Ambitious, entrepreneurial, innovative, employable and highflying…

Words we use to describe our alumni, who work in New York, Switzerland, London and Edinburgh amongst other places.

Whether working for established companies such as Adobe and Google or in their own business start-ups such as AetherWorks LLC. and PlanForCloud (formerly ShopForCloud) our graduates continue to flourish. And rumour has it more of our talented CS graduates will be joining some of them shortly. The suspense! They are all exemplars of why St Andrews is the only Scottish university to feature in the 2013 High Fliers, a report about the graduate market in 2013.

Clockwise from top left:

Rob, Angus and Greg from AetherWorks LLC., who took time out to capture a photo of themselves outside their offices in New York.

Ali at graduation, sporting a colour-co-ordinated Google Glass (who knew!). Listen to Ali discuss his career at the SICSA PhD conference careers panel.

We caught up with Adam, Andrew and James earlier this year when they represented Google at the Tech Talk by Google engineers.

Neil (complete with sunglasses) visited the school last week, on an unusually sunny day, with colleagues from Adobe.

Thanks to:
AetherWorks LLC.: Robert MacInnis, Angus MacDonald, Allan Boyd and Greg Bigwood.
PlanForCloud: Ali Khajeh-Hosseini and Alistair Scott.
Adobe: Neil Moore.
Google: James Smith, Adam Copp and Andrew McCarthy.
Editorial Support: Anne Campbell

MSc in Human Computer Interaction starting in September 2013

We have added more details on our new MSc in Human Computer Interaction which is starting in September 2013. This is an intensive one-year programme designed to provide a solid theoretical and practical foundation in HCI. It is designed to enable students from a variety of backgrounds to become HCI practitioners, in roles including UX designer, visual analysts, interaction designers and interaction architects. This MSc will also help prepare you for a PhD programme in HCI. In semester 1 students take Human Computer Interaction Principles and Human Computer Interaction Practice, followed by User-Centred Interaction Design and Evaluation Methods in Human Computer Interaction in semester 2. Other modules can be selected from the general MSc portfolio.

You can find more details here on the MSc in Human Computer Interaction.

Computer Science Research 2013 & Beyond

Q: What do the words in the tag cloud have in common?

A: They all relate to research happening in the School of Computer Science. Some are conference contributions coming to a conference near you soon, and some will appear as forthcoming journal articles.

The University research portal features publications and awards, and can be customised to explore research happening in the School of Computer Science.

Thinking of studying in the School or contemplating collaboration with a research group? Use the words above to search and peruse the research publications for some inspiration.

Here Comes Summer

Work continues in the new Comp Sci Garden. It’s not Blue Peter or Beechgrove status yet, but look out Chelsea 2014.

Carnegie-Cameron Taught Postgraduate Bursaries 2013

Congratulations to Alice Herbison who has been selected to receive a Carnegie-Cameron Taught Postgraduate Bursary. Alice has studied a number of undergraduate modules in the school and will begin her postgraduate studies in September on our new MSc in Human Computer Interaction. We look forward to seeing her in the department again soon.

The Carnegie Trust For The Universities Of Scotland, supports the bursaries, which were established by Andrew Carnegie in 1901.

Computing Reviews’ Notable Books and Articles 2012

ACM Computing Reviews has selected a recent survey paper written by Per Ola Kristensson and colleagues as one of the Notable Computing Books and Articles of 2012.

The list consists of nominations from Computing Reviews reviewers, Computing Reviews category editors, the editors in chief of journals covered by Computing Reviews, and others in the computing community.

The selected survey paper is entitled “Foundational Issues in Touch-Surface Stroke Gesture Design — An Integrative Review” and it was published by the journal Foundations and Trends in Human-Computer Interaction in 2012.

What Next for Senior Honours?

As the exam diet draws to a close for another year, our final year students are considering their next step after graduation. Stephen Haley will join PlanForCloud in August as a Software Engineer, working alongside Alistair Scott, another graduate from the school.

PlanForCloud, originally ShopForCloud, was established by Hassan and Ali Khajeh-Hosseini and acquired by RightScale in 2012. While studying for his PhD in Computer Science at St Andrews, Ali worked as a software engineering intern at RightScale. Their continued success means that they are actively recruiting, visit the PlanForCloud recruitment page for further information.

More next steps to follow…

Alumni Numbers Increase in New York City

We like to share success stories, especially when they relate to our Alumni. Congratulations to Greg Bigwood who recently joined AetherWorks LLC. as Senior Software Architect. AetherWorks LLC. is a Software Engineering, Research & Development lab in New York City.

Computer Science Graduates Robert MacInnis, Allan Boyd and Angus Macdonald launched software company AetherStore™ earlier last year. Visit their websites at www.AetherWorks.com and www.AetherStore.com to read more about their journey. We wish them continued success as they approach the anniversary of their launch.