Human-Centred Computing News

UK universities are evaluated on the quality of their research every six years. The results of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), announced by the Higher Education Funding Council today, rank Warwick Computer Science 2nd out of 89 UK computing departments.

REF assesses the quality of research outputs (academic papers, software, etc.) and the impact that this research has had (including improvements to society and business). Warwick’s output was ranked the best in the country, while its research impact was ranked joint second (with the University of Cambridge).

Professor Stephen Jarvis, Chair of the Department of Computer Science, commented:

We are delighted with this result. Warwick Computer Science produces world-leading research, both in the theoretical underpinnings of computer science and in its translation to real-world problems. Our work over the past six years has created new businesses, developed new standards, generated IP for new products, underpinned national security and defence, and impacted on social policy in education and health.

This result comes on the back of an excellent year. Warwick has been named University of the Year in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2015, and Warwick Computer Science was recently ranked as one of the best departments in the world in the 2014 QS Worldwide University Rankings.

Research Excellence Framework 2014: Institutions ranked by Subject

Further Information

• Times Higher Education: REF2014 results
• Research Excellence at Warwick

The Departments of Statistics and Computer Science are seeking a new Assistant Professor in the area of Data Science.

An enthusiastic individual is sought for this unique opportunity to be part of the newly created Warwick Data Science Institute (WDSI), which reflects the commitment of the Department of Statistics and the Department of Computer Science, in collaboration with the Warwick Mathematics Institute, to a coherent methodological approach to the fundamentals of Data Science and the challenges of complex data sets. In addition, the departments of Computer Science and Statistics have created a joint undergraduate degree programme in Data Science, which has recruited its first students in September 2014. You would be naturally involved in this exciting development, which constitutes the first course of its kind in the UK.

You will have knowledge of the current issues in Data Science and the drive to address them at a fundamental level while being part of a collaborative team from researchers across the mathematical sciences at Warwick. You will help shape Warwick’s research and teaching leadership in this fast-developing discipline. This is an opportunity to be part of an exciting collaboration between the Mathematical Science departments at Warwick.

Informal enquires can be addressed to any of Professors Mark Steel (M.Steel@warwick.ac.uk), Stephen Jarvis (S.A.Jarvis@warwick.ac.uk), David Firth (D.Firth@warwick.ac.uk), or Graham Cormode (G.Cormode@warwick.ac.uk), or to any other senior member of the Warwick Computer Science and Statistics departments.

You should have a PhD in Statistics, Computer Science or Mathematics or an equivalent qualification.

It is expected that interviews will take place in January 2015.

Start date: Flexible, although we expect the successful candidate to be in post by 1 October, 2015.

Professor Dan Král has been awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize for his work on combinatorial limits.

Philip Leverhulme Prize is awarded to outstanding scholars who have made a substantial and recognised contribution to their particular field of study, recognised at an international level, and where the expectation is that their greatest achievement is yet to come.

The research focus of the prize, the theory of combinatorial limits, is a recently emerged and rapidly evolving area of mathematics, which led to opening new links between analysis, combinatorics, computer science, group theory and probability theory.The analytic view of large discrete structures resulted in a substantial progress on many notoriously difficult extremal combinatorics questions. It also gave new understanding of aspects of important concepts such as regularity decompositions. Still, many fundamental problems remain widely open. A particularly challenging problem is finding a robust notion of convergence that would unify the existing notions for dense and sparse discrete structures. In relation to extremal combinatorics, problems of a great significance include a full description of low dimensional projections of the body of feasible limit densities or the existence of finitely forcible (determined) configurations in the extremal points of this body as conjectured by Lovász and Szegedy.