Highlighting the School’s penchant for the sweet and fizzy, earlier this week Long Thai returned from vacation with Vietnamese sweets including: bánh cốm (green sticky rice cake), sesame candy, peanut candy and chè lam.
Tom Kelsey introduced a Game of Thrones Cake. The StACS garden continues to offer fresh vegetables and BARR’s fizzy pop survived longer than a day.
As we start a new semester, we take time to reflect on those moving on to new ventures and wish colleague and friend, Per Ola Kristensson every success in his new post in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge.
During his time in the School he had many successes and viewed St Andrews as an “incredibly stimulating and vivid research environment.”
Describing the School and SACHI as “friendly and supportive” he underlined the school’s commitment to ensuring teaching and research is of “the highest calibre.”
Describing the students he worked with as “fantastic” and a pleasure to supervise, he explained that some of their dissertations had lead to scientific publications.
His final reflection:
Looking back, these years I have spent in St Andrews have helped me develop as a researcher and a teacher and I will remember my years here fondly.
We wish him continued success and look forward to seeing him in the very near future. You can read more about his research on the SACHI blog.
Twas the week before orientation, when all through the labs not a student was stirring.
Tranquility in Computer Science
We are looking forward to welcoming our new students next week, and seeing the labs bustling with creativity once again. Find out all you need to know about Orientation 2014 on the School homepage.
Congratulations to Dr Graeme Stevenson, who passed his PhD viva earlier today. He is pictured below with supervisor Professor Simon Dobson and Internal Examiner Dr Graham Kirby. Professor Julie McCann from Imperial College, acted as External Examiner.
Congratulatory Cheers
Last September a diverse group of students arrived at orientation to begin, their MSc journey.
Start of the journey: September 2013
After a year of hard work, and an intensive summer project, students submitted their final dissertation last week. Earlier today they had an opportunity to present their posters and demonstrate their project artefacts.
MSc Poster Session: Pinning, Preparation and Presentation
End of the MSc journey: August 2014
With prizes awarded to the top 3 posters and cakes for all, the session proved busy and provided the perfect occasion to meet with second markers, reflect upon the dissertation journey and appreciate the projects completed by their peers.
Congratulations to Alice Herbison (overall winner): The design and implementation of DentalAnx, (best runner-ups) Bejamin Yakubu: AMLA Android Multimedia Learning Aid, and Thomas Brunner: Interactive Realtime Analysis of Social Media Data, all three received the coveted amazon vouchers.
Clockwise from top left: Benjamin, Alice and Thomas complete with poster. Receiving Amazon vouchers
We wish them all, every success with future plans, and look forward to seeing them again at December 2014 Graduation!
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.
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
