Twas the week before orientation, when all through the labs not a student was stirring.
Tranquility in Computer Science
We are looking forward to welcoming our new students next week, and seeing the labs bustling with creativity once again. Find out all you need to know about Orientation 2014 on the School homepage.
Congratulations to Dr Graeme Stevenson, who passed his PhD viva earlier today. He is pictured below with supervisor Professor Simon Dobson and Internal Examiner Dr Graham Kirby. Professor Julie McCann from Imperial College, acted as External Examiner.
Congratulatory Cheers
Hear why MarkLogic was chosen as the 2012 Olympic website content store to ingest, store and deliver the data and content assets to the BBC¹s mobile app and thousands of web pages.
Speaker: Paul Preuveneers, Director, Sales Engineering, MarkLogic
Paul Preuveneers has more than 9 years of development experience with MarkLogic, with expertise in running software teams as well as spearheading the European office of MarkLogic UK. Paul Preuveneers joined MarkLogic from Elsevier Science, where he led the Agile Development Team, working on leading edge products including the many CONSULT sites and the main strategic elsevierhealth.com site. Trained in Extreme Programming and Agile Techniques, Paul has been on the forefront of many of the most innovative applications using MarkLogic in Europe. Prior to Elsevier Science, Paul held positions at Action Information Management and gained his Bsc in Computer Science at Southampton University.
What is Meyer’s E1 problem?
John Slaney, Australian National University
The E1 problem is a rather specialised question concerning propositional logic. It was posed by R. K. Meyer almost 50 years ago, and is still open. In this talk, I undertake to explain the problem, to review progress towards its solution and possibly even to make it look less eccentric than it might at first seem. The talk is accessible to anyone with an interest in computer science or logic, as it does not presuppose any great technicalities.
John Slaney is Professor of Computer Science at Australian National University, Canberra.
His research has focussed on many aspects of logic and artificial intelligence, sometimes from a very philosophical standpoint but also from a very practical one of building better solvers. He also wrote Logic4Fun, an interactive logic modelling and solving website.
John Slaney has never denied rumours that he was a professional ice hockey player in North America, including scoring the winning goal in a Canada-USSR match. However, if asked he probably will deny them (since he was never a hockey player).
Last September a diverse group of students arrived at orientation to begin, their MSc journey.
Start of the journey: September 2013
After a year of hard work, and an intensive summer project, students submitted their final dissertation last week. Earlier today they had an opportunity to present their posters and demonstrate their project artefacts.
MSc Poster Session: Pinning, Preparation and Presentation
End of the MSc journey: August 2014
With prizes awarded to the top 3 posters and cakes for all, the session proved busy and provided the perfect occasion to meet with second markers, reflect upon the dissertation journey and appreciate the projects completed by their peers.
Congratulations to Alice Herbison (overall winner): The design and implementation of DentalAnx, (best runner-ups) Bejamin Yakubu: AMLA Android Multimedia Learning Aid, and Thomas Brunner: Interactive Realtime Analysis of Social Media Data, all three received the coveted amazon vouchers.
Clockwise from top left: Benjamin, Alice and Thomas complete with poster. Receiving Amazon vouchers
We wish them all, every success with future plans, and look forward to seeing them again at December 2014 Graduation!
The results of the 2014 National Student Survey (NSS) were released this week and 100% of our students reported themselves “satisfied” (20%) or "very satisfied” (80%) with their course. This places Computer Science at St Andrews top in the UK.
The School was also top in a number of other categories including “Staff are good at explaining things”, “Assessment arrangements and Marking have been fair”, “I have been able to contact staff when I needed to”, “Good advice was available when I needed to make study choices” and ” I have been able to access general IT resources when I needed to”.
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 feel so positive about their student experience and wish them every success with future endeavours.
Computer Science Graduation 2014
Read more about the survey, the 2014 results and its ongoing review at the Funding Council website, in the University news and in the media.
Congratulations to James Montgomery, the overall video winner in “Love Learning” an annual competition run by UCAS and The Times.
James viewed the contest as an opportunity to express the passion that he has developed for computing during his first year of study in the School of Computer Science. We congratulated him earlier this week, and asked him to comment on the motivation and inspiration behind the video.
I was particularly inspired by lectures on abstraction levels, and discovering that sliced onion lends itself so well to animation was a deciding factor in choosing my subject matter. I’m delighted to have received the overall prize, and hope my video will encourage more people to consider pursuing computer science at university.
UCAS love learning seeks to inspire the next generation of students to study a related subject at university and encourages students to bottle their enthusiasm and distil it into a winning formula.
Very, well done to James. You can view his winning video along with other entries on the competition results website.
We seek applications for a SICSA lectureship in Human Computer Interaction or a closely related area. We welcome applications from excellent researchers in any relevant area who are keen to cooperate with others within St Andrews Computer Human Interaction (SACHI) and the School of Computer Science. We are especially, but not exclusively, interested in those working in HCI and:
Input and Interaction methods
Information Visualisation or other techniques relevant to Data Science (e.g. machine learning)
Ubiquitous Computing or Systems
Digital Humanities
You should have a PhD, a period of postdoctoral experience and have an outstanding research record as demonstrated by publications and research funding. You must be willing to cooperate with other researchers across Scotland and contribute to the work of SICSA, especially its Human Computer Interaction theme, and to teach in any area of Computer Science. Teaching is important to us and you should be a committed teacher, with appropriate experience.
Candidates interested in this post are welcome to informally contact the Head of School (Steve Linton hos-cs@st-andrews.ac.uk) to discuss possible options. For informal discussion on St Andrews Computer Human Interaction, please contact Professor Aaron Quigley aquigley@st-andrews.ac.uk. We would welcome interaction with any established groups wishing to move to St Andrews.
Information on how to apply.
MSc students take time out of their busy schedule to enjoy a summer BBQ. A sunny July day presented an opportunity to relax and reflect on all their hard work, before submitting their dissertations. Later this month they will present their posters, and demonstrate their project artefacts. We look forward to viewing the culmination of a journey that started a year ago.
Images courtesy of MSc students.
Abstract: We live in an information society, with cloud computing is changing the way we live, work and play in a world of devices and services. In this talk we’ll explore what, why and how this new era of computing is changing the way we think about conceiving, developing and delivering software and services. We’ll then look at how the concept of Big Data is transforming science, and the opportunities it presents for the future.
Bio: Dr Kenji Takeda is Solutions Architect and Technical Manager in Microsoft Research. He is currently focussed on Azure for Research and Environmental Science tools and technologies. The Azure for Research programme currently supports over 300 projects worldwide, including two at the University of St Andrews – see
http://www.azure4research.com
Kenji has extensive experience in Cloud Computing, High Performance and High Productivity Computing, Data-intensive Science, Scientific Workflows, Scholarly Communication, Engineering and Educational Outreach. He has a passion for developing novel computational approaches to tackle fundamental and applied problems in science and engineering.
