Talk

Seminar: ‘Formalizing Garbage: Mathematical Models of Memory Management’ by Jeremy Singer

Abstract:

Garbage collection is no longer an esoteric research interest. Mainstream programming languages like Java and C# rely on high-performance memory managed run time systems. In this talk, I will motivate the need for rigorous models of memory management to enable more powerful analysis and optimization techniques. I will draw on a diverse range of topics including thermodynamics, economics, machine learning and control theory.

Bio:

Jeremy Singer is a lecturer at the School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, Scotland. He has research interests in programming languages,compilation, run time code optimization and memory management. Singer received his PhD from Cambridge in 2006. Website:http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~jsinger

 

Event details

  • When: 6th October 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Seminar, Talk

Talk: ‘This is a Google Talk’ – by James Smith

The School of Computer Science is pleased to welcome back one of its former PhD students, James Smith, who is currently Google Product Manager, London to talk about Google @ St Andrews. FB_20150916_14_52_25_Saved_Picture

Abstract: Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. It’s an enormous goal to accomplish and we need great people to help us achieve it. We invite you to come learn about Google and some of the engineering challenges we’re tackling.

Sign up: goo.gl/GXXiWp

Event details

  • When: 13th October 2015 20:00 - 21:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33
  • Format: Talk

School Seminars: Building the News Search Engine – Bloomberg

Building the news search engine, by Ramkumar Aiyengar, Bloomberg
Abstract:
This talk provides an insight into the challenges involved in providing near real-time news search to Bloomberg customers. Our News team is in the process of migrating to using Solr/Lucene as its search and alerting backend. This talk starts with a picture of what’s involved in building such a backend, then delves into what makes up a search engine, and then discusses the challenges of scaling up for low-latency and high-load.
Bio:
Ramkumar leads the News Search backend team at the Bloomberg R&D office in London. He joined Bloomberg from his university in India and has been with the News R&D team for 7 years now. For the last couple of years, his team has focussed on rewriting almost the entire search/alert backend, used by almost every Bloomberg user to get near-real time access to news with sub-second latencies. A geek at heart, he considers himself a Linux evangelist, an open source enthusiast, and one of those weird creatures who believes that Emacs is an operating system and had once got his music player and playlists to be controlled through a library written in Lisp.

Event details

  • When: 3rd March 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33
  • Series: CS Colloquia Series, School Seminar Series
  • Format: Seminar, Talk

School Seminar Series: Matching in Practice: Junior Doctor Allocation and Kidney Exchange

Matching in Practice: Junior Doctor Allocation and Kidney Exchange by Dr. David Manlove

Abstract:
Matching problems typically involve assigning agents to commodities, possibly on the basis of ordinal preferences or other metrics. These problems have large-scale applications to centralised matching schemes in many countries and contexts. In this talk I will describe the matching problems featuring in two such schemes in the UK that have involved collaborations between the National Health Service and the University of Glasgow. One of these dealt with the allocation of junior doctors to Scottish hospitals (1999-2012), and the other is concerned with finding kidney exchanges among incompatible donor-patient pairs across the UK (2007-date). In each case I will describe the applications, present the underlying algorithmic problems, outline the computational methods for their solution and give an overview of results arising from real data connected with the matching schemes in recent years.

BIO:
David Manlove is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, where he has been since 1995. His research interests lie mainly in the field of algorithms and complexity, and include algorithms for matching problems involving preferences. These arise in applications such as the assignment of school leavers to universities, kidney patients to donors and junior doctors to hospitals. He and his colleagues have been involved in collaborations with the NHS in relation to the Scottish Foundation Allocation Scheme (for matching junior doctors to hospitals) and the National Living Donor Kidney Sharing Schemes (for enabling kidney “swaps” between incompatible donor-patient pairs) where optimal matching algorithms developed by him and colleagues have been deployed. He has over 50 publications in this area including his book “Algorithmics of Matching Under Preferences”, published in 2013.

Event details

  • When: 3rd February 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Talk

School Seminar Series: Statistically Consistent Estimation and Efficient Inference for Natural Language Parsing

Statistically Consistent Estimation and Efficient Inference for
Natural Language ParsingBy Shay Cohen, University of Edinburgh.

Abstract:
In the past few years, there has been an increased interest in the machinel earning community in spectral algorithms for estimating models with latent variables. Examples include algorithms for estimating mixture of Gaussians or for estimating the parameters of a hidden Markov model.

The EM algorithm has been the mainstay for estimation with latent variables, but because it is guaranteed to converge to a local maximum of the likelihood, it is not a consistent estimator. Spectral algorithms, on the other hand, are often shown to be consistent. They are often more computationally efficient than EM.

In this talk, I am interested in presenting two types for spectral algorithms for latent-variable PCFGs, a model widely used in the NLP community for parsing. One algorithm is for consistent estimation of L-PCFGs, and the other is for efficient inference with L-PCFGs (or PCFGs). Both algorithms are based on linear-algebraic formulation of L-PCFGs and PCFGs.

BIO:
Shay Cohen is a Chancellor’s fellow (assistant professor) at the University of Edinburgh (School of Informatics). Before that, he was a postdoctoral research scientist in the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University, and held an NSF/CRA Computing Innovation Fellowship. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. from Tel Aviv University in 2000 and 2004, and his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 2011. His research interests span a range of topics in natural language processing and machine learning, with a focus on structured prediction. He is especially interested in developing efficient and scalable parsing algorithms as well as learning algorithms for probabilistic grammars.

Event details

  • When: 21st January 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Talk

School Seminar: Cloud Platform in Financial Services – Allan Beck, J.P. Morgan

Title: Cloud Platform in Financial Services

Presenter: Allan Beck, Cloud Platform and Strategy Lead from JPMorgan Chase

Abstract: Cloud Computing is revolutionising the delivery of compute services and driving the next generation of web-scale application design. This presents enormous opportunities but also challenges, particularly in heavily regulated sectors such as Financial Services.
Allan Beck, Cloud Platform and Strategy Lead from JPMorgan Chase, will discuss the current approach and challenges to Cloud in Financial Services. This will include an overview of available Cloud services and capabilities, the specific challenges to Cloud in Financial Services (private and public Cloud) and an overview of the next-generation Cloud platform and developer experience at JPMorgan Chase.

Event details

  • When: 18th November 2014 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Seminar, Talk

Thursday Seminar from Japan – Prof. Yoshifumi Kitamura – Interactive Content Design and 3D Interactions

Date: 2014-11-13
Time: 14:00 to 15:00
Location: Maths Lecture Theatre A, North Haugh, University of St Andrews.

Title: Interactive Content Design and 3D Interactions

Abstract: Good media content has the power to enrich our lives. We focus on non-traditional content other than movies, music and games, conducting comprehensive research on a variety of interactive content which creates new value through interactions with humans. In this talk I will introduce a series of my group’s recent research projects involving technologies for interactive content design and 3D interactions.
Web: http://www.icd.riec.tohoku.ac.jp/index-e.html

Bio: Yoshifumi Kitamura is a Professor at Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University. He received the B.Sc., M.Sc. and PhD. degrees in Engineering from Osaka University in 1985, 1987 and 1996, respectively. Prior to Tohoku University, he was an Associate Professor at Graduate School of Engineering and  Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University (1997-2010), and before that he was a researcher at ATR Communication Systems Research Laboratories (1992-1996) and Canon Inc. (1987-1992).

Event details

  • When: 13th November 2014 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Maths Theatre A
  • Format: Seminar, Symposium, Talk

School Seminar: Complex Networks and Complex Processes

Simon Dobson, School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews

Abstract:

Complex networks provide a way of modelling systems with lots of
dependent elements, such as traffic networks or social networks. By
running processes over these networks we can explore how the topology of
the network affects the way the process evolves, and potentially
identify factors that accelerate or impede it. This opens-up
possibilities both for study (science) and control (engineering).

This talk will briefly introduce the mechanics of complex networks and
the processes that run on them, review some recent results we have
obtained, and look to future research programme where we will combine
simulation with sensing to give us new ways of looking at the world.

Event details

  • When: 4th November 2014 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Talk

Seminar by John Slaney

What is Meyer’s E1 problem?

John Slaney, Australian National University

The E1 problem is a rather specialised question concerning propositional logic. It was posed by R. K. Meyer almost 50 years ago, and is still open. In this talk, I undertake to explain the problem, to review progress towards its solution and possibly even to make it look less eccentric than it might at first seem. The talk is accessible to anyone with an interest in computer science or logic, as it does not presuppose any great technicalities.

John Slaney is Professor of Computer Science at Australian National University, Canberra.

His research has focussed on many aspects of logic and artificial intelligence, sometimes from a very philosophical standpoint but also from a very practical one of building better solvers. He also wrote Logic4Fun, an interactive logic modelling and solving website.

John Slaney has never denied rumours that he was a professional ice hockey player in North America, including scoring the winning goal in a Canada-USSR match. However, if asked he probably will deny them (since he was never a hockey player).

Event details

  • When: 1st September 2014 11:00 - 12:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar, Talk

Geometrisation of first-order logic

Dr. Roy Dyckhoff will give a talk titled, “Geometrisation of first-order logic”.

Abstract:

We show that every first-order theory T has a conservative extension G_T that is a geometric theory. Reasoning problems in T can therefore be replaced by problems in G_T, where the methods of geometric (aka ‘coherent’) logic are applicable. We discuss related work by Skolem (1920), Antonius (1975), Bezem and Coquand (2005), Fisher (2007–..), Polonsky (2011) and Mints (2012).

(A formula is **positive** iff built from atoms using \exists, \land and \lor. A **geometric implication** is the universal quantification of a formula C -> D where C and D are positive. A theory is **geometric** iff axiomatised by geometric implications. Lots of mathematical theories are geometric. Reasoning in a geometric theory usually avoids the unnatural conversions of resolution-based theorem proving, and produces intuitionistically sound proofs)

Joint work with Sara Negri (Helsinki).

Event details

  • When: 21st February 2014 12:00 - 13:00
  • Where: Maths 1A Tut Rm
  • Format: Talk