First Away Day between Constrained Programming group and Statistical Ecology group held over the summer

The first Away Day between Constrained Programming group from the Computer Science department and Statistical Ecology group from the Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental modeling (https://www.creem.st-andrews.ac.uk/) was organized over the summer on May 7th, 2024 from 9:30 to 3:00 p.m. It was organised by Ian Miguel and Özgür Akgün from the constraint programming group and by David Borchers and Chris Sutherland from the statistical ecology group. The event was attended by 20 people including faculty members and PhD students from both the departments. The title of the Away Day was “Exploring the connection between constraint programming and statistical ecology”.

This was the first event from the School of Computer Science to be held in the Boiler Room, House Education Centre in the Botanic Gardens in St Andrews. It makes a beautiful location for an Away Day. The room used to be a storage house but has recently been converted to a meeting room that can be booked for free by all students and staff.

The Away Day was opened by two talks from the constraint programming group. The first one was delivered by Özgür Akgün  with the title “A short survey of work on Statistics & Constraint programming”. The second talk was “A quick introduction on automated algorithm configuration and selection” by Nguyen Dang.

These were followed by two talks from the statistical ecology group. The first speaker was Prof. David Borchers who was recently awarded the RSS Barnett Award for 2024 by the Royal Statistics Society (RSS) for his work in developing new methodologies and spatial capture-recapture. He presented a talk on “Dealing with recapture uncertainty in spatial capture-recapture”. The second speaker was Chris Sutherland who talked about “Optimal sampling in ecological monitoring”.

The event concluded by open discussions on opportunities for collaboration between the two groups and funding opportunities. The Away Day was a success since it confirmed statistical ecology as a potential application area for constraint programming. On the other side, it identified the potential of constraint programming for providing computational efficiency in dealing with spatial capture-recapture problems for statistical ecology.

Blog post written by science communicator Qurat Ul Ain Shaheen

CS Graduation Reception

On behalf of the school, we would like to invite our Graduating Students and your guests to our upcoming graduation reception.

Please join us in celebrating your achievements and marking this significant milestone in your academic journey with a glass of bubbly and some cakes from Fisher and Donaldsons

    • Date: Wednesday, 12th June
    • Time: 10:30 AM – 12:30 PM
    • Location: Jack Cole Coffee area

We look forward to seeing you there.

Best Wishes,

The Admin Team

Distinguished Lecture series 2024

This years Distinguished Lecture series was delivered yesterday ( Tuesday 12th March) by Professor Neil Lawrence, University of Cambridge

In his talk on, ‘The Atomic Human Understanding Ourselves in the Age of AI’ he gave an overview of where we are now with machine learning solutions, and what challenges we face both in the near and far future. These include the practical application of existing algorithms in the face of the need to explain decision-making, mechanisms for improving the quality and availability of data and dealing with large unstructured datasets.

Seminar: Tangible User Interfaces 13th March 2024

We have 2 presentations next week focusing on Tangible interfaces by Laura Pruszko and Anna Carter.

Talk 1: Designing for Modularity – a modular approach to physical user interfaces

Abstract:

Designing for Modularity – a modular approach to physical user interfaces by Laura Pruszko
Physical user interfaces, future or history? While some of our old physical UIs get progressively replaced by their graphical counterparts, humans still rely on physicality for eye-free interaction. Shape-changing user interfaces — i.e. physical devices able to change their shape to accommodate the user, the task, or the environment – are often presented as a way to bridge the gap between the physicality of physical user interfaces and the flexibility of graphical user interfaces, but they come with their fair share of challenges. In this presentation, we will talk about these challenges under the specific scope of modular shape-changing interfaces: how do we design for modularity? What is the impact on the user? As these kinds of interfaces are not commonplace in our everyday lives, they introduce novel usability considerations for the HCI community to explore.

Bio:

Laura Pruszko is a lecturer in the Applied Computer Games department of Glasgow Caledonian University. Her research focuses on interaction with physical user interfaces and modular systems. She obtained her PhD from Grenoble Alpes University in 2023, as part of the multidisciplinary Programmable Matter consortium. This consortium brings together people from different horizons such as artists, entrepreneurs, HCI and robotics researchers, to collaborate towards enabling the long-term vision of Claytronics.

Talk 2: Sense of Place, Cultural Heritage and Civic Engagement

Abstract:

In this presentation, I will provide an overview of my recent work, where I implemented a range of interactive probes, exploring sense of place and cultural heritage within a regenerating city centre. Through these digital multimodal interactions, citizens actively participated in the sharing of cultural heritage, fostering a sense of belonging and nostalgia. Looking ahead, I’ll discuss how these insights inform my ongoing work at the intersection of the Digital Civics project and the Centre for Digital Citizens project. This presentation will not only offer my personal insights but also open the floor for collaborative discussions on integrating these crucial aspects into future embedded research.

Bio:

Anna Carter is a Research Fellow at Northumbria University she has extensive experience in designing technologies for local council regeneration programs, her work focuses on creating accessible digital experiences in a variety of contexts using human-centred methods and participatory design. She works on building Digital Civics research capacities of early career researchers as part of the EU funded DCitizens Programme and on digital civics, outdoor spaces and sense of place as part of the EPSRC funded Centre for Digital Citizens.

Event details:

  • When: 13th March 2024 12:00 – 14:00. There’ll be cakes and soft drinks from 12 onwards. The talks will be from 12:30 – 13:30
  • Where: Jack Cole 1.33 (Soft drinks and cake provided by F&D)

SACHI Seminar: Rights-driven Development

Abstract:

Alex will discuss a critique of modern software engineering and outline how it systematically produces systems that have negative social consequences. To help counter this trend, he offers the notion of rights-driven development, which puts the concept of a right at the heart of software engineering practices. Alex’s first step to develop rights-driven practices is to introduce a language for rights in software engineering. He provides an overview of the elements such a language must contain and outlines some ideas for developing a domain-specific language that can be integrated with modern software engineering approaches. 

Bio:

Alex Voss, who’s an Honorary Lecturer here at the school and an external member of our group. Alex was also a Technology Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and an Associate in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard.

Alex holds a PhD in Informatics and works at the intersection of the social sciences and computer science. His current research aims to develop new representations, practices and tools for rights-respecting software engineering. He is also working on the role that theories of causation have in making sense of complex socio-technical systems.

His research interests include: causality in computing, specifically in big data and machine learning applications; human-centric co-realization of technologies; responsible innovation; computing and society; computer-based and computer-aided research methods.

More about Alex: https://research-portal.st-andrews.ac.uk/en/persons/alexander-voss

Event details:

  • When: 28th February 2024 12:30 – 13:30
  • Where: Jack Cole 1.19

If you’re interested in attending any of the seminars in room 1.19, please email the SACHI seminar coordinator: aaa8@st-andrews.ac.uk so they can make appropriate arrangements for the seminar based on the number of attendees.

100m boost in AI research will propel transformative innovations

£100m boost in AI research will propel transformative innovations – UKRI

We are delighted to participate in the National Edge AI Hub that is funded by UKRI. The Hub comprises 12 universities and numerous industry and public sector organisations. The vision of the Hub is to develop the underlying research to secure the edge of the network using Artifical Intelligence / Machine Learning (AI/ML).

The St Andrews team led by Dr Blesson Varghese will develop fundamental research on making AI/ML algorithms and models to work on extremely small devices in challenging environments for critical decision making.

Dr Varghese said, “We are delighted to be a part of this national initiative and contribute to the vision of making Edge AI a reality for times when it is most needed – mitigating cyber threats on our digital infrastructure”.

Dr Varghese directs the Edge Computing Hub at the University of St Andrews.