CodeFirst:Girls Final presentations Fall 2016

Congratulations to our St Andrews Computer Science Code First Girls, for completing the Fall 2016 course, and staging their final projects. Students are pictured presenting some of their diverse and ambitious projects to staff, CFG tutors and fellow students. Presentations were followed by some home baking.

Judges awarded overall winner to Marya Simeonova and Chirsty McFadyen for Student Association’s Environment Subcommittee. Runners-up were Hannah Done, Anna Guckian and Eilidh Robb for GradTrip and Alix Réveilhac, Bridget Holmes and Sherry Zhang for The Grind.

Well done to all. Read more about CFG in our previous post Computer Science supports CodeFirst:Girls

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Children in Need 2016

Well done to Sophie and Caitlyn, who raised £215 pounds for Children In Need today. They are pictured setting up shop and selling their delicious homemade cakes and biscuits. Thanks to staff and students for helping them raise a fabulous total. Options included Pretzels, Rainbow Cupcakes (lactose free), Oreo Cupcakes, Brownies (gluten free), Chocolate cake (vegan) and Gingerbread Pudsey Bears.

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Review their previous 2012, 2013 and 2015 cakes and fundraising through our past blog posts. A great effort all round, we look forward to seeing you again next year.

Arkwright Awards for budding young engineers

On Friday 11 November 2016, Professor Saleem Bhatti was the principal guest of the Arkwright Scholarship Trust, as principal speaker and presenter at Arkwright’s award ceremony at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. The Arkwright Trust is a well-established, independent UK-wide charity which identifies and 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. This year, the award ceremony was sponsored by GCHQ, with the theme of “Cyber Security and Communications”.

Edinburgh . Arkwright Scholarships Awards. Copyright © 2016 Andrew Wiard, www.andrew-wiard.com, www.reportphotos.com

Edinburgh . Arkwright Scholarships Awards.
Copyright © 2016 Andrew Wiard,
www.andrew-wiard.com,
www.reportphotos.com

Edinburgh . Arkwright Scholarships Awards. Copyright © 2016 Andrew Wiard, www.andrew-wiard.com, www.reportphotos.com

Edinburgh . Arkwright Scholarships Awards.
Copyright © 2016 Andrew Wiard,
www.andrew-wiard.com,
www.reportphotos.com

Images used with permission from the Arkwright Scholarship Trust

Distinguished Lecture Series 2016: Prof. Julie McCann

Earlier this month Professor Julie McCann from Imperial College London, delivered the next set of distinguished lectures for 2016, in Lower and Upper College Hall. The three topical, well attended and interesting lectures centred around Distributed Systems and Sensing and discussed how sensor networks are being used today, how other sciences will impact the research area, how such systems are programmed and finished by introducing ongoing challenges in terms of scalability, resilience and security.

Professor McCann is pictured below at various stages of the distinguished lecture series, and with Director of Research, Professor Simon Dobson and Dean of Science, Professor Alan Dearle.

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Videos from the DLS can be accessed on Vimeo –
Lecture 1: https://vimeo.com/192134381
Lecture 2: https://vimeo.com/192135351
Lecture 3: https://vimeo.com/192137007

Images courtesy of Saleem Bhatti

Computer Science Student Reps 2016

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We are delighted to congratulate the student representatives for 2016/7, elected by their peers. Reps play a very important part in the life of the school by providing a healthy communication channel between staff and the students they represent, and also by chairing and running the Staff-Student Consultative Committee, amongst many other roles.

The reps are shown outside the Jack Cole Building in November 2016, and are (from left to right)

  • Juris Bogusevs (1st year)
  • Seamus Bonner (1st year, library)
  • Keno Schwalb (3rd year, careers)
  • Christa-Awa Kollen (welfare)
  • Vika Anisimova (4th year)
  • Anastasiia Izmailova (2nd year, social)
  • Masha Nedjalkova (masters, careers, minutes)
  • Fearn Bishop (postgraduate research)
  • Robin Nabel (school president)

Many thanks to the reps for arranging this photo (taken by Alex Bain who can be seen in the reflection), which should help staff and students put faces to the names.

Thanks to everyone who volunteered to be a student rep.

 

 

RadarCat presented at UIST2016

SACHI research project RadarCat (Radar Categorization for Input & Interaction), highlighted earlier this year in the University news, the Courier and Gizmodo and in a Google I/O ATAP 2016 session, will be presented at UIST2016 this week.

RadarCat is a small, versatile radar-based system for material and object classification which enables new forms of everyday proximate interaction with digital devices. SACHI’s contribution to Project Soli featured in a previous blog post SACHI contribute to Google’s Project Soli, in May. Read more about RadarCat for object recognition on the SACHI blog.

Google's Project Soli workshop in March 2016

Google’s Project Soli workshop in March 2016