Congratulations to the Masters Class of 2012, and our PhD students, who graduated yesterday. Students were invited to a reception in the school to celebrate their achievement with staff, friends and family. Our graduates have moved on to a wide variety of interesting and challenging employment and further study opportunities, and we wish them all well with their future careers.
Success in J.P.Morgan Code for Good Competition
A team of Computer Science students from the University of St Andrews came first in their category and runner up overall in the J.P.Morgan Code for Good Competition 2012
The Coding Challenge was open to all students enrolled fulltime at a university located in the United Kingdom, who are under-graduates or post-graduates and are 18 years of age or over. Students had to be on track for a 2:1. Teams of 4-6 students competed against each other on behalf of a charity assigned to them in order to provide a technological solution to a problem that the charity faces.
The team representing St Andrews was
- Aleksejs Sazonovs
- Anastasia Bugaenko
- Gareth Munro
- Kernius Kuolys
- Ole Sandbu
Seminar by Leo Liberti on “Symmetry in Mathematical Programming”, 19th Nov, 11am
Leo Liberti, the director of the Optimisation and Sustainable Development Chair at Ecole Polytechnique, will be giving a seminar on Monday 19th November, 2012, at 11am-12, in Jack Cole 1.33a.
Symmetry in Mathematical Programming
Abstract: When solving Mathematical Programming (MP) problems (be they linear or nonlinear, continuous or mixed-integer) using Branch-and-Bound (BB), the presence of symmetries of the solution set results in BB taking longer than strictly needed, due to the symmetries induced on the BB tree. I shall illustrate a class of “symmetry breaking” methods based on reformulating the symmetric MPs so that some of the symmetric optima become infeasible. I shall show how to automatically detect MP formulation symmetries by reducing MP to graphs, and how to automatically generate reformulated MPs with (hopefully) fewer symmetric optima. Although computational tests show that reformulations may not always succeed in making BB terminate faster, they can be applied very efficiently – so they can be considered an efficient “pre-solving step” to running BB.
Event details
- When: 19th November 2012 11:00 - 12:00
- Where: Cole 1.33a
- Format: Seminar
The Paterson Prize
Interested in writing science fiction then read on. The Paterson Prize was set up by one of our former employees Dr Norman Paterson for students in computer science who liked to write science fiction stories.
Closing date for entries is 31st March 2013
SICSA DEMOfest 2012
The Scottish Informatics & Computer Science Alliance in association with ScotlandIS hosted their 5th annual DEMOfest, a technology showcase of Scottish Universities Informatics and Computer Science on the 6th November.
The school had three posters at the DEMOfest. Derek and Gordon were promoting their work on the SFC funded Horizon Project “Services to the Cloud”, Masih’s poster was “On The Propagation of Network State Knowledge In Structured Peer-to-Peer Networks”, which forms part of his PhD, and Chris was talking about the work he’s been doing with Alex Voss on “Analysing Social Media”.
In addition, for the first time, workshops were included as part of the DemoFest. Gordon organised the first of these on the topic of Cloud Computing. The lunchtime workshop was aimed at software developers who are considering moving their product to the cloud, and comprised three invited speakers and an open panel Q&A/discussion session.
It was attended by 37 people from industry and academia, and is the first in a series of dissemination workshops being organised as part of the Services to the Cloud project.
Graduation November 2012
The School of Computer Science will be holding a Graduation Reception in the Jack Cole Building on Friday 30th November starting at 12:00 for the Masters Class of 2011. Students are invited to attend after their graduation along with any guests attending the event. Current MSc Students are also invited to the reception, which will continue until 17:00, to meet with the graduates and discuss their experiences both during the course and since they have left.
Event details
- When: 30th November 2012 09:30 - 15:30
- Where: St Andrews
Best Student Paper Award for iSCAN
Congratulations to Per Ola and colleagues Ha Trinh, Annalu Waller, Keith Vertanen and Vicki L. Hanson. Their paper “iSCAN: a phoneme-based predictive communication aid for nonspeaking individuals” received the ACM SIGACCESS Best Student Paper Award at the 14th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2012) earlier this year.
Computer Gaming Industry careers: Aardvark Swift presentation – Get in the Game
Tuesday 27 November, 1400-1500, 1.33a Jack Cole building (Computer Science)
Aardvark Swift, recruitment agents for the gaming industry, will be talking about how to break into the sector. Get advice from those in the know on the key skills you will need, the common pitfalls, and how to maximise your chances. Ideal for programming enthusiasts of all disciplines, and for anyone interested in a gaming career. http://www.aswift.com/index.jsp#holder1-start
AS will also be giving details of how to enter their nationwide programming competition Search for a Star! SFAS is designed to highlight and reward the UK’s most promising video games developers. The winner will be announced at the Eurogamer 2013, with last years winner securing a job at Sony Evolution . This years competition is being sponsored by Microsoft http://www.aswift.com/searchforastar/
Event details
- When: 27th November 2012 14:00 - 15:00
- Where: Cole 1.33a
- Format: Talk
Bake Sale for Children in Need
It’s Children In Need this Friday.
Well done to Sophie Gent, who raised £133 for children in need in October. The delicious cakes were the result of 3 days hard baking in the Gent household. They proved to be very popular and were certainly a welcome addition during coffee time in the school.
Find out more about fundraising for Children in Need at the BBC website
Adobe Prize Bursaries
The School of Computer Science is delighted to announce two Adobe prize bursaries available this year.
The bursaries are open to students currently in their first year at St Andrews with a degree intention of Computer Science or any joint honours combination involving Computer Science who are eligible for the full means-tested loan or grant from SAAS or the English, Welsh or Northern Irish equivalents. The value of the bursaries is £1000 per year for up to four years, subject to the students remaining eligible and maintaining an annual grade point average of at least 13.0.
If you wish to apply for one of these bursaries, please submit 500 words on the subject of “What excites me about Computer Science?” and email it to admin-cs@st-andrews.ac.uk. The deadline for submission is 1st November 2012.
These bursaries are the first in a number of new initiatives between Adobe systems and the School of Computer Science, including both teaching and research. We will be announcing several more over the next few months.