Seminar

Seminar ‘TODAY’: Brand Objects and Gradual Contracts by Timothy Jones

The School of Computer Science welcomes Timothy Jones, a PhD student from Victoria University of Wellington,New ZealandTimothy Jones.

Abstract: Adding object branding to an existing structural system integrates nominal and structural typing without excessively complicating the type system. We have implemented brand objects to explicitly type objects, using existing features of the structurally typed language Grace, along with a static type checker which treats the brands as nominal types. We intend to extend this approach to arbitrary, gradually enforced contracts and investigate the language features necessary for their implementation.

Bio:

Grace

I am currently involved in the Grace programming language project, through the Hopper implementation of the language, as well as formalising the language’s semantics. You can find an online editor for Grace at grace/editor, and the Gribber music system (a Grace plugin for Gibber) at grace/gibber.

Haskell

I’m also an avid Haskeller. My most successful contribution is the http-media library, part of a larger attempt to simplify REST resources in the Snap web framework. I’ve tutored the Programming Languages (Haskell and Prolog) course at VUW for several years, as well as taught the Advanced Programming Languages course.

Event details

  • When: 23rd July 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.04
  • Format: Seminar

School Seminar: Efficient Privacy Preserving Data Mining via Secure Computation by Dr Changyu Dong

The School of Computer Science welcomes the opportunity to hear from Dr Changyu Dong, from the Department of Computer and Information Sciences University of Strathclyde, who will be delivering his talk on ‘Efficient Privacy Preserving Data Mining via Secure Computation’. Chanyu Dong

Abstract: Loosely speaking, secure computation allows parties to compute a function jointly while keeping their inputs private. Participants of secure computation learns only the output of the function, but nothing about the others’ private inputs. An oblivious application of secure computation is privacy preserving data mining. Imagine a scenario in which Amazon and Facebook want to find correlations between their users’ activities. With current technology, this cannot happen because none of the companies is willing to disclose its own data to the other. Secure computation can remove this barrier because data remains private during  and after the computation. In the past, secure computation is considered to be only theoretical because of its inefficiency. Recently much effort has been made to make secure computation practical. In this talk, I will present some recent advancements in this area. I will first introduce Private Set Intersection (PSI), an important secure computation primitive, and how it can be realised efficiently. I will show how PSI can be applied to linking record in databases (private record linkage) and finding association rules. I will then show how fully homomorphic encryption, an emerging cryptographic technology, can be used in building efficient secure computation protocols, and in turn be used for privacy preserving data mining.

Bio: Changyu Dong is a lecturer at the University of Strathclyde. He obtained his PhD from the Department of Computing at Imperial College London in 2009. His research is in cyber security, specifically in applied cryptography. Since 2006, He has published 27 research papers in major journals and international conferences, including the most prestigious venues in security such as ACM CCS, ESORICS and Journal of Computer Security. He has served on and chaired program committees for many conferences and workshops, and is a regular invited reviewer for top international journals including Journal of Computer Security, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing and IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security. Shortly after moving to Strathclyde in 2011, he started his research on efficient secure computation. This research direction has led to some breakthroughs in secure computing for Private Set Intersection and Private Information Retrieval protocols, which he applied in domains such as data mining.

Event details

  • When: 1st July 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Seminar

June 2nd, Seminar by John Stasko: “New Approaches for Information Visualization: Rethinking Existing Notions”

The School of Computer Science welcomes the opportunity to hear from Professor John Stasko of Georgia Tech,who will be delivering his talk on “New Approaches for Information Visualization: Rethinking Existing Notions” remotely. John Stasko

Abstract:
As the field of information visualization matures, researchers are able to reflect on, and perhaps even question,     some long-accepted notions from the area. In this talk, I focus on three such notions:
* Representing network data through force-directed node-link diagrams
* Focusing on visual representation first and foremost
* Evaluating visualizations through user studies and experiments
Although these ideas clearly have value as evidenced by their acceptance and longevity, I have begun to question      the wisdom of each. In this talk I’ll explain my concerns about these notions and I’ll suggest a new, alternative approach to each as well.       To support these arguments, I will describe a number of research projects from my lab that illustrate and exemplify the new approach.

Bio:
John received the B.S. degree in Mathematics at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania (1983) and Sc.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island (1985 and 1989). He joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 1989, and he is presently a Professor in the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing. His primary research area is human-computer interaction, with a focus on information visualization and visual analytics. John is a senior member of the ACM and IEEE. He was named an ACM Distinguished Scientist in 2011 and an IEEE Fellow in 2014. He also received the 2012 IEEE VGTC Visualization Technical Achievement Award. In 2013 John served as General Chair of the IEEE VIS conferences in Atlanta, and he was named an Honorary Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

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

 

Event details

  • When: 2nd June 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar

Scottish Programing Languages Seminar

The School of Computer Science of the University of St Andrews is organizing the next Scottish Programing Languages Seminar which will be held on Monday 15th June 2015 in Lecture Room 2 of the Gateway. In the meantime you can keep up-to-date by following the SPLS website.

For further enquiries please contact Frantisek Farka.

Event details

  • When: 15th June 2015 11:30 - 18:00
  • Where: Gateway Bldg
  • Format: Seminar

Visualizing and writing variable-free compositional relational programs

G_PacaciAbstract:
Representing argument binding in compositional relational programs is an issue due to the syntactic problems. We first present our former research on using visualization to overcome this problem, and relevant user studies, and go on to discuss our recent work on syntactic improvements in solving the same problem. We are looking forward to feedback on this early stage research.

Bio:
Gorkem studied his masters degree in Abertay Dundee in Computer Games Technology, delivering a thesis on Optimizing collision detection in games. After working in games for a while, he started studying towards a doctorate degree in Uppsala University, Sweden. His study focuses on the representation of relational programming languages.

 

Event details

  • When: 20th May 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar

May 18th, Data Science Seminar Series or “a Summer of V’s”

The Sum­mer of V’s is an excit­ing series of four events on the Four V’s of Data Sci­ence: Vera­city, Vari­ety, Velo­city and Volume. The series is coordin­ated by the new Insti­tute of Data Intens­ive Research at the Uni­ver­sity of St Andrews. How­ever, these events don’t simply tar­get groups in Sci­ence, Medi­cine or the Human­it­ies but instead all three across the Uni­ver­sity. The series aims to take a cross cut­ting theme approach with a few speak­ers present­ing on a shared aspect of data. Our aim is to bal­ance the speak­ers from across the Uni­ver­sity and as a res­ult meet­ings are rel­ev­ant to all dis­cip­lines across the University.

The first event start­s with lunch from 1.30pm on 18th May at the Bell Pet­ti­grew Museum and Bute Lec­ture Theatre A.

To register and for all the details visit the IDIR page

Event details

  • When: 18th May 2015 13:30 - 17:00
  • Where: St Andrews
  • Format: Seminar, Symposium

June 26, Andruid Kerne, The Future of Human Expression: Ideation − Play − Body-based Interaction

Speaker: Andruid Kerne, Texas A&M, USA
Date/Time: 2-3pm June 26, 2015
Location: CS1.33a, University of St Andrews

 

Andruid is research scientist-artist investigating how people experience personal expression, creative ideation, and social engagement. He develops and evaluates expressive interfaces, computational architectures, and distributed systems that support creative processes of knowledge production and interpersonal communication.

For more details see the SACHI page

Event details

  • When: 26th June 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Format: Seminar

May 19, Tom Rodden, On lions, impala, and bigraphs: modelling interactions in Ubiquitous Computing.

Speaker: Tom Rodden, University of Nottingham
Date/Time: 2-3pm May 19, 2015
Location: CS1.33a, University of St Andrews

As ubiquitous systems have moved out of the lab and into the world the need to think more systematically about how there are realised has grown. This talk will present intradisciplinary work I have been engaged in with other computing colleagues on how we might develop more formal models and understanding of ubiquitous computing systems.

More details can be found on this SACHI page

 

Event details

  • When: 19th May 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar

June 16th, seminar by Gavin Doherty: Technologies for mental health: designing for engagement

The School of Computer Science welcomes Dr Gavin Doherty, Trinity College Dublin to give his talk on ‘Technologies for mental health: designing for engagement’.

Abstract:
Mental illness is one of the greatest social and economic challenges facing our society.
The talk will consider at some of the different ways in which technology (and HCI research) can help, with a particular focus on the problem of engagement. Taking examples from a series of projects to develop novel technologies for use in the mental health space, we will see some of the unique issues and challenges which come from working in this domain, and the steps which can be taken to address them. The SilverCloud platform, designed to deliver range of engaging and effective clinician-supported mental health interventions, will be used as a specific example to discuss the topics of evaluation and dissemination. Development of a suite of programmes and a number of partnerships based on the platform have enabled the delivery of supported online interventions to tens of thousands of patients in a range of public and private healthcare services worldwide.

Bio:
Dr. Gavin Doherty is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin, and co-founder of SilverCloud Health. He completed his doctorate at the University of York, before undertaking postdoctoral work at CNR in Pisa and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK before moving to TCD. He is interested in design for specific application areas, and has led a number of interdisciplinary projects in a number of different domains. A major focus of his work over the last decade has been on the design of technologies for mental health. The aim has been to develop systems which can increase access to, increase engagement with, and assist in improving the outcomes of mental health interventions.

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

Event details

  • When: 16th June 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar

April 28th, seminar by Mel Woods: Future Cities: Co-creating Future City Design Fictions in the Wild

The School of Computer Science welcomes Mel Woods from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee.

Abstract:

mel_woodsBlue heritage plaques pepper the UK landscape expounding officially validated narratives celebrating past events, people, and buildings. This seminar will discuss a novel method that draws on this specific cultural context to generate reflective, nano-stories, documenting them through populating a place, physical space, and an online data repository. The guerrilla blue plaque method was designed to support people to reflect on possible futures, in this instance the theme of future cities. The seminar will demonstrate how using critical design artefacts can help support understanding of future hopes, needs, and goals for individuals and communities. It will also discuss the method as a feedback mechanism for participatory design, citizen engagement and emergent outcomes from the latest deployment.

This work was initially developed as part of a UK arts and digital media festival and exhibited recently at Microsoft Research Lab, Cambridge at RTD 2015.

Bio:

Mel is Reader at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee. In her research she has developed and explored interaction between people to support discovery, foster creativity and affect. Throughout her academic career she has sustained a critical enquiry in art and design, creating digital artefacts, interfaces, prototypes and exhibits using novel methods and evaluation techniques.

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

Event details

  • When: 28th April 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar