SACHI contributes to Google’s Project Soli

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 in March 2016

Google’s Project Soli workshop: March 2016

Engineering Doctorate (EngD) in Computer Science

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 arrives in the CS Garden

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.

PhD Poster Session 2016

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.

Alex Bain completes 2016 London Marathon

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.

Senior Honours: Poster Presentation and Demo Session 2016

Our talented industrious senior honours students presented their posters and final year software artifacts to staff and students last week. The best poster accolade and coveted amazon voucher was presented to Thomas Morrell for his poster – Emotion Recognition from Gait Using Smartphone Accelerometer Data, supervised by Erica .

As Illustrated in the many pictures, the poster session is a perfect opportunity to share research ideas with their peer group. We wish them success with forthcoming exams and look forward to seeing them at June graduation.

Images courtesy of Lisa Dow and Saleem Bhatti

Junior Honours: Software Team Projects 2016

Our hard working and creative Junior Honours students finalised their team projects last week, and showcased the results of their year long endeavors at a project demo afternoon. This year’s JH projects involved implementing a system for online collaborative editing. Staff and students are pictured discussing the projects and testing out the various text, graphics and sound editing systems.

Distinguished Lecture Series 2016: Dr Maria Klawe

Dr Maria Klawe, the first woman president of Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California delivered the first set of Distinguished Lectures for 2016, in the Byre Theatre. Given the decline in female participation in the tech industry, the three highly relevant, moving, well attended and thought-provoking lectures centred around Computer Science for All. The three lectures focused on Computing Education for School Children, Diversity in Undergraduate Education and Computing Research and People with Disabilities. Maria also delivered a lecture for The Andrew Carnegie Lecture Series: Getting More Woman into Technology Careers to a wider audience prior to the DLS.

Slides from the Distinguished Lecture Series
Lecture1: Computing Education for all in K-12 Education
Lecture2: Diversity in Undergraduate Education
Lecture3: Computing Research and People with Disabilities

Images courtesy of Saleem Bhatti

CodeFirst:Girls final presentations 2016

Congratulations to our St Andrews Computer Science Code First Girls, for completing the 2016 course and staging their final projects. Earlier this week they presented their distinct and impressive projects to staff and students here in the School. Prizes were awarded for overall winner to Naomi McReynolds, for No Clucks Given and runner up to Fidan Gasimova, Katya Clark and Malina McLenna, for The North Point Cafe.

The judges were thoroughly impressed by the enthusiastic presentations and the quality of answers to both technical and non-technical questions. Last year’s winner Kahina Le Louvier also gave a demonstration of her project from the advanced course. Presentations were followed by a cheese and wine reception. Read more about CodeFirst:Girls in our previous post Computer Science supports CodeFirst:Girls.

Computer Science hosts StacsHack and Google HashCode

The School hosted another hugely successful StacsHack last month. We congratulate the St Andrews Computing Society (Stacs) for running a fantastic event. Earlier in February they also coordinated and participated in Google HashCode, a team-based programming competition aimed at solving real-life engineering problems selected by Google.

Google Hash Code February 2016

Hackathons allow students with a range of talents and aptitudes to form groups and create innovative projects in 24hrs. It’s clear from the many photos that great fun was had at both events.

Gorgeous graphs, mood hub, SpeechFrenzy, Social face, Fresh: freshers app, Myo Athletics, pinboard and FarmScript are just some of the projects demos presented during StacsHack. Why not join them for StacsHack3 in 2017.

StacsHack2 February 2016

Thanks to Stacs for continuing to represent the School of Computer Science in such an upbeat and inclusive way.

Sponsors: GitHub, J.P.Morgan,Bloomberg, Codeplay and Startups hackcampus and Codio.

Hardware Lab Partners: Arduino, nest, intel, leap motion, muse, oculus, particle, pebble, and Myo.

StacsHack Photos by Ryo Yanagida, courtesy of Major League Hacking.

Google Hash Code Photos courtesy of Computer Science.

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