An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Warwick's School of Life Sciences, Centre for Systems Biology and the Department of Computer Science have discovered hundreds of regions in plant DNA that have been preserved across different species through 100 million years of evolution. These regions are not part of any genes, but may be responsible for turning individual genes "on" and "off". The discovery will help biologists to understand better the genetics of plants, leading to potential applications in agriculture and food security. This research has been made possible by a computational analysis of the DNA in several plant species, based on algorithms developed by a DCS academic Dr Alexander Tiskin and his former PhD student Dr Peter Krusche (now working at Warwick's Centre for Systems Biology). The research was published in the journal Plant Cell.

Warwick University's press release

Interview with the team's leader Dr Sascha Ott

Two researchers have joined the University of Warwick to tackle the challenges faced by cities in the 21^st century as part of the New York-based Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP).

The University of Warwick is a member of a consortium, led by New York University, which is building a new applied science research institute in New York in response to a call issued by the city’s mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The University has now welcomed the first of a number of new academic staff to be appointed to work at CUSP, Dr Maria Liakata and Dr Weisi Guo.

More information is available in the press release

Philip How, a recent graduate in MEng Computer Science, has returned to the United Kingdom after developing and leading a successful workshop at Scratch@MIT 2012. As well as marking the end of his undergraduate degree, Philip's role in this exceptionally popular event represents the culmination of a long-standing involvement with Warwick Technology Volunteers, a dedicated groups of technically minded students and staff members who make a significant contribution to the local community through involvement with schools.

Scratch@MIT is the biennial conference where educators, researchers and developers gather on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts to share their experiences and imagine the possibilities of Scratch. The workshop that Philip led, entitled Sensing Our World, involved participants building a variety of sensors, ranging from simple sensors that relied on the conductivity of pencil tracks to working touchpads made from CD cases.

On his involvment, Philip is quick to acknowledge the contributions of those around him, noting that "The staff and students contributing to Warwick Technology Volunteers are fantastic. We couldn't have hoped to achieve what we have without the hard work and comittment of the team of staff and students involved, particuler Margaret Low. In my time here she's an fantastic at organising the efforts of students and liasing with local schools".

For more information please see Warwick Technology Volunteers and Department of Computer Science - Schools.

The 39th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP 2012), the main European conference in Theoretical Computer Science, will take place 9 - 13 July 2012 at the University of Warwick, UK.

The conference will see 123 research presentations of recent advances in theoretical computer science selected from 432 submissions in three tracks: A: Algorithms, Complexity and Games, B: Logic, Semantics, Automata and Theory of Programming, C: Foundations of Networked Computation.

The standard presentations will be complemented by 5 invited talks by world leading researchers: Dr Gilles Dowek (INRIA Paris), Dr Kohei Honda (Queen Mary London), Prof Stefano Leonardi (Sapienza University of Rome), Prof Daniel A. Spielman (Yale), and Prof Berthold Vöcking (RWTH Aachen).

The conference is also one of the Alan Turing Centenary Celebration events, celebrating the Life and Work, and Legacy of Alan Turing. Prof David Harel from the Weizmann Institute of Science, will give a special Alan Turing talk during the conference.

During the conference, there will be presented three special awards: EATCS/ACM SIGACT Gödel Prize 2012, EATCS Award 2012, and EATCS Presburger Award 2012.

• EATCS and ACM's Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT) awarded the Gödel Prize 2012 to three groups of researchers for their contributions to understanding how selfish behavior by users and service providers impacts the behavior of the Internet and other complex computational systems. The papers were presented by Elias Koutsoupias and Christos H. Papadimitriou, Tim Roughgarden and Éva Tardos, and Noam Nisan and Amir Ronen.
• The Presburger Award Committee 2012, consisting of Monika Henzinger, Antonin Kucera, and Stefano Leonardi (chair), has unanimously decided to propose Venkatesan Guruswami (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh) and Mihai Patrascu (AT&T Labs) as joint recipients of the 2012 EATCS Presburger Award for young scientists. (pdf)
• The EATCS Awards Committee consisting of Leslie Ann Goldberg, Friedhelm Meyer auf der Heide and Eugenio Moggi (chair), has unanimously decided to give the 2012 EATCS Award to Moshe Vardi (Rice University). (pdf)

The main conference will be preceded by a series of workshops taking place on Sunday, July 8:

• Workshop on Applications of Parameterized Algorithms and Complexity (APAC)
• Fourth International Workshop on Classical Logic and Computation (CL&C)
• Third Workshop on Realistic models for Algorithms in Wireless Networks (WRAWN)

The Department of Computer Science is proud to present a day of talks celebrating the life and work of Alan Turing, a pioneer in mathematics and the founding father of Computer Science. The day, which marks the centenary of Turing’s birth, will feature lectures from leading academics on Turing’s contributions and their enduring relevance to a broad range of scientific disciplines.

The event is open to all, and attendance from undergraduate and postgraduate students is warmly welcomed. There will be a series of talks on the life and work of Turning, the chance to chat over coffee and buffet lunch.

For more information on the celebration go to http://go.warwick.ac.uk/turing

The University of Warwick has been named the best university in Europe and number three in the world in The QS Top 50 under 50 league table.

The University, which will celebrate its 50^th anniversary in 2015, was featured on the QS Top 50 under 50 rankings of the new generation of elite young global institutions.

The top two global institutions were both in Hong Kong - the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Full results of QS Top 50 under 50 are available here.

A £3.5 million supercomputing hub is set to power growth and innovation in the Midlands and London by opening up its vast number-crunching power to local firms.

The University of Warwick is leading a group of four top universities to launch MidPlus, a state-of-the–art high-performance computing centre, to help SMEs and larger firms with the modelling, simulation and analysis needed to design world-leading products and services.

MidPlus will provide extra computing capacity to sectors such as aerospace, automotive, biomedical and advanced materials as well as delivering supercomputing skills to the local workforce.

The investment consists of £2 million from the research funding agency EPSRC and £1.5 million from the four partners – University of Warwick, University of Birmingham, University of Nottingham and Queen Mary, University of London.

The move is linked to a Government drive to increase the UK’s capacity to exploit high-performance computing in optimising process design – a key requirement to boost industries such as advanced manufacturing, scientific research and financial services.

You can get more information, inclduing commentary from its director, on the initiative here.