Computer Science hosts Hack the Bubble

Earlier this month the School hosted hack the Bubble, a 12-hour hackathon organized by STACS, the St Andrews Computing Society and sponsored by J.P. Morgan. Hackathons are great events for teams of students to build projects from scratch and compete for awesome prizes.

The main aim of this event was to show our first and second year students what a hackathon is in a more accessible 12-hour format instead of the traditional 24 or 48 hour ones. The event was a great success with 70 students participating and 15 teams presenting their projects at the end.

This event wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the School of Computer Science for providing the venue, and sponsors J.P. Morgan for the food and prizes.

Hack the Bubble October 2016

Images and text courtesy of STACS.

Computer Science hosts StacsHack and Google HashCode

The School hosted another hugely successful StacsHack last month. We congratulate the St Andrews Computing Society (Stacs) for running a fantastic event. Earlier in February they also coordinated and participated in Google HashCode, a team-based programming competition aimed at solving real-life engineering problems selected by Google.

Google Hash Code February 2016

Hackathons allow students with a range of talents and aptitudes to form groups and create innovative projects in 24hrs. It’s clear from the many photos that great fun was had at both events.

Gorgeous graphs, mood hub, SpeechFrenzy, Social face, Fresh: freshers app, Myo Athletics, pinboard and FarmScript are just some of the projects demos presented during StacsHack. Why not join them for StacsHack3 in 2017.

StacsHack2 February 2016

Thanks to Stacs for continuing to represent the School of Computer Science in such an upbeat and inclusive way.

Sponsors: GitHub, J.P.Morgan,Bloomberg, Codeplay and Startups hackcampus and Codio.

Hardware Lab Partners: Arduino, nest, intel, leap motion, muse, oculus, particle, pebble, and Myo.

StacsHack Photos by Ryo Yanagida, courtesy of Major League Hacking.

Google Hash Code Photos courtesy of Computer Science.

Local Hack Day for STACS

Congratulation to our STACS community, on running another successful hack day earlier this month in conjunction with Major League Hackers The event hosted in the School looked like great fun and provides a great learning, building and socialising opportunity. Night bus tracker, CS story!, Crash alert, Game of phones, Notilife, Sports report and Bubble tree are just some of the resulting applications.

The students captured some great photos and a short video stream on their twitter account. The takeaway message appears to be that “hacking is a serious business”, but also great fun when it involves STACS. We look forward to hearing about the next event.

Images courtesy of Viktoriya Anisimova and STACS.

End of Semester Round up

We have reached the end of semester 2 and so many events, activities and accomplishments have taken place, it’s worth reflecting on all the hard work and enthusiasm demonstrated by our talented students.

As stated previously the School is rated highly for student satisfaction, which echoes the continued strong student staff community cultivated by all.

The events and locations pictured below help to highlight why studying Computer Science at St Andrews is such an amazing experience.

Clockwise from top left: Senior Honours demonstrate their final year projects. Junior Honours attempt world domination. PhD students present their posters.

Computer Science students organise a hugely successful StacsHack.

A bumper crop of PhD students advance towards graduation.

The CompSci garden continues to flourish with a little help from the Transitions team.

Clockwise from top left: The May Dip, Torchlit procession, Christmas ceilidh, stunning St Andrews.

Clockwise from top left: The May Dip, Torchlit procession, Christmas ceilidh and stunning St Andrews.

Computer Science Distinguished Lecture Series: Prof. Mothy Roscoe pictured at the Byre Theatre and Prof. Luca Cardelli pictured in Lower College Hall.

Images courtesy of Lisa Dow, Xu Zhu, Fearn Bishop, Saleem Bhatti and Simone Conte,

School Hosts StacsHack 2015

The School hosted a hugely successful StacsHack last month. We congratulate Stacs St Andrews Computing Society for organising and running a fantastic event. Hackathons allow students with a range of talents and aptitudes to form groups and create innovative projects in 24hrs. It’s clear from the many photos that great fun was had by all. View some of the winning projects at the challenge post submission gallery.

Thanks to Gala Malbasic, Nick Tikhonov, Ieva Vasiļjeva and Vika Anisimova for representing the School of Computer Science in such a positive way and for all their hard work and enthusiasm.

Sponsors: Palantir, J.P. Morgan, Braintree_Dev, Bloomberg and Thalmiclabs.

MLH Hardware Lab partners: Oculus VR, Pebble, Thalmic Labs, Sparkfun, Estimote, Leap Motion and Spark.

Images courtesy of Gala Malbasic and Major League Hacking.
More images from the event can be viewed on the StacsHack Facebook Page.

St Andrews Programming Competition 2014

The St Andrews Programming Competition 2014 is a friendly programming contest organised by the School of Computer Science for students belonging to all levels, coming from any background with any amount of programming experience. Team up with up to 3 members per team, compete for 3 hours by solving a set of programming problems using your favourite programming language and win £200 worth of prizes.

Generally, programming competitions are aimed at the best programmers, this is a first-of-its-kind competition where students from all levels with any amount of programming experience stand a chance to win a prize. Another unique aspect of this competition is that it has also open to members of staff from the School of Computer Science, making this a fun experience and a bonding opportunity for staff and students.

Students can use this opportunity gain valuable exposure to solving quick algorithmic programming questions – of the style that may come up in job interviews, where candidates are required to solve problems on the fly while being observed. Such interview practices are common among many companies nowadays including Google.

For more details and registration visit: http://goo.gl/I78Hyf
Facebook: www.facebook.com/stapc14
Twitter: @stapc14

If you have any questions, please email Shyam on smr20@st-andrews.ac.uk

The event, prizes and refreshments will be sponsored by AetherStore.

Event details

When: 7th April 2014 14:00 - 17:00
Where: Cole 0.35 - Subhons Lab

Computer Science Blog