Event

Doing Research in the Wild – Paul Marshall, UCL

Abstract: There has been
significant growth in interest in ‘research in the wild’ as an approach to
developing and understanding novel technologies in real world contexts.
However, the concept remains underdeveloped and it is unclear how it differs
from previous technology deployments and in situ studies. In this talk, I will
attempt an initial characterisation of research in the wild. I will discuss
some of the benefits of studying novel technologies in situ as well as some of
the challenges inherent in encouraging and studying sustained use.

Bio: Paul Marshall is a lecturer in interaction design in the UCL
Interaction Centre. His research interests focus on understanding how
ubiquitous computing technologies are used in everyday contexts such as the
home, in education or in public spaces. Prior to joining UCL he worked as a
post doc at the University of Warwick (2010-11) researching participatory
design approaches in healthcare and at the Open University (2006-10) where he
ran ethnographic and laboratory studies of shareable interfaces and sensory
extension devices. He completed a PhD project on learning with tangible
interfaces as part of the Equator project at the University of Sussex, and
prior to that a BSc (Hons) in psychology at the University of Edinburgh.

Event details

  • When: 1st April 2014 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Maths Theatre B
  • Series: School Seminar Series

St Andrews Programming Competition 2014

IMG_6817

The St Andrews Programming Competition 2014 is a friendly programming contest organised by the School of Computer Science for students belonging to all levels, coming from any background with any amount of programming experience. Team up with up to 3 members per team, compete for 3 hours by solving a set of programming problems using your favourite programming language and win £200 worth of prizes.

Generally, programming competitions are aimed at the best programmers, this is a first-of-its-kind competition where students from all levels with any amount of programming experience stand a chance to win a prize. Another unique aspect of this competition is that it has also open to members of staff from the School of Computer Science, making this a fun experience and a bonding opportunity for staff and students.

Students can use this opportunity gain valuable exposure to solving quick algorithmic programming questions – of the style that may come up in job interviews, where candidates are required to solve problems on the fly while being observed. Such interview practices are common among many companies nowadays including Google.

For more details and registration visit: http://goo.gl/I78Hyf
Facebook: www.facebook.com/stapc14
Twitter: @stapc14

If you have any questions, please email Shyam on smr20@st-andrews.ac.uk

The event, prizes and refreshments will be sponsored by AetherStore.

AetherStore_square color logo jpg

Event details

  • When: 7th April 2014 14:00 - 17:00
  • Where: Cole 0.35 - Subhons Lab

PhD Admissions Session, Thursday 13 March 2pm

There will be a short session for students (either 4th year or Masters) interested in applying for a PhD in the School of Computer Science.

The deadline for the University’s funded 7th Century scholarships is March 31, so this is a good time to be thinking about it if you are interested and have not already applied.

The session will consist of a short talk and time for Q&A with John Thomson and Ian Gent, who handle PhD admissions in the School.

It will be in Jack Cole 1.33a, from 2pm to 2.30pm on Thursday 13 March 2014

Event details

  • When: 13th March 2014 14:00 - 14:30
  • Where: Cole 1.33a

Internet-of-Things (IoT) Technologies for Integrated Smart Cities Applications by Prof John Soldatos

Title: Internet-of-Things (IoT) Technologies for Integrated Smart Cities Applications

Abstract: The aim of this talk is to illustrate the use of Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies as building blocks of smart city applications. As a first step the talk will present the pertinence of IoT and smart cities and accordingly it will introduce a range of smart city challenges that could be remedied based on recent advances in IoT technologies. Specifically, we will present how IoT/cloud convergence and IoT semantic interoperability can be used to facilitate the integration of existing silo developments in smart city developments, while at the same time providing new opportunities for innovative applications. The talk will also include the presentation of three practical smart city applications that make use of IoT technologies, notably applications in the areas of smart security, live news and urban planning. These applications are developed in the scope of (on-going) FP7 projects PROACTIVE (FP7-285320), SMART (FP7-287583) and VITAL (FP7- 608682-VITAL) and deployment in European cities (Santander (Spain), Camden/London (UK), Istanbul (Turkey)).

Short bio:
John Soldatos is an Associate Professor at the Athens Information Technology, whose current research interests span the areas of internet-of-things, cloud computing and their (IoT/cloud) convergence in the scope of smart city applications. He holds a BSc. Degree (1996) and a PhD degree (2000) both from the National University of Athens, Greece, and since 1995 he has had very active involvement in more than fifteen (EC co-funded) research projects in the areas of broadband networks, pervasive/cloud computing, and the internet-of-things. He is also the initiator and co-founder of open source projects AspireRFID (http://wiki.aspire.ow2.org) and OpenIoT (https://github.com/OpenIotOrg/openiot). As a result of his research activities, he has published more than 140 papers in international journals and conferences. He has also been an Adjunct Professor at the Information Networking Institute of the Carnegie Mellon University (2007-2010) and a Honorary Research Fellow of the School of Computing of University of Glasgow (March 2014 – May 2015).

Event details

  • When: 2nd April 2014 13:00 - 14:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33b
  • Format: Seminar

Cigna: Technology enabling Health & Well being provision across the Globe

Cigna – a global health services company is dedicated to helping those we serve to improve their health and well being. Cigna provides globally connected healthcare services with access to a global network of clinical providers through leveraging the use of pioneering and innovative technology. Find out how you can get engaged and join the team driving innovation in Healthcare!

Maths Lecture Theatre B
Time: 14:00 to 15:00
Date: Tuesday 4th March

Event details

  • When: 4th March 2014 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Maths Theatre B
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Seminar

Data Matching Research at the Australian National University

Seminar by Peter Christen, Australian National University

Techniques for matching, linking, and integrating data from different sources are becoming increasingly important in many application areas, including health, census, taxation, immigration, social welfare, in crime and fraud detection, in the assembly of national security intelligence, for businesses and in bibliometrics, as well as in the social sciences.

Today, data matching (also known as entity resolution, duplicate detection, and data or record linkage) not only faces computational challenges due to the increasing size of data collections and their complexity, but also operational challenges as many applications move from static environments into real-time processing and analysis of potentially large and fast data streams, where real-time matching of records is required. Finally, with the growing concerns by the public of the use of their data, privacy and confidentiality often need to be considered when personal information is being linked and shared between organisations.

In this talk I will present a short introduction to data matching, describe these above discussed challenges, and provide an overview of three areas of research currently conducted in data matching at the Australian National University:

  1. Scalable real-time entity resolution on dynamic databases
  2. Scalable privacy-preserving record linkage techniques
  3. Efficient matching of historical census data across time

 

Event details

  • When: 12th February 2014 13:00 - 14:00
  • Where: Honey 103 - GFB
  • Format: Seminar

Live stream from the Informatics Forum by Kevin Dorren, CEO of Diet Chef


The iV Tuesday Speaker Series features a new programme of talks given by prominent members of the business community. The programme seeks to inspire and motivate those who wish to develop their careers in different directions or have entrepreneurial ambitions.

Event details

  • When: 25th March 2014 18:00 - 19:30
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: iVTues Speaker Series

At the Edge by Alan Dix, University of Birmingham

Abstract:
From buying plane tickets to eGovernment, participation in consumer and civic society is predicated on continuous connectivity and copious computation . And yet for many at the edges of society, the elderly, the poor, the disabled, and those in rural areas, poor access to digital technology makes them more marginalised, potentially cut off from modern citizenship. I spent three and half months last summer walking over a thousand miles around the margins of Wales in order to experience more directly some of the issues facing those on the physical edges of a modern nation, who are often also at the social and economic margins. I will talk about some of the theoretical and practical issues raised; how designing software with constrained resources is more challenging but potentially more rewarding than assuming everyone lives with Silicon Valley levels of connectivity.

Bio:
Alan is Professor of Computing at University of Birmingham and Senior Researcher at Talis based in Birmingham, but, when not in Birmingham, or elsewhere lives in Tiree a remote island of the west coast of Scotland.

Alan’s career has included mathematical modelling for agricultural crop sprayers, COBOL programming, submarine design and intelligent lighting. However, he is best known for his work in Human Computer Interaction over three decades including his well known HCI textbook and some of the earliest work in formal methods, mobile interaction, and privacy in HCI. He has worked in posts across the university sector as well as a period as founder director of two dotcom companies, aQtive (1998) and vfridge (2000), which, between them, attracted £850,000 of venture capital funding. He currently works part-time for the University of Birmingham and is on the REF Panel for Computer Science. He also works part-time for Talis, which, inter alia, provides the reading list software used at St Andrews.

His interests and research methods remain, as ever, eclectic, from formal methods, to technical creativity and the modelling of regret. At present he is completing a book, TouchIT, about physicality in design, working with musicologists on next generation digital archives, envisioning how learning analytics can inform and maybe transform university teaching, and working in various projects connected with communication and energy use on Tiree and rural communities.

Last year he completed a walk around Wales as an exploration into technical issues ‘at the edge’, the topic of his seminar.

Event details

  • When: 6th May 2014 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Maths Theatre B
  • Format: Seminar

Highly Deformable Mobile Devices & Future Mobile Phones by Johannes Schöning, Hasselt University

Speaker: Johannes Schöning, Hasselt University
Date/Time: 2-3pm April 8th, 2014
Location: Maths Lecture Theatre B, University of St Andrews

Title: Highly Deformable Mobile Devices & Future Mobile Phones

Abstract:
In the talk I will present the concept of highly deformable mobile devices that can be transformed into various special-purpose controls in order to bring physical controls to mobile devices (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLe52PFZrtc). I will present different interaction techniques enabled by this concept and present results from an in-depth study. Our findings show that these physical controls provide several benefits over traditional touch interaction techniques commonly used on mobile devices. In addition we will give insights on a large-scale study that logged detailed application usage information from over 4,100 users of Android-powered mobile devices.

Bio:
Johannes Schöning is a professor of computer science with a focus on HCI at Hasselt University, working within the Expertise centre for Digital Media (EDM) – the ICT research Institute of Hasselt University. In addition, he is a visiting lecturer at UCL London within the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Cities.

His research interests are new methods and novel mobile interfaces to navigate through spatial information. In general, he develops, designs and tests user interfaces that help people to solve daily tasks more enjoyable and/ or effectively. This includes the development of mobile augmented reality applications, interactive surfaces and tabletops and other “post desktop” interfaces. His research and work was awarded with several prices and awards, such as the ACM Eugene Lawler Award or the Vodafone Research Award for his PhD.  In addition, Johannes serve as a junior fellow of “Gesellschaft für Informatik”.

This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

Event details

  • When: 8th April 2014 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Maths Theatre B
  • Format: Seminar