NSS 2015: Computer Science Students 100% Satisfied

The results of the 2015 National Student Survey (NSS) were released this week and 100% of our students reported themselves “satisfied” with 93% responding that they were “very satisfied” with their course.

The School was also rated highly in a number of other categories including “Staff are good at explaining things”, “Feedback on my work has helped me to clarify things i didn’t understand”, “The course has helped me present myself with confidence” and “As a result of the course I feel confident in tackling unfamiliar problems”.

The NSS collects satisfaction levels from undergraduate students in the UK, via a survey. The survey is sent to all students in the UK a few months before they graduate and gets a very high return rate.

We are delighted that our recent graduates (pictured below) feel so positive about their student experience and wish them every success with future endeavours.

Computer Science: Senior Honours 2015

Computer Science: Senior Honours 2015

IVF-predict: Predicting Personalised IVF Success

The IVF-predict application has been designed based on years of academic research carried out by top medical and academic laureates. Using data from more than 144,000 IVF cycles a mathematical model has been developed that allows couples to have the most accurate prediction of their chance of a live birth with IVF.

In conjunction with Dr Tom Kelsey here in the school of Computer Science, the complex formula has been transformed into a smartphone application based, calculator presented in just 9 simple steps.

ivf

The personalised, accurate and validated app has been designed to give couples the most accurate value (in %) which represents the rate of a successful outcome if they decide to undergo the IVF process. No other model predicts your chance of success with IVF taking into account your personal medical history. In addition, the application does not transmit any data outside of the device (see Privacy Policy), any data generated or calculations is stored on your device.

The research underpinning IVF-predict has now been published in the highly prestigious medical journal PLOS Medicine and is available for free download.

Find out more about IVF-Predict on the dedicated website, download the app for android or iOS and watch a short demonstration video on youtube.

Computer Science Great Scottish Swim

On August 29th the School will be participating in the Great Scottish Swim, the team comprising Percy Perez, David Symons, Julie Dunsire, Alex Voss and Ruth Letham are swimming for Médecins Sans Frontières, an independent humanitarian charity that is committed to providing medical aid where it is most needed.

The team have been training hard in various pools around Fife in preparation for the swim challenge taking place in Loch Lomond. We also have photographic evidence of some team members road-testing their wetsuits at the East Sands.

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Their target is £1k, visit the JustGiving page and reward all their hard work while supporting a great charity.

https://www.justgiving.com/uoscompsci/

Toward Workflow Management for Experimental Science?

The School of Computer Science welcomes the opportunity to hear from Dr Babak Esfandiari from Carleton University, CBabak Esfandiarianada who will be delivering his talk on ‘Toward Workflow Management for Experimental Science?’.

Abstract: Data, code, and other digital scientific artifacts are often found (at least by this presenter) to be out-of-synch, unreliable, poorly organized and only partially available. This makes science often hard to reproduce. In this talk, I demo an online tool to manage the workflow of a scientific project, and I speculate over how or whether it can help address these issues.

Bio: Babak Esfandiari is an Associate Professor at Carleton University, a comprehensive university located in the capital of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. He obtained his PhD from Montpellier II, which specializes in Science and Technologies. His research is in agent-based systems; network computing; object-oriented design and languages.

Event details

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

SICSA Summer School on Practical Types

The SICSA Summer School on Practical Types will give participants an overview of how types can be used in practice. Types have provided numerous benefits in programming language research, including language design and compiler construction, over the years and this trend looks set to continue into the future. But types have also found much wider practical application, e.g. in areas such as programme verification, termination checking, security, concurrency, software testing, resource analysis, systems biology, semi-structured data formats, databases, linguistics etc.

The school will consist of a series of 2-3 hour lectures covering introductory topics (e.g. type checking, domain specific languages, dependently typed programming), and more advanced topics such as those mentioned above. Thus we aim to cover how can types be used to classify and enhance our knowledge within specific domains of human activity, and how we can use modern functional programming languages to implement programs which take advantage of that type structure.

There will also be time in the program for participants, especially students, to present short talks about their own experience and works in progress.

Full details

Event details

  • When: 3rd August 2015 11:00 - 5th August 2015 17:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33
  • Format: Summer School

Seminar ‘TODAY’: Brand Objects and Gradual Contracts by Timothy Jones

The School of Computer Science welcomes Timothy Jones, a PhD student from Victoria University of Wellington,New ZealandTimothy Jones.

Abstract: Adding object branding to an existing structural system integrates nominal and structural typing without excessively complicating the type system. We have implemented brand objects to explicitly type objects, using existing features of the structurally typed language Grace, along with a static type checker which treats the brands as nominal types. We intend to extend this approach to arbitrary, gradually enforced contracts and investigate the language features necessary for their implementation.

Bio:

Grace

I am currently involved in the Grace programming language project, through the Hopper implementation of the language, as well as formalising the language’s semantics. You can find an online editor for Grace at grace/editor, and the Gribber music system (a Grace plugin for Gibber) at grace/gibber.

Haskell

I’m also an avid Haskeller. My most successful contribution is the http-media library, part of a larger attempt to simplify REST resources in the Snap web framework. I’ve tutored the Programming Languages (Haskell and Prolog) course at VUW for several years, as well as taught the Advanced Programming Languages course.

Event details

  • When: 23rd July 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.04
  • Format: Seminar