The School hosted another successful Coffee Morning organised by Dr Ishbel Duncan. This year, September 30th is the UK’s annual biggest coffee morning in aid of MacMillan Cancer care. Some of the home baking and donations are pictured below. So far we’ve raised just over £120. Very, well done to everyone who participated. David Letham was named Best Baker.
UPDATE: The final amount raised by computer science was £173.30.
We are delighted to introduce three female PhD students funded by the Chinese Scholarship Council.
Xue Guo (JC1.06)
“I am Xue Guo, a returning student from Beijing. My PhD research into Complex Networks is supervised by Prof. Simon Dobson. Last seven years, I hopped over five places: four undergraduate years in BUPT and UCSD, one master year in St Andrews, and two gap years – one in Phoenix TV as a technology journalist, and one in Skyscanner as a software engineer. A three-to-four-year research in one town seems quite a LONG journey for me, but I am sure it will NOT be a LONGLY one in this warm academic community of School of Computer Science. My current research interest is modelling real world phenomena using complex networks, esp. smart city design. Born in Beijing, a city with a population of over 20 million, I have experienced most urban problems that a metropolis can suffer from. I would like to design a research tool for the city designers to generate solutions to traffic congestion and give advice on city infrastructure distribution. I am looking forward to learning from you and exploring more applications of complex networks. In my free time, I enjoy fencing, snowboarding, calligraphy and music.”
Yanbei Chen (JC1.19)
“From 2011 to 2014, I was studying in Zhejiang University in China, with a speciality in Automation. In 2014, I started my master program in KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, with a major in System, Control and Robotics. In the summer of 2015, I enrolled in Tohoku University Engineering Summer Program in Japan. In the first half of 2016, I conducted my master thesis in the field of machine learning, deep learning and multimodal learning under the supervision of Dr. Atsuto Maki in Computer Vision and Active Perception Lab in KTH.Currently, with the scholarship from China Scholarship Council and University of St Andrews, I will start my PhD study under the supervision of Dr. Juan Ye. My research interests lie in the fields of activity recognition, machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence. From now on, my research will focus on activity recognition based on sensor data from smartphone. In my leisure time, I enjoy music, travel, reading, and jogging.”
Sidi Zhan (JC1.11)
“Hi, I am Sidi Zhan! I completed my BEng in Computer Science at Beijing Foreign Studies University, focusing on recommending doctors to patients in online healthcare QA community. I am now working as a PhD student in Computer Science under the supervision of Dr. Tristan Henderson and Dr. Juan Ye. My proposed research is to enhance peers mutual help and promote their social support in online healthcare community by using recommender to match-make the patient users. My research project will include collecting and analyzing users’ profiles and records data, so policies on user privacy protection will also be examined. I enjoy studying and living in St Andrews, the beautiful coastal city, very much. I am so willing to combine my hobbies with the life here by experiencing local culture, like jogging along the East Sands, singing in a chorus and going Ceilidh dances.”
Congratulations to Vinodh Rajan Sampath, who successfully defended his thesis today. He is pictured below with supervisor Dr Mark-Jan Nederhof, research student Juan Mendoza Santana and internal examiner Dr Tom Kelsey. Dr Peter Stokes from King’s College London, acted as external examiner.
Congratulations to our Senior Honours Class of 2016, and our PhD students Dr Jan de Muijnck-Hughes, Dr Christopher Davies, Dr Jakub Dostal, Dr Marc Werfs, Dr Ditchaphong Phoomikiattisak, Dr Bruce Simpson and Dr Ward Jaradat who graduated yesterday. Students were invited to a reception in the school to celebrate their achievement with staff, friends and family.
Saad Attieh, one of our talented SH students was awarded this year’s Principal’s Medal, which recognises exceptional endeavour and achievement during a student’s time at St Andrews. Read more about the medal and his journey in the University News.
Our graduates 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.
The SACHI group were well represented at CHI 2016 held in San Jose, California. The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction, and an exciting venue to discover, discuss and learn about the future of how people interact with technology.
SACHI presented five full papers, one note and a workshop paper, ran a successful workshop on Proxemic Mobile Collocated Interactions and designed many of the vibrant SIGCHI banners on display throughout the conference.
Well done to all concerned. SACHI group activities, conference keynote and plenary sessions are pictured below. CHI 2017 will be held in Denver, Colorado next year with a September deadline for papers and notes.
Images courtesy of Aaron Quigley
The SACHI group’s contribution to Project Soli was selected and featured in the official alpha developer video released by Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects group (ATAP), and has subsequently been shown on stage during the Google I/O ATAP 2016 session earlier in May.
The team systematically explored the Soli and developed machine learning techniques to train and classify objects. Achieving advanced interactions in real time, at this scale with consumer ready devices is an exciting development within the project. Read more about their research and Project Soli experience in “Object recognition with the Project Soli in St Andrews”.
The team consisted of Hui-Shyong Yeo (a PhD student in SACHI), Patrick Schrempf (a 2nd year CS student), Gergely Flamich (a 2nd year CS student), Dr David Harris-Birtill (a senior research fellow in SACHI) and Professor Aaron Quigley.
Google’s Project Soli workshop: March 2016
The School of Computer Science is excited to announce Scotland’s first Engineering Doctorate (EngD) in Computer Science. The innovative research apprenticeship in partnership with The Data Lab, was launched on Monday in Edinburgh and featured in The University News earlier today.
Prospective research engineers and industry sponsors can find essential information and application forms on the EngD website. In partnership with The Data Lab, 5 prize studentships have been announced for 2016. Interested applicants with strong data-intensive and/or data-driven research are encouraged to apply (27th June deadline).
Monday’s launch in Edinburgh
Summer has arrived in the CS garden as work begins growing “rabbit tolerant” spuds, carrots and onions as well as salad ingredients, in preparation for our summer BBQs. Staff and students from Computer Science and Transition are pictured working hard to support Computer Science’s contribution to the Edible Campus.
Students and staff are pictured at the yearly PhD poster session, held last week. The dynamic session offers a perfect opportunity for supervisors and reviewers to catch up with student progress, and is a great venue for students to meet up and consider research ideas with their colleagues.
Congratulations to School Administrator Alex Bain, who completed the London Marathon for worldwide cancer research. Alex, runner no 5089 is pictured below with his finisher’s medal. Donations to recognise his achievement and preparatory training, can still be made via his Justgiving page.
