Data Science News
Dmitry Chistikov joins the Department as a new Assistant Professor
The Department is welcoming our new Assistant Professor Dmitry Chistikov, who will be associated with the Division of Theory and Foundations (FoCS) and the Centre for Discrete Mathematics and its Applications (DIMAP).
After obtaining his Candidate of Sciences (equivalent to PhD) degree at the Department of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics of Moscow State University, Dmitry was a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, as wel as at the University of Oxford.
The general area of Dmitry's research is theoretical computer science. In particular, he is interested in theoretical foundations of verification: its algorithmic aspects (decision and counting problems) as well as combinatorial aspects (extremal properties and characteristics of mathematical models of computation).
For more information about Dmitry's research, please see his web page.
Graham Cormode awarded 2017 Adams Prize
Professor Graham Cormode has been awarded the 2017 Adams Prize by the Cambridge Faculty of Mathematics. The award recognizes his work on "Statistical Analysis of Big Data", and is awarded jointly with Professor Richard Samworth of Cambridge. Professor Cormode says,
My work, in common with Prof Samworth's, is about finding mathematical representations of data that allow useful information to be extracted effectively and accurately. These techniques allow ever larger quantities of data to be handled on ordinary computers.
Professor Cormode's work on "data sketches" has been used in companies such as Netflix, Yahoo, Twitter, Google, AT&T and Sprint. He is currently leading Warwick's involvement in the Alan Turing Institute at London, and working on questions to do with verification of machine learning, and privacy.
Floods and hurricanes predicted with social media
Social media can warn us about extreme weather events before they happen – such as hurricanes, storms and floods – according to new research by the University of Warwick.
Nataliya Tkachenko, with her supervisors in the Department of Computer Science, has found that photographs and key words posted online can signal weather risks developing in specific locations and times – for example, posts about water levels rising can alert the authorities to a potential flood.
Nataliya Tkachenko explains predicting floods & hurricanes with social media 7:30pm tonight on the BBC World Service.