Graduates Robert Macinnis, Allan Boyd and Angus Macdonald, the executive team behind AetherWorks, and distributed data storage solution AetherStore featured in The Register last week.
AetherWorks sponsored the St Andrews programming competition earlier this year. Further testament to the quality of our graduates, Lewis Headden and Isabel Peters have joined the successful start-up. We wish them all continued success as they near product delivery.
Highlighting the School’s penchant for the sweet and fizzy, earlier this week Long Thai returned from vacation with Vietnamese sweets including: bánh cốm (green sticky rice cake), sesame candy, peanut candy and chè lam.
Tom Kelsey introduced a Game of Thrones Cake. The StACS garden continues to offer fresh vegetables and BARR’s fizzy pop survived longer than a day.
As we start a new semester, we take time to reflect on those moving on to new ventures and wish colleague and friend, Per Ola Kristensson every success in his new post in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge.
During his time in the School he had many successes and viewed St Andrews as an “incredibly stimulating and vivid research environment.”
Describing the School and SACHI as “friendly and supportive” he underlined the school’s commitment to ensuring teaching and research is of “the highest calibre.”
Describing the students he worked with as “fantastic” and a pleasure to supervise, he explained that some of their dissertations had lead to scientific publications.
His final reflection:
Looking back, these years I have spent in St Andrews have helped me develop as a researcher and a teacher and I will remember my years here fondly.
We wish him continued success and look forward to seeing him in the very near future. You can read more about his research on the SACHI blog.
The PhD Reading Party of 2014 took place in the serene Burn House, outside Edzell bordering on the Cairngorms.
The PhD students had the opportunity to talk about their research, hear talks from staff as well as socialise with all other participants outside the academic work environment.
The lovely Scottish weather permitted everyone to explore the grounds, river and star gaze amongst other activities. Looks like everyone had great fun.
Twas the week before orientation, when all through the labs not a student was stirring.
Tranquility in Computer Science
We are looking forward to welcoming our new students next week, and seeing the labs bustling with creativity once again. Find out all you need to know about Orientation 2014 on the School homepage.
Congratulations to Dr Graeme Stevenson, who passed his PhD viva earlier today. He is pictured below with supervisor Professor Simon Dobson and Internal Examiner Dr Graham Kirby. Professor Julie McCann from Imperial College, acted as External Examiner.
Congratulatory Cheers
What is Meyer’s E1 problem?
John Slaney, Australian National University
The E1 problem is a rather specialised question concerning propositional logic. It was posed by R. K. Meyer almost 50 years ago, and is still open. In this talk, I undertake to explain the problem, to review progress towards its solution and possibly even to make it look less eccentric than it might at first seem. The talk is accessible to anyone with an interest in computer science or logic, as it does not presuppose any great technicalities.
John Slaney is Professor of Computer Science at Australian National University, Canberra.
His research has focussed on many aspects of logic and artificial intelligence, sometimes from a very philosophical standpoint but also from a very practical one of building better solvers. He also wrote Logic4Fun, an interactive logic modelling and solving website.
John Slaney has never denied rumours that he was a professional ice hockey player in North America, including scoring the winning goal in a Canada-USSR match. However, if asked he probably will deny them (since he was never a hockey player).
Last September a diverse group of students arrived at orientation to begin, their MSc journey.
Start of the journey: September 2013
After a year of hard work, and an intensive summer project, students submitted their final dissertation last week. Earlier today they had an opportunity to present their posters and demonstrate their project artefacts.
MSc Poster Session: Pinning, Preparation and Presentation
End of the MSc journey: August 2014
With prizes awarded to the top 3 posters and cakes for all, the session proved busy and provided the perfect occasion to meet with second markers, reflect upon the dissertation journey and appreciate the projects completed by their peers.
Congratulations to Alice Herbison (overall winner): The design and implementation of DentalAnx, (best runner-ups) Bejamin Yakubu: AMLA Android Multimedia Learning Aid, and Thomas Brunner: Interactive Realtime Analysis of Social Media Data, all three received the coveted amazon vouchers.
Clockwise from top left: Benjamin, Alice and Thomas complete with poster. Receiving Amazon vouchers
We wish them all, every success with future plans, and look forward to seeing them again at December 2014 Graduation!
The results of the 2014 National Student Survey (NSS) were released this week and 100% of our students reported themselves “satisfied” (20%) or "very satisfied” (80%) with their course. This places Computer Science at St Andrews top in the UK.
The School was also top in a number of other categories including “Staff are good at explaining things”, “Assessment arrangements and Marking have been fair”, “I have been able to contact staff when I needed to”, “Good advice was available when I needed to make study choices” and ” I have been able to access general IT resources when I needed to”.
The NSS collects satisfaction levels from undergraduate students in the UK, via a survey. The survey is sent to all students in the UK a few months before they graduate and gets a very high return rate.
We are delighted that our recent graduates feel so positive about their student experience and wish them every success with future endeavours.
Computer Science Graduation 2014
Read more about the survey, the 2014 results and its ongoing review at the Funding Council website, in the University news and in the media.
