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.

Congratulations to Adam Yaxley (3rd year Computer Systems MEng) who has won the national "Rising Star" games programming competition sponsored by Aardvark Swift. The competition is open to all UK undergraduates and aims to highlight the brightest games programming talent. To gain the title Adam had to face a number of challenges demonstrating technical programming skills, including a software challenge set by Relentless Software. He also had to show his knowledge and passion for the area by facing a panel interview with industry experts. Panel member Mark Hope said "Adam showed knowledge beyond his years to beat off competition from the other finalists, he has a bright future ahead of him and here at Aardvark Swift we wish him all the best for the future!"

Adam will be presented with his award at the Eurogamer Expo in September by industry veteran Ian Livingstone. He is also invited to present a talk at the Expo about his experiences in the competition.

Adam is currently looking forward to a placement at Havok next year before returning to Warwick to complete his MEng in Computer Systems.

Nick Pope successfully completed his PhD entitled "Supporting the Migration from Construal to Program: Rethinking Software Development" under the supervision of Dr Meurig Beynon. His thesis is both a significant contribution to Empirical Modelling research, and a vigorous critique and reappraisal of some of its established principles and tools.

Where previous EM research highlighted the role of families of definitions in developing construals Nick has proposed a richer framework in which to conceptualise the transition from construals to programs. In his vision, the current state of a construal is expressed by a single binary function of the form ϕ: R × R → R that changes dynamically.

His work draws on ideas from prototype-based object-oriented software development and functional programming that have been the basis of practical tools and models first deployed in Warwick Games Design Society. Nick is currently working on the development of a web-based EM tool that will integrate his own distinctive contribution with those of many other graduates from the EM research group.

Nick's independent spirit has not only been evident in his research contribution: he spends as much time as possible trekking, ski-ing, cycling and mountaineering. At the time of writing Nick is believed to be scaling some 4000m peaks in Morocco.

Julian Bhardwaj, a first year Discrete Mathematics student, has successfully made it through to the Grand Final of the Cyber Security Challenge which will be held in March. Julian actually qualified twice for the preceding final rounds through his performance in the SANS Packet Capture Analysis and the SANS/Sophos Penetrations Test competitions. His performance in the "Sophos’ Malware Hunt" final round placed in the top 11 candidates, competing against students and experienced IT professionals alike.

Julian has already won a year's subscription to the National Skills Academy for IT and there are more "career enabling" prizes on offer in the Grand Final which Julian is hoping will help him get into a future career in the computer security industry.

Julian is currently taking the module CS134, "Introduction to Computer Security" and wishes to continue to develop his knowledge of Computer Security throughout his degree course and possibly postgraduate study.

Maxim Sviridenko joins the Department of Computer Science as a new Professor in January 2012.

Maxim obtained his PhD in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science in 1999 from the Sobolev Institute of Mathematics and Novosibirsk State University. Then he spent two years as a post-doc at University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Aarhus University, and IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, before becoming a Research Staff Member at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights in December 2001.

Maxim's primary research interest lies in the area of the design and analysis of algorithms for discrete optimization problems. He published over 50 papers in top Computer Science, Operations Research and Discrete Mathematics journals and conferences. He designed several algorithms with best known performance guarantees for such classical optimization models as traveling salesman problem, generalized assignment problems, submodular maximization, multi-dimensional bin packing problems, job shop scheduling with various objective functions, and other inventory and supply chain management problems. He has been also working on the design of practical algorithms and modeling of the optimization problems arising in practice.

For more information about Maxim's research please visit his IBM homepage.

Matthew Leeke has joined the Department of Computer Science as an Assistant Professor.

Matthew joins the department as the first post holder for the John Buxton Lectureship in Computer Science, having completed his undergraduate degree in Computer Science at The University of Warwick in 2008 and gone on to join the department's Performance Computing and Visualisation Group for his PhD.

Matthew's primary research interests relate to issues in the design, implementation and evaluation of dependable software systems. In particular, his most recent work has focused on the development of frameworks for the design of dependable software systems based on software measurement and metics, fault injection analysis techniques for the evaluation of software systems and approaches for the generation of efficient error detection mechanisms.

For more information on Matthew's research interests and teaching please visit his homepage or stop by CS2.06.

Last week we were pleased to be host to an entire Year 8 (about 95 twelve-year-olds and their teachers) from St Alban's Academy in Birmingham. The visit was organised by Rushda Joomun one of the first of our graduates in Discrete Mathematics who was only a few weeks into the TeachFirst programme. It was what the school called a 'SuperLearning Day'. We organised a 'roundabout' of sessions: the Mathematics of animal gaits in Maths, Three sorts of sorting (without computers!) in Computer Science, and how to draw stars (and other shapes) with Scratch in the DigiLab.

Many thanks to the local IET Branch for sponsoring lunch, and to Claire Davenport of the British Computer Society for visiting and giving us inspiring words at the end. The children were excited, enthusiastic and seemed to enjoy themselves a lot - judging by the roar of approval at the end of the day! What impressed us the most was the high degree of engagement and attention being given by all the children across a very wide ability range in all the sessions. This was a credit not only to the children and their teachers but also to the hard work and preparation undertaken by the session leaders. Many thanks to all - we think everybody learned a great deal from the SuperLearning Day!