Congratulations to Computer Science undergraduates Elliot Davies and Sam Elliott who, along with Andrei Mustata from the University of Glasgow, won the DevXS “hackathon” at the University of Lincoln. Their team used datasets from the Guardian to develop a university guide.
Elliot Davies pitching their project
Throughout St Andrews Week the University opens its doors, and invites members of the public, students and staff to attend lectures.
Ian Gent’s CS1005 lectures, Computer Science and Video Games, will feature in the event. A timetable of events and location details can be found on the University website.
Another successful and well-attended Wednesday visiting day took place yesterday. Prospective undergraduates had the opportunity to meet staff, current students, eat cake and view the School facilities.
The familiar but extremely useful events are organised by Tristan, Adam and Saleem with help from volunteer students.
Isabel, Jesal, Anastasia and Thomas were the student volunteers undertaking yesterday’s tour and answering general questions.
Life in the Comp Sci Labs
The MSc lab in the John Honey building was busy with IT students holding initial group work meetings, for their next assignment. The advanced network students were networking, in a virtual sense, using WI-FI island.
Yemliha and Umer looked occupied in the HCI lab. A number of 3rd and 4th year students were busy with Project work in The Honours lab. Alas Davie and Jim were busy elsewhere.
Attendance in the 1st and 2nd year sub-honours lab, in the Jack Cole building, could be indicative of an imminent deadline. Modelling of various persuasions appeared to be the focus.
Photo: Tom Grimes receiving his award from comedian Kevin Bridges
Junior and Senior Honours were provided with milk based food products, nibbles and fermented fruit juice during their reception.
Various attempts to look studious were captured for posterity.
A small Gamefest in the sub honours lab on Wednesday proved successful and attracted some of our new undergraduate students.
Comp Sci staples Pizza and Irn Bru provided sustenance for the afternoon session of Mario Kart and Call of Duty.
Computer Science student wins University prize for Science
One of our graduating students, Joe Schaul, has been awarded the University’s “Miller Prize”. The Prize is awarded to the best final-year undergraduate in the Science Faculty. As well has having an excellent academic record throughout his 4 years in the School, Joe also produced an exceptional undergraduate project. He developed a computer simulation framework for complex networks and applied it to two very different, real-world case studies: 1) the study of epidemics using a probabilistic model for various complex network topologies; and 2) the study of the effects of super-node crashes in Skype-like computer networks. The project was extremely challenging: it involved not only aspects related to the design, implementation and performance analysis of a scalable simulation tool for thousands of nodes, but it also required a very deep understanding of the problems related to the simulation of complex systems.
Well done, Joe!
On Wednesday 11th of May 2011 the first year module CS1006: Programming Projects finished with its traditional competition. The competition centres around a 2-player strategy game (Othello this year) for which the students have developed an Artificial Intelligence player as part of the last of the four projects on the module. These AI players are pitted against each other in order to determine the champion AI of the year.
Here are the competitors (plus a few hangers-on and referees):
CS1006 Othello Competitors
Adam Copp, a Junior honours Computer Science student won the TARGET jobs IT and Computer Science Undergraduate of the Year Award for 2011. The award was sponsored by BT and, through a series of online tests, application forms, interviews and assessment exercises, Adam emerged as winner. BT only targeted a relatively small number of universities and so he beat off competition from other excellent students from other excellent universities.
Adam collecting the award from Michael Portillo (who hosted the awards) and Andy Skingley, Director of IP, Media and Mobility Platforms at BT.
