Computer Science News
Dr Adam Chester is a new WIHEA Fellow
Many congratulations to Dr Adam Chester on his election to a Fellowship of the Warwick International Higher Education Academy.
A WIHEA Fellowship recognises and rewards outstanding achievements in learning and teaching and is an exceptional opportunity to engage with colleagues across the university, improve the student experience and make a genuine difference to Warwick through research, debate and policy formation.
UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship awarded to Dr Tom Gur
We are delighted to report that Dr Tom Gur has been awarded a Future Leaders Fellowship on Foundations of classical and quantum verifiable computing, funded by £892K from UK Research and Innovation. Professor Artur Czumaj, the head of the department's Theory and Foundations research theme, has commented:
We congratulate Tom and look forward to hosting this exciting project that he will lead. This prestigious award confirms the high international standing of research at Warwick in theoretical computer science and its rich interfaces with other fields.
Tom’s Future Leaders Fellowship is concerned with algorithms and cryptographic protocols, both in the classical and quantum settings, and their applications to blockchain technology and delegation of computation to the cloud. This research programme is inherently interdisciplinary, involving fundamental research at the intersection of computer science, pure mathematics, and quantum physics.
The vision that this project aims to achieve is to develop new and exciting mathematical tools and to capitalise on their power to the end of pushing the frontiers of verifiable computing; providing new methodologies for meeting the challenges imposed by big data and the societal need for decentralised systems.
Warwick and Alan Turing Institute partnership brings Data Science for Social Good Fellowship to the UK this summer
This year's Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) Fellowship programme is being held in the UK for the first time. The University of Warwick is hosting the Fellowships this summer in conjunction with the Alan Turing Institute. The 2019 programme is running from June 10 to August 28.
The Fellowship is a project-based training programme to supply data scientists with skills to create data-driven solutions to real-world problems. It trains aspiring data scientists to work on data mining, machine learning, big data and data science projects with social impact.
It was first pioneered by the University of Chicago, and since 2013 has seen more than 200 graduate and undergraduate students studying computer science, social sciences, statistics, public policy and other quantitative fields undertaking a DSSG Fellowship at the University of Chicago.
The Alan Turing Institute’s vision to advance research for public good and train the next generation of leaders is directly aligned with DSSG’s own goal to produce data scientists with strong skills in solving real-world problems.
Fellows work with non-profit and government partners around the world. To date, more than 60 projects have run, which have helped lots of organisations do more with their data, enhancing their services, interventions and outreach so that they can fulfil their mission of improving lives across the world.
Further details on the fellowship can be found here.
Promotion for Dr Hongkai Wen
We are delighted to report that Dr Hongkai Wen has been promoted to Associate Professor, effective from 1 July 2019. Quoting from his recommendation,
Hongkai’s publication trajectory has been impressive in both quality and quantity. He consistently produces papers at leading international publication venues, at conferences as well as in journals. Remarkably, Hongkai has already forged strong collaborative links not only with a spectrum of colleagues in the department, but also across the Warwick campus, in particular with researchers in WMG. In the past academic year, Hongkai brought cutting-edge material into our popular 3rd-year module on robotics, which will benefit a number of forthcoming cohorts of students.
it remains to say many congratulations!
Dr. Shan Raza joins the department as a new Assistant Professor
The Department welcomes our new Assistant Professor Dr. Shan Raza, who will be associated with the Applied Computing division and the Tissue Image Analytics (TIA) lab.
Before joining Warwick, Shan held a postdoctoral position for two years at the Institute of Cancer Research, UK working on the lung TRACERx project funded by Cancer Research UK (CRUK). Prior to that, he worked for three years as research fellow at Warwick computer science department on a BBSRC funded project exploring the origin of new beta cells during pregnancy. Shan obtained his PhD in Computer Science from Warwick in 2014. During his PhD and postdoc roles, he also gained hands on experience setting up experiments for the acquisition of images in wet biology labs and glass houses.
Shan's research is primarily in the areas of image analysis and applied machine learning. Specifically, he is interested in developing deep learning models for the analysis of microscopy images, integration of imaging and genomics data and studying tumour microenvironment in the context of cancer evolution.
Dr. Torsten Mütze joins the department as a new Assistant Professor
The Department is welcoming our new Assistant Professor Dr. Torsten Mütze, who will be associated with the Division of Theory and Foundations (FoCS) and the Centre for Discrete Mathematics and its Applications (DIMAP).
Before joining Warwick, Torsten held postdoctoral researcher positions at TU Berlin, Georgia Institute of Technology, and ETH Zürich. He obtained his PhD in Computer Science from ETH Zürich in 2011, under the guidance of Angelika Steger.
His research is primarily in the foundations of computer science and discrete mathematics. Specifically, he is interested in combinatorial algorithms, random graph processes, Ramsey theory, and combinatorial games. For more information about his research, please see his web page at http://www.tmuetze.de.
Talha Qaiser passes his PhD exam
Talha Qaiser, a PhD student in the Tissue Image Analytics (TIA) lab, successfully defended his PhD thesis titled "Topology and Attention in Computational Pathology" on Thu the 13th of June 2019. The thesis was supervised by Prof Nasir Rajpoot and involved collaborations with the University Hospital Coventry & Warwickshire (UHCW) NHS Trust (Prof David Snead, Dr Yee Wah Tsang), Department of Mathematics (Prof David Epstein), Warwick Medical School (Prof Paul Thornalley) and the Universities of Nottingham, Birmingham, Osaka and Hiroshima.