Event

Forthcoming talk by SICSA Distinguished Visitor

Room 1.33a at 2:00 pm on Friday 7th September 2012

  • Introduction to Grammatical Formalisms for Natural Language Parsing
  • Giorgio Satta, Department of Information Engineering, University of Padua, Italy

Abstract:
In the field of natural language parsing, the syntax of natural languages is

modeled by means of formal grammars and automata. Sometimes these formalisms

are borrowed from the field of formal language theory and are adapted to the
task at hand, as in the case of context-free grammars and their lexicalized
versions, where each individual rule is specialized for one or more lexical
items. Sometimes these formalisms are newly developed, as in the case of
dependency grammars and tree adjoining grammars. In this talk, I will
briefly overview several of these models, discussing their mathematical
properties and their use in parsing of natural language.

Event details

  • When: 7th September 2012 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar, Talk

Soundcomber: A Stealthy and Context-Aware Sound Trojan for Smartphones

Seminar by Dr Apu Kapadia, Indiana University

We introduce Soundcomber, a “sensory malware” for smartphones that
uses the microphone to steal private information from phone
conversations. Soundcomber is lightweight and stealthy. It uses
targeted profiles to locally analyze portions of speech likely to
contain information such as credit card numbers. It evades known
defenses by transferring small amounts of private data to the malware
server utilizing smartphone-specific covert channels. Additionally, we
present a general defensive architecture that prevents such sensory
malware attacks.

Event details

  • When: 9th August 2012 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33
  • Format: Seminar

Mobile user study masterclass

SICSA Masterclass
Mobile user studies and experience sampling

Dr Apu Kapadia is a Distinguished SICSA Visitor in August 2012. As
part of his visit we are organising a pair of masterclasses in running
mobile user studies. These masterclasses are open to all SICSA PhD
students. Students will be need to be available to attend both
masterclasses:
– Thursday 2 August, University of Glasgow
– Thursday 9 August, University of St Andrews

The classes will cover how to design and run a mobile user study using
smartphones, and in particularly cover the use of the experience
sampling method (ESM), a currently popular methodology for collecting
rich data from real-world participants. In the first class, attendees
will learn about the methodology and be given a smartphone. Attendees
will then carry the smartphone and participate in a small study, and
we will cover data analysis in the second class in St Andrews. The
organisers have experience in running ESM studies which have looked at
mobility, social networking, security and privacy, but the methodology
should be of interest to PhD students in both the NGI and MMI themes.

Biography of Dr Apu Kapadia:

Apu Kapadia is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and
Informatics at the School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana
University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in October 2005.

Dr Kapadia has published over thirty peer-reviewed conference papers
and journal articles focused on privacy, with several of these at
top-tier venues such as ACM TISSEC, IEEE TDSC, PMC, CCS, NDSS,
Pervasive, and SOUPS. For his work on accountable anonymity, two of
his papers were named as “Runners-up for PET Award 2009: Outstanding
Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies”, a prestigious award in
the privacy community. His work on usable metaphors for controlling
privacy was given the “Honorable Mention Award (Runner-up for Best
Paper)” at Pervasive. Dr Kapadia’s recent work on smartphone
“sensory” malware that make use of onboard sensors was published at
NDSS and received widespread media coverage. His work on analyzing
privacy leaks on Twitter also received media attention naming his work
as one of the “7 Must-Read Twitter Studies from 2011”, and one of “The
10 Most Interesting Social Media Studies of 2011”.

Dr Kapadia is interested in topics related to systems’ security and
privacy. He is particularly interested in security and privacy issues
related to mobile sensing, privacy-enhancing technologies to
facilitate anonymous access to services with some degree of
accountability, usable mechanisms to improve security and privacy, and
security in decentralized and mobile environments.

Event details

  • When: 9th August 2012 11:00 - 17:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33

Graduation Reception

The School of Computer Science is having a graduation reception on Wednesday 20th June. All students who are graduating on the 20th are invited to join us for a glass of sparkling wine and some cake.

Event details

  • When: 20th June 2012 12:30 - 15:30

Seminar – Connecting Families over Distance – Dr. Carman Neustaedter

Connecting Families over Distance

Families often have a real need and desire to stay connected with their remote family members and close friends. For example, grandparents want to see their grandchildren grow up, empty-nest parents want to know about the well being of their adult children, and parents want to be involved in their children’s daily routines and happenings while away from them. Video conferencing is one technology that is increasingly being used by families to support this type of need. In this talk, I will give an overview of the research that my students and I have done in this space. This includes studies of the unique ways in which families with children, long-distance couples, and teenagers make use of existing video chat systems to support ‘presence’ and ‘connection’ over distance. I will also show several systems we have designed to support always-on video connections that move beyond ‘talking heads’ to ‘shared experiences’.


Biography

Dr. Carman Neustaedter is an Assistant Professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Dr. Neustaedter specializes in the areas of human-computer interaction, domestic computing, and computer-supported collaboration. He is the director of the Connections Lab, an interdisciplinary research group focused on the design and use of technologies for connecting people through space and time. This includes design for families and friends, support for workplace collaboration, and bringing people together through pervasive games. For more information, see:
Connections Lab.

Event details

  • When: 18th June 2012 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Series: CS Colloquia Series
  • Format: Colloquium