Congratulations to Vinodh Rajan Sampath, who successfully defended his thesis today. He is pictured below with supervisor Dr Mark-Jan Nederhof, research student Juan Mendoza Santana and internal examiner Dr Tom Kelsey. Dr Peter Stokes from King’s College London, acted as external examiner.
Congratulations to our Senior Honours Class of 2016, and our PhD students Dr Jan de Muijnck-Hughes, Dr Christopher Davies, Dr Jakub Dostal, Dr Marc Werfs, Dr Ditchaphong Phoomikiattisak, Dr Bruce Simpson and Dr Ward Jaradat who graduated yesterday. Students were invited to a reception in the school to celebrate their achievement with staff, friends and family.
Saad Attieh, one of our talented SH students was awarded this year’s Principal’s Medal, which recognises exceptional endeavour and achievement during a student’s time at St Andrews. Read more about the medal and his journey in the University News.
Our graduates 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.
The SACHI group were well represented at CHI 2016 held in San Jose, California. The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction, and an exciting venue to discover, discuss and learn about the future of how people interact with technology.
SACHI presented five full papers, one note and a workshop paper, ran a successful workshop on Proxemic Mobile Collocated Interactions and designed many of the vibrant SIGCHI banners on display throughout the conference.
Well done to all concerned. SACHI group activities, conference keynote and plenary sessions are pictured below. CHI 2017 will be held in Denver, Colorado next year with a September deadline for papers and notes.
Images courtesy of Aaron Quigley
Congratulations to Shyam who featured as Instructor of the month with CodeFirst Girls and was nominated for a teaching award by undergraduate computer science students. Shyam has been busy working on first level modules this semester and his passion for Computer Science, friendly approachable personality and all his hard work, has been duly rewarded.
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
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.
Tell us what you think of our videos and you could win a £20 Netflix or Amazon voucher!
You will be asked to watch and assess the video quality of four 1-minute online video clips, as well as complete a short questionnaire related to your regular video usage and your energy-saving awareness and preferences. Your participation should take around 20 to 30 minutes.
Optionally, you will be entered into a prize draw for a £20 Netflix or Amazon voucher.
You must be 18 years or over.
Please contact Oche Ejembi <ooe@st-andrews.ac.uk>
UTREC approval code: CS12016
Contact Details
Researcher: Oche Ejembi
email: ooe@st-andrews.ac.uk
Supervisor: Prof. Saleem Bhatti
email: saleem@st-andrews.ac.uk
Congratulations to Jan, who successfully defended his thesis today. He is pictured below celebrating with supervisor Dr Ishbel Duncan and internal examiner Dr Juiliana Bowles. Dr Shamal Faily from Bournemouth University acted as external examiner.
We are delighted to introduce the latest members of staff and research students to the school.
Dr Bo Chen:
Dr. Chen is an Associate Professor in the School of Information and Software Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC, http://www.uestc.edu.cn). He is oriented by Dr. Adam Barker now as a 
Visiting Scholar till February, 2017. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2008 from UESTC. His major research areas include: 1) Rough Set and Soft Computing 2) Data-intensive Computing Software Infrastructure 3) Data Science and Inter-disciplinary Applications. Dr. Chen has substantial industrial backgrounds. Before join UESTC, he served as software engineer and senior consultant for middleware vendors Tongtech and BEA. He PI and Co-PI-ed some Chinese national granted projects for service oriented software platform in modern service fulfilling and international e-trading. He serves as an expert panel member of China Ministry of Science and Technology, for China State Sci- Tech Support Program and Torch Program. He is also a deputy sectary and expert panel member of Innovation Technology Alliance for Electronic Trade Industry (http://www.etrades.cn), led by China Ministry of Commerce. For more information, please check out his UESTC faculty webpage http://www.is.uestc.edu.cn/teachers.do?id=1061.
Dr Roushanak Rahmat:
Roushanak is a Research Fellow in the School of Computer Science at the University of St. Andrews working on WORKANDHOME project with Dr Adam Barker.
Her research interests include mobile app design, cloud computing, image/signal processing and medical image analysis.
Dawand Sulaiman:
I earned my master’s degree in Software Engineering in the Department of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews (Academic Year: 2011/12) and received a medal for the best dissertation in the programme. Prior to that, I gained my BSc degree in Applied Computing in Ming Chuan University in Taiwan. For the last three years, I was in my hometown and worked as an instructor in the University of Kurdistan Hêwler and taught several modules including: Problem Solving Techniques, Data Structures and Algorithms, Object Oriented Programming, and Web Technologies. Meanwhile, I developed and distributed more than 30 mobile apps for both iOS and Android platforms.
I have started my PhD under the supervision of Adam Barker in January 2016. I will be working alongside an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Computer Science and Geography in the WORKANDHOME project, which investigates how home-based businesses are shaping society and space.
Guilherme Carneiro:
My name is Guilherme Carneiro, I am from Brazil. I hold a BSc in Computer Science with a specialization in So
ftware Engineering. I have some experience in industry where I spent few years working at IBM with production databases of American customers. In 2013, I returned to academia to receive training in research with a Master in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) at Paris-Sud University in France. Before coming to St. Andrews, I worked for 6 months as a Research intern at INRIA (the French National Institute for computer science and applied mathematics).
I am starting my PhD under the supervision of Prof. Aaron Quigley and Dr. Miguel Nacenta in SACHI. My research topic is focused on collaborative information visualization to facilitate group decision making in real-time. My PhD is currently funded by CNPq and the Brazilian government through the Science Without Borders program.
I love traveling and visiting new places. I like any sports in general. I also have training in self-defense with a black belt in kung-fu.
Yasir Alguwaifli:
Until now I have been working as a lecturer in computer science, mainly teaching web-related modules. Before joining the academic field, I was a student mainly working in web-related as full-stack developer but sometimes dipping my toes in other areas such as artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and formal-verification.
I have now started my PhD with Professor Kevin Hammond’s team. When I’m not spending my nights looking at code, I usually enjoy playing mmorpgs or watching gaming streams!
The 2015 PhD Reading Party was held at the Burn, a Georgian Mansion at the foot of Glenesk in the North East of Scotland in December last year. It was an opportunity for research students to network, brainstorm and talk about their research and interests with colleagues in a relaxed atmosphere.
There were twenty-two (22) student talks, each of which lasted for up to 10 minutes including time for questions and discussions. Two members of staff – Ruth Letham and Ozgur Akgun – also gave talks, the former on teaching opportunities and career paths and the latter on reproducible research and research streams in academia. At the end of the talks, the staff members provided feedback and facilitated small group brainstorming sessions based on the interests and research themes that emerged.
It wasn’t all work and no play, as the gang explored the scenic landscape, wandered through the nearby woods and streams, and contemplated the complexities of the universe while star-gazing at night. Indoors, the gang played pool, table tennis, darts and cards, and participated in organised activities including a pub quiz (because there’s no such thing as too much trivia knowledge), presentation karaoke (because extemporising is fun and useful) and a host of board games (because why not?).
PhD Reading Party 2015
Images and text courtesy of Adeola Fabola, Haifa Al Nasseri and Shyam Reyal
