The School had another successful Coffee Morning and Raffle organised by Ishbel Duncan today. September 25th is the UK’s annual biggest coffee morning in aid of MacMillan Cancer care. Some of the home baking on offer is pictured below. There are still some cakes and biscuits on offer in the coffee area. Donate generously.
Staff and students from the School of Computer Science attended Prof. Ian Miguel’s Inaugural Lecture in St Salvator’s Quadrangle yesterday evening. The well-received and highly accessible lecture titled “Constraint Satisfaction and the Crystal Maze”, was accompanied by a reception in Lower College Hall. Many will remember celebrating Ian’s installation as a new Professor at December graduation last year. Inaugural lectures provide newly appointed professors the opportunity to inform colleagues, the student community and the general public of their research interests and future plans.
Professor Ian Miguel’s Inaugural Lecture
Congratulations to our recent graduate Aleksejs Sazonovs who accomplished overall winner in the 2015 Undergraduate Awards for Computer Science yesterday. His Winning Paper: ‘A Metapopulation Model for Predicting the Success of Genetic Control Measures for Malaria’ supervised by Prof. Simon Dobson and Prof. Oscar Gaggiotti, was assessed by panels of international academics and will be published in The Undergraduate Awards Academic Journal. Overall winners are invited to the UA Global Summit, a four-day networking and brainstorming event which brings the world’s top students together for a series of inspirational lectures, workshops and discussions. We look forward to hearing more about the event from Aleksejs in November. Read more about the project in our highly commended post.
Aleksejs pictured at June Graduation
After a busy week of induction and module talks, staff and students are pictured during orientation and welcome receptions. Undergraduate students were invited to a gaming session followed by pizza. It’s always rewarding to see so many students and staff welcoming our new 1st year students. Thanks to School president, Maria Kustikova for overseeing events.
Undergraduate gaming and pizza during orientation
Welcome receptions last Wednesday and Thursday evening for our MSc and Honours students, also proved popular and highlight the outstanding student community within the School.
MSc reception September 2015
Honours welcome reception 2015
The School of Computer Science is delighted to announce the Inaugural Lecture of Professor Ian Miguel.
Title: ‘Constraint Satisfaction and the Crystal Maze’
Abstract: In numerous contexts today we are faced with making decisions of increasing size and complexity, where many different considerations interlock in complex ways. Consider, for example, a staff rostering problem to assign staff to shifts while respecting required shift patterns and staffing levels, physical and staff resources, and staff working preferences. The decision-making process is often further complicated by the need also to optimise an objective, such as to maximise profit or to minimise waste. In this talk I will introduce the field of Constraint Programming, which offers a means of solving such problems automatically. Using an illustrative example from the annals of the Crystal Maze, a popular TV game show from the 1990s, I will explore the process of modelling and solving problems with constraints and discuss some of the most significant challenges in the field.
The lecture will be held at School III, St Salvator’s Quadrangle
and there will be a reception afterwards, in Lower College Hall.
Abstract:
Garbage collection is no longer an esoteric research interest. Mainstream programming languages like Java and C# rely on high-performance memory managed run time systems. In this talk, I will motivate the need for rigorous models of memory management to enable more powerful analysis and optimization techniques. I will draw on a diverse range of topics including thermodynamics, economics, machine learning and control theory.
Bio:
Jeremy Singer is a lecturer at the School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, Scotland. He has research interests in programming languages,compilation, run time code optimization and memory management. Singer received his PhD from Cambridge in 2006. Website:http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~jsinger
The School of Computer Science is pleased to welcome back one of its former PhD students, James Smith, who is currently Google Product Manager, London to talk about Google @ St Andrews. 
Abstract: Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. It’s an enormous goal to accomplish and we need great people to help us achieve it. We invite you to come learn about Google and some of the engineering challenges we’re tackling.
Sign up: goo.gl/GXXiWp
Dean of Science, Professor Al Dearle officially opened the new Interaction Lab earlier today. The lab is situated within the John Honey building within the School of Computer Science and houses the research talents of both SACHI and Open Virtual Worlds.
The Dean of Science, Professor Aaron Quigley Chair of HCI, current staff and students, alumni and Emeritus Professor, Ron Morrison were photographed enjoying the opening celebrations.
The School participated in the Great Scottish Swim on Saturday, the CS team comprising Percy Perez, David Symons, Julie Dunsire, Alex Voss and Ruth Letham were swimming for Médecins Sans Frontières. All team members completed the swim in under an hour. Before and after pictures were captured by Katja who travelled along to support the team.
Congratulations to all. Their target is £1k and they’re 97% there. You can still donate via https://www.justgiving.com/uoscompsci/.
Congratulations to Chonlatee Khorakhun, who successfully defended her thesis today. She is pictured below with supervisor Professor Saleem Bhatti, Internal examiner Dr Juliana Bowles and External examiner Dr Cathryn Peoples from University of Ulster.
