News

Alumni visit School of Computer Science

A group of alumni who studied in the school over 20 years ago (graduating classes of 1994, 1995 and 1996) organised an informal reunion last month. During their stay in town they organised a visit to the school, where they sampled the school coffee, acquired a coveted CS mug and reminisced around the photo boards. The group were given an overview of the present day Computer Science at St Andrews and proceeded on a tour of the department with current Head of School, Simon Dobson, Professor Emeritus, Ron Morrison and Dave Munro.

Dr Roy Dyckhoff

Our friend and colleague Roy Dyckhoff died in hospital last month. He had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia, which was being managed through blood transfusions. His death was however sudden and unexpected.

Roy was educated at Winchester College, before studying at King’s College, Cambridge. He undertook postgraduate study at New College, Oxford. He was appointed as a Lecturer in the Department of Pure Mathematics in St Andrews in 1975, moving to Computer Science in 1981.

Roy worked in logic and proof theory, having begun his career as a topologist and category theorist (for which one of his thesis advisors was Dana Scott). Much of his work concerned various aspects of intuitionistic logic, but he also contributed to work in programming languages, type theory, natural language processing, and model checking. He was also instrumental in changing the peal of the bells in St Salvator’s chapel, the college church of the University, which he frequently rang at graduations and other events, including the celebration of the 550th anniversary of the consecration of the chapel.

He had retired from St Andrews but retained an honorary position with us, and was a frequent visitor and seminar-goer until very recently. We’ll remember him as someone who was always ready to dive into deep mathematical or philosophical discussions, as well as being someone who could explain the essence of advanced mathematical concepts even to those with a lot less mathematical sophistication than he himself possessed. His engagement with the School and the wider academic community in Scotland and worldwide should have gone on for much longer than it did, and we’ll miss the conversations and interactions that we’ll no longer have with him.

Roy’s funeral will be held on Thursday 6 September at Kirkcaldy Crematorium at 11.45am, and plans are being developed for a Service of Thanksgiving at St Salvator’s Chapel later this year. There’s a card in the front office ready for his funeral later this week.

For those who’d like to mark his passing in some way, the family have suggested giving blood as a suitable marker. Alternatively, they are collecting for the Scottish Mountain Bothies Association, which was a charity he supported for many years.

https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/roydyckhoff

DHSI Seminar Series

The school of Physics & Astronomy (Room 222) are hosting our next Digital Health Seminar

12.00pm – Lunch
12.20pm – Isla Rose & Mary Barnard Ultraviolet Radiation, DNA damage, and sunscreen
12.50pm – Lewis McMillan Monte Carlo radiation transfer model of laser tissue ablation
1.20pm –   Nicole Schanche Planet candidate detection and ranking using MachineLearning
1.50pm –   General discussions

All welcome!

DHSI Flyer – Physics & Astronomy 17.8

Event details

  • When: 17th August 2018 12:00 - 14:00
  • Where: Physics Bldg
  • Format: Seminar

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.”

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.