June 26, Andruid Kerne, The Future of Human Expression: Ideation − Play − Body-based Interaction

Speaker: Andruid Kerne, Texas A&M, USA
Date/Time: 2-3pm June 26, 2015
Location: CS1.33a, University of St Andrews

 

Andruid is research scientist-artist investigating how people experience personal expression, creative ideation, and social engagement. He develops and evaluates expressive interfaces, computational architectures, and distributed systems that support creative processes of knowledge production and interpersonal communication.

For more details see the SACHI page

Event details

  • When: 26th June 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Format: Seminar

May 19, Tom Rodden, On lions, impala, and bigraphs: modelling interactions in Ubiquitous Computing.

Speaker: Tom Rodden, University of Nottingham
Date/Time: 2-3pm May 19, 2015
Location: CS1.33a, University of St Andrews

As ubiquitous systems have moved out of the lab and into the world the need to think more systematically about how there are realised has grown. This talk will present intradisciplinary work I have been engaged in with other computing colleagues on how we might develop more formal models and understanding of ubiquitous computing systems.

More details can be found on this SACHI page

 

Event details

  • When: 19th May 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar

May 8th, Workshop, Sketching and Constructing Visualisations

A hands-on introduction to data literacy

This will be a hands-on workshop where we will conduct exercises on data characterisation, visualisation data sketching, and constructive visualisation. There will be several short talks on basic data visualisation concepts, discussions, sketching sessions and constructive visualisation sessions.

In this workshop you employ the basic visual variables to construct meaningful representations, the dynamic manipulation of spatial positioning to enable spatial reasoning, and through these practices you will become aware of the wide variety of ways that people can think about data.

More details can be found on this SACHI page.

 

Event details

  • When: 8th May 2015 11:00 - 16:30
  • Where: Cole 1.33

Graham Kirby: Excellence in Teaching Award

We congratulate our Director of Teaching Dr Graham Kirby on being rewarded for championing ‘learning by doing’ at The University Teaching Awards held in Parliament Hall.

The School is rated highly for student satisfaction, which echoes the great teaching and strong student staff community sustained here in Computer Science. Graham is pictured below participating in some recent School activities.

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Images courtesy of me (apologies in advance).

€4.2M ParaPhrase Project Concludes

The impressive ParaPhrase project which commenced in October 2011, brought together a world-leading team of academic and industrial experts to improve the programmability and performance of modern parallel computing technologies. The consortium consisted of 7 academic and 3 industrial partners from 6 countries and was coordinated by Prof. Kevin Hammond here in the School of Computer Science .

The project has produced over 80 publications in leading international conferences and journals and has been demonstrated at over 100 international conferences and other events, as well as producing a range of new software tools and programming standards.

Prof Hammond described ParaPhrase as a tremendous success but highlighted that significant challenges remain. In the future, parallel programs will need to self-adapt to computing architectures we haven’t even thought of yet.

Read the full article in the University news.

April in Computer Science: Poster Presentations and World Domination

The Senior Honours students presented their posters and final year software artifacts to staff and students last week. The best poster accolade and associated amazon voucher was presented to Callum Hyland for his poster – Android: Smoking Cessation, behavioural pattern prediction through spatial and temporal modelling. We wish them well with exam revision and look forward to seeing them at June graduation.

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The Junior Honours students finalised their team projects last Friday and competed for world domination. This year the project involved implementing a multi-player peer-to-peer world domination game, with AI. We await news of which team dominated the CS world for a time on Friday.

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Images courtesy of Lisa Dow and Simone Conte

Computer Science Distinguished Lectures 2015

Earlier this month Prof. Mothy Roscoe from ETH Zürich delivered the first set of distinguished lectures for 2015 in the Byre Theatre. The three highly accessible, well attended and engaging lectures centred around the question “What’s happening to computer hardware, and what does it mean for systems software?”

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Images courtesy of Saleem Bhatti

Space School @ Computer Science

Primary School pupils from across Fife take part in fun, hands-on activities themed around Computer Science and Space. They will have the opportunity to use online resources to explore the solar system, program their own Lunar Lander game in Scratch, and guide a Lego Mindstorm robot around a track. This session is part of Space School @ St Andrews.

Event details

  • When: 25th April 2015 09:45 - 14:30
  • Where: School of Computer Science
  • Format: Summer School

DVF: Professor David Kaufman

Professor David Kaufman of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver will be visiting the School between May 7th and May 21st.
Prof. Kaufman is a world leading expert on Computer Supported Education, Educational Technologies and Digital StoryTelling.
See: http://www.sfu.ca/education/faculty-profiles/dkaufman.html

He will be hosted by Ishbel and working with the Virtual Worlds research group. Prof. Kaufman will be giving several talks and workshops across Scotland.

The schedule is:
1.In Stirling on Tuesday 12th at 11am in 4B108 Cottrell Building, Prof. Kaufman will be talking about Digital Games and Simulations in HE

2. On Thursday 14th at 11am at GCU, in the George Moore Building, M625, 11am he will also be talking about Digital Games and Simulations in HE

3. On Monday 18th in Abertay, at 11am in rm 2521, he will discuss Ageing Well : Can Digital games help older adults.

4. He will be in Edinburgh on May 15th if anyone wishes to meet up with him that day.