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!