Abstract:

“Why is my kid getting HD on their phone, while I’m stuck with SD on my 50″ TV?” This type of complaint is among the most common directed to streaming services such as Netflix and BBC. Recent studies observe that adaptive video streams, when competing behind a bottleneck link, generate flows that lead to instability, under-utilization, and unfairness. Additional measurements suggest there may also be a negative impact on users’ perceived quality of experience as a consequence. The intuitive response may be, and has been, that application-generated issues should be resolved by the application. In this presentation I shall demonstrate that fairness, by any definition, can only be solved in the network. Moreover, that in an increasingly HTTP-S world, some form of client interaction is required. In support, a new network-layer ‘QoE-fairness’ metric will be be introduced that reflects user experience. Experiments using our open-source implementation in the home environment reinforce the network-layer as the right place to attack the general problem.

Refs-

[1] http://dl.ifip.org/db/conf/networking/networking2015/1570066341.pdf
[2] https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2940144

Speaker Bio:
Marwan Fayed joined the University of St Andrews in 2018. He received his MA from Boston University and his PhD from the University of Ottawa, in 2003 and 2009 respectively, and in between worked at Microsoft as a member of the Core Reliability Group. In 2009 he joined the University of Stirling, UK as Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA) Lecturer, alongside an appointment to ‘Theme Leader’ for networking research in Scotland, 2014-2016. His current research interests lie in wireless algorithms, as well as general network, transport, and measurement in next generation edge networks. He is a co-founder of HUBS C.i.C., an ISP focussed on rural communities, recipient of an IEEE best paper award, and a Senior Member of both the IEEE and ACM.

Title and Abstract TBD

Abstract:

Matthew Rice, Scotland Director for the Open Rights Group, the digital rights campaigning organisation, will lead a seminar discussing the role of civil society organisations in the discourse of technology, rights, regulation, and norms. Computer Scientists sit at an important point in this debate, as individuals affected by changes in norms, but more importantly as builders of the applications and the infrastructure that reflect these norms.

The seminar will discuss the impact civil society has on changing norms and laws around the world, and why these actors matter in the space between governments, companies, and wider society. It will introduce students to the Open Rights Group, the UK’s only technology and human rights grassroots campaigning organisation on t, and its current work in the area of technology and human rights.

Digital technology has transformed the way we live and opened up limitless new ways to communicate, connect, share and learn across the world. But for all the benefits, technological developments have created new threats to our human rights. The Open Rights Group raise awareness of these threats and challenge them through public campaigns, legal actions, policy interventions and tech projects.

Abstract:

It is widely recognised that the threat to enterprises from insider activities is increasing, and that significant costs are being incurred. Since insider threat and compromising actions can take a multitude of forms, there is a diverse experience and understanding of what insider threats are, and how to detect or prevent them. We investigate the potential for detection of insider threat activities within a large enterprise environment using monitoring tools centred around the information infrastructure. In this seminar we will review our experiences and lessons learnt from the implementation and trial of the Corporate Insider Threat Detection (CITD) tool in real organizations, not only from a technical perspective, but also from the legal and ethical aspects.

Speaker Bio:

Dr Arnau Erola is a cyber security expert with strong background in data analytics, machine learning, data mining and information privacy. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Cyber Analytics group of Oxford University, working on enterprise security, defence systems and better understanding the cyber-threat landscape. Dr Erola holds a Ph. D., M. Sc. and B.Sc. in Computer Science from the Rovira i Virgili University of Tarragona (URV). He is author of several international journal articles on online privacy, anonymity protocols and intrusion detection mechanisms.

Abstract TBD

Abstract:

The HUT Group have a variety of engineering, UX and data science teams solving real-world customer and logistics problems. This presentation looks at a variety of solutions applied across the business, from continuous release processes to warehouse layout approaches.

Speaker Bio:

Elliott graduated from CS at St Andrews in 2016, and now works within the research and development team at THG.

Abstract:

I will describe how the PRISM model checker was used to generate strategies for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), specifically to determine search strategies for a UAV trying to find objects within a grid, for a range of scenarios. Parameters and probabilities for our models were informed by simulation models developed in the School of Engineering’s Micro Air Systems Technologies (MAST) Laboratory. Our generated controllers can now be used within the simulation models (and ultimately in UAV controller software).

This is joint work with colleagues from the Schools of Computing Science (Gethin Norman, Ruth Hoffmann and Ruben Giaquinta) and the School of Engineering (Murray Ireland).

Speaker Bio:

Alice Miller is a Senior Lecturer in Computing Science at the University of Glasgow. She works in Formal Methods and Graph Theory, with a particular interest in Symmetry. Before working at Glasgow she worked at the Universities of Western Australia, East Anglia and Stirling.