By the start of the Autumn Term, the department will boast seven new staff who have joined us in 2020: Associate Professor Dr Long Tran-Thanh, Assistant Professor Dr Weiren Yu, Senior Teaching Fellow Dr Andrew Hague, Teaching Fellows Dr Greg Watson, Dr Rossella Suma and Richard Kirk, and Research and Teaching Fellow Dr Matthew Bradbury.

Coming from Southampton, Aston and Warwick universities, our new colleagues bring a wealth of teaching and research excellence, with expertise in areas including artificial intelligence, agent-based systems, data mining, information retrieval, educational technologies, image processing, high-performance computing, and cyber security.

A further piece of excellent news: Dr Paolo Turrini has been promoted to Associate Professor, effective from 1 September 2020. Many congratulations to Paolo, whose recommendation says:

Dr Turrini has maintained an internationally recognised publication trajectory, with papers appearing in highly-ranked journals and conferences. He has also grown his research group to 4 PhD students currently, and developed fruitful research collaborations with several academics in the department. … Dr Turrini has contributed to designing two 4th-year/MSc modules. He has been attentive to his teaching to an exemplary degree, resulting in consistently positive feedback from students...

We are very happy to report that Dr Andrew Hague has been promoted to Senior Teaching Fellow, effective from 1 July 2020. Quoting from his recommendation,

Dr Hague... has built on his successful experiences of design and delivery of teaching in Warwick Foundation Studies, already demonstrating a high standard in module development as well as delivery of lectures, seminars and laboratories in Computer Science. Both feedback from students and references from colleagues testify to his excellence and initiative. … Dr Hague is recognised within a valuable network of contacts on campus, in the computer games industry, and other educational and community organisations, where he is known for his capacity for impactful innovation in the wide domain of educational technology. Dr Hague has also already proved himself in several successful outreach initiatives and events.

it remains to say many congratulations!

We are very happy to report that the Department has won a Bronze Award from the Athena SWAN Charter. This is a key Equality Charter of Advance HE, and it recognises advancement of gender equality: representation, progression and success for all. Commenting on the award, the University's Provost, Professor Christine Ennew, said:

This is excellent news for Computer Science and the wider Warwick community. I would like to offer my congratulations to everyone in the Department for the significant progress that has been made on gender equality in recent years, and I wish them every success in implementing their Action Plan for this area in the coming years.

We are especially grateful to the Self-Assessment Team, and all students and staff who contributed to the questionnaire, the analysis and the consultation. This Bronze Award will be held by the Department until at least November 2023.

Another piece of excellent news: Dr Sayan Bhattacharya and Dr Tom Gur have been promoted to Associate Professor, effective from 1 May 2020. Quoting from their recommendations,

Dr Bhattacharya has attracted a very competitive EPSRC New Investigator grant and a high-profile UK-Israel collaborative grant with the Weizmann Institute... . Dr Bhattacharya’s high standing in the research community is confirmed by his memberships of the programme committees of prestigious conferences, as well as his organisation of international research events. … Dr Bhattacharya has developed a new 3rd-year core module for Discrete Mathematics students and delivered it for the past three years, as well as now teaching most of a key 1st-year core module for the same degree course.

and

Dr Gur has attracted a highly prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, as well as growing his international leading publications record. He is also growing a successful own research group, having recruited a PhD student and on track to employing several postdocs. … voluntarily exceeding his workload, Dr Gur has developed from scratch and currently teaches a popular 4th-year module on quantum computing. Mentioning here only some of his other contributions, Dr Gur also … is the organiser of the main departmental research seminar, was an active contributor to the department’s recent Athena SWAN submission, and has been developing fruitful links with several industrial partners.

it remains to say many congratulations!

In the current challenging context, a piece of excellent news: Dr Jane Sinclair and Dr Yulia Timofeeva have been promoted to Professor, effective from 1 June 2020. Quoting from their recommendations,

Dr Sinclair is an established educational leader in the department, the faculty, the university, nationally and internationally. Going far beyond development and delivery of teaching in the department, many of the main educational advances in Computer Science in recent years are due to Dr Sinclair, … Nationally and internationally, building on her excellent educational scholarship that has recently won a prestigious Best Paper Award, Dr Sinclair has shown sustained leadership in her work with ACM (the world’s computing society) as well as the leading national organisations Council of Professors and Heads of Computing (CPHC) and Computing At School (CAS), resulting in substantial impact on secondary and higher computing education in the UK and beyond.

and

Dr Timofeeva has an established international reputation for her research that spans several areas. Her recent successes with attracting external funding are impressive, including a £475K MRC grant and a major role in the £4.6M renewal of the MathSys CDT. … Dr Timofeeva has a strong track record of engaging with a variety of stakeholders in the context of her research field, through her editorial work, conference organisation, and visiting appointments. She has played a leading role in the UK Mathematical Neuroscience Network, which facilitates joint efforts by top UK researchers to tackle real-life problems. … One of the most collegiate and efficient Computer Science academics, Dr Timofeeva has had a large number of key administrative roles in the department and the MathSys CDT.

it remains to say many congratulations!

The 17th Warwick Postgraduate Colloquium in Computer Science (WPCCS) was held on Monday 9 December, in the Mathematical Science Building for the first time. This year’s event saw 78 submissions from postgraduate research students in the Department. The submissions were split across six varied tracks, highlighting the breadth and depth of research currently being conducted by PhD students within the Department.

Student presentations were supplemented with two engaging guest talks from academics in the Department. Torsten Mütze captured everyone's attention with the mathematics behind origami, and Feng Hao enlightened the audience on the encryption challenges behind e-voting. The day concluded with a festive drinks reception, sponsored by the Department’s two Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs), at which prizes were awarded to the best posters and presentations.

PhD student attendee Jonathan Davies said, “It was very rewarding for me to present at WPCCS this year. It gave me the opportunity to share my research with others and engage in stimulating conversation with my fellow postgraduate colleagues. The guest talks, in particular, were thought-provoking and engaging. I look forward to presenting at WPCCS in the future."

Hakan Ferhatosmanoglu, Director of Postgraduate Research and CS CDT, said, “It was a pleasure to attend WPCCS this year and to celebrate the excellent work that has been undertaken by our PhD students in the past year. It was great to see how everyone was having research discussions and exchanging ideas with each other.”

Prize Winners

• Best Presentation - John Pocock
• Best Poster - Tom Wood
• Best in Computational Biology - John Pocock, Rawan Abulsayli and Hammam Alghamdi
• Best in Theory, Foundations, and Discrete Mathematics - Alex Dixon and Thesjaswini Raghavan
• Best in Computer Security and Networks - Jasmine Grosso and Shin Wan
• Best in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence - Tom Wood, Abeer Almowallad, Gabriele Pergola, Haoyi Wang, Junyu Li and Helen McKay
• Best in High Performance Computing and Databases - Richard Kirk and Dean Chester
• Best in Urban Science - Jonathan Davies, Teddy Cunningham, Elisa Baioni, Ivana Tosheva and Shanaka Perera

On 15–17 November, we saw a number of Department of Computer Science students from across undergraduate and postgraduate communities represent Warwick at the Northwestern Europe Regional Contest (NWERC) held in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Our 3 teams (led by Dr Dmitry Chistikov) finished in the middle of the 124-team scoreboard.

The NWERC is an annual contest in which teams from universities all over the Northwestern part of Europe are given a series of algorithmic problems.

The goal of each team is to solve as many problems as possible within the 5-hour time limit. Potential solutions are submitted and judged by an automated system. The top teams at the end of the contest qualify for the ICPC global World Finals.

We look forward to the next national round (UKIEPC) in autumn 2020 and to the future NWERC in Reykjavik, Iceland. Training sessions will resume in term 2, please do not hesitate to contact Dmitry (D.Chistikov@warwick.ac.uk) for further details if you’re interested in this.

We are please to report that Dr Maria Liakata has received a Turing Artificial Intelligence (AI) Fellowship.

The Fellowships from The Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national institute for data science and AI, aim to attract and retain exceptional researchers in artificial intelligence. Covering a broad view of AI, including applications of foundational disciplines across mathematical sciences, statistical sciences, computational sciences and engineering, Fellows collaborate across disciplines and have the opportunity to collaborate with academia, industry, government and the third sector.

Dr Liakata’s Fellowship will focus on creating time sensitive sensors from language and heterogeneous user generated content. Commenting on the research she said:

“Wide spread use of digital technology has made it possible to obtain language data (e.g., social media, SMS) as well as heterogeneous data (e.g., mobile phone use, sensors) from users over time. Such data can provide useful behavioural cues both at the level of the individual and the wider population, enabling the creation of longitudinal digital phenotypes.

“Current methods in natural language processing (NLP) are not well suited to time sensitive, sparse and missing data, collected over time or personalised models of language use. The Turing AI fellowship will allow me to establish a new area in NLP on personalised longitudinal language processing.

“I plan to develop sensors for capturing digital biomarkers from language and heterogeneous user generated content to understand the evolution of an individual over time. I want to make a significant contribution to mental health by working with clinical experts to create new tools based on the sensors, making it possible to assess and measure conditions in between clinician appointments.”

To read more on this story, please click here.

The last week has seen a number of industrial engagements throughout the department.

On Tuesday, October 15th, Bank of America came in to announce their sponsorship of both CS118 Programming for Computer Scientists module and CS241 Operating Systems and Networks. Representatives from Bank of America were here all afternoon, including University of Warwick alumni, to tell our students what a career in finance technology is like, and how to shape their CVs for internships and graduate positions.

The day after, Citrix arrived to help some keen students develop a security based mindset. The students were split into groups of defenders and attackers, and had to out-think each other in order to either secure or steal valuable resources.

Then, on Friday, JP Morgan took over the atrium with their Technology Showcase. They spent the day demonstrating all the ways in which they use technology and even research new ideas, and not always in relation to finance. They also discussed with our students how their experiences and skills translate to a career in JP Morgan.

If you missed any of these events, there's still plenty of chances to get involved. We have a number of events coming up, so please keep an eye on the DCS calendar!