Computer Science News

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today the next winner in the New York City Applied Sciences Initiative.

The Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) is an applied science research institute which will be a partnership of top institutions from around the globe, led by NYU and NYU-Poly with a consortium of world-class universities including The University of Warwick, Carnegie Mellon University, The City University of New York, The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and The University of Toronto. Industry partners include IBM, Cisco, Siemens, Con Edison, National Grid, Xerox, Arup, IDEO, and AECOM.

Warwick Computer Science will play a significant role in CUSP, with new and existing academics providing research and teaching in areas including operations research, service computing, complexity theory, networking and communications, data analytics, modelling and visualisation.

The completed institute will host 50 faculty and researchers and over 500 masters-level and PhD students. Students and staff from Warwick Computer Science will be able to engage in urban sciences projects in the New York ‘living lab’, in areas including smart buildings, digital healthcare, transport solutions, and public safety.

The Centre will open its doors to its first class of Warwick-CUSP students in September 2013.

For more information see:

1. http://www.nycedc.com/press-release/mayor-bloomberg-new-york-university-president-sexton-and-mta-chairman-lhota-announce
2. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/warwick_only_european/
3. http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/04/urban-science-centre-born-in-the-big-apple.html

Last week a training day was held in the Department for ICT/Computing teachers interested in starting GCSE Computing in their school. While all the main Boards are offering this qualification we were pleased to have our opening talk from the Chief Examiner for the OCR GCSE Computing, Sean O'Byrne. It became typical of the whole day, that even in this first session, many participants (30 teachers or advisors) interjected with vigorous, sometimes critical, questioning and discussion. It was an intense day with sessions on practical sorting activities at KS3, on programming (Scratch and Greenfoot), on the potential of on-line support especially for programming, and on what to do next! Two major themes that emerged were:

(i) problems associated with the assessment of programming tasks and the kinds of teacher intervention and support that are allowable and desirable,

(ii) how should teachers new to programming choose and learn languages suited to the GCSE and suited to students gaining valuable concepts for future work in computing.

There was a huge range of experience among those present: some had been on the OCR pilot scheme already for two years, others were committed to starting the GCSE this September, some had industry experience of programming, others no programming knowledge at all. The day proved a good success for most participants (judging by the detailed feedback) and will result in our setting up a dedicated schools portal (soon) and preparing to offer further CPD training for teachers this July.

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.

February sees the launch of the ROADBLOCK project, funded by the EPSRC with the goal of developing artificial and programmable bacterial coatings to protect surfaces against infective agents. While Bioengineering techniques that allow genes to be manipulated have been around for some time, the discipline of Synthetic Biology allows for the more effective design of genetic circuits. The Principle Investigator for this project is Dr Sara Kalvala, who will be applying her expertise in Compiler Design and Formal Logics towards the development of tools which will help assemble genetic networks and model their interactions with host genes.

The Department invites applications for a Research Fellowship to work on this three-year project. The project requires a post-doctoral researcher with a good background in Computer Science, especially in either Compiler Design or Automated Reasoning, who would like to expand their horizons and apply their knowledge into Synthetic Biology.

More information and details of the application procedure are available from http://go.warwick.ac.uk/kalvala/pdra. The deadline for applications is 27 February 2012.

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.

The department would like to congratulate the students who graduated today in the Winter Degree Ceremony, which took place in the Butterworth Hall in the Arts Centre with a food and drinks reception being provided in the department.

Step No.1 :

The speech by Michael Gove last Wednesday was probably the first time that a Minister for Education in the UK Government has acknowledged in reference to schools that, "Computer Science is a rigorous, fascinating and intellectually challenging subject". See

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jan/11/digital-literacy-michael-gove-speech

He said, "we're encouraging rigorous Computer Science courses [in schools] .. . we will certainly consider including Computer Science as an option in the English Baccalaureate". He recognised the current ICT curriculum as a "roadblock" and announced a plan to withdraw the Programme of Study for ICT and allow schools the freedom to teach the subject as they wish.

The speech was not 'anti-ICT', as some have suggested, though it was ambiguous in that regard. Quite clear was the determination urgently to move ahead with new high quality Computer Science GCSEs and A-levels, and to focus on training teachers to support and deliver such courses. We hope this new direction marks a significant turning point in Computer Science education in the UK. It is long overdue but very welcome.

At Warwick we believe the universities have an important role in supporting such developments. We should like to hear from teachers, teacher trainers, and Examination Boards as to what provision would be most useful in the short and medium term. We have a variety of resources to offer but need to collaborate with others for well-focussed planning and delivery. We have already been planning some one-day training sessions in March and April aimed at supporting teachers of the more technical A-Levels in Computing. Details of these courses will appear here. Please send suggestions for such courses, or offers of collaboration or assistance to steve.russ@warwick.ac.uk

Step No.2 :

On Friday last week was published the long-awaited Royal Society Commissioned Report on Computing in UK Schools.

http://royalsociety.org/education/policy/computing-in-schools/report/

On any reckoning this 120pp Report must be regarded as an historic landmark in charting the complex development of computing education in schools over the past several decades and making 11 key recommendations for the future. The Report is clear and clarifying, comprehensive and yet urgent. It is essential reading for anyone interested in computer education in schools and in Higher Education.

The Computer Science community, and indeed the country, owes a considerable debt to Professor Steve Furber and his Advisory Board for an impressive and compelling compilation of evidence and argument. A powerful case is presented for the delivery in schools of computing education in three overlapping, but distinguishable, levels of digital literacy, Information Technology and Computer Science. The educational case for Computer Science (see Section 3.2.2) has not before been presented so cogently.

As in Michael Gove's speech, there is considerable emphasis in the Royal Society Report on the necessity of further Continuing Professional Development for teachers. But it is in this area that we at Warwick feel the need to complement the Recommendation 3 (p.9), "Government .... should seek support from business and industry to make that provision [for subject-specific CPD for Computing teachers]". We believe there is a social, scientific, and pragmatic responsibility for universities also to offer technical and academic support for such CPD provision for teachers. We intend to be practising what we preach in this respect - hopefully in co-operation with other Midlands Universities - in the coming months.

Dr Steve Russ (homepage)

Admissions Tutor and Associate Professor in Computer Science