Author: valia

SACHI Conference: Changing Perspectives at CHI 2013

CHI is the premier international conference on human computer interaction, and this year’s event is looking to be the most exciting yet for the St Andrews Computer Human Interaction (SACHI) research group in the School of Computer Science.

Seven members of SACHI will attend CHI in Paris this April to present three full papers, one note, one work in progress paper and five workshop papers. In addition members of SACHI are involved in organising two workshops and one special interest group meeting. Two academics in SACHI are Associate Chairs for respective sub-committees and two PhD students will be serving as student volunteers at the 2013 conference. A very busy time for all!

For more complete details on these papers, notes etc. please see http://sachi.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/2013/02/sachi-changing-perspectives-at-chi-2013/

Please note that the school of Computer Sciience is going to be introducing a new Masters in HCI from September this year.

Event details

  • When: 27th April 2013 - 2nd May 2013
  • Format: Conference

DLS: Formal Modelling and Analysis of Deployed Systems by Prof Muffy Calder

Title
Formal Modelling and Analysis of Deployed Systems

Professor Steve Linton and Dr Adam Barker with Professor Muffy Calder.

Professor Steve Linton and Dr Adam Barker with Professor Muffy Calder.

Abstract
Formal methods are traditionally used for specification and implementation in a waterfall model. In contrast, I am interested in formal models of concurrent, interactive systems that may/may not be in software, and   may already be deployed, i.e. they are systems to be observed.  Can formal models and reasoning expose how a system actually works?  Can formal models and reasoning suggest improvements based on how a system is actually used?

In these talks I will investigate these questions through case studies, from biochemical signalling pathways, to wireless home networks and (shock horror) mobile app games.

Biography
I have been at the Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow since January 1988. Until 2012 I was Dean of Research in the College of Science and Engineering and Senate Assessor on Court and before that I was Head of Department of Computing Science for four years, from 2003 to 2007. I currently work for the Scottish Government 60% of the time, as the Chief Scientific Adviser. Continue reading

Event details

  • When: 8th April 2013 10:30 - 16:30
  • Where: St Andrews
  • Series: Distinguished Lectures Series

School Seminar: Programs that Write Programs – Is that Interesting?- by Prof Ron Morrison, …with many ideas from…

This seminar is suitable for CS3053-RPIC

A talk by Prof Ron Morrison …with many ideas from:

Dharini Balasubramaniam, Graham Kirby, Kath Mickan – University of St Andrews, Brian Warboys, R. Mark Greenwood, Ian Robertson, Bob Snowdon – University of Manchester and technologies developed by some of the above and Alfred Brown, Al Dearle, Richard Connor, Quintin Cutts, David Munro and Stuart Norcross – University of St Andrews.

Continue reading

Event details

  • When: 25th February 2013 15:00 - 16:00
  • Where: Phys Theatre C
  • Series: CS Colloquia Series
  • Format: Colloquium

School Seminar: HCI in Health Care by Jill Freyne -ICT Centre,CSIRO

 Abstract
Obesity, poor diet and lifestyle and the associated health care costs are set to cripple the governmental budgets of most Western countries over the coming decades. The facts of the equation are simple. Energy intake must exceed energy output for weight loss, and living within a healthy weight range has a host of benefits. Most communities understand and acknowledge the facts, but despite their understanding continue to live lifestyles that endanger them in the long term. In this talk Jill Freyne will walk us through two case studies for online and mobile dietary interventions and examine the power and weaknesses of the technology in the fight to engage and sustain individuals in lifestyle change.

Event details

  • When: 3rd May 2013 15:00 - 16:00
  • Where: Phys Theatre C
  • Series: CS Colloquia Series
  • Format: Colloquium, Seminar

A new Interaction Paradigm for Distributed User Interfaces by Prof. Dr. Harald Reiterer, University of Konstanz

This seminar is suitable for CS3053-RPIC

Abstract:

Distributed User Interfaces (DUIs) are typically used in ‘Interactive spaces’ which are physical environments or rooms for collaborative work that are augmented with ubiquitous computing technology. Their purpose is to enable a computer-supported collaboration between multiple users that is based on a seamless use of different devices for natural ‘post-WIMP’ interaction, e.g., multi-touch walls, interactive tabletops, tablet PCs or digital pen & paper. However, to this day, there are still no well-established guidelines or toolkits for designing and implementing such distributed user interfaces (DUIs). Therefore the talk will introduce the Zoomable Object-Oriented Information Landscape (ZOIL), a novel design & interaction paradigm and software framework for post-WIMP DUIs in interactive spaces. Continue reading

Event details

  • When: 11th March 2013 15:00 - 16:00
  • Where: Phys Theatre C
  • Series: CS Colloquia Series
  • Format: Colloquium, Seminar

Interdependence and Predictability of Human Mobility and Social Interactions by Mirco Musolesi University of Birmingham

Abstract: The study of the interdependence of human movement and social ties of individuals is one of the most interesting research areas in computational social science. Previous studies have shown that human movement is predictable to a certain extent at different geographic scales. One of the open problems is how to improve the prediction exploiting additional available information. In particular, one of the key questions is how to characterise and exploit the correlation between movements of friends and acquaintances to increase the accuracy of the forecasting algorithms. Continue reading

Event details

  • When: 15th April 2013 15:00 - 16:00
  • Where: Phys Theatre C
  • Series: CS Colloquia Series
  • Format: Colloquium, Seminar

Towards reliable and responsible social network research by Tristan Henderson – University of St Andrews

This seminar is suitable for CS3053-RPIC

Abstract
Social network sites (SNSs) such as Facebook and Twitter are used by hundreds of millions of people daily. As such they represent an attractive source of data for research. Many researchers have crawled these SNSs to collect data for projects involving psychology, sociology, health, and of course computer science. But there are many risks to naively crawling an SNS, ranging from data protection and privacy concerns to the reliability of the collected data.

Continue reading

Event details

  • When: 11th February 2013 15:00 - 16:00
  • Where: Phys Theatre C
  • Series: CS Colloquia Series
  • Format: Colloquium, Seminar

CANCELLED Unikernels: Functional Library Operating Systems for the Cloud by Anil Madhavapeddy, University of Cambridge

(followed by tea/coffee and then informal gatherings at local venues)

ROOM: TBA

ABSTRACT
Public compute clouds provide a flexible platform to host applications
as a set of appliances, e.g., web servers or databases. Each appliance
usually contains an OS kernel and userspace processes, within which
applications access resources via APIs such as POSIX.  The flexible
architecture of the cloud comes at a cost: the addition of another
layer in the already complex software stack. This reduces performance and
increases the size of the trusted computing base. Continue reading

Event details

  • When: 19th February 2013 14:30 - 15:30
  • Format: Seminar