Series

School Seminar: Complex Networks and Complex Processes

Simon Dobson, School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews

Abstract:

Complex networks provide a way of modelling systems with lots of
dependent elements, such as traffic networks or social networks. By
running processes over these networks we can explore how the topology of
the network affects the way the process evolves, and potentially
identify factors that accelerate or impede it. This opens-up
possibilities both for study (science) and control (engineering).

This talk will briefly introduce the mechanics of complex networks and
the processes that run on them, review some recent results we have
obtained, and look to future research programme where we will combine
simulation with sensing to give us new ways of looking at the world.

Event details

  • When: 4th November 2014 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Talk

The Design and Implementation of Feldspar

By: Josef Svenningsson, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Feldspar is a domain specific language with the goal of raising the
level of abstraction for performance sensitive, low-level code.
Feldspar is a functional language embedded in Haskell, which offers a
high-level style of programming. The key to generating generating
efficient code from such descriptions is to use a high-level
optimisation technique called vector fusion. Feldspar achieves
vector fusion for free by employing a particular way of embedding the
language in Haskell by combining deep and shallow embeddings.

Bio: Josef Svenningsson is an Assistant Professor in the Functional
Programming group at Chalmers University of Technology. He has a broad
range of interest and has published papers on wide variety of topics,
including: program analysis, constraint solving, security, programming
language design, testing and high-performance computing.

Event details

  • When: 21st October 2014 14:00 - 20th October 2014 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Seminar

Talk: Internship Experiences 2014

Many St Andrews CS students do internships in the summer, but we very rarely get the opportunity to learn about them.

If you are interested in what some outstanding fourth year students did this summer, including tips and hints on how to do this yourself, you cannot miss this!

Hear them talk at 2:00pm on Tuesday.

 

Details:

Andrew McCallum worked at Inclusiq on “E-learning games for diversity”

Emily Dick worked at Accenture as a “business and system analysis to help a large government client move from a paper to an online process”

Aleksejs Sazonovs worked at Microsoft Research Cambridge (Systems and Networking group) “using insights gathered from the data, to develop an effective storage and content retrieval policy for OneDrive”

Robert Dixon worked at McLaren Racing using neural networks on a tool to help the race strategy team.

 

The speaker interns at a subsequent meal with the Head of School. From left to right, Steve Linton (HOS), Aleksejs Sazonovs, Robert Dixon, and Andrew McCallum (Emily Dick could not attend the meal).

The speaker interns at a subsequent meal with the Head of School. From left to right, Steve Linton (HOS), Aleksejs Sazonovs, Robert Dixon, and Andrew McCallum (Emily Dick could not attend the meal).

Event details

  • When: 7th October 2014 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33b
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Seminar

Accelerating Datacenter Services with Reconfigurable Logic

by Aaron Smith, Microsoft Research

Datacenter workloads demand high computational capabilities, flexibility, power efficiency, and low cost. It is challenging to improve all of these factors simultaneously. To advance datacenter capabilities beyond what commodity server designs can provide, we have designed and built a composable, reconfigurable fabric at Microsoft to accelerate portions of large-scale software services. In this talk I will describe a medium-scale deployment of this fabric on a bed of 1,632 servers, and discuss its efficacy in accelerating the Bing web search engine along with future plans to improve the programmability of the fabric.

Bio: Aaron Smith is a member of the Computer Architecture Group at Microsoft Research. He is broadly interested in optimizing compilers, computer architecture and reconfigurable computing. Over the past 15 years he has led multiple industrial and research compiler projects at Metrowerks/Freescale Semiconductor, The University of Texas at Austin and Microsoft. He received his PhD in Computer Science from UT-Austin in 2009 and is currently serving as co-General Chair of CGO 2015.

Event details

  • When: 2nd October 2014 12:00 - 13:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33b
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Seminar

Enterprise NoSQL in the BBC

Hear why MarkLogic was chosen as the 2012 Olympic website content store to ingest, store and deliver the data and content assets to the BBC¹s mobile app and thousands of web pages.
Speaker: Paul Preuveneers, Director, Sales Engineering, MarkLogic

Paul Preuveneers has more than 9 years of development experience with MarkLogic, with expertise in running software teams as well as spearheading the European office of MarkLogic UK. Paul Preuveneers joined MarkLogic from Elsevier Science, where he led the Agile Development Team, working on leading edge products including the many CONSULT sites and the main strategic elsevierhealth.com site. Trained in Extreme Programming and Agile Techniques, Paul has been on the forefront of many of the most innovative applications using MarkLogic in Europe. Prior to Elsevier Science, Paul held positions at Action Information Management and gained his Bsc in Computer Science at Southampton University.

Event details

  • When: 16th September 2014 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Seminar

Big data, the Cloud and the future of computing by Dr Kenji Takeda, Microsoft Research

Abstract: We live in an information society, with cloud computing is changing the way we live, work and play in a world of devices and services. In this talk we’ll explore what, why and how this new era of computing is changing the way we think about conceiving, developing and delivering software and services. We’ll then look at how the concept of Big Data is transforming science, and the opportunities it presents for the future.

Bio: Dr Kenji Takeda is Solutions Architect and Technical Manager in Microsoft Research. He is currently focussed on Azure for Research and Environmental Science tools and technologies. The Azure for Research programme currently supports over 300 projects worldwide, including two at the University of St Andrews – see

http://www.azure4research.com

Kenji has extensive experience in Cloud Computing, High Performance and High Productivity Computing, Data-intensive Science, Scientific Workflows, Scholarly Communication, Engineering and Educational Outreach. He has a passion for developing novel computational approaches to tackle fundamental and applied problems in science and engineering.

Event details

  • When: 5th August 2014 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Seminar

Design Frontiers in Parallel Languages: The Role of Determinism

Constraints can be a source of inspiration; their role in creative art forms is well-recognized, with poetry as the quintessential example.  We argue that the requirement of determinism can play the same role in the design of parallel programming languages. This talk describes a series of design explorations that begin with determinism as the constraint, introduce the concept of monotonically-changing concurrent data structures (LVars), and end in some interesting places—flirting with the boundaries to yield quasideterminism, and revealing synergies between parallel effects, such as cancelation and memoization, when used in a deterministic context.

Our goal is for guaranteed-deterministic parallel programming to be practical and efficient for a wide range of applications. One challenge is simply to integrate the known forms of deterministic-by-construction parallelism, which we overview in this talk: Kahn process networks, pure data-parallelism, single assignment languages, functional programming, and type-effect systems that enforce limited access to state by threads. My group, together with many others around the world, are developing libraries such as LVish and Accelerate that add these capabilities to the programming language Haskell. It is early days yet, but already possible to build programs that mix concurrent, lock-free data structures, blocking data-flow, callbacks, and GPU-based data-parallelism, without ever compromising determinism or referential transparency.

Event details

  • When: 12th June 2014 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Seminar

Computational Social Choice: an Overview by Edith Elkind, University of Oxford

ABSTRACT
In this talk, we will provide a self-contained introduction to the field of computational social choice – an emerging research area that applies tools and techniques of computer science (most notably, algorithms, complexity and artificial intelligence) to problems that arise in voting theory, fair division, and other subfields of social choice theory. We will give a high-level overview of this research area, and mention some open problems that may be of interest to mathematicians and computer scientists.

Event details

  • When: 15th April 2014 - 15:00
  • Where: Maths Theatre B
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Seminar

Doing Research in the Wild – Paul Marshall, UCL

Abstract: There has been
significant growth in interest in ‘research in the wild’ as an approach to
developing and understanding novel technologies in real world contexts.
However, the concept remains underdeveloped and it is unclear how it differs
from previous technology deployments and in situ studies. In this talk, I will
attempt an initial characterisation of research in the wild. I will discuss
some of the benefits of studying novel technologies in situ as well as some of
the challenges inherent in encouraging and studying sustained use.

Bio: Paul Marshall is a lecturer in interaction design in the UCL
Interaction Centre. His research interests focus on understanding how
ubiquitous computing technologies are used in everyday contexts such as the
home, in education or in public spaces. Prior to joining UCL he worked as a
post doc at the University of Warwick (2010-11) researching participatory
design approaches in healthcare and at the Open University (2006-10) where he
ran ethnographic and laboratory studies of shareable interfaces and sensory
extension devices. He completed a PhD project on learning with tangible
interfaces as part of the Equator project at the University of Sussex, and
prior to that a BSc (Hons) in psychology at the University of Edinburgh.

Event details

  • When: 1st April 2014 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Maths Theatre B
  • Series: School Seminar Series

Cigna: Technology enabling Health & Well being provision across the Globe

Cigna – a global health services company is dedicated to helping those we serve to improve their health and well being. Cigna provides globally connected healthcare services with access to a global network of clinical providers through leveraging the use of pioneering and innovative technology. Find out how you can get engaged and join the team driving innovation in Healthcare!

Maths Lecture Theatre B
Time: 14:00 to 15:00
Date: Tuesday 4th March

Event details

  • When: 4th March 2014 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Maths Theatre B
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Seminar