Cecilia Mascolo (Cambridge): Systems, Models and Learning: From mobile devices to mobile data (School Seminar)

Abstract:

This talk concentrates on our efforts over the years to make the harvesting of relevant data from mobile devices accurate and efficient, to allow on device data interpretation and to produce models able to interpret the data so that it can be exploited for a wide range of applications. In this sense I will describe specifics of our work which range from fitting mobile sensing inference on devices and how we are able to exploit local device heterogeneous computation resources efficiently to data analytics for mobile health and urban computing. I will discuss challenges and opportunities of the field throughout the talk.

Speaker Bio:

Cecilia Mascolo is a mother of a teenage daughter. She is also Full Professor of Mobile Systems in the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK, a Fellow of Jesus College Cambridge and a Faculty Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute for Data Science in London. Prior joining Cambridge in 2008, she has been a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at University College London. She holds a PhD from the University of Bologna. Her research interests are in human mobility modelling, mobile and sensor systems and networking and spatio-temporal data analysis. She has published in a number of top tier conferences and journals in the area and her investigator experience spans projects funded by Research Councils and industry. She has received numerous best paper awards and in 2016 was listed in “10 Women in Networking /Communications You Should Know”. She has served as steering, organizing and programme committee member of mobile, sensor systems, networking, data science conferences and workshops. She has delivered a number of keynote talks at conferences and workshops in the area of mobility, data science, pervasive computing and systems. She is Associate Editor in Chief for IEEE Pervasive Computing and sits on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks and ACM Transactions on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies. More details at www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/cm542.

Event details

  • When: 30th January 2018 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Seminar

Adriana Wilde (St Andrews): Rising to challenges in assessment, feedback and encouraging gender diversity in computing (School Seminar)

Abstract

This talk is in two parts, in the first of which Adriana will focus on her experiences in assessment and feedback in large classes, and in the second part on her work in encouraging gender diversity in computer science.

The focus of the first part will be on her involvement in redesigning an undergraduate module on HCI, where the methods of assessment used were no suitable for increasingly larger classes (up to 160 students). Redesign decisions needed to preserve the validity and reliability of the assessment whilst respecting the need for timely feedback. Adriana will specifically talk about the exam and coursework, and how learning activities in the module were aligned to the assessment, through the use of PeerWise for student-authored MCQs, and the use of video for assessment to foster creativity and application of knowledge. During the talk, there will be an opportunity for discussion on the challenges then encountered.

A (shorter) second part of the talk will present her experiences in supporting women in computing, starting with a very small-scale intervention with staff and students at her previous institution, and concluding with her engagement at the Early Career Women’s Network in St Andrews.

Event details

  • When: 23rd January 2018 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Seminar

December Graduation Reception

Congratulations to the Masters Class of 2017, and MPhil student Yunjia Wang, who graduated last week. Each year, students are invited to a reception in Computer Science, to celebrate their achievement and reflect on their time in the School.

Our graduates move on to a wide variety of interesting and challenging employment and further study opportunities, and we wish them all well with their future careers.

Pireh Pirzada: Sensors in Smart Homes for independent living of elderly people

Title: Sensors in Smart Homes for independent living of elderly people

Abstract: In the UK alone approximately about 3.64 million people aged 65 or above live on their own, and this number is rising. This increases concern of the safety and wellbeing of an ageing population, as growing old often results in reduced capabilities for individuals to perform activities of daily living (ADL), which will soon have a compounded effect on wider societal health care and the economy. Recent technological advances allow logging, monitoring and tracking behaviour can be put to the service of reducing this burden, allowing elderly people to remain in their own homes safely and independently. In this talk, I will describe my MSc dissertation work on a system designed for recording ADL, monitoring, classifying, predicting and alerting concerned people if anything out of regular pattern or life threatening happening occurs using unobtrusive sensors so that their quality of life is not impaired. This development has highlighted a number of areas for extension and improvement which can be further explored in the context of my doctoral research, which I will also outline within this talk.

This dissertation work was completed at the University of Southampton in September 2017 under the supervision of Neil White and Adriana Wilde.

Event details

  • When: 12th December 2017 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33b
  • Format: Seminar, Talk

Dr. Vladimir Janjic – Efficient Dynamic Mapping of Parallel Applications to NUMA Architectures by Reinforcement Learning

Title: Efficient Dynamic Mapping of Parallel Applications to NUMA Architectures by Reinforcement Learning

 

Abstract: We present a dynamic framework for mapping threads and data of parallel applications to computational cores/memory nodes of parallel non-uniform memory architecture (NUMA) systems. We use a feedback-based mechanism where the performance of each thread is collected and used to drive the reinforcement-learning policy of assigning affinities of threads/data to CPU cores/memory nodes. The proposed framework can address different optimisation criteria, such as maximum processing speed and minimum speed variance. We demonstrate that we can achieve an improvement of 12% in execution time compared to the default Linux operating system scheduling/mapping of threads under varying availability of resources (e.g. when multiple applications are running on the same system).

Event details

  • When: 7th December 2017 12:00 - 12:00
  • Where: Honey 103 - GFB
  • Format: Talk

Join us for Graduation: Thursday 7th December

The School will celebrate more student successes and accomplishments next week, when our recent MSc and PhD students graduate. We look forward to toasting their success at our graduation reception in the School of Computer Science, next Thursday afternoon, between 12 and 3.30. Over the years graduation has involved cakes, fizz, laughter, changeable weather and lots of reminiscing as pictured below. For family and friends who can’t make it to graduation ceremonies, the University broadcasts each graduation ceremony live.

Summer and Winter Graduations 2010 – 2014

Celebrations, Kilts and Graduation 2010- 2014

“Sensing and topology: some ideas by other people, and an early experiment” by Simon Dobson

Abstract
The core problem in many sensing applications is that we’re trying to
infer high-resolution information from low-resolution observations —
and keep our trust in this information as the sensors degrade. How can
we do this in a principled way? There’s an emerging body of work on
using topology to manage both sensing and analytics, and in this talk I
try to get a handle on how this might work for some of the problems
we’re interested in. I will present an experiment we did to explore
these ideas, which highlights some fascinating problems.

Event details

  • When: 30th November 2017 13:00 - 14:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Series: Systems Seminars Series
  • Format: Seminar