“Love Learning” Video Competition Winner

Congratulations to James Montgomery, the overall video winner in “Love Learning” an annual competition run by UCAS and The Times.

James viewed the contest as an opportunity to express the passion that he has developed for computing during his first year of study in the School of Computer Science. We congratulated him earlier this week, and asked him to comment on the motivation and inspiration behind the video.

I was particularly inspired by lectures on abstraction levels, and discovering that sliced onion lends itself so well to animation was a deciding factor in choosing my subject matter. I’m delighted to have received the overall prize, and hope my video will encourage more people to consider pursuing computer science at university.

UCAS love learning seeks to inspire the next generation of students to study a related subject at university and encourages students to bottle their enthusiasm and distil it into a winning formula.

Very, well done to James. You can view his winning video along with other entries on the competition results website.

MSc Summer Barbecue

MSc students take time out of their busy schedule to enjoy a summer BBQ. A sunny July day presented an opportunity to relax and reflect on all their hard work, before submitting their dissertations. Later this month they will present their posters, and demonstrate their project artefacts. We look forward to viewing the culmination of a journey that started a year ago.

Images courtesy of MSc students.

Finalist in Scottish Software Engineer of the Year

Congratulations to St Andrews student Simone Ivan Conte, who has been selected as one of the four finalists in the Young Software Engineer of the Year Award 2014.

Simone’s project (pictured below) involved creating a haptic device and API for displaying vector graphics (e.g., trees and graphs) for people with visual disabilities. According to his Senior Honours dissertation supervisor, Dr. Miguel Nacenta

this work demonstrates a lot of ingenuity and has a large potential impact.

The Young Software Engineer of the Year Awards are given for the best undergraduate software projects completed by students studying computer science and software engineering in Scotland.

Simone graduated in Computer Science from St Andrews earlier this year and is currently working for Adobe on a summer internship. In September he will start his doctoral studies, funded by Adobe, with Professor Alan Dearle at St Andrews.

Previous finalists and prize winners have included Thomas Grimes, Alistair Scott, Craig Paul, Angus MacDonald, Ben Catherall and Graeme Bell. Further testament to the quality of talented students graduating from the School of Computer Science.

The winners of this year’s award will be revealed on 2nd October 2014! Fingers crossed.

Computer Science: Graduation 2014

Congratulations to the Senior Honours Class of 2014, our MSci (Honours) students and our PhD students, who graduate today. Students were invited to a reception in the School to celebrate their achievement with staff, friends and family. Our graduates will move on to a wide variety of interesting and challenging employment and further study opportunities, and we wish them all well with their future careers.

Images courtesy of Saleem Bhatti and Lisa Dow

Summer in the Edible Campus à la Computer Science

Dr Gordon Baxter appointed Scottish Chair of BCS Interaction Group

Dr Gordon Baxter has recently been appointed as the chair of the Scottish regional sub-group of the BCS Interaction Group. The BCS Interaction Group celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, and is the longest established and largest national group in Europe devoted to human-computer interaction. The Interaction group is served by regionally based sub-groups with representatives from a broad range of academic and industrial centres of HCI interest. These sub-groups meet informally every few weeks to progress work, and all participants are committed to promoting the education and practice of HCI and to supporting HCI people in industry and academia.

Ildiko Pete wins People’s Choice Prize

Congratulations to Ildiko Pete who won the People’s Choice Prize for her presentation at the 2014 London Hopper Colloquium. Ildiko entered the Research Spotlight competition prior to the event, and was chosen as a finalist. The event was held at the BCS headquarters on 22 May 2014.

The Colloquium is an annual event for women in Computer Science, which provides an opportunity for participants to present their work, network with other researchers and gain insights into careers in industry.

Hot off the press: Foundations for Designing User Centered Systems

A new book, Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems has just been published by Springer. Written by Frank Ritter (Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State), Gordon Baxter (Systems Engineering Group, Computer Science, University of St Andrews) and Elizabeth Churchill (Director of HCI at eBay Research Labs), Foundations for DUCS was developed for people studying and practising human factors/HCI and software engineering.

Foundations for DUCS encapsulates the extensive experience of its co-authors in designing, developing and conducting research into interactive systems in domains as diverse as aviation, consumer Internet, health care, eCommerce, industrial process control, and enterprise systems. The book covers the fundamental information that system designers need in order to understand their users’ capabilities and limitations, the tasks those users will perform, and the context in which they perform them. It also considers the practical implications of this information for system design. Applying the lessons from Foundations for DUCS will help readers to design interactive systems that are more usable, more useful, and more effective.

Springer launched Foundations for DUCS at the end of April 2014 in Toronto at CHI, the pre-eminent conference in Human-Computer Interaction.

Dr Baxter said:

“It was a real challenge to produce a practical resource that would be useful to students of human factors/HCI and software engineering, as well as appealing to both academics and practitioners. The testimonials we’ve received from leading lights in all areas of our target audience suggest that we’ve met that challenge, with Ian Sommerville (author of Software Engineering) recommending it ‘to all engineers’, highly respected Human Factors expert Peter Hancock saying that ‘Even if only a proportion of designers and users read this book we will be so much better off.’ and IBM Distinguished Fellow and Chief Architect, Richard Hopkins noting that the book ‘has given me access to a variety of new techniques and an extended vocabulary that I look forward to introducing my design teams to.’”

The book is currently available via SpringerLink: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-1-4471-5134-0 and from book stores.

Senior Honours Poster and Demo Sessions

Our talented final year Computer Science students presented their projects last week. A demonstration and poster session allowed them to discuss the output from a semester of hard work with their peer group and staff.

We wish them every success as they approach graduation, and look forward to celebrating their successful CS journey, next Thursday at the SH BBQ.

Images courtesy of Conrad de Kerckhove.

CS1006 Backgammon AI

The annual CS1006 challenge took place this morning in the subhonours lab. Students had been designing AIs to play Backgammon, this year. The first year module was delivered by John Thomson. Previous years have focused on Hex, Othello and Connect 4.

Congratulations to David Mulkerrin, winner of the CS1006 competition, winning a £50 Amazon voucher.

Also congratulations to:
2nd- Neofytos Dimitriou and Nick Tikhonov
3rd- Callum Fare and Conor Barr

It’s always a fun session to end Semester 2, and a great opportunity to showcase the ingenuity and creativity of our first year students.

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