computer science

Yawen Chen has also joined the department as a Lecturer this week. To read about her background and her research interests, you can check this page.

Shawn Martin has joined the department as a Lecturer. To read about his background and interests, you can check this page.

Graduate Pete Bruns has created the best Tantrix playing robot, based on his COSC490 project. This robot, called 'Monte', successfully defeated the previous best bot in a game lasting 27 hours. The software is based on the Monte Carlo method.

To find out more, and to challenge the robot yourself (if you dare), see the Tantrix site.

PhD candidate Sheetal Jadhav has won a best paper award at the PDCAT 2011 conference in South Korea.

Her paper was called "Performance Evaluation of Quality of VoIP in WiMAX and UMTS".

Congratulations to Sheetal!

New lecturer Steven Mills has started work in the Department.

Steven is a graduate of this Department, having completed his BSc and then his PhD in the year 2000.

Read more about his research interests here.

COMP160 - Fri 4th November, 9.30

COMP212 - Sat 5th November, 9.30
COSC242 - Sat 5th November, 14.30
COSC244 - Thur 27th October, 9.30
TELE202 - Thur 27th October, 9.30

COSC344 - Wed 19th October, 14.30
COSC345 - Thur 20th October, 9.30
COSC346 - Fri 28th October, 14.30
COSC348 - Sat 5th November, 9.30

COSC411 - Tues 25th October, 9.30
COSC421 - Thur 27th October, 14.30
COSC441 - Wed 19th October, 9.30
NEUR421 - Thur 27th October, 14.30
TELE402 - Fri 21st October, 14.30

Thomas Verbeek has just come back from giving a talk at DevWorld and his animation has been accepted at CreateWorld (both AUC conferences). Here is more from Thomas:

I recently presented at /dev/world 2011 - Apple's developer's conference down under. My presentation was titled "Introducing the canvas element using HTML5". It was attended by delegates from Australia and New Zealand. Some students from our department also attended: Benjamin Mark, Malcolm Durling, and ex-student Tom Kirk (who attended as staff). It was great presenting and meeting with developers in the field. I had a few hours of one-on-one time with Josh Anon from Pixar, which was invaluable to me.

/dev/world: http://www.auc.edu.au/DevWorld+2011

My proposal for a presentation has been accepted for CreateWorld. This is Apple's conference for digital media, innovation and creativity in Brisbane. My presentation is titled "Playtime - Student animation work at Otago - a screening and discussion". I will be screening my 3D animation "Playtime" and provide a breakdown of the work involved in making the animation at the University of Otago.

CreateWorld: http://www.auc.edu.au/Create+World+2011

How to apply for 1 of 4 subsidies to attend:
http://www.auc.edu.au/Create+World+2011+Subsidies

The Postgraduate symposium is to be held on Monday 29th August, in the Owheo Building.

The full schedule of postgraduate speakers and their topics is available here.

Read HoD Brendan McCane's comments on the 'industry-ready graduate' issue and why good programmers are so valuable in the latest COMPUTERWORLD here.

You can also check their article on Dunedin IT: town and gown here.

The Apple University Consortium is pleased to announce it is offering up to 50 partially funded places to the AUC's iOS SDK Workshop to be held in Sydney & Melbourne during September 2011. (Only for university staff or students.)

Whether you are a novice or an experienced developer, anyone can write an iOS application by simply using the tools and frameworks that are freely available.

In this workshop you will learn the tools of the trade and the most important parts of the iOS SDK to get you on your way to writing cool applications for these revolutionary devices.

Spaces are limited and will be awarded on a competitive basis based on the information supplied in the application form. Subsidies for travel and accommodation where required will be available.

More information and how to apply is available at:
http://www.auc.edu.au/iOS+SDK+Workshops

This seminar will look at how institutions and students around the world are using iPad in teaching, learning, and research. It builds upon last years' AUC seminar on Mobile Learning which was delivered to over 1,300 colleagues at Australian and New Zealand AUC member universities. Various Apps will be demonstrated, case studies will be shared, and current research will be examined. Please join guest presenters at this free 90 minute seminar.

Venue and Date July 15th 10:30 - 12:00 pm Hutton Theatre, Otago Museum.

Registration page

New data on graduate salary earning from the Chronicle of higher Education confirms the high value of a CS degree. The median income for graduates with Bachelor degrees in Computing in the USA is now about US$70,000, with the range being $50,000 to $98,000.

Read the full details here.

The next class reps meetings will be held as follows:

100 level: Monday 16th May, 1pm, G34
200 level: Wednesday 25th May, 1pm, G34
300 level: Monday 16th May, 10.30am, 106
400 level: Thursday 19th May, 2pm, G34

If you want to raise an issue but don't know who your class reps are, see the noticeboard by reception.

A Careers Fair of special interest to Computer Science students and graduates is being held on Tuesday 10 May from 11-2 in the Link. Among those taking part are Datacom Systems Limited, ADInstruments Ltd, Intergen Limited and Orion Health. All are particularly interested in meeting computer science students.

More Information.

About ninety high school students attended the talks at Owheo, and at the Expo in the Union Hall large numbers enjoyed the Lego robots, and also talking to our postgraduates Manish, Jothi, Umair and Sheetal who manned the booth for the day. Our big new banner had its first outing too!

Class reps meetings:

100-level - Monday 11th April, 1pm, with Brendan - Owheo Room G34.

200-level - Wednesday 13th April, 1pm, with Willem - Owheo Room G34.

300-level - Tuesday 12th April, 11am, with Ali - Owheo Room 106.

400-level - Wednesday 20th April 1pm, with Mike - Owheo Room G34.

Class reps for all levels will be meeting with staff soon to discuss any course-related concerns. Talk to your class rep if you want any issues raised. If you don't know who your class reps are, see the noticeboard by Computer Science reception.

The BBQ for staff and students of the Department will be held on Friday 11th March at 4pm in the courtyard of the Owheo building. See you there!

Dr Lubica Benuskova has taken up a new Editorship of the prestigious IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks.

We have a vacancy for a Lecturer in the Department.

The closing date for applications is 14th April 2011.

Full details, and how to apply.

New lecturers Dr David Eyers and Dr Haibo Zhang have joined us in time for semester one. For short biographies see their staff pages:
David
Haibo

Sad news: Dr Kevin Novins, a Senior Lecturer in the Department up to 2001, has died in California. He had been undergoing chemotherapy.

Kevin's expertise was in Computer Graphics and Computer Vision, and he worked in the Graphics group. More recently he had been working for a hedge fund in California.

Many staff members remember Kevin with great affection.

News from CareerCast:
"Each year Jobs Rated researchers survey 200 jobs - from Accountant to Zoologist - scoring them according to five key criteria: Physical Demands, Work Environment, Income, Outlook and Stress.... In 2011, thanks to the popularity of smartphone applications and "cloud" based software, technical positions involving computers have risen to the top of the rankings. Indeed, Software Engineer, Computer Systems Analyst, Technical Writer and Computer Programmer all rank within the top 30 this year."
Software Engineer is currently the most highly ranked job of all.
Read more: http://www.careercast.com/jobs-rated/2011-ranking-200-jobs-best-worst.

Graduate morning tea, 15th December 2010.

School teams coached by Anthony Robins and Sandy Garner achieved successes in the recent Robocup competition.

Teams from Balmacewan Intermediate and Logan Park won the Junior Dance and Senior Soccer categories respectively.

Read more in the ODT report.

The latest Apple University Consortium Magazine has a good feature on Thomas Verbeek's hang gliding simulator.

The article explains how the simulator works, and the challenges Thomas had to overcome.

You can read it here - Wheels for the Mind (Summer 2010 edition).

The results of this year's Google AI Challenge have just been released.

The task was to write a program (bot) that would play games against bots of other players. Among over 4600 participants from 112 countries, there were 24 from New Zealand, among them four people from our department - Lech Szymanski, Andrew Webb, Martin Takac and Vaughn Wood.

Our best result was achieved by Lech, who ranked the 287th total and the 2nd best within New Zealand. Although he is probably not satisfied with the result, congratulations Lech! (The other Otago guys scored 9, 10 and 12th within NZ).

This Friday's AI seminar at 4-5pm in the AI lab on the 2nd floor will be devoted to the contest, everybody welcome.

A friend of Prof Anthony Robins, Michael Kerrisk, has just published a book called 'The Linux Programming Interface'.

It's a detailed technical reference and, with hundreds of working programs and exercises, a potentially advanced text book.

Check it out online at http://man7.org/tlpi/. The Computer Science Department and Cathy Chandra get acknowledgment and thanks for the loan of access to various flavours of Unix on which some of the cross platform comparisons were based.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a yearly writing challenge founded in 1998 by Chris Baty. Participants attempt to write a 50,000 word novel over the course of the 30 days of November.

NaNoWriMo has been growing as a worldwide literacy movement since that first year consisting of a few bored college students, and at present there are over 130,000 participants signed up worldwide for 2010.

There will be an Otago-Southland Midway No-Writing Movie Night held on Monday November 15 from 3:30 PM until 6 PM, in the Owheo Building, 133 Union Street East, room 1.06 (first floor, turn right, go past the Centre for Research on Children and Families to the end of the corridor). For more details contact the Otago/Southland Municipal Liaison: Rowan
tomo_kat@hotmail.com

An interdisciplinary team of Professor Chris Ackerley (English), Dr Murat Genc (Economics), Professor Douglas Russell (Chemistry, Auckland), and Associate Professor Michael Albert won the Open teams event at the Queenstown Bridge Congress.

Professor Geoff Wyvill will talk on 'Prior Art' at the CS and IS seminar on Friday (15th October), at 1pm in Archway 2.

Who was Henri Maillardet?

When was the Zoopractiscope invented?

Why was Rembrandt ignored in the history of Computer Animation?

What do Gavin Miller, Andy Pearce and John Woodwark have in common?

Geoff will explain some of these things and confuse you about others!

Senior Lecturer Lubica Benuskova has been named a best ambassador for Dunedin in a Tourism Dunedin competition. She has won a year's free rates, a certificate and tickets to the Chinese Garden for her work promoting the city.

Read more about the story here.

The Department of Computer Science and Areo are offering a one year scholarship towards the thesis year of an MSc degree in the area of in Computer Vision.

The stipend is $20,000 and the closing date is November 2nd, 2010.

More details here (PDF file).

Timed to run in conjunction with the teaching & learning focussed "Mobility in Education" seminars, these free 3 hour hands-on workshops will focus on the most important parts of the iPhone SDK to get you started writing Apps for Apple mobile devices - the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

The Computer Science department is hosting one of these workshops.

The workshop is aimed specifically at students who study computing science, computer engineering, information technology, mathematics, creative arts/design or related disciplines and/or have an interest in developing applications for these portable devices. Staff from member Universities are also welcome to attend.

Workshops will be run around New Zealand (and Australia) and are strictly limited to the first 25 applicants.

More information, and instructions on how to register are available at:
http://www.auc.edu.au/iOS+Workshop.

Dr Zhiyi Huang is organising the The 2010 International Workshop on Programming Models and Applications for Multicores and Manycores (to be held December 8-11, 2010, Wuhan, China).

About the workshop:
"Rapid advancements in multicore and chip-level multi-threading technologies open new challenges and make multicore systems a part of the computing landscape. From high-end servers to mobile phones, multicores are steadily entering every single aspect of the information technology.

However most programmers are trained in sequential programming, yet most existing parallel programming models are prone to errors such as data race and deadlock. Therefore to fully utilise multicore hardware, parallel programming models that allow easy transition of sequential programs to parallel programs with good performance and development of error-free codes are urgently needed.

This workshop is dedicated primarily to gather researchers and practitioners addressing the main challenges and share experiences in the emerging multicore software engineering and distributed programming paradigm, and in addition, to provide a discussion forum for people interested in programming environments, models, applications and tools specifically designed for parallel multi/many-core hardware environments."

Read more about the workshop.

Student Jason Mair has had a paper accepted at the E2GC2 (Energy Efficient Grids, Clouds and Clusters) workshop.

About the workshop: "The question of energy savings has been a matter of concern for a long time in mobile distributed systems. However, for the large-scale non-mobile distributed systems, which nowadays reach impressive sizes, the energy dimension just starts to be taken into account. The E2GC2 workshop will focus on Green and energy efficient approaches, ideas, practical solutions, experiments and framewords dedicated to medium and large scale distributed infrastructures like Grids, clouds and clusters."

Read more.

Apple Developer Conference Down Under

The Apple University Consortium has announced they will be holding a 2 day conference for University staff and students who develop on the Apple platform. A pre-conference 'Understanding Cocoa' full day workshop will also be offered.

DevWorld 2010 will be held at the Rydges Hotel in Melbourne on the 28th and 29th September 2010 and will feature a wide range of presenters from the Apple developer community as well as sessions covering a wide range of subjects including iOS development, Snow Leopard, Xcode, Objective C, Core Animation and many others.

More information: http://www.auc.edu.au/DevWorld+2010.

Registration closes on 17 September 2010 and spaces are limited.

Registration & Travel Subsidies: http://www.auc.edu.au/DevWorld+Subsidy.

Sandy Garner, Alistair Knott and Anthony Robins helped organise and run the RoboCup Junior Otago competition for school students in Otago and Southland on August 7th.

Over 100 students took part in three robotic events, Dance, Search and Rescue, and Soccer.

The event was covered by the Otago Daily Times and photos (by Sam Mann) can be seen here.

Professors Mike Atkinson and Michael Albert talked recently at the Permutation Patterns conference in Dartmouth college.

Mike's talk:
Avoiding consecutive patterns in permutations

Michael's talk: Separation anxiety

More details.

Student Hayden Walles has won a 2010 Division of Sciences Exceptional Thesis award for his thesis A perpetual basis for noun phrase syntax.
(Primary supervisor Dr Alistair Knott).

A thesis is of exceptional quality when all three examiners of a candidate's thesis agree that the thesis is of an exceptional standard in every respect - research content, originality, quality of expression and accuracy of presentation - and is amongst the top 10% of theses examined.

More information on the awards here.

Ikarus Security Software (Austria's leading IT Security company) offered Natascha Chrobok a position after reading her recent paper "Advantages and Vulnerabilities of Pull-Based Email-Delivery" published in the Proceedings of the 2010 Australasian Information Security Conference.

Natascha studied email spam prevention under the guidance of Dr. Trotman and Dr. O'Keefe. She is awaiting the marking of her Masters thesis. We wish her all the best in her new position.

In this video Head of Department Professor Brendan McCane explains what Computer Science is all about, and why our graduates have such great career prospects.

To view the video go here.

Dr Andrew Trotman was elected Secretary of ACM SIGIR, a 3 year appointment.

SIGIR is the leading academic Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval. It supports research into all aspects of IR research including: theory, HCI, efficiency, and accuracy.

Acting Head of Department:
This will be Professor Michael Albert, from Thursday 1st July, for the six-month period of Professor Brendan McCane's sabbatical.

Semester 1 examinations:
COMP112 Wednesday 23-Jun-2010 14:30
COMP150 Friday 11-Jun-2010 14:30
COSC241 Saturday 19-Jun-2010 14:30
COSC243 Tuesday 15-Jun-2010 14:30
COSC341 Tuesday 15-Jun-2010 09:30
COSC342 Wednesday 16-Jun-2010 09:30
COSC343 Thursday 10-Jun-2010 09:30
TELE301 Saturday 12-Jun-2010 09:30

Class rep meetings are to be held this week and next week. Students - if you do not know who your class reps are, check the noticeboard in the corridor in front of Owheo Computer Science reception. Your class reps can raise any issues of concern with staff.

HE KITENGA, the University of Otago Research Highlights publication for 2009 has a large article called "Maths modelling aids brain research" which describes the work on computational modelling of neurobiological data by our senior lecturer Lubica Benuskova.

The Department will be at booth 36 in the Union Hall on Tertiary Information Day on Monday 3rd May.

There will also be presentations about the career opportunities for Computer Science graduates in Room 1.06, Owheo Building, at 12 noon and again at 2pm.

If you are considering studying Computer Science at Otago, stop by at the booth for a chat, or come to one of the presentations. See you there!

We have a current vacancy for the position of Lecturer.

Applications close 10th May, 2010.

See the full details on our Employment page.

Lecturer Ali Knott has been trapped in Europe by the flight disruptions caused by the Icelandic volcano, but we are hoping to see him back by Tuesday to give his scheduled lecture.

Student Benjamin Humphrey has won sponsorhip to attend the Ubuntu Developer Summit, which is being held in Belgium in May.

Student Thomas Verbeek has won a two year Apple University Student Developer Scholarship, following his impressive performance with his project application and interview. The scholarship includes a MacBook Pro, membership of the Mac Developer Program and the iPhone Developer Program, support to attend Apple conferences in 2010 and 2011, and the chance to participate in the Apple USA internship program.

More information about the scholarships themselves is available at the AUC web site.

Dr Paul Werstein, who has been a lecturer in the Department since 1995, is retiring from the Department at the end of the month. Dr Janet Rountree, who has been a lecturer since 2007, is also leaving us this month to take up a new challenge.

Meetings between staff and class representatives are being held, starting this week. One meeting is held for each level (100, 200, 300 and 400). If you want to bring up an issue, talk to or email your class rep. Class rep names and photos and contact details will be put up in the Owheo foyer, by Reception, soon.

We have a current vacancy for the position of Lecturer.

Applications close 10th May, 2010.

See the full details on our Employment page.

The Department's first BBQ of the year was held on Friday 12th March, in the Owheo courtyard, and indoors, due to the weather. There was a great turnout by staff and students.

Departmental alumnus Alexis Angelidis and three others have won their category 'Outstanding Effects Animation' in an Animated Feature Motion Picture (Up) at the VES (Visual Effects Society) Award ceremony in Los Angeles, which was otherwise dominated by awards to the movie 'Avatar'.

Official winning details:
Outstanding Effects Animation in an Animated Feature Motion Picture
Winner: Up - Jason Johnston, Alexis Angelidis ( 2nd from left ), Jon Reisch, Eric Froemling

See details of all the awards here.

You can see Alexis (with his award) straight after the shot of James Cameron, and then a shot of Alexis AND Alex in the background here -
Video of the Awards

Well done Alexis! Thanks to Sui-Ling for the news and the links.

The Global Game Jam has finished for another year, with over 950 games being created in a 48 hour period.

The Computer Science department hosted the event, one of three in New Zealand. On Friday evening the theme for the games was announced as"Deception", with additional constraints / sub-themes of 'Cakes, Snakes, Lakes'.

Approximately 15 people worked over the weekend to produce 3 finished games, which can be seen here.

The event is fantastic fun, and is a great test, not just of your programming or artistic skills, but also design, teamwork and project management. A special thank you to everyone involved in setting up and supporting the event. Some photos of the Game Jam can also be seen here.

We have several research visitors at work in the department -

Mathilde Bouvel, LIAFA, University of Paris
Anders Claesson, Reykjavik University
Nik Ruskuc, University of St Andrews
are all working on the theory of permutation classes with Mike Atkinson and Michael Albert.

Richard Nowakowski, Dalhousie University
is working on combinatorial game theory with Michael Albert.

The Global Game Jam is an event where teams from around the world attempt to create complete games in 48 hours. Currently there are 138 locations from 39 countries taking part. Our teams in Dunedin will be among the first to start, as the event begins at 5pm Friday in each location.

It is not easy building a game that is fun to play (especially in 48 hours), it is a complex system of ideas that interact together and result in an unique player experience. Games tell stories, share ideas, teach and communicate a lot about our culture and show us how other cultures interpret the same idea.

Best of all, after the Global Gam Jam is done, everyone will have all those games to play on the website archive!

For more details, see The Global Game Jam's website

Students enjoyed our 3-D Programming project in Hands on Science. See you next year!

You can study COMP112 (Web Development), COMP160 (General Programming), COSC326 (Effective Programming) and COSC360 (Game Design) at the Summer School. Paper details here.

The outlook for IT graduates is excellent despite the current economic circumstances. Read the full details from NZICT.

Photos from our 25th Anniversary celebrations can now been be viewed online.

Congratulations to Heidi McQuillan! Details of her real estate system and her win here.

Celebrations begin at 1pm, in Owheo.

The semester 2 staff student BBQ will be held in the courtyard of the Owheo building, Friday 11th September, 4pm.

The entire department has moved to the Owheo building on the corner of Union St and Forth St.

Computer Science is celebrating its 25th anniversary next month.