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.

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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

PhD Studentship: Reasoning about Racy Programs under Relaxed Consistency

A PhD studentship on “Reasoning about Racy Programs under Relaxed Consistency” is available in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews, funded by Microsoft Research and EPSRC.

The project will involve developing reasoning principles and tools for relaxed memory consistency settings. This is a key problem in shared-memory concurrency at the low-level, whether in C or C++, or even higher-level languages such as Java.

There has been lots of work done on proving shared-memory concurrent programs correct, by the use of very sophisticated program logics such as Concurrent Separation Logic and RGsep. However, shared-memory concurrent programs actually do not satisfy a key building block of such logics, an assumption that memory is sequentially consistent. Instead, when programming at the low-level in C or C++, or even in relatively higher-level languages such as Java, programmers have to deal with relaxed memory consistency. How and whether sophisticated program logics can scale up to this setting is the open research question we seek to address. Furthermore, efficient concurrent code often have intentional races, making the problem harder (and rendering the standard prescription of data-race-freedom ineffective). If we can develop such a logic, we can build tools that can automatically analyse code and make them safe, efficient, and correct by suggesting appropriate fences or other mechanisms. With multiprocessors everywhere from personal mobile devices to servers, this is an important problem with a potential of high impact, both in theory and in practice.

The project will be supervised by Dr Susmit Sarkar at the University of St Andrews. Dr Jade Alglave of Microsoft Research Cambridge will be the Microsoft supervisor. During the course of their PhD, Scholars are invited to Microsoft Research in Cambridge for an annual Summer School, and there is also a possibility of paid internships during studies. The studentship is fully funded to pay fees and stipend for students with a relevant connection to the UK.

Applicants are expected to have or expect to obtain a UK first-class Honours or Masters degree (or its equivalent from non-UK institutions) in Computer Science, but the minimum standard we require is an upper second-class Honours degree or equivalent. Some experience in concurrent and/or functional programming and an aptitude for mathematical subjects are required. Knowledge and experience of one or more of formal verification, mechanised proofs, and programming languages is highly desirable.

For further information on how to apply, see our postgraduate web pages. Ideally the student will start in October 2015, or as soon as possible thereafter. Further details on the project and suggested reading is available from Dr Susmit Sarkar.

Welcome to Mr Nicol Thomson

Welcome to Mr Nicol Thomson who joined us recently as a technician. Nicol has been working in the school casually since 2014 on a number of Lab Designs, technical support and the development of the Laddie unit you can see below. Stuart our head of systems said, “Nicol is an excellent addition to the school’s technical team and I am sure that his experience and knowledge will prove a great asset“.

We all welcome Nicol and wish him well in his new role.

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Staff and Students with Dr Vint Cerf

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Dr Vint Cerf with staff and new CS PhD graduates

On July 24th, Dr Vinton Cerf was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, by the University of St Andrews. Dr. Vint Cerf, a founding father of the Internet, graduated alongside our new PhD and Honours graduates. In his Laureation address, Professor Saleem Bhatti highlighted to the audience that, “The internet is mankind’s largest and most complex creation. It spans national boundaries and puts global communication at the fingertips of the world’s citizens. It is, in today’s world, difficult to imagine life without the information and many services that are available to us all through the internet. However, it is an invention of our time.”

This graduation ceremony was a memorable day for both staff and students and presented each person the opportunity to reflect on their own research experiences here in the University of St Andrews. Reflecting on our “Internet @ 100symposium earlier in the week, Professor Bhatti concluded by noting that, “Easy and accessible internet communication is also seen as an empowering service for the citizens of the world“.

We wish all of our new graduates, all the best for the future.

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Dr Vint Cerf with staff and new CS PhD and Honours graduates

Welcome to Dr Uta Hinrichs

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Dr Uta Hinrichs

We are delighted to welcome Dr Uta Hinrichs as a new lecturer in Computer Science. Uta has been a postdoctoral research fellow with SACHI since 2012 and she now co-leads SACHI along with her colleagues. Prior to joining the University of St Andrews, Uta studied in the University of Calgary in Canada. Her PhD combined information visualization with large display technology and was awarded the Bill Buxton Award 2012 as Best Canadian HCI Dissertation and her MSc is in Computational Visualistics from the University of Magdeburg in Germany. Uta has also worked at Microsoft Research.

You can read more comments welcoming and commenting on Uta’s appointment here.