News

Ae Fond Farewell: Per Ola Kristensson

As we start a new semester, we take time to reflect on those moving on to new ventures and wish colleague and friend, Per Ola Kristensson every success in his new post in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge.

During his time in the School he had many successes and viewed St Andrews as an “incredibly stimulating and vivid research environment.”

Describing the School and SACHI as “friendly and supportive” he underlined the school’s commitment to ensuring teaching and research is of “the highest calibre.”

Describing the students he worked with as “fantastic” and a pleasure to supervise, he explained that some of their dissertations had lead to scientific publications.

His final reflection:

Looking back, these years I have spent in St Andrews have helped me develop as a researcher and a teacher and I will remember my years here fondly.

We wish him continued success and look forward to seeing him in the very near future. You can read more about his research on the SACHI blog.

Welcome to Jonathan Hughes honorary research fellow

We are delighted to welcome Jonathan Hughes as an honorary research fellow to SACHI and the School of Computer Science. Jonathan is Founder & CEO of Butterfly Catcher and was formerly a founder employee of Realtime Worlds Inc., helping to create the BAFTA-winning videogame franchise ‘Crackdown’ for Microsoft Game Studios. As Principal Designer there he was also responsible for the design direction of ‘MyWorld’, a hugely ambitious entertainment platform which secured $50m funding from NEA and WPP, with executive design oversight of the UK and Asia-Pacific projects. After running the software development agency Zedaxis for several years, with clients such as Skyscanner and the NHS, he founded Butterfly Catcher in 2012, focusing on data visualisation for industry, and in particular finance.

Commenting on his honorary fellowship Jonathan said “I’m delighted to be appointed to this role. Aaron’s team at SACHI have a tremendous reputation and they are undertaking world-leading research which is highly applicable to industry. Being given the opportunity to be involved is very exciting indeed.”

Jonathan has a Masters (Dual Hons) in Psychology & Philosophy from the University of St Andrews, where he specialised in visual perception so this is a return home of sorts! Professor Aaron Quigley said of this fellowship, “we are delighted to have Jonathan join us and we are looking forward to many fruitful collaborations. With his 15 years of industrial experience across a wide range of industry sectors, Jonathan brings a new dynamic to SACHI which we are looking forward to.” Jonathan will contribute to St Andrews HCI research (SACHI) with respect to seminars, involvement in informal supervision, exploration of joint research projects, advice on information visualisation and the finance sector along with working with staff and students on research projects. We also expect Jonathan to provide advice on Palimpsest along with developing new projects and ideas with collaborators within SACHI (both within St Andrews and across Scotland).

Tales from the Burn

The PhD Reading Party of 2014 took place in the serene Burn House, outside Edzell bordering on the Cairngorms.
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The PhD students had the opportunity to talk about their research, hear talks from staff as well as socialise with all other participants outside the academic work environment.

The lovely Scottish weather permitted everyone to explore the grounds, river and star gaze amongst other activities. Looks like everyone had great fun.
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Text and images courtesy of Ruth, Shyam, Matus and Ildiko.

MSc Poster Demo Session 2014

Last September a diverse group of students arrived at orientation to begin, their MSc journey.

Start of the journey: September 2013

Start of the journey: September 2013

After a year of hard work, and an intensive summer project, students submitted their final dissertation last week. Earlier today they had an opportunity to present their posters and demonstrate their project artefacts.

MSc Poster Session: Pinning, Preparation and Presentation

MSc Poster Session: Pinning, Preparation and Presentation

End of the MSc journey: August 2014

End of the MSc journey: August 2014

With prizes awarded to the top 3 posters and cakes for all, the session proved busy and provided the perfect occasion to meet with second markers, reflect upon the dissertation journey and appreciate the projects completed by their peers.

Congratulations to Alice Herbison (overall winner): The design and implementation of DentalAnx, (best runner-ups) Bejamin Yakubu: AMLA Android Multimedia Learning Aid, and Thomas Brunner: Interactive Realtime Analysis of Social Media Data, all three received the coveted amazon vouchers.

Clockwise from left: Benjamin, Alice and Thomas complete with their winning poster. Receiving Amazon vouchers for top 3 posters.

Clockwise from top left: Benjamin, Alice and Thomas complete with poster. Receiving Amazon vouchers

We wish them all, every success with future plans, and look forward to seeing them again at December 2014 Graduation!

NSS 2014: Computer Science Students 100% Satisfied

The results of the 2014 National Student Survey (NSS) were released this week and 100% of our students reported themselves “satisfied” (20%) or "very satisfied” (80%) with their course. This places Computer Science at St Andrews top in the UK.

The School was also top in a number of other categories including “Staff are good at explaining things”, “Assessment arrangements and Marking have been fair”, “I have been able to contact staff when I needed to”, “Good advice was available when I needed to make study choices” and ” I have been able to access general IT resources when I needed to”.

The NSS collects satisfaction levels from undergraduate students in the UK, via a survey. The survey is sent to all students in the UK a few months before they graduate and gets a very high return rate.

We are delighted that our recent graduates feel so positive about their student experience and wish them every success with future endeavours.


Computer Science Graduation 2014

Computer Science Graduation 2014


Read more about the survey, the 2014 results and its ongoing review at the Funding Council website, in the University news and in the media.

“Love Learning” Video Competition Winner

Congratulations to James Montgomery, the overall video winner in “Love Learning” an annual competition run by UCAS and The Times.

James viewed the contest as an opportunity to express the passion that he has developed for computing during his first year of study in the School of Computer Science. We congratulated him earlier this week, and asked him to comment on the motivation and inspiration behind the video.

I was particularly inspired by lectures on abstraction levels, and discovering that sliced onion lends itself so well to animation was a deciding factor in choosing my subject matter. I’m delighted to have received the overall prize, and hope my video will encourage more people to consider pursuing computer science at university.

UCAS love learning seeks to inspire the next generation of students to study a related subject at university and encourages students to bottle their enthusiasm and distil it into a winning formula.

Very, well done to James. You can view his winning video along with other entries on the competition results website.

Lectureship In Human Computer Interaction

We seek applications for a SICSA lectureship in Human Computer Interaction or a closely related area. We welcome applications from excellent researchers in any relevant area who are keen to cooperate with others within St Andrews Computer Human Interaction (SACHI) and the School of Computer Science. We are especially, but not exclusively, interested in those working in HCI and:

Input and Interaction methods
Information Visualisation or other techniques relevant to Data Science (e.g. machine learning)
Ubiquitous Computing or Systems
Digital Humanities

You should have a PhD, a period of postdoctoral experience and have an outstanding research record as demonstrated by publications and research funding. You must be willing to cooperate with other researchers across Scotland and contribute to the work of SICSA, especially its Human Computer Interaction theme, and to teach in any area of Computer Science. Teaching is important to us and you should be a committed teacher, with appropriate experience.

Candidates interested in this post are welcome to informally contact the Head of School (Steve Linton hos-cs@st-andrews.ac.uk) to discuss possible options. For informal discussion on St Andrews Computer Human Interaction, please contact Professor Aaron Quigley aquigley@st-andrews.ac.uk. We would welcome interaction with any established groups wishing to move to St Andrews.
Information on how to apply.