Engineering Doctorate (EngD) in Computer Science

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

Summer arrives in the CS Garden

Summer has arrived in the CS garden as work begins growing “rabbit tolerant” spuds, carrots and onions as well as salad ingredients, in preparation for our summer BBQs. Staff and students from Computer Science and Transition are pictured working hard to support Computer Science’s contribution to the Edible Campus.

PhD Poster Session 2016

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.

Are there still two cultures?

This Friday the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Young Academy of Scotland is hosting a panel discussion and debate to celebrate the 60th anniversary of one of the most influential essays of all time. CP Snow’s “The two cultures” has passed into popular culture as the idea that arts and sciences are separated by an almost unbridgeable gap in understanding. But is this still true, as science and technology become ever more entwined with our everyday lives? Can we afford to tolerate mutual incomprehension between different groups, and how might we bridge the gap?

A small panel will discuss “The two cultures” and its relevance to modern times in the Studio Theatre at the Byre from 6pm on Friday 13th May, followed by a drinks reception. The panel includes Prof SimonDobson from the School of Computer Science, who also directs the St Andrews Institute for Data-Intensive Research that aims in part to bridge the two cultures by bringing data-driven computational techniques to both arts and science projects.

Event details

When: 13th May 2016 18:00
Where: Byre Theatre

Alex Bain completes 2016 London Marathon

Congratulations to School Administrator Alex Bain, who completed the London Marathon for worldwide cancer research. Alex, runner no 5089 is pictured below with his finisher’s medal. Donations to recognise his achievement and preparatory training, can still be made via his Justgiving page.

Senior Honours: Poster Presentation and Demo Session 2016

Our talented industrious senior honours students presented their posters and final year software artifacts to staff and students last week. The best poster accolade and coveted amazon voucher was presented to Thomas Morrell for his poster – Emotion Recognition from Gait Using Smartphone Accelerometer Data, supervised by Erica .

As Illustrated in the many pictures, the poster session is a perfect opportunity to share research ideas with their peer group. We wish them success with forthcoming exams and look forward to seeing them at June graduation.

Images courtesy of Lisa Dow and Saleem Bhatti

Junior Honours: Software Team Projects 2016

Our hard working and creative Junior Honours students finalised their team projects last week, and showcased the results of their year long endeavors at a project demo afternoon. This year’s JH projects involved implementing a system for online collaborative editing. Staff and students are pictured discussing the projects and testing out the various text, graphics and sound editing systems.

Distinguished Lecture Series 2016: Dr Maria Klawe

Dr Maria Klawe, the first woman president of Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California delivered the first set of Distinguished Lectures for 2016, in the Byre Theatre. Given the decline in female participation in the tech industry, the three highly relevant, moving, well attended and thought-provoking lectures centred around Computer Science for All. The three lectures focused on Computing Education for School Children, Diversity in Undergraduate Education and Computing Research and People with Disabilities. Maria also delivered a lecture for The Andrew Carnegie Lecture Series: Getting More Woman into Technology Careers to a wider audience prior to the DLS.

Slides from the Distinguished Lecture Series
Lecture1: Computing Education for all in K-12 Education
Lecture2: Diversity in Undergraduate Education
Lecture3: Computing Research and People with Disabilities

Images courtesy of Saleem Bhatti

Tristan Henderson appointed as ACM SIGCOMM Education Director

Congratulations to Dr Tristan Henderson who has been appointed to the ACM SIGCOMM Executive Committee, to serve as the SIGCOMM Education Director. SIGCOMM is the ACM’s Special Interest Group on communications and computer networks, and provides a forum for computer scientists, engineers, educators and students to discuss these topics. Amongst the SIG’s activities are the SIGCOMM conference, which is the premier venue for networking research. As Education Director Tristan will be responsible for the SIGCOMM education portal, soliciting summer schools, and other educational activities. In particular he hopes to use his experience in running the CRAWDAD network data archive to encourage educators to use real-world network data in their teaching efforts.

The School of Computer Science has a long history of teaching networking, with networks and distributed systems embedded into our subhonours (e.g. CS2003: The Internet and the Web: Concepts and Programming), honours (e.g. CS3102: Data Communications and Networks) and Masters (e.g. CS5023: Mobile and Wireless Networks) modules. This new appointment is timely given that the School is currently revamping and refreshing its networking curriculum.

CodeFirst:Girls final presentations 2016

Congratulations to our St Andrews Computer Science Code First Girls, for completing the 2016 course and staging their final projects. Earlier this week they presented their distinct and impressive projects to staff and students here in the School. Prizes were awarded for overall winner to Naomi McReynolds, for No Clucks Given and runner up to Fidan Gasimova, Katya Clark and Malina McLenna, for The North Point Cafe.

The judges were thoroughly impressed by the enthusiastic presentations and the quality of answers to both technical and non-technical questions. Last year’s winner Kahina Le Louvier also gave a demonstration of her project from the advanced course. Presentations were followed by a cheese and wine reception. Read more about CodeFirst:Girls in our previous post Computer Science supports CodeFirst:Girls.

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