Human-Centred Computing News

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.