Author: lisa

End of Semester Round up

We have reached the end of semester 2 and so many events, activities and accomplishments have taken place, it’s worth reflecting on all the hard work and enthusiasm demonstrated by our talented students.

As stated previously the School is rated highly for student satisfaction, which echoes the continued strong student staff community cultivated by all.

The events and locations pictured below help to highlight why studying Computer Science at St Andrews is such an amazing experience.

Clockwise from top left: Senior Honours demonstrate their final year projects. Junior Honours attempt world domination. PhD students present their posters.

Clockwise from top left: Senior Honours demonstrate their final year projects. Junior Honours attempt world domination. PhD students present their posters.

Computer Science students organise a hugely successful StacsHack.

Computer Science students organise a hugely successful StacsHack.

A bumper crop of PhD students advance towards graduation.

A bumper crop of PhD students advance towards graduation.

The CompSci garden continues to flourish with a little help from the Transitions team.

The CompSci garden continues to flourish with a little help from the Transitions team.

Clockwise from top left: The May Dip, Torchlit procession, Christmas ceilidh, stunning St Andrews.

Clockwise from top left: The May Dip, Torchlit procession, Christmas ceilidh and stunning St Andrews.

Computer Science Distinguished Lecture Series. Prof. Mothy Roscoe pictured at the Byre Theatre and Prof. Luca Cardelli pictured in Lower College Hall.

Computer Science Distinguished Lecture Series: Prof. Mothy Roscoe pictured at the Byre Theatre and Prof. Luca Cardelli pictured in Lower College Hall.

Images courtesy of Lisa Dow, Xu Zhu, Fearn Bishop, Saleem Bhatti and Simone Conte,

Graham Kirby: Excellence in Teaching Award

We congratulate our Director of Teaching Dr Graham Kirby on being rewarded for championing ‘learning by doing’ at The University Teaching Awards held in Parliament Hall.

The School is rated highly for student satisfaction, which echoes the great teaching and strong student staff community sustained here in Computer Science. Graham is pictured below participating in some recent School activities.

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Images courtesy of me (apologies in advance).

€4.2M ParaPhrase Project Concludes

The impressive ParaPhrase project which commenced in October 2011, brought together a world-leading team of academic and industrial experts to improve the programmability and performance of modern parallel computing technologies. The consortium consisted of 7 academic and 3 industrial partners from 6 countries and was coordinated by Prof. Kevin Hammond here in the School of Computer Science .

The project has produced over 80 publications in leading international conferences and journals and has been demonstrated at over 100 international conferences and other events, as well as producing a range of new software tools and programming standards.

Prof Hammond described ParaPhrase as a tremendous success but highlighted that significant challenges remain. In the future, parallel programs will need to self-adapt to computing architectures we haven’t even thought of yet.

Read the full article in the University news.

April in Computer Science: Poster Presentations and World Domination

The Senior Honours students presented their posters and final year software artifacts to staff and students last week. The best poster accolade and associated amazon voucher was presented to Callum Hyland for his poster – Android: Smoking Cessation, behavioural pattern prediction through spatial and temporal modelling. We wish them well with exam revision and look forward to seeing them at June graduation.

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The Junior Honours students finalised their team projects last Friday and competed for world domination. This year the project involved implementing a multi-player peer-to-peer world domination game, with AI. We await news of which team dominated the CS world for a time on Friday.

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Images courtesy of Lisa Dow and Simone Conte

Computer Science Distinguished Lectures 2015

Earlier this month Prof. Mothy Roscoe from ETH Zürich delivered the first set of distinguished lectures for 2015 in the Byre Theatre. The three highly accessible, well attended and engaging lectures centred around the question “What’s happening to computer hardware, and what does it mean for systems software?”

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Images courtesy of Saleem Bhatti

Mario Kart Around the World

The School recently hosted “Mario Kart Around the World” for students from Newport Primary.

All versions of Mario Kart with the exception of arcade versions were available for the youngsters to play. Our visitors had access to a range of consoles and games ranging from Vectrex to Leap Motion and a great opportunity to see modern equipment and how it looked in the “olden days“.

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Staff were pictured testing out the equipment ( by way of playing Mario Kart) post event. Peter Nightingale (top left) is pictured playing the Vectrex Home Arcade System. Jon Lewis (bottom left) was seen tackling Elite on the Sinclair Spectrum.

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The successful event was organised by Ruth Letham with help from Ian Gent, Jon Lewis, Peter Nightingale, Chris Jefferson, Ian Miguel, Gonzalo Mendez and Shyam Reyal.

Images Courtesy of Ian Miguel and Ian Gent.