Congratulations to School Manager Alex Bain, who completed the London Marathon for the third time earlier this month. Alex, runner no 32993, is pictured below with his finisher’s medal. Alex also completed the London Marathon in 2017 and 2016 raising funds for Guide dogs and worldwide cancer research.
This week members of the SACHI research group are in Canada for the annual CHI conference where they are presenting 8 papers and other research work.
Their research papers have been attracting media interest this week. The Times has covered their paper on Change blindness in proximity-aware mobile interfaces quoting Professor Quigley.
App developers urged to cure phone ‘blindness’
While the verge and Engadget has covered the best paper Project Zanzibar: A Portable and Flexible Tangible Interaction Platform.
Hui-Shyong Yeo contributed to this research while he was a research intern at Microsoft Research last summer in Cambridge.
The research group has put together a page which describes all the efforts at CHI 2018 here
Next year CHI 2019 will be in Scotland while CHI 2020 will be in Hawaii on its way to Asia in 2021.
Members of SACHI are already involved in the planning for 2019 as associate chairs for the program and are looking forward to CHI here in Scotland next year
Peter Cushley (MSci) brilliantly sang the part of Hilarion in the Gilbert & Sullivan Society’s Princess Ida performance at the Byre on the 20th and 21st April.
Two other Computer Scientists were in the cast; Joanna Moreland and Simon Cadge, both in 2nd year.
The performances were well received with great applause. Some of the cast will be singing in HMS Pinafore at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August.
Congratulations to Percy Perez, who successfully defended his thesis yesterday. He is pictured with supervisor Dr Alex Voss, Internal examiner, Dr Marwan Fayed and external examiner Dr Gareth Tyson, from Queen Mary University of London.
Image courtesy of Ryo Yanagida
The ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) series of academic conferences is generally considered the most prestigious in the field of human-computer interaction. It is hosted by ACM SIGCHI, the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction. CHI has been held annually since 1982 and attracts thousands of international attendees. Next week members of SACHI will be at the CHI 2018 conference in Montreal where they will be presenting 6 full papers (1 best paper), 1 demonstration, 1 late-breaking work and other activities.
This work includes pointing all around you, the design of visualization tools, physicalization, change blindness, multi-user interfaces, tangible interaction and augmented reality.
You can find the research papers, videos and more details on SACHI @ CHI2018 here.
A project funded by the Undergraduate Research Assistant Scheme has successfully completed the first stage of interdisciplinary work, between the Institute of Mediaeval Studies and the School of Computer Science. The long-term aim is to digitise and analyse early French bibles.
In this pilot project, undergraduate student Gregor Haywood, under the supervision of Prof. Clive Sneddon and Dr. Mark-Jan Nederhof, explored the feasibility of large-scale OCR technology for early printed text. Scans from a French bible from 1543 were provided by the Special Collections of the University Library. Much of the project consisted of iterations of automatic transcription, manual correction, retraining, and evaluation of accuracy. In addition, problems were investigated that specifically arise from taking OCR technology designed for modern printed documents and applying it on early documents. Such problems include non-standard character sets, non-standard page layout, faded or smudged ink, and torn pages.
Despite of these problems, it was demonstrated that error rates below 3% are achievable, which paves the way for a continuation of these efforts.
Congratulations to Gonzalo Mendez, who successfully defended his thesis today. He is pictured with supervisor Dr Miguel Nacenta, Internal examiner, Dr Tristan Henderson and external examiner Associate Professor Samuel Huron, from Télécom ParisTech.
Image courtesy of Annemarie Paton.
Alex Voss from the School of Computer Science and Anna Clements and Eva Borger from the University Library have been awarded funding by OCLC for a 1-year project titled “Characterizing the adoption of ORCID ID in academic communities”.
ORCID iDs are persistent digital identifiers that distinguish researchers and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, support automated linkages between individuals and their professional activities ensuring that their work is recognized and attributed.
The funded project, which began in March, expands on a pilot study carried out in 2017 by Eva as part of her MSc dissertation project, which investigated the adoption and use of ORCID iDs among researchers at the University of St Andrews and identified key use cases and new avenues for advocacy.
The team now aim to carry out similar surveys at other institutions that integrate ORCID iDs and build a bigger picture of how advocacy, institutional processes and mandates relate to the adoption of ORCID iDs in academic communities. Based on these findings, they plan to formulate recommendations on how advocacy and policies regarding ORCID iDs can be employed to maximise their value in the research process.
Alex Voss has a related MSc dissertation, Consolidating Output and Citations Data, for students interested in this particular project or research area.
If you would like to find out more about ORCID iDs at the University of St Andrews, visit their ORCID pages. For more information about the project, please contact Alex Voss at alex.voss@st-andrews.ac.uk or visit the ORCID study blog for ongoing updates.
Applying to study at university includes many financial considerations. Scholarships and bursaries can help reward academic achievement and provide financial awards enabling students to undertake or further their education. Students in Computer Science have secured a variety of bursaries to help fund their passion for the subject. Successful undergraduate and postgraduate student perspectives are highlighted below.
Sherlock Cruz , the first recipient of The London Scholarship reflected on his time at St Andrews and how scholarships can transform lives. The scholarship encourages young students from the Greater London area to study at St Andrews by equipping them with accommodation and living costs.
The School is fortunate in receiving on-going support from Adobe for undergraduate students studying Computer Science by way of Adobe Prize Bursaries. Successful applicants receive an award each year for the duration of their degree.
Henry Hargreaves was the successful recipient of a Royal Television Society Technology Bursary. The bursary encourages the most talented Engineering and Computer Sciences undergraduates to consider a career in television.
Alice Herbison secured a Carnegie-Cameron Bursary to support postgraduate study enabling her to undertake our MSc in Human Computer Interaction.
Arkwright Awards for budding young engineers nurtures high-potential A-level and Scottish Advanced Higher students who have a desire to be future leaders in engineering disciplines, including computing, software, communications and product design. More information on Arkwright engineering awards and who can apply can be located on their website.
The scholarships and funding catalogue has up-to-date information on eligibility for undergraduate and postgraduate applicants.
The University of St Andrews and Primorska are soon to agree to award a joint degree with the title of Doctor of Philosophy (on condition that the joint PhD study programme in Computer Science will gain accreditation of the Slovenian Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education). This represents the culmination of many months of effort from Drs Matjaž Kljun, Klen Čopič Pucihar and Professor Aaron Quigley. Aaron and Matjaž first met at the UMAP conference in 2011 in Spain as mentor and mentee in the PhD doctoral program. Since then, Matjaž and Klen who undertook their PhDs in the University of Lancaster have returned to Slovenia to establish and exciting program of HCI research and development in the HICUP lab. In 2017 a program of international support (Slovenian/English) allowed them to invite Aaron to Slovenia for three weeks and this has resulted in a number of join grant submissions and the establishment of this co-tutelle program. We look forward to many years collaborating and we look forward to this new PhD student starting later this year.
