Month: October 2012

The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship 2013 – Europe, the Middle East and Africa

As part of Google’s ongoing commitment to furthering Anita’s vision, we are pleased to announce the 2013 Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship: Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Doctor Anita Borg (1949 – 2003) devoted her life to revolutionizing the way we think about technology and dismantling the barriers that keep minorities and women from entering the computing and technology fields.

Who Should Apply?

*Be a female student enrolled in a Bachelor’s, Master’s or PhD program in 2013/2014.

*Be enrolled at a University in Europe, the Middle East or Africa.

*Study Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Informatics, or a closely related technical field.

*Maintain an excellent academic record.

The scholarship recipients will each receive a 7,000 EUR scholarship. All recipients will be invited to visit a Google office in Europe for a networking retreat.

For full details, please visit us at:

www.google.com/anitaborg/emea

Deadline to apply: February 1, 2013

2013 Google Europe Scholarship for Stuents with Disabilities

Access to knowledge is our passion. When it comes to higher education for promising scholars, we do not want anything to stand in the way. That is why we are pleased to announce the 2013 Google Europe Scholarship for Students with Disabilities.

Who Should Apply?

*Be a student enrolled in a Bachelor’s, Master’s or PhD program in 2013/2014.

*Be enrolled at a University in Europe or Israel.

*Study Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Informatics, or a closely related technical field.

*Maintain an excellent academic record.

*Be a person with a disability.

The scholarship recipients will each receive a 7,000 EUR scholarship. All scholarship recipients will be invited to visit a Google office in Europe for an all-expenses-paid networking retreat.

Complete details at:

www.google.com/studentswithdisabilities-europe

Deadline to apply: February 1, 2013

 

Computer Gaming Industry careers: Aardvark Swift presentation – Get in the Game

Tuesday 27 November, 1400-1500, 1.33a Jack Cole building (Computer Science)

Aardvark Swift, recruitment agents for the gaming industry, will be talking about how to break into the sector. Get advice from those in the know on the key skills you will need, the common pitfalls, and how to maximise your chances. Ideal for programming enthusiasts of all disciplines, and for anyone interested in a gaming career. http://www.aswift.com/index.jsp#holder1-start

AS will also be giving details of how to enter their nationwide programming competition Search for a Star! SFAS is designed to highlight and reward the UK’s most promising video games developers. The winner will be announced at the Eurogamer 2013, with last years winner securing a job at Sony Evolution . This years competition is being sponsored by Microsoft http://www.aswift.com/searchforastar/

Event details

  • When: 27th November 2012 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Talk

Google

At 2pm today there will be a series of talks in Physics Lecture Theatre B by Google engineers and myself. Event details here: https://plus.google.com/events/cugartcmak5aabt8a91q6kfb0h8

“Ryan Shatford, a senior engineering manager from California who has been with Google since 2001 will talk about his experiences of Google as it grew from a silicon valley startup to a corporation with global reach.

Ben Birt, a St Andrews Computer Science graduate, will speak on his experience of transitioning from student life to working at Google and tell us a bit about the Google developed programming language Go.

James Smith, a PhD student in the School of Computer Science will talk about his internship with Google on their Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team in Dublin.

Jen McColl, Google’s University liaison officer for St Andrews will participate in a live Google+ Hangout to answer any questions on careers at Google.”

All welcome! Please RSVP on the Google+ Event: https://plus.google.com/events/cugartcmak5aabt8a91q6kfb0h8

Lab PC upgrade

The School has started the tender process for replacement of our Lab PCs. The new PCs will have a similar form-factor to the current PCs but will have faster more power efficient CPUs, more memory, quieter cooling and twin HDDs for simpler dual boot configuration. We will be replacing the current displays with LED back-lit HD (1920×1080) screens and some of the PCs will have dual displays.

The current timetable will see the new PCs deployed in January.

Shuttle SH61R4 H61 PC base unit

Base unit for the new CS Lab PCs - Shuttle SH61R4 H61

The components specified in the tender are as follows:

  • Shuttle SH61R4 base-unit.
  • Intel Core i5, 3450S, 2.80GHZ, 65W CPU.
  • 8GB DDR3 1333MHz memory.
  • Dual 250GB HDD, 5400RPM, energy efficient.
  • 21” – 24”, 1920 x 1080, LED backlit, DVI, energy efficient display.

Bake Sale for Children in Need

It’s Children In Need this Friday.

Well done to Sophie Gent, who raised £133 for children in need in October. The delicious cakes were the result of 3 days hard baking in the Gent household. They proved to be very popular and were certainly a welcome addition during coffee time in the school.



Find out more about fundraising for Children in Need at the BBC website

Four Geeks and an Entrepreneur

Al Dearle, Monty Widenius, Steve Linton, Ian Gent

Al Dearle, Monty Widenius, Steve Linton, Ian Gent (left to right), St Andrews, 15 October 2012

We were privileged today to hear three lectures from Monty Widenius, main author of the MySQL database system.   His main focus was on entrepreneurship and being an entrepreneur while giving away source code on an open source basis.

Three staff members from St Andrews are pictured with Monty before the first lecture, in St Salvator’s quad at the University of St Andrews.

Event details

  • When: 15th October 2012
  • Series: Distinguished Lectures Series

Adobe Prize Bursaries

The School of Computer Science is delighted to announce two Adobe prize bursaries available this year.

The bursaries are open to students currently in their first year at St Andrews with a degree intention of Computer Science or any joint honours combination involving Computer Science who are eligible for the full means-tested loan or grant from SAAS or the English, Welsh or Northern Irish equivalents. The value of the bursaries is £1000 per year for up to four years, subject to the students remaining eligible and maintaining an annual grade point average of at least 13.0.

If you wish to apply for one of these bursaries, please submit 500 words on the subject of “What excites me about Computer Science?” and email it to admin-cs@st-andrews.ac.uk. The deadline for submission is 1st November 2012.

These bursaries are the first in a number of new initiatives between Adobe systems and the School of Computer Science, including both teaching and research. We will be announcing several more over the next few months.

School Seminar – Mari Ostendorf

Professor Mari Ostendorf of the University of Washington is visiting
Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews as part of a SICSA Distinguishing
Fellowship.

Title: Rich Speech Transcription for Spoken Document Processing

Abstract:
As storage costs drop and bandwidth increases, there has been rapid growth of spoken information available via the web or in online archives — including radio and TV broadcasts, oral histories, legislative proceedings, call center recordings, etc. — raising problems of document retrieval, information extraction, summarization and translation for spoken language. While there is a long tradition of research in these technologies for text, new challenges arise when moving from written to spoken language. In this talk, we look at differences between speech and text, and how we can leverage the information in the speech signal beyond the words to provide a rich, automatically generated transcript that better serves language processing applications. In particular, we look at how prosodic cues can be used to recognize segmentation, emphasis and intent in spoken language, and how this information can impact tasks such as topic detection, information extraction, translation, and social group analysis.

Event details

  • When: 27th November 2012 15:00 - 16:00
  • Where: Phys Theatre C
  • Format: Seminar