Pictures

Gala Malbasic: Young Software Engineer of the Year 2017

Congratulations to Gala Malbasic who won Young Software Engineer of the Year 2017. The awards organised by ScotlandIS were presented at the ScotSoft Awards Dinner yesterday evening. The Young Software Engineer of the Year awards are awarded to the best undergraduate software projects from students studying computer science and software engineering in Scotland.

Gala’s project, Leap Up: The Keyboard Renaissance, set out to to make keyboard interaction faster and less complicated and involved creating a hardware prototype, using software to ensure optimal sensor performance and implemented a large gesture set for use within the system prototype. The final year project was supervised by Professor Aaron Quigley.

Judged against the level of innovation planning & organisation, technical difficulty, commercial and/or social relevance, quality of engineering quality of presentation and level of knowledge & previous research, Judges considered Gala’s project to be exceptional.

As overall winner, Gala received a cheque for £2500 from Sopra Steria, and a trophy from ScotlandIS.

Watch Gala describing her project on YouTube.

Read more about the awards at FutureScot: Women sweep the board at Scottish software engineering awards

Photos courtesy of Aaron Quigley.

Computer Science Ball 2017

Postgraduate students, led by Paul Dobra, organised the first ever CS Ball in August. The celebration coincided with finishing summer dissertations and the annual poster and demo session. The school sponsored Smurfalicious Blue Ball proved very popular and sold out of tickets earlier in August. The theme was blue and the location was The old Manor Hotel, in Lundin Links. The evening comprised of champagne, dinner and a Ceilidh till midnight. Students are pictured enjoying the 3 course dinner and fully embracing the spirit of a Cèilidh. We look forward to seeing them at December Graduation.

Images courtesy of Paul Dobra, Ula Rustamova, Nick Tikhonov, and Xu Zhu.
– Main Organisers: Paul Dobra & Shyam Reyal
– Promotion (online): Yin Noe, Nouchali Reyal
– Promotion (offline): Gillian Baird, Fiona George, Midhat Un Nisa
– Material Design: Yin Noe
– Photography: Ula Rustamova and Nick Tikhonov
– Decorations: Fiona George, Midhat Un Nisa, Anke Shi, Masha Nedjalkova, Sihan Li
– Electronics / Multimedia / Drone: Xu Zhu
– Music for Disco: Blair Fyfe

https://www.facebook.com/csball.standrews/

Computer Science Orientation and Welcome 2017

After advising and induction events, staff and students are pictured enjoying a welcome reception and orientation activities, coordinated by Uta Hinrichs. The annual orientation gaming session proved as popular as ever and offered retro classic digital games and traditional board games. The gaming session was closely followed by a well attended welcome reception for the consumption of Twiglets and Irn Bru.

MSc Poster Demo Session 2017

After a year of hard work, and an intensive summer dissertation, our MSc students submitted their dissertations last week and presented their project posters and artefacts.

The eventful poster demonstration session provides a great opportunity for students to meet with second markers, reflect upon their MSc experience and appreciate the diverse projects completed by their peers. This year, students organised a School sponsored CS Ball, to celebrate their achievement.

We wish them all, every success with future plans, and look forward to seeing them again at December Graduation.

Images courtesy of Saleem Bhatti and Xu Zhu.

Postgraduate Dinner at Fairmont Hotel

Postgraduate student, Paul Dobra organised an end of semester celebratory dinner at the Fairmont Hotel in April. The social event marked the end of teaching and provided a chance to relax before the commencement of dissertation. Paul supplied comments and shared some photos from the occasion.

“There are rather few occasions not to be happy when you are surrounded by friends and family. Even better so when your friends are like your family, and in true computer science spirit the end of the second semester finished in a grand style: enjoying the scenic view of the North Sea from the balcony of the Fairmont Hotel and Restaurant, approximately 60 postgraduates celebrated their friendship and the successful completion of deadlines. Consisting of a lavish three-course meal and blessed with amazing weather, the event was a reminder of the true, everlasting bonds that can be forged outside university.”

Images and text courtesy of Paul Dobra

Computer Science: June Graduation 2017

Congratulations to our Senior Honours Class of 2017, MSci Honours students and our PhD students Dr Anne-Marie Mann, Dr Ildiko Pete, Dr Yuchen Zhao and Dr Michael Mauderer, who graduated on Wednesday. Students were invited to a reception in the School prior to the ceremony, to celebrate their achievement with staff, friends and family. We echo the sentiments expressed by our Head of School, Professor Steve Linton, during his Graduation address.

“For what you have achieved here, we are so proud of you. For what you will achieve, we wait eagerly and will always be proud. And wherever you are, we hope you will always regard St Andrews as a place you can call home.”

Our graduates will indeed 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 Annemarie Paton and Ryo Yanagida.

Best Final Year Student at Lovelace 2017

We are delighted to congratulate Iveta Dulova, who attended the 10th BCSWomen  Lovelace Colloquium, and walked away with the prize for “Best Final Year Student”. Iveta’s poster, titled “SensorCube: An end-to-end framework for conducting research via mobile sensing“, was based on her final year project supervised by Dr Juan Ye.

The event was held at Aberystwyth University on April 12, 2017. Also attending from St Andrews were Chloe Collins, competing in the second year category with the poster “Pedal to the metal – the role of technology in transportation” and Laura Brewis with her poster “What percentage of solitaire games are actually winnable?”.

It showed great commitment for these three students to undertake the lengthy trip at a busy time of semester. Like St Andrews, Aberystwyth, is a beautiful small seaside town with an excellent Computer Science department.  Iveta took a couple of photos showing off the beach and the campus.