Uncategorized

School of Computer Science: Distinguished Lecture Series

The School of Computer Science in the University of St Andrews is pleased to announce the next set of Distinguished Lectures (DLS) leading up to the 50th anniversary of the series in 2019.

The next DLS will be delivered by Maria Klawe the president of Harvey Mudd College and former president of the ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) on Thursday March 31st, location to be confirmed.

The well attended Distinguished Lecture Series were initiated by Professor Jack Cole in 1969 with a view to exposing students and other interested parties to leading edge topics in Computer Science.

Professor Jack Cole

Professor Jack Cole

All alumni of the school are invited to return and join us in St Andrews for the DLS, and In time we will extend further invitations to the larger 50th Anniversary events in 2019.

Previous Distinguished Lectures held in Lower College Hall and The Byre Theatre

Previous Distinguished Lectures held in Lower College Hall and The Byre Theatre

Distinguished Lecture Programme: ‘Scalability and Fault-tolerance, are they the same?’ by Joe Armstrong

The first of this academic year’s distinguished lectures will be given by Professor Joe Armstrong, co-inventor of Erlang, on Monday 16th November 2015 at The Byre Theatre. The programme is as follows:

09:15 – 09:30   Introduction By Professor Kevin Hammond

09:30 – 10:45   Lecture 1 [Setting the scene: I’ll talk about the software landscape of the mid 80’s and discuss which problems we were  trying to solve. I’ll talk about the early experiments that led to Erlang.]

10:45 – 11:15   Coffee Break – Refreshments provided

11:15 – 12:30   Lecture 2 [The middle years: I’ll talk about the enhancements we made to Erlang. How we added distribution and the bit syntax and so on. I’ll talk about company politics, building a community and about the obstacles to introducing a new technology.]

12:30 – 14:00   Lunch Break – Free time

14:00 – 15:15   Lecture 3 [WhatsApp and the future: I’ll talk about what happened after Erlang became open source and how this changed everything. I’ll talk about the explosive growth of Erlang which lead to adoption by WhatsApp.

 I’ll also talk about the future. What are the challenges of the Internet of things? How can we make massively distributed systems that run forever?]

15:15 – 15:30   Q & A Session – Open forum

Computer Science supports UKIEPC 2015

The School hosted a local programming contest in conjunction with UKIEPC on Saturday. Students and staff are pictured tackling problem sets throughout the day. Results and contest standings can be viewed on the UKIEPC Scoreboard. Aetherstore who sponsored the 2014 event, once again offered their backing, we thank them for their continued support.

comp1

comp2

comp3

Images courtesy of Graham Kirby.

Academic Skills Project – Workshop 1A: Securing Internships and Job Placements

This is the first part of a 4-part workshop. Details are as follows:

Date and time: 24th Sept 4.30PM – 6.30PM

Venue: Jack Cole 1.33A/B

Workshop Leader: Shyam Reyal (smr20)

Sign up here: http://goo.gl/forms/RfnaQhZSB2 (Only 3 days left)

 Workshop 1A (24th September) Contents:

  • Introduction to the internship recruitment process
  • Panel discussion on the most important aspects of securing an internship/job placement
    • Facing the programming interview
    • Enhancing your required skills and CV
  • Sharing internship experiences by current/returning Computer Science Honours and PhD students
    • Shyam Reyal, Peter Josling, Robin Nabel (Google)
    • Simone Conte (Adobe)
    • Ilia Shumailov (Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase)
    • Gala Malbasic (Makers Academy)
    • Maria Kustikova (Soliton Systems)
    • Nick Tikhonov (Amazon)
  • Informal networking session

Some points of discussion are highlighted below:

  • What to expect during the recruitment / selection process
  • How to enhance your resume/portfolio to boost your chances of getting an interview
  • How to prepare for ‘the programming interview’
  • What skills/qualifications should be developed to improve your chances, and how

Future Workshops:

Workshop 1B – 1st Oct

  • Detailed workshop on enhancing your online presence and portfolio, preparing for ‘the programming interview’

Workshop 1C – 19th Nov

  • Interactive session on solving interview style programming problems in a time constrained scenario

Workshop 1D – 26th Nov

  • Practice/mock interview session with feedback for improvement

Our ultimate objective is to see our students secure more, high quality internships/job placements in high-end tech companies and/or start-ups!

This workshop is targeted at honours and masters students. However, keen sub-honours students and PhD students are welcome. We believe it is never too early or too late to start looking for internships and developing your skills. Refreshments will be provided!

 

Contact aef6@st-andrews.ac.uk for more information.

 

Academic Skills Project

The Academic Skills Project – sponsored by the School of Computer Science and CAPOD – will commence in week 2 and run every Thursday evening in JC 1.33a/b, with workshops covering a range of topics from internships to writing technical reports. The workshops will be targeted at undergraduates, but postgraduates are welcome to attend. For details for each workshop, please see posters on the notice boards, and sign-up sheets for each workshop session will be available on notice boards two weeks before the workshop session. For more information, contact aef6@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Poster

Scottish Programing Languages Seminar

The School of Computer Science of the University of St Andrews is organizing the next Scottish Programing Languages Seminar which will be held on Monday 15th June 2015 in Lecture Room 2 of the Gateway. In the meantime you can keep up-to-date by following the SPLS website.

For further enquiries please contact Frantisek Farka.

Event details

  • When: 15th June 2015 11:30 - 18:00
  • Where: Gateway Bldg
  • Format: Seminar

April 28th, seminar by Mel Woods: Future Cities: Co-creating Future City Design Fictions in the Wild

The School of Computer Science welcomes Mel Woods from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee.

Abstract:

mel_woodsBlue heritage plaques pepper the UK landscape expounding officially validated narratives celebrating past events, people, and buildings. This seminar will discuss a novel method that draws on this specific cultural context to generate reflective, nano-stories, documenting them through populating a place, physical space, and an online data repository. The guerrilla blue plaque method was designed to support people to reflect on possible futures, in this instance the theme of future cities. The seminar will demonstrate how using critical design artefacts can help support understanding of future hopes, needs, and goals for individuals and communities. It will also discuss the method as a feedback mechanism for participatory design, citizen engagement and emergent outcomes from the latest deployment.

This work was initially developed as part of a UK arts and digital media festival and exhibited recently at Microsoft Research Lab, Cambridge at RTD 2015.

Bio:

Mel is Reader at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee. In her research she has developed and explored interaction between people to support discovery, foster creativity and affect. Throughout her academic career she has sustained a critical enquiry in art and design, creating digital artefacts, interfaces, prototypes and exhibits using novel methods and evaluation techniques.

This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

Event details

  • When: 28th April 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar