Event

System Seminar: Remote Health Monitoring Using Online Social Media Systems, on 16 April, by Chonlatee Khorakhun

Abstract:

Remote monitoring is considered an essential part of future eHealth systems to enable the delivery of healthcare outside clinical sites at reduced cost, while improving quality of patient care. We examine the use of online social networks for re- mote health monitoring. By exploiting the existing infrastructure, initial costs can be reduced and fast application development is possible. Facebook is used as an example platform: as a platform allowing user-defined applications, development is flexible and can be arranged quickly to suit different requirements of patients and health professionals. We analyse the general requirements of a remote monitoring scenario and the process of building and using a Facebook application to meet these requirements. Four different access viewpoints are implemented to suit the requirements of each user in our example scenario to form a carer network: the patient, the doctor in charge, professional carers, and family members of the patient. The suitability of the application is analysed including security and privacy issues. We conclude that online social media systems could offer a suitable platform for developing certain types of remote monitoring capability.

Bio:

Chonlatee Khorakhun is a second year PhD student, supervised by Prof. Saleem Bhatti. Before coming to St. Andrews, Chonlatee had completed an M.Sc. in Information and Communication Systems at University of Technology Hamburg-Harburg and worked in industry in Germany.

Event details

  • When: 16th April 2013 13:00 - 14:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar

System Seminar: Decentralised Orchestration of Service-oriented Workflows, on 16 April, by Ward Jaradat, University of St Andrews

Abstract:

Centralised orchestration of service-oriented workflows presents significant scalability challenges, these include: the consumption of network bandwidth, degradation of performance, and single points of failure. These challenges are particularly prominent when dealing with highly distributed data-intensive workflows, which involve large quantities of intermediate data that need to be routed through a centralised engine. In this talk we present a dataflow specification language and a distributed architecture that attempt to address these scalability challenges. Our language provides simple abstractions for orchestrating large-scale web service workflows and separates between the workflow logic and its execution. It is based on a data-driven execution model that permits parallelism to improve the workflow performance. Unlike classical approaches of distributed computing, our architecture allows the computation to be moved “closer” to services in the workflow; this is achieved by partitioning the workflow specification into smaller fragments which may be sent to remote locations for execution.

Bio:

Ward is a research student supervised by Dr. Adam Barker and Prof. Alan Dearle. He completed an M.Sc. in Software Engineering at the University of St Andrews. His research interests span the areas of software engineering, distributed computing, and service-oriented architecture, with a focus on building practical solutions for improving the scalability and performance of software systems.

Event details

  • When: 16th April 2013 13:00 - 14:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar

Talk by Susmit Sarkar

Title: “Shared-Memory Concurrency in the Real World: Working with Relaxed Memory Consistency”

Abstract:

Shared-memory concurrency is now mainstream, from phones to servers. However, real-world implementations do not validate the basic assumption of Sequential Consistency traditionally made in work on concurrent programming and verification. Instead, we get subtle relaxed consistency models. Furthermore, the consistency models of different hardware architectures vary widely and have often been poorly defined, while programming language models (aiming to abstract from hardware details) are different again.

This talk is about what relaxed consistency models we actually get on current mainstream systems: the x86 multiprocessor architecture, the IBM Power and ARM lines of multiprocessors, and in the new concurrency model in ISO C/C++11. Part of the challenge here is that neither hardware microarchitects nor low-level programmers (for operating systems or compilers) know exactly what you get, or what you should get. I will discuss the models that are getting some agreement/acceptance, and how we can use those models.

Event details

  • When: 4th April 2013 12:00 - 13:00
  • Where: Cole 1.04
  • Format: Talk

School Seminar: Neil Moore

Neil Moore obtained his PhD in Computer Science at St Andrews a couple of years ago, and is now working for Abobe.

He’ll be giving a technical talk, and describing internship opportunities at Adobe.

Title: Mutualism in software development

Abstract:
Computers are designed to be extensible at different levels: hardware can run different operating systems and operating systems are designed to expose functionality to allow third parties to write applications. It is easy to overlook extensibility at the level of application software: functionality can be added to or extracted from existing applications by third parties with no access to the source. For example: plugins, scripting environments, APIs, web services, etc.

I will talk about ways that this can benefit both the application publisher as well as third parties. I will also give practical information and examples of how this can be achieved based on my experience in working in this area for Adobe, who are heavily invested in extensibility in their products.

Event details

  • When: 1st April 2013 15:00 - 16:00
  • Where: Phys Theatre C
  • Series: CS Colloquia Series
  • Format: Seminar

Talk by Dr Jost Berthold Thursday 14th March

Thursday 14th March, the regular meeting of the Functional Programming group will give the floor to our guest Dr. Jost Berthold for a public talk called “High-Level Parallel Computing in Finance — Haskell Case Studies within HIPERFIT –” .

The presentation will take place from 12.00 to 13.00, in the Jack Cole building, room 1.04 (upstairs), and everyone is welcome.

If you intend to come to the talk, it would be helpful (but is not essential) to drop me (fs39) a one-line email beforehand, to be sure that the reserved room has a suitable size.

Abstract: Continue reading

Event details

  • When: 14th March 2013 12:00 - 13:00
  • Where: Cole Bldg
  • Format: Seminar, Talk

System Seminar: Stochastic Methodologies for Autonomously Evaluating Systems State, on 12th March, by Chris Schneider, University of St Andrews

Abstract:

Rising complexity in systems management remains an open problem. As complexity increases, so do the costs associated with operating large-scale computing environments.

One approach for addressing these issues is to build self-healing systems that can autonomously detect and recover from faults. Such approaches combine machine learning with closed control loops to reduce the number of situations requiring human involvement. By reducing the need for human interaction, operational costs are reduced and systems complexity is reduced.

This talk will provide an overview of current self-healing systems methodologies (i.e., frameworks) and briefly discuss an unsupervised methodology for detecting systems faults.

Bio:

Chris Schneider is a second year Ph.D. student under Prof. Simon Dobson and Dr. Adam Barker. Before attending the University of St Andrews he completed an M.Sc. in Security Informatics at The Johns Hopkins University, and worked in industry as a Security Technologist.

Event details

  • When: 12th March 2013 13:00 - 14:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar

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

System Seminar: A Framework for Maintaining Artefact Consistency During Software Development, by Ildiko Pete, University of St Andrews

Abstract:

Software systems are subject to evolution: they may be in a state of change at any given time during their existence until they are phased out. A system is typically associated with a variety of artefacts, which are products of the various activities involved in its development.

In practice, software artefacts evolve at different paces. Modifications applied to one artefact may not necessarily get reflected in another related artefact. This differential evolution of software artefacts may result in inconsistency among artefacts, eventually leading to problems with maintenance and software aging. Therefore, the management of software evolution must also cater for artefact consistency. Although incremental practices provide a more flexible solution for handling changes during software development, they do not explicitly address artefact consistency.

This talk will provide an overview and evaluation of the state of the art in managing consistency of software artefacts during software evolution. It will also propose new research directions to solve outstanding problems in the area.

Bio:

Ildiko started her PhD with Dr Dharini Balasubramaniam at the end of October last year. Before coming to St Andrews, Ildiko obtained an MSc degree in Applied Computing at the University of Dundee and had briefly worked in industry in both Scotland and Hungary.

Event details

  • When: 26th February 2013 13:00 - 14:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar