Computer Science News

On Friday, about 22 Year 9 students from six local schools visited the department to get a taster session of programming. The students, most of whom had never done 'real' programming before, were shown how programming is useful in everyday life in everything from video games to mapping disaster zones using mobile phones.

They were a lively group who then worked at an example of programming in the ‘World of Wombats’ - mostly with enthusiasm and lots of questions. Most of them achieved what we hoped for in the short time they had – though they still had several ‘challenges’ to finish. Did we put them off or turn them on? We hope to see some of them again in four and a half years time!

This was part of a full day at the university, organised by the Widening Participation team, in which five other departments held similar events in order to inspire young people to consider a degree at university.

Over a hundred students gathered last week in the Panorama Room for a reception, poster display and then Award Ceremony for the Warwick Advantage Awards. They were all winners of Awards of various kinds in recognition of outstanding extra-curricular contributions to life at Warwick and the local community.

We were delighted that four Award winners were from Computer Science. Main Awards were presented to Phillip Taylor (CS3) and Hoi Zin (Jackie) Tran (DM3). Gold Awards were gained by two Computer and Business Studies students Samantha Edwards and Nikhita Giridhar (pictured above). Among many activities over her first two years at Warwick Samantha has visited numerous local schools (a different one each week!) as one of the Warwick Technology Volunteers to introduce the programming environment Scratch to pupils and teachers. Interestingly Nikhita, a final year student, commented, "I think it counted significantly towards my getting a job offer from Goldman Sachs that I done so many extra-curricular things during my time at Warwick."

The Warwick Advantage Award provides the opportunity to achieve University recognition and reward for the time and effort that students put into societies, sports clubs, campaigns, committees, volunteering, events, URSS research, work experience & everything else that isn't a degree requirement. Find out more at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/advantage/awards/

On the last Wednesday of term about 250 6th formers, teachers and employers converged on the Department of Computer Science at Warwick for a conference Computing Your Future. The purpose was to inspire school students with the astonishing possibilities and challenges that computing now offers and to inform them about the great variety of computing degrees and also the excitement of the numerous career paths that can follow after such degrees. The conference was one of about a dozen similar events across the country during National Science Week sponsored by the Computing At School (CAS) movement and the British Computer Society. Lunch at the event was very generously sponsored by the local branch of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Further support was provided from the British Computer Society and CAS.

The day began, and ended, with plenary sessions addressed by staff from both Warwick and Coventry universities including a remarkably inspiring final talk from Peter Dickman – an Engineering Manager at the Google Zurich Office. The main work of the day went on in a series of Workshops which participants attended in small groups. There were 17 of these in parallel ranging from Haptic Interaction with Virtual Scenes to First Steps with Greenfoot, and from A Day in the Life of a Video Game Programmer to Ethical Hacking and Network Security. Several Computer Science students (as well as staff) from both Warwick and Coventry Universities helped to lead these workshops. There were also a wide variety of employers – both recent graduates and experienced managers – giving a detailed and practical insight into the huge range of jobs that are calling out for computing-qualified graduates.

The lead organiser of the event, Steve Russ of Computer Science at Warwick, was assisted by staff from Warwick Manufacturing Group and Coventry University as well as the Coventry and Warwickshire LEA. The success of the day depended in large measure on a team of 32 Warwick students who enthusiastically welcomed and guided groups around the numerous venues and helped to run workshops. There were 15 local schools represented and we hope a new CAS Hub can be formed soon which will help to support and share resources among ICT/Computing teachers on a regular on-going basis.

ACM has named Leslie G. Valiant of Harvard University the winner of the 2010 ACM A.M. Turing Award for his fundamental contributions to the development of computational learning theory and to the broader theory of computer science. Valiant brought together machine learning and computational complexity, leading to advances in artificial intelligence as well as computing practices such as natural language processing, handwriting recognition, and computer vision. He also launched several subfields of theoretical computer science, and developed models for parallel computing. The Turing Award, widely considered the "Nobel Prize in Computing," is named for the British mathematician Alan M. Turing. The award carries a $250,000 prize, with financial support provided by Intel Corporation and Google Inc. Les Valiant received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Warwick in 1974. His PhD supervisor was Professor Mike Paterson.

Dr Abd-Nacer Bouchekhima joined the department as a Research Fellow after obtaining his PhD in 2009 from the MOAC DTC and then holding an appointment as Assistant Professor in KFUPM (Saudi Arabia). He will work together with Dr Yulia Timofeeva on a project funded by the BBSRC that aims to investigate the role of calcium dynamics in neuronal computation underlying important brain functions.

Steve Russ and Meurig Beynon hosted a visit to Computer Science from the cohort of students in Education who are on the ICT initial teacher training course (PGCE). Their lecturer (Mick Hammond) had asked if we could show them something of our 'alternative' approach to computing. Most of the time they were working through part of a workshop that Meurig used at the Constructionism 2010 conference in Paris last August. They were a lively group (about 15 of them came along including Mick himself) and from several discussions it was clear what a very wide-ranging and challenging task an ICT teacher has in today's schools. Some of these budding teachers had worked in the software industry, almost all had a first degree which contained significant programming work. They were just off to do another six weeks of teaching practice in local schools. Whether there would be opportunity, or support, for teaching any programming in their schools, or in their first jobs, appeared to be very uncertain - indeed the desirability and relative importance of such teaching was clearly problematic to many of them. The issues are truly complicated with many stakeholders all pulling in different directions and the Government currently reviewing ICT in a fashion which some feel will weaken support for it further. In such a climate it is clearly very important for the discipline of computing (if there is such a thing) that we can clearly distinguish ICT and computing, and that pupils, parents, teachers and politicians all understand the distinction. The Computing at School movement is working hard to achieve this (among many other worthy aims). They are sponsoring our 6th form conference coming up in March.

In recent years IBM have regularly invited a group of Warwick computer science students to an 'open day' event held at
their research centre at Hursley. A couple of weeks ago a coach-full of our students (from 1st years to 4th years) attended this year's event. One of those attending, Alex Wilson, picks up the story ...

"After arriving in Hursley we were shown around the beautiful grounds of Hursley House before being introduced to IBM staff and facilities. The Galileo Centre, where we spent most of the day, was filled with interesting exhibitions and demonstrations of technology such as facial profiling and uses of RFID tags. The staff gave us presentations on current technologies and uses, such as in the SMARTer planet scheme – including one employee who had integrated public monitoring with his house through Twitter! During lunch we were able to have personal chats with IBM’s Master Innovators, the people who design the new innovations in technology.

The last part of the day was splitting into groups and working on our own “innovations” – we gave a presentation on uses and how we’d implement it to the rest of the students who came and IBM’s own panel of judges. The winning team received iPods as prizes. The entire day was very fun, interesting, and well worth doing again. A big thank you to IBM for their time and hospitality!"

(Outside Image credit Simon Greig, release under Creative Commons)