Research

Job Vacancy: Research Fellow in Computer Science

WORKANDHOME is an interdisciplinary project between the School of Computer Science and the School of Geography, which investigates how home-based businesses are shaping society and space. The research explores how this transformation of work-residence relations has implications on economic activity, economic spaces, city models, the meaning of the home, the role of the neighbourhood and residential choices. Social science research and computer sciences will be integrated to record and predict the consequences of changing activity/networking patterns for future cities through computational network analysis and agent-based modelling. A component of the WORKANDHOME project involves conducting a survey of households in selected UK cities. Individuals’ activities and social networks – both in physical space and virtual space activities will be tracked using mobile devices, social media applications and a web-browser plug-in.

You will work as a Researcher and Engineering Lead for a number of software components which will facilitate a UK-wide survey. Firstly, a mobile phone application (Android and iPhone) which will utilise GPS data in order to measure location, distance travelled etc. as well as reporting the purpose of trips (e.g., shopping, bringing children to school) and types of social contacts (e.g., business supplier, friend). Secondly, for tracking activities in social networks, apps for several social media networks will be developed (e.g. Facebook and Twitter). These will record activities through mobile phones and PCs/laptops (location of contact and frequency). Finally, a web-browser plug-in for a popular browser such as Google Chrome or Firefox will be used in order to report browsing history to a database in St Andrews.

This research will be undertaken in the School of Computer Science at the renowned University of St Andrews. This is a unique opportunity to work at the cutting edge of systems research. Come join us in St Andrews.

For an informal discussion about the post you are welcome to contact Dr Adam Barker.

Fixed term: Full time for 12 months or Part time for 24 months
Salary: £31,342 per annum
Full job listing

IVF-predict: Predicting Personalised IVF Success

The IVF-predict application has been designed based on years of academic research carried out by top medical and academic laureates. Using data from more than 144,000 IVF cycles a mathematical model has been developed that allows couples to have the most accurate prediction of their chance of a live birth with IVF.

In conjunction with Dr Tom Kelsey here in the school of Computer Science, the complex formula has been transformed into a smartphone application based, calculator presented in just 9 simple steps.

ivf

The personalised, accurate and validated app has been designed to give couples the most accurate value (in %) which represents the rate of a successful outcome if they decide to undergo the IVF process. No other model predicts your chance of success with IVF taking into account your personal medical history. In addition, the application does not transmit any data outside of the device (see Privacy Policy), any data generated or calculations is stored on your device.

The research underpinning IVF-predict has now been published in the highly prestigious medical journal PLOS Medicine and is available for free download.

Find out more about IVF-Predict on the dedicated website, download the app for android or iOS and watch a short demonstration video on youtube.

Toward Workflow Management for Experimental Science?

The School of Computer Science welcomes the opportunity to hear from Dr Babak Esfandiari from Carleton University, CBabak Esfandiarianada who will be delivering his talk on ‘Toward Workflow Management for Experimental Science?’.

Abstract: Data, code, and other digital scientific artifacts are often found (at least by this presenter) to be out-of-synch, unreliable, poorly organized and only partially available. This makes science often hard to reproduce. In this talk, I demo an online tool to manage the workflow of a scientific project, and I speculate over how or whether it can help address these issues.

Bio: Babak Esfandiari is an Associate Professor at Carleton University, a comprehensive university located in the capital of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. He obtained his PhD from Montpellier II, which specializes in Science and Technologies. His research is in agent-based systems; network computing; object-oriented design and languages.

Event details

  • When: 14th August 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar

Welcome to Dr Uta Hinrichs

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Dr Uta Hinrichs

We are delighted to welcome Dr Uta Hinrichs as a new lecturer in Computer Science. Uta has been a postdoctoral research fellow with SACHI since 2012 and she now co-leads SACHI along with her colleagues. Prior to joining the University of St Andrews, Uta studied in the University of Calgary in Canada. Her PhD combined information visualization with large display technology and was awarded the Bill Buxton Award 2012 as Best Canadian HCI Dissertation and her MSc is in Computational Visualistics from the University of Magdeburg in Germany. Uta has also worked at Microsoft Research.

You can read more comments welcoming and commenting on Uta’s appointment here.

Graduation 2015: A Computer Science Symposium with Dr Vint Cerf

The University of St Andrews awarded Dr. Vint Cerf, a founding father of the Internet, an honorary doctorate alongside our graduating students last week. In advance of this, the School of Computer Science organised a one day symposium entitled “The Internet at 100” that encompassed a host of prominent speakers and closed with “Digital Dark Age? Digital Vellum”. The Keynote by Dr Cerf contemplated that the information we have now might be lost unless we plan carefully for the longevity of the applications and data that we use today.
internet100

The interesting and thought provoking talks challenged a diverse range of Internet related research absorbing video, the technology and politics of privacy and surveillance, things and sensors, research directions and a true history of the Internet were considered by Dr Colin Perkins, Prof Ian Brown, Prof Julie McCann, Dr Lars Eggert and Prof Jon Crowcroft respectively.

internet2

Read more about the schedule and the speakers on the event website. Images courtesy of Xu Zhu.

Computer Science Interns Accelerate Impact

Congratulations to Computer Science Interns Gergely Flamich, Jack Cargill, Iveta Dulova, Tatiana Tay and Finlay Marno for designing a prize winning poster, and providing an excellent demonstration session at the recent EPSRC Impact Showcase held in the School of Medicine.

From left: Gergely, Jack, Iveta and Tatiana complete with winning poster.

From left: Gergely, Jack, Iveta and Tatiana complete with winning poster.

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The research presented, focuses on biomedical data science by identifying, integrating and simulating data from both previous studies and current collaborations.

The EPSRC awarded Impact acceleration award (IAA) funding to The University of St Andrews to promote a step change in the delivery of knowledge exchange. There were more than 30 projects funded by the EPSRC. The recent showcase offered an opportunity for university staff and students to find out more about the projects via posters, exhibits and demonstrations.

June 22nd: Internet at 100 Symposium with Dr Vint Cerf

On Monday June 22nd we are organising a one day symposium entitled “The Internet at 100”. This event features a host of distinguished speakers and culminates with a talk by Dr Cerf, one of the “fathers of the internet” and now vice-president and chief internet evangelist at Google.

Internet at 100

The Internet is, of course, not 100 years old. It’s not even quite 50 years old but the talks at this event will look at its history, its current state and forward to what it might look like at 100. We are looking forward to a day of inspiring talks, time to network and socialise but also time to look back while we consider what might be for the Internet.

The full website for this event can be found here: http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/i@100/

Event details

  • When: 22nd June 2015 09:45 - 20:45
  • Where: N Haugh, St Andrews
  • Format: Symposium

Scottish Programing Languages Seminar

The School of Computer Science of the University of St Andrews is organizing the next Scottish Programing Languages Seminar which will be held on Monday 15th June 2015 in Lecture Room 2 of the Gateway. In the meantime you can keep up-to-date by following the SPLS website.

For further enquiries please contact Frantisek Farka.

Event details

  • When: 15th June 2015 11:30 - 18:00
  • Where: Gateway Bldg
  • Format: Seminar

Visualizing and writing variable-free compositional relational programs

G_PacaciAbstract:
Representing argument binding in compositional relational programs is an issue due to the syntactic problems. We first present our former research on using visualization to overcome this problem, and relevant user studies, and go on to discuss our recent work on syntactic improvements in solving the same problem. We are looking forward to feedback on this early stage research.

Bio:
Gorkem studied his masters degree in Abertay Dundee in Computer Games Technology, delivering a thesis on Optimizing collision detection in games. After working in games for a while, he started studying towards a doctorate degree in Uppsala University, Sweden. His study focuses on the representation of relational programming languages.

 

Event details

  • When: 20th May 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar