Event

School Seminar by Eoin Woods

The Role of the Software Architect in Industry

Eoin Woods is a professional software architect and amateur software architecture researcher, having spent over 20 years in software engineering practice and contributed a number of papers and a co-authored book to the research literature on software architecture. In this talk, he will discuss how the two worlds relate to each other, the context for software architecture provided by enterprise software development and what software architects actually spend their days doing. The aim of the talk is to provide an honest insight into the day-to-day work of an industrial software architect, while still inspiring people to become one!

Event details

  • When: 8th May 2012 15:00 - 16:00
  • Where: Phys Theatre C
  • Series: CS Colloquia Series
  • Format: Colloquium

Seminar, An Overview of the AspeKT Project – Turning Academic Excellence into Gold by Colin Adams

An Overview of the AspeKT Project – Turning Academic Excellence into Gold


Abstract


The talk will give an overview of the major elements of the AspeKT project a 3 year program funded by Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Funding Council dedicated to improving the flow of ideas between the research excellence and talent pool produced by SICSA, and local industry. It will go through the major elements of the program designed to stimulate industrial innovation and a great flow of start-ups from that research base.


Bio


Dr Colin Adams is the Director of Commercialisation at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh and the Director of the AspekT program – the knowledge transfer program for the SICSA research pool. Colin started as an academic in the 1970’s before moving to Digital Equipment Corporation where he managed the development of VAX/VMS operating system before running the office automation business and the All-In-1 product line. He then moved into Electronic Design Automation and silicon, founding European Silicon Structures , US Silicon Structures and EuCAD. He sold EuCAD to Cadence Design Systems and managed various Cadence businesses and finally running the TALITY Management Buy Out. After a brief attempt at retiring he returned to the School of Informatics at University of Edinburgh to run the ProspeKT program focusing on generating start-ups out of the talent pool there.
He also chairs 2 local start-ups: ATEEDA and Coriolis Media and is a non Exec Director for ScotlandIS. HE has a BSc in Computer Science and Mathematics and a PhD in Computer Science, both from the University of Edinburgh

Event details

  • When: 23rd April 2012 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Phys Theatre C
  • Series: CS Colloquia Series
  • Format: Colloquium

Autonomy handover and rich interaction on mobile devices by Simon Rodgers

Abstract: In this talk I will present some of the work being done in the new Inference, Dynamics, and Interaction group, at the University of Glasgow. In particular, we are interested in using probabilistic inference to improve interaction technology on handheld devices (particularly with touch screens).

I will show how we are using sequential Monte-Carlo techniques to infer distributions over user inputs which can be (1) augmented with applications to provide a smooth handover of control between the human and device and (2) used to extract additional information regarding touch interactions and subsequently improve touch accuracy.

There is a short bio on my webpage:
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~srogers

Event details

  • When: 19th March 2012 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Phys Theatre C
  • Series: CS Colloquia Series
  • Format: Colloquium, Seminar

A large-scale study of information needs by Karen Church

In recent years, mobile phones have evolved from simple communication devices to sophisticated personal computers enabling anytime, anywhereaccess to a wealth of information. Understanding the types of information needs that occur while mobile and how these needs are addressed is crucial in order to design and develop novel services that are tailored to mobile users.

To date, studies exploring information needs, in particular mobile needs, have been relatively small in terms of scope, scale and duration. The goal of this work is to investigate information needs on a much larger-scale and to explore, through quantitative analysis, how those needs are addressed.To this end, we conducted one of the most comprehensive studies of information needs to date, spanning a 3-month period and involving over 100 users. The study employed an intelligent experience sampling algorithm, an online diary and SMS technology to gather insights into the types of needs that occur from day to day.

Our results not only complement earlier studies but also shed new light on the differences between mobile and non-mobile information needs as well as the impact of demographics like gender have on the types of needs that arise and on the means chosen to satisfy those needs. Finally, we point to a number of design implications for enriching the future experiences of mobile users based on our findings..

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Event details

  • When: 5th March 2012 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Phys Theatre C
  • Series: CS Colloquia Series
  • Format: Colloquium, Seminar

Alan Frisch Seminar Video

From October to December 2011, the School of Computer Science hosted Dr Alan Frisch from the University of York as a SICSA Distinguished Visiting Fellow. While here, Dr Frisch kindly agreed to give a seminar entitled “Decade of Progress in Constraint Modelling & Reformulation: The Quest for Abstraction and Automation”, the video of which can now be found here.

During his Fellowship Dr Frisch also visited, and spoke at, the universities of Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Event details

  • When: 3rd October 2011 - 22nd December 2011
  • Format: Seminar

SCOttish Networking Event (SCONE)

The next SCONE meeting will be held in the School of Computer Science
in St Andrews on Friday 24 February. We will start with lunch at 1200,
and the main event from 1300-1700 before adjourning to a pub.

To register, please e-mail Tristan Henderson so that we can organise numbers for
catering.

The format for this meeting will be a very small number of talks, and
a PhD poster session. If you are a PhD student, then please consider
bringing a poster to advertise your work and elicit feedback. If you
are a PhD supervisor, then please encourage your students to present a
poster.

If you are not a PhD student and would like to give a talk, then
please also get in touch.

The programme will eventually become available here.

Event details

  • When: 24th February 2012 12:00 - 17:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Workshop

Proactive contextual information retrieval by Samuel Kaski

A talk on “Proactive contextual information retrieval” by Samuel Kaski of Aalto University and University of Helsinki, Finland.

Abstract:

In proactive information retrieval the ultimate goal is to seamlessly access relevant multimodal information in a context-sensitive way. Usually explicit queries are not available or are insufficient, and the alternative is to try to infer users’ interests from implicit feedback signals, such as clickstreams or eye tracking. We have studied how to infer relevance of texts and images to the user from the eye movement patterns. The interests, formulated as an implicit query, can then be used in further searches. I will discuss our new machine learning-based results in this field, including data glasses-based augmented reality interface to contextual information, and timeline browsers for life logs.

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Event details

  • When: 23rd January 2012 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Series: CS Colloquia Series
  • Format: Seminar