School of Computer Science

June 26, Andruid Kerne, The Future of Human Expression: Ideation − Play − Body-based Interaction

Speaker: Andruid Kerne, Texas A&M, USA
Date/Time: 2-3pm June 26, 2015
Location: CS1.33a, University of St Andrews

 

Andruid is research scientist-artist investigating how people experience personal expression, creative ideation, and social engagement. He develops and evaluates expressive interfaces, computational architectures, and distributed systems that support creative processes of knowledge production and interpersonal communication.

For more details see the SACHI page

Event details

  • When: 26th June 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Format: Seminar

May 19, Tom Rodden, On lions, impala, and bigraphs: modelling interactions in Ubiquitous Computing.

Speaker: Tom Rodden, University of Nottingham
Date/Time: 2-3pm May 19, 2015
Location: CS1.33a, University of St Andrews

As ubiquitous systems have moved out of the lab and into the world the need to think more systematically about how there are realised has grown. This talk will present intradisciplinary work I have been engaged in with other computing colleagues on how we might develop more formal models and understanding of ubiquitous computing systems.

More details can be found on this SACHI page

 

Event details

  • When: 19th May 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar

May 8th, Workshop, Sketching and Constructing Visualisations

A hands-on introduction to data literacy

This will be a hands-on workshop where we will conduct exercises on data characterisation, visualisation data sketching, and constructive visualisation. There will be several short talks on basic data visualisation concepts, discussions, sketching sessions and constructive visualisation sessions.

In this workshop you employ the basic visual variables to construct meaningful representations, the dynamic manipulation of spatial positioning to enable spatial reasoning, and through these practices you will become aware of the wide variety of ways that people can think about data.

More details can be found on this SACHI page.

 

Event details

  • When: 8th May 2015 11:00 - 16:30
  • Where: Cole 1.33

Graham Kirby: Excellence in Teaching Award

We congratulate our Director of Teaching Dr Graham Kirby on being rewarded for championing ‘learning by doing’ at The University Teaching Awards held in Parliament Hall.

The School is rated highly for student satisfaction, which echoes the great teaching and strong student staff community sustained here in Computer Science. Graham is pictured below participating in some recent School activities.

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Images courtesy of me (apologies in advance).

€4.2M ParaPhrase Project Concludes

The impressive ParaPhrase project which commenced in October 2011, brought together a world-leading team of academic and industrial experts to improve the programmability and performance of modern parallel computing technologies. The consortium consisted of 7 academic and 3 industrial partners from 6 countries and was coordinated by Prof. Kevin Hammond here in the School of Computer Science .

The project has produced over 80 publications in leading international conferences and journals and has been demonstrated at over 100 international conferences and other events, as well as producing a range of new software tools and programming standards.

Prof Hammond described ParaPhrase as a tremendous success but highlighted that significant challenges remain. In the future, parallel programs will need to self-adapt to computing architectures we haven’t even thought of yet.

Read the full article in the University news.

April in Computer Science: Poster Presentations and World Domination

The Senior Honours students presented their posters and final year software artifacts to staff and students last week. The best poster accolade and associated amazon voucher was presented to Callum Hyland for his poster – Android: Smoking Cessation, behavioural pattern prediction through spatial and temporal modelling. We wish them well with exam revision and look forward to seeing them at June graduation.

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The Junior Honours students finalised their team projects last Friday and competed for world domination. This year the project involved implementing a multi-player peer-to-peer world domination game, with AI. We await news of which team dominated the CS world for a time on Friday.

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Images courtesy of Lisa Dow and Simone Conte

Computer Science Distinguished Lectures 2015

Earlier this month Prof. Mothy Roscoe from ETH Zürich delivered the first set of distinguished lectures for 2015 in the Byre Theatre. The three highly accessible, well attended and engaging lectures centred around the question “What’s happening to computer hardware, and what does it mean for systems software?”

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Images courtesy of Saleem Bhatti

PhD Scholarship in Data Science

Potential PhD students with a strong background in Computer Science are encouraged to apply for this three-year studentship funded by the Research Council of the European Commission (ERC). The student will work within an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Computer Science and Geography in the WORKANDHOME project (ERC Starting Grant 2014), which investigates how home-based businesses are shaping society and space.

The student will examine the Computer Science challenges within this research project. The exact scope of the PhD project is open to discussion but we anticipate that the successful candidate will be working broadly on Data Science topics, potentially covering one or more of the following areas: cloud computing, social network analysis and agent-based modelling. This is a unique opportunity to work at the cutting edge of systems research. Come join us in St Andrews.

Funding Notes: The studentship will cover UK/EU tuition fees and an annual tax-free stipend of approximately £13,000. Funding will be for three years of full-time study, starting date ideally in September/October 2015.

Applications: It is expected that applicants should have or expect to obtain a UK first-class honours degree (or its equivalent from non-UK institutions) in Computer Science but the minimal standard that we will consider is a UK upper-second class Honours degree or its equivalent.

For further information on how to apply, see our postgraduate web pages. The closing date for applications is June 30th 2015. All interested candidates should contact Dr Adam Barker in the first instance to discuss your eligibility for the scholarship and a proposal for research.

June 16th, seminar by Gavin Doherty: Technologies for mental health: designing for engagement

The School of Computer Science welcomes Dr Gavin Doherty, Trinity College Dublin to give his talk on ‘Technologies for mental health: designing for engagement’.

Abstract:
Mental illness is one of the greatest social and economic challenges facing our society.
The talk will consider at some of the different ways in which technology (and HCI research) can help, with a particular focus on the problem of engagement. Taking examples from a series of projects to develop novel technologies for use in the mental health space, we will see some of the unique issues and challenges which come from working in this domain, and the steps which can be taken to address them. The SilverCloud platform, designed to deliver range of engaging and effective clinician-supported mental health interventions, will be used as a specific example to discuss the topics of evaluation and dissemination. Development of a suite of programmes and a number of partnerships based on the platform have enabled the delivery of supported online interventions to tens of thousands of patients in a range of public and private healthcare services worldwide.

Bio:
Dr. Gavin Doherty is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin, and co-founder of SilverCloud Health. He completed his doctorate at the University of York, before undertaking postdoctoral work at CNR in Pisa and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK before moving to TCD. He is interested in design for specific application areas, and has led a number of interdisciplinary projects in a number of different domains. A major focus of his work over the last decade has been on the design of technologies for mental health. The aim has been to develop systems which can increase access to, increase engagement with, and assist in improving the outcomes of mental health interventions.

This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

Event details

  • When: 16th June 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar