Graduation Reception June 2018

Congratulations to our Senior Honours Class of 2018, MSci Honours students and our PhD students Dr Adam Barwell, Dr Martin McCaffery, Dr Gonzalo Mendez and Dr Long Thai, who graduated last month. Students were invited to a reception in the School prior to the ceremony, to celebrate their achievement with staff, friends and family.

Our graduates will move on to a wide variety of interesting and challenging employment and further study opportunities, and we wish them all well with their future careers.

School Technician wins sponsorship prize.

Technician David Letham entered the raffle for sponsorship of Berwick Rangers and won first prize!

“Berwick Rangers are excited to confirm that Berwick-based Northern Soul Kitchen will be the primary shirt sponsor for the 2018/19 season.

David Letham, founder of St Andrews Berwick Rangers Supporters and winner of the front of shirt sponsor prize at our sponsor draw on Saturday evening, has opted to donate the shirt sponsorship to the local community project: “Rather than putting my Supporters club on the front of the home shirt, I’ve asked Northern Soul Kitchen of Berwick if they would like the sponsorship and they were delighted to accept. It’s a good community initiative that is just starting up and I’m happy to help them by donating this sponsorship and hopefully forging a new link between Berwick Rangers and the local community in the process.”

Northern Soul Kitchen are a community project on West Street, Berwick, turning unsold food into affordable and delicious meals for people. The food is offered on a Pay-As-You-Feel (PAYF) basis meaning people can pay what they think the food is worth, donate whatever amount they can afford or even volunteer their time and skills to pay for a meal – all have their value.

Everyone knows that there is a nationwide problem with perfectly edible food being chucked away. Northern Soul Kitchen rescue this food before that happens and use it to make healthy meals for everyone. The kitchen will work to help a number of local issues, including food waste, food poverty, social exclusion and a misunderstanding about nutrition. As well as serving meals, Northern Soul Kitchen will be offering workshops and events for people to learn more about eating healthily on a budget.

Harriet Grecian, co-founder of Northern Soul Kitchen, is delighted to have been offered the primary shirt sponsorship prize: “We are incredibly grateful to David Letham and Berwick Rangers for this sponsorship opportunity. As a community project, it means a great deal to have partnerships with local organisations, especially one as significant as the local team. We’re looking forward to a great season for Berwick Rangers and can’t wait to come and see a game at Shielfield!”

The club are looking forward to working with Northern Soul Kitchen, with a number of exciting ideas already being discussed for the next 12 months. You can learn more about Northern Soul Kitchen here.”

PhD viva success: Adeola Fabola

Congratulations to Adeola Fabola, who successfully defended his thesis today. He is pictured with supervisor Dr Alan Millar, Internal examiner Dr Colin Allison and external examiner Dr Elizabeth Falconer, from Bournemouth University.

PhD viva success: Daniel Rough

Congratulations to Daniel Rough, who successfully defended his thesis today. He is pictured with supervisor Professor Aaron Quigley, Internal examiner Dr Uta Hinrichs and external examiner Professor Alessio Malizia, from the University of Hertfordshire.

Images courtesy of Annemarie Paton

PhD viva success: Chris Schwaab

Congratulations to Chris Schwaab, who successfully defended his thesis yesterday. He is pictured with supervisor Dr Edwin Brady, Internal examiner Dr Juliana Bowles and external examiner Dr Bob Atkey, from the University of Strathclyde.

Images courtesy of Annemarie Paton and Edwin Brady

PhD viva success: Franck Slama

Congratulations to Franck Slama, who successfully defended his thesis yesterday. He is pictured with supervisor Dr Edwin Brady, Internal examiner Dr Susmit Sarkar and external examiner Professor Thorsten Altenkirch, from the University of Nottingham

IDIR Summer Workshop 2018

The St Andrews Institute for Data-Intensive Research (IDIR) was set up in September 2014 to provide a focus for research and teaching activities across the University driven by access to “big data”.

IDIR does not directly sponsor or manage any research of its own: rather, we help researchers to collaborate within and beyond their home Schools in areas relating to data and computationally-intensive research.

In the past we have hosted the Summer of Vs (Variety, Veracity, Velocity & Volume) and Summer of Data Workshop Series.

This year we are hosting a series of IDIR Summer Workshops tailored by the interests of the researchers in IDIR. The themes that were identified (and the dates on which each workshop is held) are

03.07.2018 Text and/or Image Processing
24.07.2018 Data (Science) Best Practices
16.08.2018 Health and Simulation Data
04.09.2018 Cloud Computing, High Performance Computing, Reproducibility

This year’s programme of events are being organised by Özgür Akgün and Ruth Hoffmann. Get in touch with them if you would like to contribute.

Ubiquitous User Interfaces by Aaron Quigley in the University of Lleida, Spain

In the context of “User Centred Design” course, Professor Quigley delivered a series of lectures on Ubiquitous User Interfaces in the University of Lleida, Spain. These lectures draw on a number of SACHI research group studies from work published in UIST, CHI, MobileHCI, IUI, AVI and UMAP.

Aaron Quigley presenting lectures
The wider context of Ubiquitous User Interfaces

Graduation Reception: Wednesday 27th June 2018

The School of Computer Science, will be hosting a graduation reception on Wednesday 27th June, in the Jack Cole building, between 10.30 and 12.30. Graduating students and guests are invited to the School to celebrate with a glass of fizz. Computer Science degrees will be conferred in an afternoon ceremony in the Younger Hall. A class photo will be taken at 11am in the Jack Cole building. Family and friends who can’t make it on the day can watch a live broadcast of graduation.

Graduation receptions have been held in the school from 2010 and some class photos have been captured for posterity.

Class photo 2010

Class photo 2011

Class photo 2014

Class Photo 2015

Class photo 2016

Class photo 2017

Professor Aaron Quigley to Join ACM Distinguished Speaker Program

Congratulations to Aaron on being appointed as a Distinguished Speaker for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The esteemed Distinguished Speaker Program brings together international thought leaders from academia, industry, and government to give presentations to ACM chapters, members, and the greater IT community in a variety of venues and formats. The outreach program coordinates speaker lectures to consider the most important challenges in computing today and facilitates professional networking.

Aaron has developed four lectures for the DSP program here can deliver, these include:

Discreet Computing
Computing and interaction are changing the nature of humanity. As individuals our capabilities can be extended, our memories augmented and our senses attuned. Societies are being reshaped…

Global Human Computer Interaction
Global Human Computer Interaction is the study of HCI when considering global challenges, languages, concerns, cultures and different economic drivers. Digital technologies now underpin the…

Immersive Analytics
Human activity (in all its forms) can result in large volumes of data being collected and simply stored in the hope that one day it can be analysed and explored. From business to health…

Ubiquitous User Interfaces (UUI)
UbiComp or Ubiquitous Computing is a model of computing in which computation is everywhere and computer functions are integrated into everything. It can be built into the basic objects,…

Professor Quigley is Chair of Human Computer Interaction in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews. His research interests include surface and multi-display computing, body worn interaction, human computer interaction, pervasive and ubiquitous computing and information visualisation.

Computer Science Blog