task-based empirical design, collaborative learning in higher education, and sketch tools for design. She is currently writing a book on empirical methods for HCI research.

Undergraduate visiting day

tristan — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 13:26:54 +0000

Prospective undergraduates are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an undergraduate visiting day.

Undergraduate visiting day

tristan — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 13:26:39 +0000

Prospective undergraduates are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an undergraduate visiting day.

Undergraduate visiting day

tristan — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 13:26:17 +0000

Prospective undergraduates are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an undergraduate visiting day.

Undergraduate visiting day

tristan — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 13:25:56 +0000

Prospective undergraduates are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an undergraduate visiting day.

Undergraduate visiting day

tristan — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 13:25:25 +0000

Prospective undergraduates are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an undergraduate visiting day.

Undergraduate visiting day

tristan — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 13:25:10 +0000

Prospective undergraduates are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an undergraduate visiting day.

Undergraduate visiting day

tristan — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 13:24:51 +0000

Prospective undergraduates are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an undergraduate visiting day.

Undergraduate visiting day

tristan — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 13:23:10 +0000

Prospective undergraduates are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an undergraduate visiting day.

The Results Delusion – Systems Seminar by John Thomson

jt — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:14:31 +0000

Systems Seminar – by John Thomson

All wecome.

The Results Delusion

Abstract:

It is often said that any subject which requires the word ‘science’ to be placed somewhere in its name, is unlikely to be very scientific. This is unfortunately far too true for systems research in general. Every systems conference, papers are presented which show significant speedups over previous approaches to problem X, but these improvements are rarely replicated in output from industry. Why? The unpalatable answer is that a significant amount of systems research is the result of self-delusion, bad science and, I suspect occasionally, fraud.

Standards of scientific rigour in CS often fall well below what would be taken for granted in other sciences – particularly with regard to measurement of results, statistical analysis and replicability of results. I would like to do something about this, and will be presenting the idea for a new CS journal, which focuses on this exact problem. Oh, and peer review is gone too! Pitfalls abound. Would love to hear your comments, objections and advice.

Saturday visiting day

joy — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:33:26 +0000

UCAS applicants are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an Undergraduate visiting day.

Principal’s visit

alb — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:44:55 +0000

School Seminar by Eoin Woods

valia — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:20:21 +0000

The Role of the Software Architect in Industry

Eoin Woods is a professional software architect and amateur software architecture researcher, having spent over 20 years in software engineering practice and contributed a number of papers and a co-authored book to the research literature on software architecture. In this talk, he will discuss how the two worlds relate to each other, the context for software architecture provided by enterprise software development and what software architects actually spend their days doing. The aim of the talk is to provide an honest insight into the day-to-day work of an industrial software architect, while still inspiring people to become one!

Seminar, An Overview of the AspeKT Project – Turning Academic Excellence into Gold by Colin Adams

valia — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:14:48 +0000

An Overview of the AspeKT Project – Turning Academic Excellence into Gold

Abstract
The talk will give an overview of the major elements of the AspeKT project a 3 year program funded by Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Funding Council dedicated to improving the flow of ideas between the research excellence and talent pool produced by SICSA, and local industry. It will go through the major elements of the program designed to stimulate industrial innovation and a great flow of start-ups from that research base.

Bio
Dr Colin Adams is the Director of Commercialisation at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh and the Director of the AspekT program – the knowledge transfer program for the SICSA research pool. Colin started as an academic in the 1970’s before moving to Digital Equipment Corporation where he managed the development of VAX/VMS operating system before running the office automation business and the All-In-1 product line. He then moved into Electronic Design Automation and silicon, founding European Silicon Structures , US Silicon Structures and EuCAD. He sold EuCAD to Cadence Design Systems and managed various Cadence businesses and finally running the TALITY Management Buy Out. After a brief attempt at retiring he returned to the School of Informatics at University of Edinburgh to run the ProspeKT program focusing on generating start-ups out of the talent pool there. He also chairs 2 local start-ups: ATEEDA and Coriolis Media and is a non Exec Director for ScotlandIS. HE has a BSc in Computer Science and Mathematics and a PhD in Computer Science, both from the University of Edinburgh

Autonomy handover and rich interaction on mobile devices by Simon Rodgers

valia — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:42:10 +0000

Abstract: In this talk I will present some of the work being done in the new Inference, Dynamics, and Interaction group, at the University of Glasgow. In particular, we are interested in using probabilistic inference to improve interaction technology on handheld devices (particularly with touch screens).

I will show how we are using sequential Monte-Carlo techniques to infer distributions over user inputs which can be (1) augmented with applications to provide a smooth handover of control between the human and device and (2) used to extract additional information regarding touch interactions and subsequently improve touch accuracy.

There is a short bio on my webpage: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~srogers

A large-scale study of information needs by Karen Church

valia — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:04:07 +0000

In recent years, mobile phones have evolved from simple communication devices to sophisticated personal computers enabling anytime, anywhereaccess to a wealth of information. Understanding the types of information needs that occur while mobile and how these needs are addressed is crucial in order to design and develop novel services that are tailored to mobile users.

To date, studies exploring information needs, in particular mobile needs, have been relatively small in terms of scope, scale and duration. The goal of this work is to investigate information needs on a much larger-scale and to explore, through quantitative analysis, how those needs are addressed.To this end, we conducted one of the most comprehensive studies of information needs to date, spanning a 3-month period and involving over 100 users. The study employed an intelligent experience sampling algorithm, an online diary and SMS technology to gather insights into the types of needs that occur from day to day.

Our results not only complement earlier studies but also shed new light on the differences between mobile and non-mobile information needs as well as the impact of demographics like gender have on the types of needs that arise and on the means chosen to satisfy those needs. Finally, we point to a number of design implications for enriching the future experiences of mobile users based on our findings..

Bio: Karen Church is a researcher within Telefonica Research in Barcelona,Spain. She received her PhD in Computer Science from UniversityCollege Dublin, Ireland in 2008. Here PhD thesis was entitled, “A Study of Mobile Internet Usage and Implications for Mobile Search Interfaces”. Karen’s research interests include the mobile Web and mobile search space, personalization and social applications in a mobile setting, mobile HCI, mobile user experience and mobile interfaces. Karen’s was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship in 2010. The fellowship involves investigating future mobile information access behaviours and trends. Her current research focus is on social mobile search services.

Alan Frisch Seminar Video

ianm — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:06:40 +0000

From October to December 2011, the School of Computer Science hosted Dr Alan Frisch from the University of York as a SICSA Distinguished Visiting Fellow. While here, Dr Frisch kindly agreed to give a seminar entitled “Decade of Progress in Constraint Modelling & Reformulation: The Quest for Abstraction and Automation”, the video of which can now be found here. During his Fellowship Dr Frisch also visited, and spoke at, the universities of Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Saturday visiting day

tristan — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:13:38 +0000

UCAS applicants are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an Undergraduate visiting day.

Saturday visiting day

tristan — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:13:10 +0000

UCAS applicants are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an Undergraduate visiting day.

SCOttish Networking Event (SCONE)

tristan — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:33:23 +0000

The next SCONE meeting will be held in the School of Computer Science in St Andrews on Friday 24 February. We will start with lunch at 1200, and the main event from 1300-1700 before adjourning to a pub.

To register, please e-mail Tristan Henderson so that we can organise numbers for catering.

The format for this meeting will be a very small number of talks, and a PhD poster session. If you are a PhD student, then please consider bringing a poster to advertise your work and elicit feedback. If you are a PhD supervisor, then please encourage your students to present a poster.

If you are not a PhD student and would like to give a talk, then please also get in touch.

The programme will eventually become available here.

Proactive contextual information retrieval by Samuel Kaski

aquigley — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 20:53:12 +0000

A talk on “Proactive contextual information retrieval” by Samuel Kaski of Aalto University and University of Helsinki, Finland.

Abstract:

In proactive information retrieval the ultimate goal is to seamlessly access relevant multimodal information in a context-sensitive way. Usually explicit queries are not available or are insufficient, and the alternative is to try to infer users’ interests from implicit feedback signals, such as clickstreams or eye tracking. We have studied how to infer relevance of texts and images to the user from the eye movement patterns. The interests, formulated as an implicit query, can then be used in further searches. I will discuss our new machine learning-based results in this field, including data glasses-based augmented reality interface to contextual information, and timeline browsers for life logs.

Biography:

Prof. Samuel Kaski, D.Sc. (PhD), is Director of Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT, vice director of Finnish Centre of Excellence in Computational Inference Research COIN, and director of Finnish Doctoral Programme in Computational Sciences FICS. He studies statistical machine learning, proactive interfaces and computational biology.

Distinguished Lecture Series:Artificial Life as an approach to Artificial Intelligence, by Professor Larry Yaeger

valia — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:34:39 +0000

Programme dls_sem2 12 Yaeger

An overview of ALife in general, some of the research–including neuroscience, genetic algorithms, information theory, and animal cognition–leading to my incremental, evolved approach to AI, and the work I (and others) have done in this area.

Slides:

Venue: UCH (Upper College Hall)

Graduation Reception

alb — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:11:55 +0000

The school is hosting a St Andrews Day Graduation reception on Wednesday 30th November from 14:00

Inaugural Lecture: The computer is the new microscope by Professor Simon Dobson

valia — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:26:46 +0000

Professor Simon Dobson, School of Computer Science, will deliver his Inaugural Lecture “The computer is the new microscope” in the Lecture Theatre, Medical and Biological Sciences Building, on Wednesday 7 December 2011 at 5.15 p.m. PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE. The Princpal will take the Chair and the Dean of Science will give the vote of thanks. The School will host a reception in the coffee area (near the foyer) of the Jack Cole Building.

Biological Data: Analysis, Visualisation and Prediction by Geoff Barton – Professor of Bioinformatics, College of Life Sciences, University of Dundee

joy — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 09:59:42 +0000

Abstract: Modern biological research hinges on technologies that are able to generate very large and complex datasets. For example, recent advances in DNA sequencing technologies have led to global collections in the multi-petabyte range that are doubling every five months. These data require organising in a form that allows interpretation by a very large and diverse user community that are interested in everything from human health and disease, through crop and animal breeding to the understanding of ecosystems. In this talk I will first give an overview of core molecular biology concepts and some of the different types of data that are currently collected, I will then focus on work from my group in visualisation and analysis of sequence alignment data before turning to examples of prediction of properties and features from biological data.

Biography: Prof. Geoff Barton Professor of Bioinformatics College of Life Sciences University of Dundee, UK

Geoff Barton did his first degree in Biochemistry at the University of Manchester. He then performed Ph.D. research supervised by Mike Sternberg in the Department of Crystallography, Birkbeck College, University of London before spending two years as an ICRF Fellow working with Chris Rawlings at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Labs. in London. In 1989 he was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship to set up his own group in the Lab of Molecular Biophysics, University of Oxford. From April 1995 until October 1997, Geoff was also Head of Genome Informatics at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics., University of Oxford. From 1st October 1997-July 2001 Geoff was a Research and Development Team Leader at the EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), Cambridge. From 1st January 1998-July 2001 Geoff was also head of the European Macromolecular Structure Database at EBI which is now known as the Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe). Geoff has been Professor of Bioinformatics at the University of Dundee, College of Life Sciences since 2001 and is co-director of the Post-Genomics Centre and Head of the Data Analysis Group. He has more than 20 years’ experience in bioinformatics research and has published 103 refereed papers which have attracted over 8,400 citations. His research centres on developing computational techniques for biological sequence and structure analysis as well as applying those techniques to systems of interest in collaboration with experimentalists. Since 2008 he has expanded his research to the analysis of novel small RNAs [1-4] and the application of deep sequencing techniques to a number of problems [5-8]. Recently, he has established a strong BBSRC-funded collaboration with Dr Gordon Simpson to perform genome-wide studies by deep sequencing of alternative polyadenylation and non-coding RNAs in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana.

The majority of Geoff’s tools are distributed in the form of downloadable program packages, web-accessible systems or databases and are widely used by the community. For example, the ALSCRIPT program [9] for visualisation of multiple alignments as PostScript graphics has been cited 1,028 times, while the Jalview multiple alignment visualisation, editor and analysis workbench, is installed on >20,000 computers world-wide, and is mentioned on over 100,000 web pages. The two papers describing Jalview have attracted over 1,100 citations with the most recent [10] being identified by ISI as a “hot paper”. Jalview is exploited by many websites including major databases such as Pfam/Rfam and the EBI services. Geoff’s group have contributed a number of techniques for protein structure prediction of which the JPred server [11, 12] is the most widely appreciated, running up to 95,000 predictions monthly for scientists in 140 countries. His group also developed the TarO sequence analysis pipeline [13] which is aimed at target selection and optimisation for structural proteomics. TarO takes a sequence, runs a comprehensive range of analysis and database search programs and then combines the results into a set of ranked tables and as an annotated alignment viewed by Jalview. TarO ranks results by applying techniques developed by his group for predicting a protein’s crystallisability [14-16]. Recently, Geoff’s group has developed novel techniques for the prediction of protein-protein interactions [17, 18] and the first predictor of protein nucleolar localisation signals [19] which was a “feature” paper in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.

Geoff is a Fellow of the Society of Biology and an honorary Fellow of the James Hutton Institute.

References

1. Ono, M., M.S. Scott, K. Yamada, F. Avolio, G.J. Barton, and A.I. Lamond, Identification of human miRNA precursors that resemble box C/D snoRNAs. Nucleic Acids Res, 2011. 39(9): p. 3879-91. 2. Ono, M., K. Yamada, F. Avolio, M.S. Scott, S. van Koningsbruggen, G.J. Barton, and A.I. Lamond, Analysis of human small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNA) and the development of snoRNA modulator of gene expression vectors. Mol Biol Cell, 2010. 21(9): p. 1569-84. 3. Scott, M.S., F. Avolio, M. Ono, A.I. Lamond, and G.J. Barton, Human miRNA precursors with box H/ACA snoRNA features. PLoS Comput Biol, 2009. 5(9): p. e1000507. 4. Cole, C., A. Sobala, C. Lu, S.R. Thatcher, A. Bowman, J.W. Brown, P.J. Green, G.J. Barton, and G. Hutvagner, Filtering of deep sequencing data reveals the existence of abundant Dicer-dependent small RNAs derived from tRNAs. RNA, 2009. 15(12): p. 2147-60. 5. Gkikopoulos, T., V. Singh, K. Tsui, S. Awad, M.J. Renshaw, P. Scholfield, G.J. Barton, C. Nislow, T.U. Tanaka, and T. Owen-Hughes, The SWI/SNF complex acts to constrain distribution of the centromeric histone variant Cse4. EMBO J, 2011. 30(10): p. 1919-27. 6. Gkikopoulos, T., P. Schofield, V. Singh, M. Pinskaya, J. Mellor, M. Smolle, J.L. Workman, G.J. Barton, and T. Owen-Hughes, A Role for Snf2-Related Nucleosome-Spacing Enzymes in Genome-Wide Nucleosome Organization. Science, 2011. 333(6050): p. 1758-1760. 7. van Koningsbruggen, S., M. Gierlinski, P. Schofield, D. Martin, G.J. Barton, Y. Ariyurek, J.T. den Dunnen, and A.I. Lamond, High-resolution whole-genome sequencing reveals that specific chromatin domains from most human chromosomes associate with nucleoli. Mol Biol Cell, 2010. 21(21): p. 3735-48. 8. Remenyi, J., C.J. Hunter, C. Cole, H. Ando, S. Impey, C.E. Monk, K.J. Martin, G.J. Barton, G. Hutvagner, and J.S. Arthur, Regulation of the miR-212/132 locus by MSK1 and CREB in response to neurotrophins. Biochem J, 2010. 428(2): p. 281-91. 9. Barton, G.J., ALSCRIPT: a tool to format multiple sequence alignments. Protein Eng, 1993. 6(1): p. 37-40. 10. Waterhouse, A.M., J.B. Procter, D.M. Martin, M. Clamp, and G.J. Barton, Jalview Version 2–a multiple sequence alignment editor and analysis workbench. Bioinformatics, 2009. 25(9): p. 1189-91. 11. Cole, C., J.D. Barber, and G.J. Barton, The Jpred 3 secondary structure prediction server. Nucleic Acids Res, 2008. 36(Web Server issue): p. W197-201. 12. Cuff, J.A. and G.J. Barton, Application of multiple sequence alignment profiles to improve protein secondary structure prediction. Proteins, 2000. 40(3): p. 502-11. 13. Overton, I.M., C.A. van Niekerk, L.G. Carter, A. Dawson, D.M. Martin, S. Cameron, S.A. McMahon, M.F. White, W.N. Hunter, J.H. Naismith, and G.J. Barton, TarO: a target optimisation system for structural biology. Nucleic Acids Res, 2008. 36(Web Server issue): p. W190-6. 14. Overton, I.M., C.A. van Niekerk, and G.J. Barton, XANNpred: neural nets that predict the propensity of a protein to yield diffraction-quality crystals. Proteins, 2011. 79(4): p. 1027-33. 15. Overton, I.M., G. Padovani, M.A. Girolami, and G.J. Barton, ParCrys: a Parzen window density estimation approach to protein crystallization propensity prediction. Bioinformatics, 2008. 24(7): p. 901-7. 16. Overton, I.M. and G.J. Barton, A normalised scale for structural genomics target ranking: the OB-Score. FEBS Lett, 2006. 580(16): p. 4005-9. 17. McDowall, M.D., M.S. Scott, and G.J. Barton, PIPs: human protein-protein interaction prediction database. Nucleic Acids Res, 2009. 37(Database issue): p. D651-6. 18. Scott, M.S. and G.J. Barton, Probabilistic prediction and ranking of human protein-protein interactions. BMC Bioinformatics, 2007. 8: p. 239. 19. Scott, M.S., F.M. Boisvert, M.D. McDowall, A.I. Lamond, and G.J. Barton, Characterization and prediction of protein nucleolar localization sequences. Nucleic Acids Res, 2010. 38(21): p. 7388-99.

Multimodal mobile interaction – making the most of our users’ capabilities by Stephen Brewster, University of Glasgow

valia — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:45:33 +0000

Title: Multimodal mobile interaction – making the most of our users’ capabilities

Mobile user interfaces are commonly based on techniques developed for desktop computers in the 1970s, often including buttons, sliders, windows and progress bars. These can be hard to use on the move which then limits the way we use our devices and the applications on them. This talk will look at the possibility of moving away from these kinds of interactions to ones more suited to mobile devices and their dynamic contexts of use where users need to be able to look where they are going, carry shopping bags and hold on to children. Multimodal (gestural, audio and haptic) interactions provide us new ways to use our devices that can be eyes and hands free, and allow users to interact in a ‘head up’ way. These new interactions will facilitate new services, applications and devices that fit better into our daily lives and allow us to do a whole host of new things

I will discuss some of the work we are doing on input using gestures done with fingers, wrist and head, along with work on output using non-speech audio, 3D sound and tactile displays in applications such as for mobile devices such as text entry, camera phone user interfaces and navigation. I will also discuss some of the issues of social acceptability of these new interfaces; we have to be careful that the new ways we want people to use devices are socially appropriate and don’t make us feel embarrassed or awkward

Biography: Stephen is a Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow, UK. His main research interest is in Multimodal Human-Computer Interaction, sound and haptics and gestures. He has done a lot of research into Earcons, a particular form of non-speech sounds. He completed his degree in Computer Science at the University of Herfordshire in the UK. After a period in industry he did his PhD in the Human-Computer Interaction Group at the University of York in the UK with Dr Alistair Edwards. The title of his thesis is “Providing a structured method for integrating non-speech audio into human-computer interfaces”. That is where he developed his interests in earcons and non-speech sound. After finishing his PhD he worked as a research fellow for the European Union as part of the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM). From September, 1994 – March, 1995 he worked at VTT Information Technology in Helsinki, Finland. He then worked at SINTEF DELAB in Trondheim, Norway.

Idris: Verified Systems Programming with Dependent Types by Edwin Brady

valia — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:40:34 +0000

Systems software, such as an operating system or a network stack, underlies everything we do on a computer, whether that computer is a desktop machine, a server, a mobile phone, or any embedded device. It is therefore vital that such software operates correctly in all situations. In recent years, dependent types have emerged as a promising approach to ensuring program correctness using languages and verification tools such as Agda and Coq. However, these tools operate at a high level of abstraction and so it can be difficult to map these verified programs to efficient low level code, working with bit-level operations and interacting directly with system services.

In this talk I will describe Idris, a dependently typed programming language implemented with systems programming in mind. I will show how it may be used to implement programs which interact safely with the operating system, in particular how to give precise APIs for verifiable systems programming with external C libraries.

Bio: Edwin Brady is a SICSA Advanced Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews (http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~eb)

Responsibility Modelling by Prof Ian Sommerville

valia — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:36:15 +0000

Many ‘failures’ in software-intensive organisational systems result from human actions or inaction so, to reduce the possibility of such ‘failures’ and so improve system dependability, it is important to adopt a holistic view where system designers consider the environment in which a system will be used as well as the technical characteristics of the system itself.

In this talk, I will introduce the notion of responsibility modelling, which aims to represent the responsibilities of human and automated agents in a complex system, where the system may be created by integrating different systems from different agencies. The motivation for the work is that many ‘system failures’ are actually failures of agents in the system to fulfil their expected responsibilities and so responsibility modelling offers the opportunity to analyse how responsibilities are distributed and to identify responsibility vulnerabilities, before these lead to system failure.

Bio

Ian Sommerville has been Professor of Computer Science at St Andrews University since 2006. For more details see http://www.software-engin.com.

Workshop on Computational Logic in honour of Roy Dyckhoff

valia — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 11:53:26 +0000

The University of St Andrews is hosting a 2-day workshop on Computational Logic in honour of Roy Dyckhoff, who has retired this year. The workshop will be held in Parliament Hall at the University of St Andrews on November 18-19, 2011, and is very generously sponsored by the SICSA Modelling and Abstraction Theme. Topics include Proof Theory, Natural Deduction, Verification, Combinatory Logic and Semantics. More details, including the programme can be found at: http://www.lix.polytechnique.fr/~lengrand/Events/Dyckhoff/index.php?page=programme Attendance at the workshop is free to SICSA researchers, but we do ask you to register through the web site so that we can arrange catering.

Proof engineering, from the Four Color to the Odd Order Theorem by Dr Georges Gonthier

valia — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:32:29 +0000

Thirty five years ago computers made a dramatic debut in mathematics with the famous proof of the Four Color Theorem by Appel and Haken. Their role has been expanding recently, from computational devices to tools that can tackle deduction and proofs too complex for (most) human minds, such as the Kepler conjecture or the Classification of Finite Simple Groups. These new “machine” proofs entail fundamental changes in the practice of mathematics: a shift from craftsmanship, where each argument is a tribute to the ingenuity of the mathematician that perfected it, to a form of engineering where proofs are created more systematically. In addition to formal definitions and theorems, mathematical theories also contain clever, context-sensitive notations, usage conventions, and proof methods. To mechanize advanced mathematical results it is essential to capture these more informal elements, replacing informal and flexible usage conventions with rigorous interfaces, and exercise apprenticeship with precise algorithms. This can be difficult, requiring an array of techniques closer to software engineering than formal logic, but it is essential to obtaining formal proofs of graduate-level mathematics, and can give new insight as well. In this talk we will give several examples of such empirical formal mathematics that we have encountered in the process of mechanizing a large corpus of Combinatorics and Algebra required by the proofs of the Four Colour and Odd Order Theorem. Bio:Georges Gonthier is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge. Dr. Gonthier has worked on the Esterel reactive programming language, techniques for the optimal computation of functional programs, the design and formal verification of a concurrent garbage collector, the join calculus model of concurrency, concurrency analysis of the Ariane 5 flight software, using full abstraction in the analysis of security properties, and a fully computer-checked proof of the famous Four Colour Theorem. He now heads the Mathematical Components project at the MSR Inria Joint Center, following up on the latter work with the development of a comprehensive library of formalized abstract algebra. Georges Gonthier – Head of the Mathematical Components team Microsoft Research-INRIA joint centre http://www.msr-inria.inria.fr/ There will be bisquits from 3:45 downstairs

Sword Ciboodle presentation

alb — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 10:03:18 +0000

Sword Ciboodle will be visiting the University of St. Andrews on Tuesday 1st November between 1pm and 2pm. Come and join us in Jack Cole 1.33A to gain an insight into the Company and for information about graduate opportunities within the Research & Development and Professional Services teams. Opportunities exist for summer placements and full time roles following graduation. You will also be able to meet some of our most recent graduates to understand their experiences of working with the Company. Lunch will be provided. Sword Ciboodle, with over 300 staff based in five offices around the world (Chicago, Sydney, Jakarta, Johannesburg and Glasgow), has its headquarters in Renfrewshire, near Glasgow in the India of Inchinnan building, the only commercially used Grade-A listed building in Scotland. Apart from the impressive surroundings, Sword Ciboodle employees also benefit from a competitive salary, excellent benefits and the opportunity to work with some of the best Software Engineers in the industry. Further information can be found at www.sword-ciboodle.com. Please register your interest with Jenna at Jenna.Currie@sword-ciboodle.com. Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions.

Augmentative and Alternative Communication across the Lifespan of Individuals with Complex Communication Needs

Jakub Dostal — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 08:54:19 +0000

Speaker: Annalu Waller, University of Dundee

Abstract:
Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) attempts to augment natural speech, or to provide alternative ways to communicate for people with limited or no speech. Technology has played an increasing role in AAC. At the most simplest level, people with complex communication needs (CCN) can cause a prestored message to be spoken by activating a single switch. At the most sophisticated level, literate users can generate novel text. Although some individuals with CCN become effective communicators, most do not – they tend to be passive communicators, responding mainly to questions or prompts at a one or two word level. Conversational skills such as initiation, elaboration and story telling are seldom observed.
One reason for the reduced levels of communicative ability is that AAC technology provides the user with a purely physical link to speech output. The user is required to have sufficient language abilities and physical stamina to translate what they want to say into the code sequence of operations needed to produce the desired output. Instead of placing all the cognitive load on the user, AAC devices can be designed to support the cognitive and language needs of individuals with CCN, taking into account the need to scaffold communication as children develop into adulthood. A range of research projects, including systems to support personal narrative and language play, will be used to illustrate the application of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Natural Language Generation (NLG) in the design and implementation of electronic AAC devices.

About Annalu:
Dr Annalu Waller is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing at the University of Dundee. She has worked in the field of Augmentative and Alternate Communication (AAC) since 1985, designing communication systems for and with nonspeaking individuals. She established the first AAC assessment and training centre in South Africa in 1987 before coming to Dundee in 1989. Her PhD developed narrative technology support for adults with acquired dysphasia following stroke. Her primary research areas are human computer interaction, natural language generation, personal narrative and assistive technology. In particular, she focuses on empowering end users, including disabled adults and children, by involving them in the design and use of technology. She manages a number of interdisciplinary research projects with industry and practitioners from rehabilitation engineering, special education, speech and language therapy, nursing and dentistry. She is on the editorial boards of several academic journals and sits on the boards of a number of national and international organisations representing disabled people.

Amazon presentation

alb — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 13:36:28 +0000

Amazon is looking for outstanding software developers to join their development centre in Edinburgh. Come and learn about the company, and about our work in Scotland, devising, creating and growing major features and websites for Amazon worldwide. Our developers, designers and leaders work in small teams across the company, contributing to Amazon’s systems which are used by over 144 million active Amazon customer accounts, over 2 million active seller accounts and hundreds of thousands of external developers. From interactive UI design to large-scale distributed systems and machine learning, we do whatever it takes to deliver great experiences for our customers. Our freedom to execute effectively against broad, ambitious goals offers boundless opportunities for talented, innovative engineers. Target students all software development engineer students, in particular final years, however we are keen to start developing a relationship with all high performing students in this space.

Evolution of Radio Access Networks: Lighting up IQ by Francisco J. Garcia, Agilent Technologies

valia — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 08:19:03 +0000

In this talk we will introduce how new mobile base station architectures are evolving not only to meet demand but also to become “greener” since at current rates of deployment, mobile networks are becoming very large CO2 contributors. These new base station architectures are also becoming enablers for new Radio Access Networks (RANs) where the same infrastructure can support multiple radio technologies simultaneously by backhauling their baseband leading towards distributed antenna systems and distributed base station architectures. Some would argue that this represents a paradigm shift towards “cloud” enabled mobile networks. In the talk we will cover the reasons why things are progressing this way, how this is being enabled through technology innovation, and what Agilent has done to meet some of the test and measurement challenges in this evolved 4G wireless communications space.

Creating personalized digital human models of perception for visual analytics

Jakub Dostal — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:04:53 +0000

Speaker: Aaron Quigley, SACHI University of St Andrews Abstract: Our bodies shape our experience of the world, and our bodies influence what we design. How important are the physical differences between people? Can we model the physiological differences and use the models to adapt and personalize designs, user interfaces and artifacts? Within many disciplines Digital Human Models and Standard Observer Models are widely used and have proven to be very useful for modeling users and simulating humans. In this paper, we create personalized digital human models of perception (Individual Observer Models), particularly focused on how humans see. Individual Observer Models capture how our bodies shape our perceptions. Individual Observer Models are useful for adapting and personalizing user interfaces and artifacts to suit individual users’ bodies and perceptions. We introduce and demonstrate an Individual Observer Model of human eyesight, which we use to simulate 3600 biologically valid human eyes. An evaluation of the simulated eyes finds that they see eye charts the same as humans. Also demonstrated is the Individual Observer Model successfully making predictions about how easy or hard it is to see visual information and visual designs. The ability to predict and adapt visual information to maximize how effective it is is an important problem in visual design and analytics. About Aaron: In this talk Professor Aaron Quigley will present a talk for a paper he is presenting at the User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (UMAP) conference 2011 on July 12th in Barcelona Spain. This work on Creating Personalized Digital Human Models of Perception for Visual Analytics is the work with and of his former PhD student Dr. Mike Bennett and now postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology in Stanford University. Professor Aaron Quigley is the Chair of Human Computer Interaction in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews. He is the director of SACHI and his appointment is part of SICSA, the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance. Aaron’s research interests include surface and multi-display computing, human computer interaction, pervasive and ubiquitous computing and information visualisation.

A Decade of Research on Constraint Modelling and Reformulation:The Quest for Abstraction and Automation by Alan M Frisch

valia — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:22:36 +0000

Abstract:

To mark the Tenth International Workshop on Constraint Modelling and Reformulation, this talk reviews research in the field over the past decade, focusing on the key themes of abstraction and automation.

Looking to the future, the talk identifies key issues that must be confronted in furthering the quest for abstraction and automation.

Biography:

Dr Alan M Frisch is a Reader in Intelligent Systems and Head of the Artificial Intelligence Group in the Dept. of Computer Science at the Univ. of York. He is currently a SICSA Distinguished Visiting Fellow.

For over 30 years he has been teaching artificial intelligence and researching various topics within the field, including a focus on constraint programming over the past decade. He is an acknowledged leader in constraint modelling, best known for his pioneering contributions in the automation of constraint modelling, in inventing the ESSENCE problem specification language, and in developing symmetry-breaking constraints.

Alan M Frisch - Artificial Intelligence Group – Department of Computer Science - University of York, UK.

MacMillan Coffee Morning (Friday)

ishbel — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:28:59 +0000

From 10.30am onwards on Friday morning in the JCB coffee area, we will be hosting a MacMillan coffee morning. All proceeds from the sales of cakes, biscuits or produce will go to support the MacMillan Cancer Support service. This is a service that allows terminal patients to remain in their own homes for their last days, supported by a MacMillan nurse. Donations of goods are welcome, otherwise come along and buy some home baking. A raffle will be held with prizes including sloe gin, champagne and chocolates.

Bada Challenge Competition

alb — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 13:32:53 +0000

We’re participating in the bada Student Developers Challenge 2011/12 – the ultimate coding challenge event run across the UK & Ireland in connection with other universities leading the way in Computer Sciences. Giving student coders from first year to masters the chance to create their own Apps for Samsungs new bada platform and have those very apps uploaded to their stores. Whilst doing so, impressing people from one of the worlds biggest mobile phone manufacturers and standing the chance of winning a share of a £15,000 prize fund. Sign up your teams and Make It ‘Appen For any queriees or to find out more, visit our website, Twitter feed or Facebook page: http://www.badastudentdeveloperchallenge.com/ or www.badachallenge.com @badastudent http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bada-Student-Developer-Challenge/221130171247152

Design, Agency and a Sense of Wellbeing by Ann Light

valia — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 11:12:44 +0000

Abstract: In Capability and Wellbeing, Sen (1993) says that acting freely and being able to choose may be directly conducive to wellbeing, not just because more freedom may make better alternatives available, but because the action of choice is itself a freedom. This talk reflects on three projects with older people and considers their sense of agency in thinking about interactive systems and future technologies, looking particularly at how agency might contribute to a sense of wellbeing. Although a theme running through the talk is the design of digital tools, the discussion takes a broad view of the factors to be considered in human-computer interaction. Sen, Amartya. (1993). Capability and Well-Being. In M. Nussbaum and A. Sen, eds. The Quality of Life, pp. 30–53. New York: Oxford University Press. Bio: Ann Light is a Professor in the School of Design at Northumbria University. Among other research, she has just completed a study on Digital Inclusion involving the councils of South Yorkshire and two AHRC Connected Communities projects on participation, and she recently helped set up a mobile phone innovation incubator with Makerere University in Uganda. Her interests include the social impact of technology and the politics of design, explored through design research such as Democratising Technology (DemTech: www.demtech.qmul.ac.uk) and Fair Tracing (www.fairtracing.org). Drawing on this experience, she is currently working with the idea of Digital Interdependence: the potential for digital technologies to help build social structures and sustainable lifestyles for all. Ann publishes on human-computer interaction, cross-cultural methodology, interactive media and design, with an focus on meaning-making and experience of technology, begun in studies of websites and online discussion in 1995 and now turned upon mobile and ubiquitous contexts of use. She is visiting researcher at the University of Sussex, and at Queen Mary University of London (where she worked in the Drama department for 18 months, looking at performance techniques for engaging communities in design activity). Ann Light, School of Design, Northumbria University

Undergraduate visiting day

tristan — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 09:50:41 +0000

Prospective undergraduates are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an undergraduate visiting day.

Undergraduate visiting day

tristan — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 09:49:38 +0000

Prospective undergraduates are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an undergraduate visiting day.

Undergraduate visiting day

tristan — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 09:49:06 +0000

Prospective undergraduates are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an undergraduate visiting day.

Undergraduate visiting day

tristan — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 09:48:34 +0000

Prospective undergraduates are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an undergraduate visiting day.

Undergraduate visiting day

tristan — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 09:48:15 +0000

Prospective undergraduates are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an undergraduate visiting day.

Undergraduate visiting day

tristan — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 09:47:49 +0000

Prospective undergraduates are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an undergraduate visiting day.

Undergraduate visiting day

tristan — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 09:46:51 +0000

Prospective undergraduates are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an undergraduate visiting day.

Undergraduate visiting day

tristan — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 08:43:08 +0000

Prospective undergraduates are welcomed to the School of Computer Science for an undergraduate visiting day.

Quantifying human vision: perception of depth and shape by Julie Harris

valia — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:52:03 +0000

Abstract
The human visual system is extraordinary powerful, but it is not a perfect seeing device. In this talk I will use the example of binocular vision to explore visual processing. I will describe some of the biology of the binocular visual system, some of the limitations that the biology presents, and I will describe methods used to probe the relative importance of binocular vision, versus other sources of 3-D visual information. These methods allow us to predict where and when binocular vision provides a powerful source of 3-D information, and is therefore useful to inform the design and production of devices across a range of HCI applications.

Bio
Julie Harris is interested in visual perception, with particular interests in how binocular vision and eye movements are used for the perception of shape and depth and the control of action in 3-D space. Current projects include how binocular information is used for distance perception, how gaze patterns can be described in simple mathematical terms, and how we perceive motion in three dimensions.

ParaForming: Forming Parallel Haskell Programs using Novel Refactoring Techniques by Prof Kevin Hammond

valia — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:48:23 +0000

Abstract

Despite Moore’s “law”, uniprocessor clock speeds have now stalled. Rather than using single processors running at ever higher clock speeds, it is common to find dual-, quad- or even hexa-core processors, even in consumer laptops and desktops. Future hardware will not be slightly parallel, however, as in today’s multicore systems, but will be massively parallel, with manycore and perhaps even megacore systems becoming mainstream. This means that programmers need to start thinking parallel. To achieve this they must move away from traditional programming models and development processes that offer parallelism as an bolted-on afterthought.

This talk introduces the idea of “paraforming”, a new approach to constructing parallel functional programs using formally-defined refactoring transformations. We show how parallel programs can be built from a small number of primitive Haskell building blocks, and describe some new refactorings for Parallel Haskell that capture common parallel abstractions, such as divide-and-conquer and data parallelism using these building blocks. Using a paraforming approach, we are able to easily obtain significant and scalable speedups (up to 7.8 on an 8-core machine).

Biography

Kevin Hammond has worked extensively in the field of advanced programming language design and implementation, with a focus on cost and performance issues. His work concentrates on functional language designs, including that of the standard non-strict functional language Haskell, where he served on the international design committee, and worked on the dominant compiler, GHC. Since receiving his PhD in 1989, he has published widely in the general area of parallel programming, producing over 80 books, book chapters, journal papers and other refereed publications focusing on parallel computing, domain-specific programming languages, real-time systems, cost issues, adaptive run-time environments, lightweight concurrency, high-level programming language design and performance monitoring/visualisation. He has run over 20 successful national and international research projects, and is a founder member of IFIP WG 2.11 (Generative Programming).

Friendlists, Followers and Contacts: Using Self-Reported Social Networks to Improve Opportunistic Networks by Gregory Bigwood

valia — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:43:27 +0000

Abstract:

Opportunistic networks provide an ad hoc communication medium without the need for an infrastructure network, by leveraging human encounters and mobile devices. Routing protocols in opportunistic networks frequently rely upon encounter histories to build up meaningful data to use for informed routing decisions. This seminar presents work showing it is possible to use pre-existing social-network information to improve existing opportunistic routing protocols, and that these self-reported social networks have a particular benefit when used to bootstrap an opportunistic routing protocol.

Frequently, opportunistic routing protocols require users to relay messages on behalf of one another: an act that incurs a cost to the relaying node. Nodes may wish to avoid this forwarding cost by not relaying messages. Opportunistic networks need to incentivise participation and discourage the selfish behaviour. This seminar further presents an incentive mechanism that uses self-reported social networks to construct and maintain reputation and trust relationships between participants, and demonstrates its superior performance over existing incentive mechanisms.

Biography:

Greg Bigwood is a Ph.D. student in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews. He works in the field of opportunistic networks and social networks, researching the use of social-network information to improve opportunistic networks.

He read Computer Science at the University of St Andrews, graduating in 2007.

Systems and Security Modelling: From Theory to Practice (Really) by Professor David J. Pym

valia — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:36:57 +0000

Abstract: I describe a mathematical systems modelling framework that is motivated by a desire to represent and reason about properties of (large-scale) systems situated in dynamic environments. Motivated by the concepts of distributed systems theory, the framework has at its core mathematical treatments of environment, location, resource, and process, and comes along with a separating modal logic. Extensions to analyze questions in computer security are also considered. The mathematical structures provide a semantics for a modelling tool, called (Core) Gnosis, that, together with some elementary utility theory, has been deployed in a range of commercial projects undertaken with Hewlett-Packard’s information security business and its customers. I conclude by discussing the rôle of economics in the context of modelling questions in information security.

Biography:
Professor David J. Pym, 6th Century Chair in Logic, and SICSA Professor of Computing Science, Head of School of Natural and Computing Sciences, University of Aberdeen. Previously Principal Scientist at HP Labs, Bristol and Professor of Logic & Computation at Bath, Professor of Logic at QMUL. PhD Edinburgh; MA, ScD Cambridge; FIMA, FBCS. Led the ‘Security Analytics’ project at HP Labs, now deployed commercially by Hewlett-Packard in its information security business. One of the designers of the Core Gnosis tool for systems and security modelling which is used to deliver the modelling part of Security Analytics. See this recent news piece about my colleagues at HP: http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2011/oct-dec/security_analytics.html
David is currently interested in the following areas:

Mathematical systems modelling, using algebraic, logical, and stochastic methods, with applications in information security;
Topics related to the economics of information security;
Topics related to the economics of systems thinking;
Topics connecting logic (substructural, modal; process algebra) and utility theory;
Topics in logic related to information flow and trust domains;
Topics related to information security, information stewardship, and cloud computing;
Topics in logic related to the theory of search spaces.

Interaction and Visualization Approaches for Artistic Applications

Jakub Dostal — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 13:00:02 +0000

Speaker: Sean Lynch, Innovis group/Interactions lab, University of Calgary, Canada
Abstract:
Information visualization and new paradigms of interaction are generally applied to productive processes (i.e., at work) or for personal and entertainment purposes. In my work, I have looked instead at how to apply new technologies and visualization techniques to art. I will present mainly two projects that focus on multi-touch music composition and performance, and the visual analysis of the history and visual features of fine paintings.
About Sean:
Sean Lynch is a Master’s Student in Computer Science at the Interactions Lab at the University of Calgary. Sean’s research interests span interactive technologies (e.g., multi-touch), interactive art, and information visualization.

Welcome Reception for Honours Students

alb — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:17:00 +0000

Wine and nibbles event for junior and senior honours students in the School of Computer Science

Welcome Reception for Postgraduate Students

alb — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:14:07 +0000

Wine and nibbles event for all postgraduates in the School of Computer Science

Barbecue for Undergraduate Students

alb — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:10:28 +0000

Barbecue for all undergraduate students in the school of Computer Science

Barbecue for MSc Students

alb — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:07:44 +0000

Barbecue for MSc students

The Dependability of Complex Socio-technical Infrastructure & Smart Grids and Smart Meters: Game Changer, or Serious Danger? by Prof. Ross Anderson

valia — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:14:24 +0000

DLS Programme

Lecture 1: The Dependability of Complex Socio-technical Infrastructure

Abstract: We have all become dependent on large complex systems such as Facebook, the bank payment system and even the Internet itself.

Keeping these systems dependable in the face of accidents, errors and malice is one of the most important, and interesting, challenges facing engineers today. It brings not only technical problems of the highest order, but also some intricate economics; how do we persuade firms to invest in spare capacity that will mostly help their competitors offer better service? I’ll discuss such problems in two contexts: frauds against payment networks, and the resilience of the Internet. The talk will draw on a recent major study we did for ENISA of the resilience of the Internet interconnect.

Lecture 2: Smart Grids and Smart Meters: Game Changer, or Serious Danger?

Abstract: The European Union has started a €100bn project to replace all our electricity meters with smart meters. Officials hope that making energy use more salient to householders will lead to energy savings; that time-of-day pricing will shave peak demand; and that in a smart grid, demand response will help accommodate fluctuating energy sources such as solar and wind.

This project could create plenty of work for security engineers! As smart meters can be commended remotely, they may be open to attacks ranging from scalable fraud to wholesale service denial. Moving distribution assets such as substations online creates further hazards. The architectures in some Member States are complex, heavily centralised or both, leading to protocol design and project management issues. Some smart meters accept many commands, raising the possibility of API attacks. Updating device software to patch vulnerabilities is hard. Energy companies want fine-grained consumption data but this may contravene European privacy law. And there are many incentive problems: smart meters will be operated by energy companies, who don’t really want us to save energy. I suggest that part of the solution might be to develop an open platform that will enable users to connect up their meters, appliances and suppliers, and control them via a web interface.

Bio: Ross Anderson is Professor of Security Engineering at Cambridge University. He was one of the founders of a vigorously-growing new academic discipline, the economics of information security. Ross was also a seminal contributor to the idea of peer-to-peer systems and an inventor of the AES finalist encryption algorithm “Serpent”. He has well-known publications on many other technical security topics including hardware tamper-resistance, emission security, copyright marking, and the robustness of APIs. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the IET and the IMA. He also wrote the standard textbook “Security Engineering – a Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems”.

Learning hard chart constraints for efficient context-free parsing by Brian Roark – Oregon Health & Science University

valia — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:02:27 +0000

Abstract: In this talk, I’ll present some recent work in learning hard constraints for cells within a context-free parsing chart, to reduce parsing time. Each cell in the chart represents one of the O(n^2) substrings of the input string, and characteristics of each substring can be used to decide how much work to do in the associated chart cell. I’ll discuss finite-state models for tagging chart constraints on words, including methods for bounding the worst-case complexity of the parsing pipeline to quadratic or sub-quadratic in the length of the string. Empirical results will be presented for English and Chinese, achieved by constraining various high accuracy parsers.

Finally, I will present a generalization of these finite-state approaches that performs a quadratic number of classifications (one for each substring) to produce further (finer) constraints on the amount of processing within each cell. This latter approach has the nice property of being trained on maximum likelihood parses, rather than reference parses, making for a straightforward method for tuning parsing efficiency to new tasks and domains.

Bio: Brian Roark is an Associate Professor in the Center for Spoken Language Understanding (CSLU) and Dept. of Biomedical Engineering at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). He received his PhD from Brown University in 2001 and spent 3 years in the Speech Algorithms Department at AT&T Labs – Research before joining CSLU. His research interests include natural language processing, language modeling for various applications, assistive technology, and spoken language understanding.

Is provenance logical? (James Cheney, University of Edinburgh)

gs — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 08:45:17 +0000

Research on provenance in databases (or other settings) sometimes has an arbitrary flavor. Once we abandon the classical semantics of queries there is a large design space for alternative semantics that could provide some useful provenance information, but there is little guidance for how to explore this space or justify or compare different proposals. Topics from mathematical or philosophical logic could be used as a way of inspiring, justifying or comparing different approaches to provenance in databases. This talk will give a short tutorial on provenance in databases and present several topics in logic that may bear upon provenance techniques. These areas include nonclassical logics (e.g. relevance logic), algebraic logic (cylindric algebras), substructural logic (e.g. linear logic) and logics of knowledge, belief or causality.

Exploring semantics in situation identification using context lattices by Dr.Juan Ye

valia — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 09:08:53 +0000

Pervasive systems must offer an open, extensible, and evolving portfolio of services which integrate sensor data from a diverse range of sources. The core challenge is to provide appropriate and consistent adaptive behaviours for these services in the face of huge volumes of sensor data exhibiting varying degrees of precision, accuracy and dynamism. Situation identification is an enabling technology that resolves noisy sensor data and abstracts it into higher-level concepts that are interesting to applications. In this talk, I will provide a comprehensive analysis of the nature and characteristics of situations, discuss the complexities of situation identification, and introduce a novel situation identification technique called “context lattice”. The context lattice is built on a sound mathematical model, aiming to identify situations by systematically exploring the semantics of sensor data, domain knowledge, and situations in a pervasive computing system. I will present and discuss the evaluation results when applying this technique to recognising human activities in smart home environments. This talk will be concluded with challenging questions in the area of situation identification. Bio: Dr.Juan Ye is a postdotcoral researcher in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews. She holds a BSc, MSc, and PhD in computer science and is a professional member of the British Computer Society. Her research interests centers on the design and implementation of adaptive pervasive computing, specialising in formal semantics, ontologies, machine learning techniques, and lattice theory. She has produced over 30 publications on these topics, eight of which are on internationally peer-reviewed journals. She has served as a reviewer for internationally well-known journals including Pervasive and Mobile Computing, Knowledge Engineering Review, and ACM Transaction on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems. She has been taking a leading role in an EU Framework 7 project in terms of scientific programme direction.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Abstract Data Visualisations

Jakub Dostal — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 20:40:15 +0000

Speaker: Mark Shovman, University of Abertay, Dundee

Abstract:
In natural and social sciences, novel insights are often derived from visual analysis of data. But what principles underpin the extraction of meaningful content from these visualisations? Abstract data visualisation can be traced at least as far back as 1801; but with the increase in the quantity and complexity of data that require analysis, standard tools and techniques are no longer adequate for the task. The ubiquity of computing power enables novel visualisations that are rich, multimodal and interactive; but what is the most effective way to exploit this power to support analysis of large, complex data sets? Often, the lack of fundamental theory is pointed out as a central ‘missing link’ in the development and assessment of efficient novel visualisation tools and techniques.
In this talk, I will present some first steps towards the theory of visualisation comprehension, drawing heavily on existing research in natural scene perception and reading comprehension. The central inspiration is the Reverse Hierarchy Theory of perceptual organisation, which is a recent (2002) development of the near-centennial Laws of Gestalt. The proposed theory comes complete with a testing methodology (the ‘pop-out’ effect testing) that is based on our understanding of the cognitive processes involved in visualisation comprehension.
About Mark:
Mark Shovman is a SICSA Lecturer in Information Visualisation in the Institute of Arts, Media and Computer Games Technology in the University of Abertay Dundee. He is an interdisciplinary researcher, studying the perception and cognition aspects of information visualisations, computer games, and immersive virtual reality. His recent research projects include the application of dynamic 3D link-charts in Systems Biology; alleviating cyber-sickness in VR helmets; and immersive VR as an art medium. Mark was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, and lived in Jerusalem, Israel since 1990. He can be found on http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mark-shovman/3/a4b/849

MSc Poster Presentations 2011

lisa — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:51:40 +0000

The MSc poster presentations and project demonstrations took place this afternoon. We wish all of our MSc students good luck as they finish their dissertations and move closer to graduation!

Summer school “Advanced techniques in computer algebra systems development”

alexk — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 10:05:01 +0000

The summer school “Advanced techniques in computer algebra systems development” is organised by the Centre of Interdisciplinary Research in Computational Algebra and supported by the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA) and the EU FP6 project “SCIEnce – Symbolic Computation Infrastructure for Europe” Further details>>>

Security and Privacy in mHealth systems

tristan — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 15:17:53 +0000

Mobile computing and sensing technologies present exciting opportunities for healthcare. Wireless sensors worn by patients can automatically deliver medical sensor data to care providers, family members, or other caregivers, providing new opportunities to diagnose, monitor, and manage a wide range of medical conditions. Using the mobile phones that patients already carry to provide connectivity between sensors and providers can help to keep costs low and deployments simple. However, there are many security and privacy challenges involved in developing a system that will protect the patient’s privacy and the integrity of the data collected. In this talk I describe the advent of these “mHealth” systems, survey the security and privacy issues, and describe research underway at Dartmouth to address these challenges.

Biography

David Kotz is the Champion International Professor, in the Department of Computer Science, and Associate Dean of the Faculty for the Sciences, at Dartmouth College in Hanover NH. During the 2008-09 academic year he was a Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Science, in Bangalore India, and a Fulbright Research Scholar to India. At Dartmouth, he was the Executive Director of the Institute for Security Technology Studies from 2004-07. His research interests include security and privacy, pervasive computing for healthcare, and wireless networks. He has published over 100 refereed journal and conference papers. He is an IEEE Fellow, a Senior Member of the ACM, a member of the USENIX Association, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. After receiving his A.B. in Computer Science and Physics from Dartmouth in 1986, he completed his Ph.D in Computer Science from Duke University in 1991 and returned to Dartmouth to join the faculty. For more information see http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~dfk/.

Energy-efficient location-awareness on mobile devices

Jakub Dostal — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:50:40 +0000

Speaker: Peterri Nurmi, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT Abstract: Contemporary mobile phones readily support different positioning techniques. In addition to integrated GPS receivers, GSM and WiFi can be used for position estimation, and other sensors such as accelerometers and digital compasses can be used to support positioning, e.g., through dead reckoning or the detection of stationary periods. Selecting which sensor technologies to use for positioning is, however, a non-trivial task as available sensor technologies vary considerably in terms of their energy demand and the accuracy of location estimates. To improve the energy-efficiency of mobile devices and to provide as accurate position estimates as possible, novel on-device positioning technologies together with techniques that select optimal sensor modalities based on positioning accuracy requirements are required. In this talk we first introduce novel GSM and WiFi fingerprinting algorithms that run directly on mobile devices with minimal energy consumption [1]. We also introduce our recent work on minimizing the power consumption of continuous location and trajectory tracking on mobile devices [2]. [1] P. Nurmi, S. Bhattacharya, J. Kukkonen: “A grid-based algorithm for on-device GSM positioning.” Proc. 12th ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp, Copenhagen, Denmark, September 2010). ACM Press, 2010, 227-236. [2] M. B. Kjaergaard, S. Bhattacharya, H. Blunck, P. Nurmi, “Energy-efficient Trajectory Tracking for Mobile Devices”, Proc. 9th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services (MobiSys, June-July, 2011). About Petteri: Dr. Petteri Nurmi is a Senior Researcher at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT. He received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Helsinki in 2009. He is currently co-leading the Adaptive Computing research group at HIIT together with Doc. Patrik Floréen. His research focuses on ubiquitous computing, user modeling and interaction with a view of making the life of ordinary people easier through easy-to-use mobile services. He regularly serves as Program Committee Member and reviewer for numerous leading conferences and journals. More information about his research can be found from the webpage of the research group: http://www.hiit.fi/adapc/

Sensing, understanding and modelling people using mobile phones

Jakub Dostal — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:34:59 +0000

Speaker: Mirco Musolesi, Computer Science, University of St Andrews Abstract: Mobile phones are increasingly equipped with sensors, such as accelerometers, GPS receivers, proximity sensors and cameras, that can be used to sense and interpret people behaviour in real-time. Novel user-centered sensing applications can be built by exploiting the availability of such technologies in these devices that are part of our everyday experience. Moreover, data extracted from the sensors can also be used to model people behaviour and movement patterns providing a very rich set of multi-dimensional data, which can be extremely useful for social science, marketing and epidemiological studies. In this talk I will present some of my recent work in this area including the design and implementation of the CenceMe platform, a system that supports the inference of activities and other presence information of individuals using off-the-shelf sensor-enabled phones and of EmotionSense, a system for supporting social psychology research. Finally, I will discuss the issues related to the design of energy-efficient social sensing systems. About Mirco: Dr. Mirco Musolesi is a SICSA Lecturer at the School of Computer Science at the University of St. Andrews. He received a PhD in Computer Science from University College London in 2007 and a Master in Electronic Engineering from the University of Bologna in 2002. From October 2005 to August 2007 he was a Research Fellow at the Department of Computer Science, University College London. Then, from September 2007 to August 2008 he was an ISTS Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Dartmouth College, NH, USA, and from September 2008 to October 2009 a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge. His research interests lie in the broad area of mobile systems and networking with a current focus on intelligent mobile systems, online social networks, application of complex network theory to networked systems design, mobility modelling and sensing systems based on mobile phones. More information about his research profile can be found at the following URL: http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~mirco

Narrative Generation: a case study in assistive technology

Jakub Dostal — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:59:04 +0000

Speaker: Nava Tintarev, University of Aberdeen
Abstract:
Story-telling, (including personal narrative), is a big part of our personal and social communication. This talk will identify challenges and solutions that look at the generation of narrative for social communication. We describe a way to “automatically” generate personal stories. The stories which are mix of natural language and multimedia, are based on sensor, and other data, collected with a mobile phone. This study will place a particular focus on the natural language generation task of document structuring: segmenting this data into meaningful and distinct events.
About Nava:
Nava Tintarev has worked on applied HCI projects with themes such as explanations in recommender systems, recommendations in a mobile travel scenario, and more recently, natural language generation for assistive technology.
Currently, she is working as a Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen where she is a member of the Natural Language Generation Group. She has been working on the “How was School today…?” project, which helps children with complex communication needs create and tell a story about their day at school (which will be the applied setting for the talk on the 19th of July). Before that, she was at Telefónica Research, Barcelona, working on user-centred issues in recommender systems.
Her doctoral thesis focused on explanations for recommender systems, and one of her papers on the topic won her the James Chen best student paper award at the International Conference on Hypermedia (2008). For the last three years she has also been co-organizing a workshop on explanation-aware computing (ExaCt) (http://exact2011.workshop.hm/).

The use of regret and forgiveness

Gordon — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 12:51:15 +0000

Dr Steve Marsh. Regret, the emotion arising from counterfactual reasoning about action and inaction, is a powerful tool in the arsenal of trust-reasoning and enabling technologies. One aspect of the tool, Regret Management, is the enforcement of a view of System Trust in technological approaches in order to preserve and encourage respect for concerns such as data protection, privacy, and cyber-social interaction. Forgiveness, as a tool in the broad spectrum of computational trust, helps agents reason about and rebuild relationships that may have been damaged by some action, and is particularly useful in areas where, as online, cheap pseudonyms can exist. This talk will examine regret and forgiveness from the point of view of agents or devices in connected environments, where humans are present actors, and show how enforcement of regret management and forgiveness measures may be efficacious. Steve Marsh is a Research Scientist in the Network Security Group at in the Communications Research Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His PhD (University of Stirling, 1994) was a seminal work that introduced the first formalisation of the phenomenon of trust (the concept of ‘Computational Trust’), and applied it to Multi Agent Systems. As a milestone in trust research, it brought together disparate disciplines and attempted to make sense of a vital phenomenon in human and artificial societies, and is still widely referenced today. Steve’s current work builds extensively on this model, applying it to network security, MANETs, and mobile device security. His research interests include computational trust, trust management, regret and regret management, and socially adept technologies. He is the Canadian delegate to IFIP Technical Committee 11: Security and Privacy Protection in Information Processing Systems. He is an adjunct professor at UNB (Computer Science), UOIT (Business and IT) and Carleton University (Systems and Computer Engineering and Cognitive Science).

Evaluation of network resilience and survivability: analysis, simulation, tools, and experimentation

tristan — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:01:37 +0000

Abstract As the Internet becomes increasingly important to all aspects of society, the consequences of disruption are increasingly severe. Thus it is critical to increase the resilience and survivability of the future networks in general, and the Internet in particular. We define resilience as the ability of the network to provide desired service even when the network is challenged by attacks, large-scale disasters, and other failures. Resilience subsumes the disciplines of survivability, fault-tolerance, disruption-tolerance, traffic-tolerance, dependability, performability, and security. After an introduction to the disciplines and challenges to network resilience, this presentation will discuss analytical, simulation, and experimental emulation techniques for understanding, evaluating, and improving the resilience of the Future Internet. This includes a multilevel state-space based approach that plots network service delivery against operational state that is the basis for both mathematical- and simulation-based analysis, and approaches that embed fundamental properties such as redundancy and diversity into all aspects of network structure, mechanism, and protocols. A set of tools to help in this analysis has been developed: KU-LoCGen (Location and Cost-Constrained Topology Generation), KU-TopViwe (Topology Viewer), and KU-CSM (Challenge Simulation Module). Plans to experimentally evaluate resilience include using the international programmable testbed GpENI: Great Plains Environment for Network Innovation. Bio: James P.G. Sterbenz is Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and a member of technical staff at the Information & Telecommunication Technology Center at the University of Kansas, and is a Visiting Professor of Computing in InfoLab 21 at Lancaster University in the UK. He has previously held senior staff and research management positions at BBN Technologies, GTE Laboratories, and IBM Research. His research interests include resilient, survivable, and disruption tolerant networking, future Internet architectures, active and programmable networks, and high-speed networking and components. He is director of the ResiliNets Research Group, currently PI in the NSF-funded FIND and GENI programs, the EU-funded FIRE ResumeNet project, leads the GpENI international programmable network testbed project, and leads a US DoD project in highly-mobile ad hoc disruption-tolerant networking. He received a doctorate in computer science from Washington University in 1991. He has been program chair for IEEE GI, GBN, and HotI; IFIP IWSOS, PfHSN, and IWAN; and is on the editorial board of IEEE Network. He is principal author of the book High-Speed Networking: A Systematic Approach to High-Bandwidth Low-Latency Communication.

Arduino workshop

csblog — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:59:24 +0000

The School will hold an all day Arduino workshop on Sunday the 26th of June hosted by Dr David McKeown from UCD in Ireland. Thanks also to Ben Arent, an interaction designer based in Dublin for his help in supporting this. The Arduino workshop preceeds the Summer School on Multimodal Systems for Digital Tourism that will be held in the School from 27th June to 1st July.

Arduino and Kinect equipment for the workshop and summer school

You can see some of the Arduino and Kinect equipment we have for the summer school here starting on June 26th with an Arduino workshop. The focus of this summer school is to introduce a new generation of researchers to the latest research advances in multimodal systems, in the context of applications, services and technologies for tourists (Digital Tourism). Where mobile and desktop applications can rely on eyes down interaction, the tourist aims to keep their eyes up and focussed on the painting, statue, mountain, ski run, castle, loch or other sight before them. In this school we focus on multimodal input and output interfaces, data fusion techniques and hybrid architectures, vision, speech and conversational interfaces, haptic interaction, mobile, tangible and virtual/augmented multimodal UIs, tools and system infrastructure issues for designing interfaces and their evaluation. Mornings are devoted to seminars from our international speakers followed by guided group work sessions or focussed time for project development. We are proving a dedicated lab with development machines for the duration of the school along with access to a MERL Diamondtouch, a Microsoft Surface (v1.0), a range of mobile devices, arduinos, phidget kits, pico-projectors, Kinects and haptic displays. As we expect participants from a range of backgrounds to attend we will form groups who will, through a guided process, propose a demonstrator they can realise during the summer school which they will demonstrate and showcase on the final day. Further information on the summer school on the SACHI site.

Summer School on Multimodal Systems for Digital Tourism

csblog — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:50:37 +0000

The focus of this summer school is to introduce a new generation of researchers to the latest research advances in multimodal systems, in the context of applications, services and technologies for tourists (Digital Tourism). Where mobile and desktop applications can rely on eyes down interaction, the tourist aims to keep their eyes up and focussed on the painting, statue, mountain, ski run, castle, loch or other sight before them. In this school we focus on multimodal input and output interfaces, data fusion techniques and hybrid architectures, vision, speech and conversational interfaces, haptic interaction, mobile, tangible and virtual/augmented multimodal UIs, tools and system infrastructure issues for designing interfaces and their evaluation. We have structured this summer school as a blend of theory and practice. Further information on the summer school on the SACHI site.

From Recommendation to Reputation: Information Discovery Gets Personal

Stuart Norcross — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:42:54 +0000

Speaker: Barry Smyth Affiliation: University College Dublin Biography: Prof. Barry Smyth holds the Digital Chair of Computer Science in University College Dublin.He is the Director of CLARITY These lectures will focus on how personalization techniques and recommender systems are being used in response to the information overload problem that face web users everyday. Personalization research brings together ideas from artificial intelligence, user profiling, information retrieval and user-interface design to provide users with more proactive and intelligent information services that are capable of predicting the needs of individuals and adapting to their implicit preferences. We will review core ideas from recommender systems research, drawing on the many practical examples that have underpinned modern web success stories, from e-commerce to mobile applications. In addition we will explore how the next generation of web search is likely to be influenced by recommender systems techniques that can facilitate a more social and collaborative approach to web search, which complements the purely algorithmic focus of contemporary search engines. Programme: Physics: Lecture Theatre B: 11.00-12.00noon Purdie: Lecture Theatre A:14.0-17.00 Downloads:

Towards Pervasive Personal Data

Stuart Norcross — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 15:58:23 +0000

Dr Graham Kirby, Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews. This talk will outline an embryonic project to develop a software infrastructure supporting pervasive data, in which file data will flow automatically to the places that it is needed. Equilibrium will be achieved when the data reaches all the necessary places. When the equilibrium is perturbed, due to either the data or the necessary places changing, the infrastructure will react to restore the equilibrium by initiating new data flows. The infrastructure will approximate the ideal of all of a user’s files being available at all locations all of the time. The user will be able to exert high-level influence on how this approximation is achieved, by specifying the desired equilibrium declaratively. The user will also be able to define policy that influences the priorities attached to restoring various non-equilibrium aspects of the system.

PhD Reading Party 2010

csblog — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 21:36:24 +0000

The 2010 PhD reading party trip took us to Lochearnhead on the banks of Loch Earn. Each of the twelve PhD students attending gave a talk on their current work, before taking off for a spot of mountain biking in nearby Comrie.

The Whole Group

Talks

Each student gave a 15 minute talk on their work, with time for questions and comments.

Savio Dimatteo

At the end of the student talks Tom and Ed, the two staff members on the trip, imparted some wisdom (that talk didn’t take 15 minutes!).

Cycling

Our mountain biking route took us along to Crieff, past the Famous Grouse distillery, and back again. As the map below shows some of us took low route back, while a few brave souls attempted a hill climb which tops out at around 150 feet. Tough work!

Cycling Route

This wouldn’t be a Computer Science trip without amazingly specific elevation data for our route, so here you go…

Elevation of Route

Some exciting videos from the cycling trip:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f5s1h0NoDE

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNLslD_Hor0

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8M1m_dLOTE

Pool

Of course, the reading party wasn’t all work (and cycling). On each day after the presentations had finished we took the chance to visit the local pub, which was handily located right next to the hotel!

Watch the Intensity