MSc students take time out of their busy schedule to enjoy a summer BBQ. A sunny July day presented an opportunity to relax and reflect on all their hard work, before submitting their dissertations. Later this month they will present their posters, and demonstrate their project artefacts. We look forward to viewing the culmination of a journey that started a year ago.
Images courtesy of MSc students.
Congratulations to St Andrews student Simone Ivan Conte, who has been selected as one of the four finalists in the Young Software Engineer of the Year Award 2014.
Simone’s project (pictured below) involved creating a haptic device and API for displaying vector graphics (e.g., trees and graphs) for people with visual disabilities. According to his Senior Honours dissertation supervisor, Dr. Miguel Nacenta
this work demonstrates a lot of ingenuity and has a large potential impact.
The Young Software Engineer of the Year Awards are given for the best undergraduate software projects completed by students studying computer science and software engineering in Scotland.
Simone graduated in Computer Science from St Andrews earlier this year and is currently working for Adobe on a summer internship. In September he will start his doctoral studies, funded by Adobe, with Professor Alan Dearle at St Andrews.
Previous finalists and prize winners have included Thomas Grimes, Alistair Scott, Craig Paul, Angus MacDonald, Ben Catherall and Graeme Bell. Further testament to the quality of talented students graduating from the School of Computer Science.
The winners of this year’s award will be revealed on 2nd October 2014! Fingers crossed.
Applications are invited for a Teaching Fellow in Computer Science in the School of Computer Science. In the first instance, at least, this is a fixed-term position of nine months with a start date of September 2014. We require a Teaching Fellow to assist with the development and delivery of high quality, innovative teaching. Applicants should have at least a BSc in Computer Science, preferably a PhD, and previous lecturing and tutorial experience at undergraduate level. Preferably they should also be able to demonstrate ability to deliver a range of core Computer Science courses, in particular within the field of HCI, in classroom, laboratory and small-group tutorial environments; experience in the development of innovative material for learning and teaching; and/or experience of contributing to pedagogical studies in the sciences. Information on how to apply.
Iain Parris had a busy week at the end of June. On Monday 30 June he travelled to Madrid for the 6th International Workshop on Hot Topics in Peer-to-peer computing and Online Social neTworking (HotPOST), where his paper Friend or Flood? Social prevention of flooding attacks in mobile opportunistic networks won the best paper award. He then returned to St Andrews on Wednesday to defend his PhD thesis on Practical privacy and security for opportunistic networks. Fortunately he wasn’t too tired from his travels and his examiners, Dr Mike Just and Professor Aaron Quigley agreed that he should pass with minor corrections. The examiners and the soon-to-be Dr Parris are pictured.
This June Honorary Professor John Stasko delivered the EuroVis 2014: Capstone on The Value of Visualization…and Why Interaction Matters
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Congratulations to the Senior Honours Class of 2014, our MSci (Honours) students and our PhD students, who graduate today. Students were invited to a reception in the School 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.
Images courtesy of Saleem Bhatti and Lisa Dow
Come along to the Graduation reception on Wednesday morning at 10.30am until 12.30pm in the Jack Cole coffee area- hope to see you all there. Fizz and cream cakes will be provided!
Dr Gordon Baxter has recently been appointed as the chair of the Scottish regional sub-group of the BCS Interaction Group. The BCS Interaction Group celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, and is the longest established and largest national group in Europe devoted to human-computer interaction. The Interaction group is served by regionally based sub-groups with representatives from a broad range of academic and industrial centres of HCI interest. These sub-groups meet informally every few weeks to progress work, and all participants are committed to promoting the education and practice of HCI and to supporting HCI people in industry and academia.
Congratulations to Ildiko Pete who won the People’s Choice Prize for her presentation at the 2014 London Hopper Colloquium. Ildiko entered the Research Spotlight competition prior to the event, and was chosen as a finalist. The event was held at the BCS headquarters on 22 May 2014.
The Colloquium is an annual event for women in Computer Science, which provides an opportunity for participants to present their work, network with other researchers and gain insights into careers in industry.
