Congratulations to To Masih Hajiarabderkani, who has successfully defended his PhD thesis. Pictured celebrating with supervisor Dr Graham Kirby and Internal examiner Dr John Thomson.
Pictures
PhD Viva Success
Congratulations to Ruth Hoffmann and Jonathan Ward who passed their PhD vivas earlier this week. Ruth is pictured with Dr Tom Kelsey (internal examiner) and Jonathan (top left) with his PhD supervisor Dr Adam Barker. We look forward to celebrating their achievements at June Graduation.
Mario Kart Around the World
The School recently hosted “Mario Kart Around the World” for students from Newport Primary.
All versions of Mario Kart with the exception of arcade versions were available for the youngsters to play. Our visitors had access to a range of consoles and games ranging from Vectrex to Leap Motion and a great opportunity to see modern equipment and how it looked in the “olden days“.
Staff were pictured testing out the equipment ( by way of playing Mario Kart) post event. Peter Nightingale (top left) is pictured playing the Vectrex Home Arcade System. Jon Lewis (bottom left) was seen tackling Elite on the Sinclair Spectrum.
The successful event was organised by Ruth Letham with help from Ian Gent, Jon Lewis, Peter Nightingale, Chris Jefferson, Ian Miguel, Gonzalo Mendez and Shyam Reyal.
Images Courtesy of Ian Miguel and Ian Gent.
Torchlit Procession
The Torchlit Procession and Rectorial Drag are historic university traditions, in February the soon-to-be-installed Rector Catherine Stihler addressed all students in St Mary’s Quad. The Torchlit Procession later in the evening left from Sallies Lawn where students collected and lit their torches. The walk continued down to the pier offering some fabulous photographic opportunities.
Stunning images from the procession were captured by MSc students Xu Zhu and Fearn Bishop.
School Hosts StacsHack 2015
The School hosted a hugely successful StacsHack last month. We congratulate Stacs St Andrews Computing Society for organising and running a fantastic event. 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 by all. View some of the winning projects at the challenge post submission gallery.
Thanks to Gala Malbasic, Nick Tikhonov, Ieva Vasiļjeva and Vika Anisimova for representing the School of Computer Science in such a positive way and for all their hard work and enthusiasm.
Sponsors: Palantir, J.P. Morgan, Braintree_Dev, Bloomberg and Thalmiclabs.
MLH Hardware Lab partners: Oculus VR, Pebble, Thalmic Labs, Sparkfun, Estimote, Leap Motion and Spark.
Images courtesy of Gala Malbasic and Major League Hacking.
More images from the event can be viewed on the StacsHack Facebook Page.
Notable Woman in Computing Card Deck
Available on a coffee table (Jack Cole) near you: Notable Women in Computing playing card deck featuring 54 notable women in computer science. Play your favourite card game and learn more about the history and future of women in computer science. Read more about the KickStarter and Wiki Project.
PhD Poster Session 2015
Students and staff are pictured at the annual PhD poster session. The perfect opportunity,before teaching starts for supervisors and reviewers to catch up with student progress, and a great venue for students to discuss their research with their peers.
Ae fond farewell: Anne and Joy
As we start a new semester, we take time to reflect on those leaving the department. Fare thee well Anne and Joy. The School hosted a retirement reception for them last week. We thank them for all their hard work over many years and their contribution to making the School such a great place to work and study. They are pictured below being presented with flowers and keepsakes.
Graduation December 2014
Congratulations to the Masters Class of 2014, and PhD students Dr Lakshitha De Silva and Dr Iain Parris who graduated today. The School also celebrated the installation of Professor Ian Miguel.
Students were invited to a reception in the school to celebrate their achievement with staff, friends and family.
Winter graduation coincided with a weekend of St Andrew’s Day celebrations captured in full glory by MSc student Xu Zhu.
Historic Streets, Pier, Harbour and Old Course
R&A, Christmas Lights and Cèilidh.
Our graduates have moved on to a wide variety of interesting and challenging employment and further study opportunities, and we wish them all well with their future careers.
Distinguished Lecture Series 2014: Luca Cardelli
The 2014 Distinguished Lecture Series took place on Tuesday in Lower College Hall. This year’s speaker Prof Luca Cardelli of Microsoft Research and the University of Oxford, delivered three lectures involving Morphisms of Reaction Networks that Couple Structure to Function.
Slides from the lectures are now available: http://lucacardelli.name/indexTalks.html
Luca pictured in Lower College Hall on Tuesday
Abstract
The mechanisms underlying complex biological systems are routinely represented as networks. Network kinetics is widely studied, and so is the connection between network structure and behavior. But it is the relationships between network structures that can reveal similarity of mechanism.
We define morphisms (mappings) between reaction networks that establish structural connections between them. Some morphisms imply kinetic similarity, and yet their properties can be checked statically on the structure of the networks. In particular we can determine statically that a complex network will emulate a simpler network: it will reproduce its kinetics for all corresponding choices of reaction rates and initial conditions. We use this property to relate the kinetics of many common biological networks of different sizes, also relating them to a fundamental population algorithm. Thus, structural similarity between reaction networks can be revealed by network morphisms, elucidating mechanistic and functional aspects of complex networks in terms of simpler networks.
Tuesday’s Programme:
09:15-09:30 Introduction by Prof Simon Dobson
09:39-10:30 Lecture 1 – Molecular Programming
11:00-12:00 Lecture 2 – The Cell Cycle Switch Computes Approximate Majority
13:30-14:30 Lecture 3 – Morphisms of Chemical Reaction Networks
14:30-15:30 Q & A Session
Image courtesy of Prof Saleem Bhatti