The University of St Andrews and Primorska are soon to agree to award a joint degree with the title of Doctor of Philosophy (on condition that the joint PhD study programme in Computer Science will gain accreditation of the Slovenian Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education). This represents the culmination of many months of effort from Drs Matjaž Kljun, Klen Čopič Pucihar and Professor Aaron Quigley. Aaron and Matjaž first met at the UMAP conference in 2011 in Spain as mentor and mentee in the PhD doctoral program. Since then, Matjaž and Klen who undertook their PhDs in the University of Lancaster have returned to Slovenia to establish and exciting program of HCI research and development in the HICUP lab. In 2017 a program of international support (Slovenian/English) allowed them to invite Aaron to Slovenia for three weeks and this has resulted in a number of join grant submissions and the establishment of this co-tutelle program. We look forward to many years collaborating and we look forward to this new PhD student starting later this year.
Author: jh100
VISSOFT 2018 Keynote by Professor Aaron Quigley
Aaron will be a keynote speaker at the IEEE VISSOFT 2018 conference later this year. “The sixth IEEE Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT 2018) builds upon the success of the previous four editions of VISSOFT, which in turn followed after six editions of the IEEE International Workshop on Visualizing Software for Understanding and Analysis (VISSOFT) and five editions of the ACM Symposium on Software Visualization (SOFTVIS). Software visualization is a broad research area encompassing concepts, methods, tools, and techniques that assist in a range of software engineering and software development activities. Covered aspects include the development and evaluation of approaches for visually analyzing software and software systems, including their structure, execution behaviour, and evolution.”
Mensch-und-Computer 2019 Keynote by Professor Aaron Quigley
Professor Aaron Quigley will be a keynote speaker at the Mensch-und-Computer conference 2019 in Hamburg Germany in September of 2019. This series of symposia takes place each year in different German-speaking countries. This is one of the largest HCI conferences in Europe each year with over 700 delegates from industry and academia. Usability Professionals and Scientists come together in a multi-track program with long papers, short contributions, demos, tutorials and workshops. Submissions are possible in German and English.
Semantics for probabilistic programming – Dr Chris Heunen
Statistical models in e.g. machine learning are traditionally expressed in some sort of flow charts. Writing sophisticated models succinctly is much easier in a fully fledged programming language. The programmer can then rely on generic inference algorithms instead of having to craft one for each model. Several such higher-order functional probabilistic programming languages exist, but their semantics, and hence correctness, are not clear. The problem is that the standard semantics of probability theory, given by measurable spaces, does not support function types. I will describe how to get around this.
Event details
- When: 6th October 2017 12:00
- Where: Cole 1.33b
Visualizing and writing variable-free compositional relational programs
Abstract:
Representing argument binding in compositional relational programs is an issue due to the syntactic problems. We first present our former research on using visualization to overcome this problem, and relevant user studies, and go on to discuss our recent work on syntactic improvements in solving the same problem. We are looking forward to feedback on this early stage research.
Bio:
Gorkem studied his masters degree in Abertay Dundee in Computer Games Technology, delivering a thesis on Optimizing collision detection in games. After working in games for a while, he started studying towards a doctorate degree in Uppsala University, Sweden. His study focuses on the representation of relational programming languages.
Event details
- When: 20th May 2015 14:00 - 15:00
- Where: Cole 1.33a
- Format: Seminar
Administrative Data Research Centre – Scotland, St Andrews team
The Scottish ADRC is led by Chris Dibben at the University of Edinburgh, and is supported by the Economic and Social Research Council. The ADRC – Scotland:
- Brings together major Scottish centres of research, and builds on predecessor organisation structures, involving secondary analysis of public-sector data in order to create a common framework for research based on an integrated data linkage service These groups, funded by research councils, charities and Government, include the Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS), Administrative Data Liaison Service (ADLS), the UK Census and Administrative data LongitudinaL hub (CALLS), Applied Quantitative Methods Network (AQMeN), Scottish Health Informatics Centre (SHIP) and eHealth Research Centre (eHIRC), the national digital data centre (EDINA), Centre for Research on Environment Society and Health (CRESH) and the Centre for Cognitive Ageing & Cognitive Epidemiology.
- Involves world leading experts in the theory, methods and policy of record linkage for secondary uses, including public engagement, ethics, information governance and law; linkage and analysis of large datasets; geocoding, natural language processing and machine learning. This includes experts from a range of sectors from which administrative data is derived including housing, transport, income, labour markets, health, crime and criminal justice, education, social services.
- Builds on existing services – enabling immediate access to state-of-the-art facilities for research access to de-identified administrative data by accredited researchers.
- Co-locates with the Scotland hub of national health informatics research endeavour, which has already brought together key infrastructures, technologists and research groups, enabling synergies and collaborations that will ensure rapid progress towards a national informatics centre of world importance.
- Exploits Scotland’s unique holding of linked, machine readable, historical administrative data, including the 1932 and 1947 Scottish Mental Surveys, civil registration data (1855-present), Aberdeen Children of the Nineteen Fifties (ACONF), and others, to make available powerful administrative data based cohort and longitudinal studies.
- Aims to support National Records of Scotland (NRS) in their work exploring alternatives to the traditional decennial based census.
- Will have a significant programme of public engagement – including working with citizens to produce statistics of use and relevance to them, and press engagement to ensure that accurate messages are reported.
- The ADRC research programme will inform the entire UK Administrative Data Research Network and produce research – both specific to administrative data use and more broadly social science – world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour.
The St Andrews team will lead research in data linkage methodology, and are currently investigating the potential to use prefabricated secure rooms within the premises of institutions where researchers require secure access to sensitive data.
The St Andrews team involves:
- Graham Kirby, Alan Dearle – researchers
- Darren Lightfoot – project manager
- 2-year research fellow to be appointed summer 2015
The data linkage methodology research programme also includes Alasdair Gray at Heriot-Watt and Peter Christen at Australian National University.