News

PhD Studentship: Reasoning about Racy Programs under Relaxed Consistency

A PhD studentship on “Reasoning about Racy Programs under Relaxed Consistency” is available in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews, funded by Microsoft Research and EPSRC.

The project will involve developing reasoning principles and tools for relaxed memory consistency settings. This is a key problem in shared-memory concurrency at the low-level, whether in C or C++, or even higher-level languages such as Java.

The project will be supervised by Dr Susmit Sarkar at the University of St Andrews. Dr Jade Alglave of Microsoft Research Cambridge will be the Microsoft supervisor. During the course of their PhD, Scholars are invited to Microsoft Research in Cambridge for an annual Summer School, and there is also a possibility of paid internships during studies. The studentship is fully funded to pay fees and stipend for students with a relevant connection to the UK.

Applicants are expected to have or expect to obtain a UK first-class Honours or Masters degree (or its equivalent from non-UK institutions) in Computer Science, but the minimum standard we require is an upper second-class Honours degree or equivalent. Some experience in concurrent and/or functional programming and an aptitude for mathematical subjects are required. Knowledge and experience of one or more of formal verification, mechanised proofs, and programming languages is highly desirable.

For further information on how to apply, see our postgraduate web pages. Ideally the student will start in October 2015, or as soon as possible thereafter. Further details on the project and suggested reading is available from Dr Susmit Sarkar.

Codebase Open day

CodeBase Open Day

Friday 5 June 2015 – Friday 5 June 2015
13:00 – 16:00
Edinburgh

The CodeBase Open Day gives a chance for students, professionals and would-be developers and designers to learn more about amazing companies housed within the UK’s largest technology incubator.

It’s a chance to roam our corridors and drop in on companies for an informal chat and find out more about what they do .

Come and learn more about the 60 startups based within the building and explore what the startup scene has to offer. There will also be series of drop-in talks so those who attend get the opportunity to hear, first hand, what it’s like to work for some of the most exciting and interesting tech companies in Edinburgh.

Further details and ticket information: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/codebase-open-day-tickets-16594864687

Event details

  • When: 5th June 2015 13:00 - 16:00

PhD Scholarship in Data Science

Potential PhD students with a strong background in Computer Science are encouraged to apply for this three-year studentship funded by the Research Council of the European Commission (ERC). The student will work within an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Computer Science and Geography in the WORKANDHOME project (ERC Starting Grant 2014), which investigates how home-based businesses are shaping society and space.

The student will examine the Computer Science challenges within this research project. The exact scope of the PhD project is open to discussion but we anticipate that the successful candidate will be working broadly on Data Science topics, potentially covering one or more of the following areas: cloud computing, social network analysis and agent-based modelling. This is a unique opportunity to work at the cutting edge of systems research. Come join us in St Andrews.

Funding Notes: The studentship will cover UK/EU tuition fees and an annual tax-free stipend of approximately £13,000. Funding will be for three years of full-time study, starting asap.

Applications: It is expected that applicants should have or expect to obtain a UK first-class honours degree (or its equivalent from non-UK institutions) in Computer Science but the minimal standard that we will consider is a UK upper-second class Honours degree or its equivalent.

For further information on how to apply, see our postgraduate web pages. All interested candidates should contact Dr Adam Barker in the first instance to discuss your eligibility for the scholarship and a proposal for research.

Scott Lang Dinner 2015

Peter Redford Scott Lang (1850-1926) was a Professor of Mathematics at St Andrews University from 1879 until his retirement in 1921. He had studied at Edinburgh University, and taught there before being appointed to St Andrews. Having seen the “ordinary student fare of the mid nineteenth century and menus of term time dinners” he instigated the institution of ‘Common Dinners’ in the 1880s.

Scott Lang dinner 2015

Scott Lang dinner 2015

The original purpose of the dinners was to enable students to have a “decent and varied diet,” but ended up meaning much more than that to some.  In 1926, L.J.D. Gibson wrote this about the dinners:

The Common Dinners were of the greatest service in the bringing the men together … Modern St Andrews owes a great debt to Professor Lang … was so invaluable in fostering the social life of the university.
Ruth Hoffmann, Viktoriya Anisimova, Gala Malbasic, Cameron Wright and Steve Linton (HOS)

Computer Scientists: Ruth Hoffmann, Viktoriya Anisimova, Gala Malbasic, Cameron Wright and Steve Linton (HOS)

The lavish common dinners fell out of favour during the war period and have only been recently reintroduced to St Andrews. In 2015 the dinner was held on the 14th April in Lower College Hall. The dinner is designed to encourage interaction across interests in all areas of the University community and is open to all staff and students.
Aleksejs Sazonovs (school president), Ruth Hoffman, Keno Schwalb, Aaron Quigley (DoR) and Cameron Wright

Aleksejs Sazonovs (school president), Ruth Hoffman, Aaron Quigley (DoR), Keno Schwalb and Cameron Wright

In 2015, the School of Computer Science invited its class representatives and student president to dine with the head of school, Professor Steve Linton and Director of Research, Professor Aaron Quigley at the annual Scott Lang Dinner. This was to thank the students for their service to their fellow students, the school and to the University. Everyone had a wonderful evening and it was a great opportunity to learn more about each other outside the school. We hope this is the start of a new and long lasting tradition for our staff and students.

Thanks to Xu Zhu who also attended for the images (CC by-SA 3.0 license).

Graham Kirby: Excellence in Teaching Award

We congratulate our Director of Teaching Dr Graham Kirby on being rewarded for championing ‘learning by doing’ at The University Teaching Awards held in Parliament Hall.

The School is rated highly for student satisfaction, which echoes the great teaching and strong student staff community sustained here in Computer Science. Graham is pictured below participating in some recent School activities.

dot

Images courtesy of me (apologies in advance).

€4.2M ParaPhrase Project Concludes

The impressive ParaPhrase project which commenced in October 2011, brought together a world-leading team of academic and industrial experts to improve the programmability and performance of modern parallel computing technologies. The consortium consisted of 7 academic and 3 industrial partners from 6 countries and was coordinated by Prof. Kevin Hammond here in the School of Computer Science .

The project has produced over 80 publications in leading international conferences and journals and has been demonstrated at over 100 international conferences and other events, as well as producing a range of new software tools and programming standards.

Prof Hammond described ParaPhrase as a tremendous success but highlighted that significant challenges remain. In the future, parallel programs will need to self-adapt to computing architectures we haven’t even thought of yet.

Read the full article in the University news.

April in Computer Science: Poster Presentations and World Domination

The Senior Honours students presented their posters and final year software artifacts to staff and students last week. The best poster accolade and associated amazon voucher was presented to Callum Hyland for his poster – Android: Smoking Cessation, behavioural pattern prediction through spatial and temporal modelling. We wish them well with exam revision and look forward to seeing them at June graduation.

sh1

sh2

The Junior Honours students finalised their team projects last Friday and competed for world domination. This year the project involved implementing a multi-player peer-to-peer world domination game, with AI. We await news of which team dominated the CS world for a time on Friday.

jh1

Images courtesy of Lisa Dow and Simone Conte