ACL 2021 Test of Time Award

Dr. Jean Carletta has been awarded the 2021 Association for Computational Linguistics 25-year Test-of-Time paper award for Assessing Agreement on Classification Tasks: The Kappa Statistic, Computational Linguistics 22 (1), 1996. In this paper she intervened to correct a common but misleading statistical practice. As a result, her field began to require assessments of how variability in subjective analyses could bias the claims made for their results. Although her work was based on existing content analysis best practice in the humanities, the clarity of her expression led to the paper being used widely in teaching research methods to medical students as far afield as Beijing.
Jean is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Computer Science. She is engaged in a wide portfolio of work that takes a systems level approach to improving the impact Scotland’s academic community has on national cyber security and resilience.

https://www.aclweb.org/portal/content/announcement-2021-acl-test-time-paper-award-0

Students perform in G&S’s Princess Ida

Peter Cushley (MSci) brilliantly sang the part of Hilarion in the Gilbert & Sullivan Society’s Princess Ida performance at the Byre on the 20th and 21st April.

Two other Computer Scientists were in the cast; Joanna Moreland and Simon Cadge, both in 2nd year.

The performances were well received with great applause. Some of the cast will be singing in HMS Pinafore at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August.

MacMillan Coffee Morning

The yearly World’s Biggest Coffee Morning for MacMillan cancer support is on Friday 30th September.

Staff and students are invited to donate cakes, biscuits or home produce for sale on Friday morning from 10.45am in the JCB coffee area. Everyone is invited to bake, cook or donate either national delicacies or just something you want to share. In previous years we have also had home made jam and home grown fruit and vegetables for sale. For some recipe ideas see http://coffee.macmillan.org.uk/ideas/baking-recipes/

Donations for a raffle are also welcome (to Ishbel or the School Office).

The MacMillan coffee morning raises money for nurses and counsellors to support cancer patients and their families. At home or hospice terminal and support care nursing costs £28 per hour and a counsellor costs £15 per hour.

Event details

  • When: 30th September 2016 10:45 - 16:30
  • Where: Cole Coffee Area

Seminar: A Changing Landscape: Securing The Internet Of Things (IoT)

Professor Sanjay Jha, Director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Laboratory (Cyspri) at UNSW.

The first part of this talk will discuss how the community is converging towards the IoT vision having worked in wireless sensor networking and Machine-2-Machine (M2M) communication. This will follow a general discussion of security challenges in IoT.

Finally I will discuss some results from an ongoing projects on security of bodywork devices and IoT. Wireless bodyworn sensing devices are becoming popular for fitness, sports training and personalized healthcare applications. Securing the data generated by these devices is essential if they are to be integrated into the current health infrastructure and employed in medical applications. In this talk, I will discuss a mechanism to secure data provenance and location proof for these devices by exploiting symmetric spatio-temporal characteristics of the wireless link between two communicating parties. Our solution enables both parties to generate closely matching `link’ fingerprints, which uniquely associate a data session with a wireless link such that a third party, at a later date, can verify the links the data was communicated on. These fingerprints are very hard for an eavesdropper to forge, lightweight compared to traditional provenance mechanisms, and allow for interesting security properties such as accountability and non-repudiation. I will present our solution with experiments using bodyworn devices in scenarios approximating actual device deployment. I will also touch upon other research on secure reprogramming of IoT devices over wireless networks.

Event details

  • When: 8th September 2016 12:30 - 13:30
  • Where: Honey 103 - GFB
  • Format: Seminar

The scientific life of Ada Lovelace

Prof. Ursula Martin will be talking about the letters of Lady Ada Lovelace at 5.30pm on Thursday 17th December in Abertay University (Kydd Building, Bell St, Dundee, behind Dundee High School).

This is a BCS sponsored event and all are welcome. Teas/Coffees from 4.30pm. PhD research posters will also be on display.

Event details

  • When: 17th December 2015 16:30 - 18:30
  • Format: Talk

DVF: Professor David Kaufman

Professor David Kaufman of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver will be visiting the School between May 7th and May 21st.
Prof. Kaufman is a world leading expert on Computer Supported Education, Educational Technologies and Digital StoryTelling.
See: http://www.sfu.ca/education/faculty-profiles/dkaufman.html

He will be hosted by Ishbel and working with the Virtual Worlds research group. Prof. Kaufman will be giving several talks and workshops across Scotland.

The schedule is:
1.In Stirling on Tuesday 12th at 11am in 4B108 Cottrell Building, Prof. Kaufman will be talking about Digital Games and Simulations in HE

2. On Thursday 14th at 11am at GCU, in the George Moore Building, M625, 11am he will also be talking about Digital Games and Simulations in HE

3. On Monday 18th in Abertay, at 11am in rm 2521, he will discuss Ageing Well : Can Digital games help older adults.

4. He will be in Edinburgh on May 15th if anyone wishes to meet up with him that day.

UG short internships

Short term Virtual Worlds internships are available for students wishing to work with Alan Miller on virtual museums or with Ishbel Duncan, Janie Brooks (ELT) and Paula Miles (Psychology) on the Virtual St Andrews project.
Each project has 60 hours notational funding attached (£50 per 6 hours).
Please contact Alan or Ishbel in the first instance.