Postgraduate

Funded PhD Research Studentships Closing Date 12th February

The School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews has funding for students to undertake PhD research in any of the general research areas in the school:

http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/research

We are looking for highly motivated research students with an interest in these exciting research areas. Our only requirements are that the proposed research would be good, we have staff to supervise it, and that you would be good at doing it. 

We have funded studentships, including industrial sponsored studentships, available for students interested in working towards a PhD. The studentships offer costs of fees and an annual tax-free maintenance stipend of about £14,057 per year for 3.5 years. Students should normally have or expect at least an upper-2nd class Honours degree or Masters degree in Computer Science or a related discipline.

For further information on how to apply, see our postgraduate web pages (http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/prospective-pg). A non-exclusive list of potential PhD projects is provided at http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/phd-projects. The closing date for applications is February 12th 2016 and we will make decisions on studentship allocation by March 4th 2016. Informal enquiries can be directed to pg-admin-cs@st-andrews.ac.uk or to potential supervisors.

Graduation November 2015

Congratulations to the Masters Class of 2015, and PhD students Dr Luke Hutton and Dr Chris Schneider who graduated on Monday. Dr Chonlatee Khorakhun graduated in absentia.

Students were invited to a reception in the school to celebrate their achievement with staff, friends and family.

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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.

2014/15 Graduation Reception on St Andrews Day

The School of Computer Science will be holding a Graduation Reception in the Jack Cole Building on Monday 30th November 2015 from 11:00am to 14:00pm for Masters and PhD students who are graduating that day at Younger Hall.

The graduates are invited, along with their guests, to come along after the ceremony for a glass of bubbly and mini cream cake or two! Staff are encouraged to come along and join in the celebrations.

On behalf of the school may I wish those graduates unable to attend Graduation the very best for their future endeavors.

 

Event details

  • When: 30th November 2015 11:00 - 14:00
  • Where: Cole Coffee Area

China Scholarship Council and University of St Andrews Scholarships

The School has a number of scholarships available for Chinese students to study for a PhD with us.

Scholarships are available for individuals normally resident in mainland China, intending to return to China at the end of their studies. Scholarships will be awarded on the basis of academic merit, potential to become a leader in your field and potential to become a decision-maker and opinion former within China.

More details can be found here. Please note that the closing data for applications is 30 November 2015.

 

General Research Students Arrive at Computer Science

As the new academic year gets underway we welcome the following new PhD students to the School. Good luck guys!

Awada

Uchechukwu Awada

Awada
My name is Awada Uchechukwu, I am starting a PhD program with the Systems Research Group at the School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews, where I will be researching on innovative technologies that addresses the current and future data-intensive challenges. Prior to this, I was a PhD research assistant with the Network and Cloud Computing Laboratory at the School of Computer Science and Technology, Dalian University of Technology, China. I received my MEng degree in Computer Applied Technology, from Harbin Engineering University (China) and my BSc in Computer Science from Ebonyi State University (Nigeria).

 

Fearn

Fearn Bishop

Fearn
Fearn is interested in the creation of information visualizations. Primarily her research is looking at how children visually represent datasets, and how this knowledge can be used to aid the creation of new visualizations, perhaps also aiding in their accessibility. She also has an interest in tangibles and the physicalization of data. She has blue hair and plays more board games than are necessarily advisable.

 

 

Tom Dalton

Tom
I’m a new PhD student in the department working on Data linkage with direction from Graham and Al. My research is likely to focus on the preservation of provenance in our linkages and how we handle the associated uncertainties while still trying to produce high quality linkage solutions – obviously it’s still month one and we haven’t yet nailed down an exact research question yet, so things are liable to change slightly.My undergrad was also here in the department and so the place, and the people, isn’t all that different to me – but having an office is definitely something that I’m enjoying. I’m originally from Manchester where I spent all of my life before escaping to St Andrews.In my free time I enjoy climbing mountains, watching cycling and cricket, I’m also involved in the CU and the Free Church in town; otherwise I’ll be hidden behind my new camera or in the pub.

Michael Pitcher

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I’m Mike, and I’m originally from the North Wales-Shropshire border region. I graduated from Keele University in 2010 with a dual honours degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. I then worked for 4 years as a computer programmer before coming to St. Andrews in 2014 to complete a Masters in Artificial Intelligence, after which I started my PhD. My hobbies include football, rugby and video gaming and I’m also Secretary of the University’s Real Ale Society.

For my PhD, I’m working with both the School of Computer Science and the School of Medicine, and my research is investigating the use of complex network based computer models to study diseases, in particular tuberculosis. The aim is to create realistic models of human physiology and disease dynamics within the body to aid the testing and discovery of new treatments.

Hui-Shyong Yeo

Yo

My name is Hui-Shyong Yeo, but feel free to just call me YO. I am from Malaysia which has the best food in the world.

I graduated from Multimedia University in Malaysia for my undergrad and Dongseo University in Korea for my master. Before coming to St Andrews. I worked as a researcher for one year in UVR Lab, KAIST, Korea.

I am starting my PhD in SACHI, under Prof. Aaron Quigley. I am particularly interested in exploring and developing novel interaction techniques that transcend the barrier between human and computers, especially on topics such as gestural/mid-air interaction, mobile/wearable interaction, augmented/virtual reality and text entry. For my PhD, I am likely to focus on Around Body Interaction with free-hand gestures.

I like to talk about latest research in HCI and I actually maintain a educational fan-page on Facebook for sharing interesting HCI news/papers. Please feel free to have a look.

Distinguished Lecture: ‘Scalability and Fault-tolerance, are they the same?’ by Joe Armstrong

The first of this academic year’s distinguished lectures will be given by Professor Joe Armstrong, co-inventor of Erlang, on Monday 16th November 2015 at The Byre Theatre.Joe Armstrong

Abstract:

To build a scalable system the important thing is to make small isolated independent units. To scale up we just add more units. To build a fault-tolerant system the important thing to do is make small isolated independent units…. Does that sound familiar? Haven’t I seen that somewhere before? Oh yes, in the first paragraph! So maybe scalability and fault tolerance are really different names for the same thing.

This property of systems, namely that fault-tolerant systems were also scalable, was noticed years ago, notably in the design of the Tandem computer system. The Tandem was design for fault tolerance but rapidly became a leading supplier of scalable computer platforms. Thus it was with Erlang.

Erlang followed  a lot of the Tandem design, it was built for fault-tolerance but some of the most successful applications  (such as WhatsApp) use it for its scalability.

In this lecture I’ll talk about the intimate relationship between scalability and fault-tolerance and why they are architecturally the same thing.

I’ll talk about the design of Erlang and why scalable systems have to be built on non-shared memory abstractions.

Bio:

Joe Armstrong has been programming since 1967. He invented the programming language Erlang. He has worked as a programmer, founded a few successful companies and written a few books. He has a PHD in Computer Science from KTH. He is currently Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

Event details

  • When: 16th November 2015 09:15 - 15:30
  • Where: Byre Theatre
  • Series: Distinguished Lectures Series
  • Format: Distinguished lecture

PhD Studentship: Reasoning about Racy Programs under Relaxed Consistency

A PhD studentship on “Reasoning about Racy Programs under Relaxed Consistency” is available in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews, funded by Microsoft Research and EPSRC.

The project will involve developing reasoning principles and tools for relaxed memory consistency settings. This is a key problem in shared-memory concurrency at the low-level, whether in C or C++, or even higher-level languages such as Java.

There has been lots of work done on proving shared-memory concurrent programs correct, by the use of very sophisticated program logics such as Concurrent Separation Logic and RGsep. However, shared-memory concurrent programs actually do not satisfy a key building block of such logics, an assumption that memory is sequentially consistent. Instead, when programming at the low-level in C or C++, or even in relatively higher-level languages such as Java, programmers have to deal with relaxed memory consistency. How and whether sophisticated program logics can scale up to this setting is the open research question we seek to address. Furthermore, efficient concurrent code often have intentional races, making the problem harder (and rendering the standard prescription of data-race-freedom ineffective). If we can develop such a logic, we can build tools that can automatically analyse code and make them safe, efficient, and correct by suggesting appropriate fences or other mechanisms. With multiprocessors everywhere from personal mobile devices to servers, this is an important problem with a potential of high impact, both in theory and in practice.

The project will be supervised by Dr Susmit Sarkar at the University of St Andrews. Dr Jade Alglave of Microsoft Research Cambridge will be the Microsoft supervisor. During the course of their PhD, Scholars are invited to Microsoft Research in Cambridge for an annual Summer School, and there is also a possibility of paid internships during studies. The studentship is fully funded to pay fees and stipend for students with a relevant connection to the UK.

Applicants are expected to have or expect to obtain a UK first-class Honours or Masters degree (or its equivalent from non-UK institutions) in Computer Science, but the minimum standard we require is an upper second-class Honours degree or equivalent. Some experience in concurrent and/or functional programming and an aptitude for mathematical subjects are required. Knowledge and experience of one or more of formal verification, mechanised proofs, and programming languages is highly desirable.

For further information on how to apply, see our postgraduate web pages. Ideally the student will start in October 2015, or as soon as possible thereafter. Further details on the project and suggested reading is available from Dr Susmit Sarkar.

Staff and Students with Dr Vint Cerf

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Dr Vint Cerf with staff and new CS PhD graduates

On July 24th, Dr Vinton Cerf was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, by the University of St Andrews. Dr. Vint Cerf, a founding father of the Internet, graduated alongside our new PhD and Honours graduates. In his Laureation address, Professor Saleem Bhatti highlighted to the audience that, “The internet is mankind’s largest and most complex creation. It spans national boundaries and puts global communication at the fingertips of the world’s citizens. It is, in today’s world, difficult to imagine life without the information and many services that are available to us all through the internet. However, it is an invention of our time.”

This graduation ceremony was a memorable day for both staff and students and presented each person the opportunity to reflect on their own research experiences here in the University of St Andrews. Reflecting on our “Internet @ 100” symposium earlier in the week, Professor Bhatti concluded by noting that, “Easy and accessible internet communication is also seen as an empowering service for the citizens of the world“.

We wish all of our new graduates, all the best for the future.

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Dr Vint Cerf with staff and new CS PhD and Honours graduates

PhD Studentship: Reasoning about Racy Programs under Relaxed Consistency

A PhD studentship on “Reasoning about Racy Programs under Relaxed Consistency” is available in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews, funded by Microsoft Research and EPSRC.

The project will involve developing reasoning principles and tools for relaxed memory consistency settings. This is a key problem in shared-memory concurrency at the low-level, whether in C or C++, or even higher-level languages such as Java.

The project will be supervised by Dr Susmit Sarkar at the University of St Andrews. Dr Jade Alglave of Microsoft Research Cambridge will be the Microsoft supervisor. During the course of their PhD, Scholars are invited to Microsoft Research in Cambridge for an annual Summer School, and there is also a possibility of paid internships during studies. The studentship is fully funded to pay fees and stipend for students with a relevant connection to the UK.

Applicants are expected to have or expect to obtain a UK first-class Honours or Masters degree (or its equivalent from non-UK institutions) in Computer Science, but the minimum standard we require is an upper second-class Honours degree or equivalent. Some experience in concurrent and/or functional programming and an aptitude for mathematical subjects are required. Knowledge and experience of one or more of formal verification, mechanised proofs, and programming languages is highly desirable.

For further information on how to apply, see our postgraduate web pages. Ideally the student will start in October 2015, or as soon as possible thereafter. Further details on the project and suggested reading is available from Dr Susmit Sarkar.