New research centre at St Andrews: CATCH

The Centre for Archaeology, Technology and Cultural Heritage (CATCH) is a multi-disciplinary centre that brings together researchers from across the University of St Andrews. The Centre promotes research into all aspects of past human activity from across the globe, with the aim of making our research accessible to the widest audience as possible. The Centre brings together arts and sciences in order to investigate how humans have been influenced by, and changed, their environment.

The Schools, Departments and Units involved in CATCH are: Art History, Classics, Computer Science, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Geography & Sustainable Development, History, Museum Collections Unit and Social Anthropology.

"Digitising cave art will prevent it being lost forever"
New Scientist, April 2014

New at St Andrews: Institute for Data-Intensive Research

The St Andrews Institute for Data-Intensive Research (IDIR) is a new institute set up to provide a focus for research and teaching activities across the University driven by access to “big data”. 

IDIR will bring the University’s strengths in humanities and social sciences with those in computer, mathematical, life, and physical scientists to share insights and techniques. IDIR results from the enormous volume of activity taking place across the University that could broadly be described as data-driven – from data science, through digital humanities and digital social science, to digital medicine, which all share common characteristics. They are exploring new techniques and opportunities brought about by the availability of large volumes of data and the processing power needed to manipulate them.

Some of the Schools included are Computer Science, Mathematics & Statistics, Physics & Astronomy, Medicine, Chemistry, Biology, International Relations, Earth and Environmental Sciences and History.

Royal Society of Edinburgh Prizes - St Andrews honoured

The Royal Society of Edinburgh has announced their Prize Winners for 2014 and the University of St Andrews is honoured to have received four! Sincere congratulations are in order to Professor Andrew Whiten FRSE FBA, Dr Katie Stevenson, Dr Per Ola Kristensson and Dr Catherine Cazin on their fantastic achievements.
  
Senior Prize for Public Engagement to Professor Andrew Whiten FRSE FBA, Wardlaw Professor of Psychology and Professor of Evolutionary and Developmental Psychology, School of Psychology and Neurosciences, for his extensive, creative and unique forms of public engagement particularly as founding Director of the “Living Links to Human Evolution” Research Centre at Edinburgh Zoo.
 

Thomas Reid Medal (Early Career Prize) to Dr Katie Stevenson, Senior Lecturer in Late Medieval History, School of History, for her outstanding scholarly work on the cultural and political history of late medieval Scotland which has established her as a leading international expert in the field and for her commitment to knowledge exchange. 
                     
RSE/Makdougall Brisbane Medal (Early Career Prize) to Dr Per Ola Kristensson, Lecturer in Human Computer Interaction, School of Computer Science, for his outstanding research work and entrepreneurialism that intersects human-computer interaction, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Dr. Kristensson is also a Member of the RSE Young Academy of Scotland.

RSE/Makdougall Brisbane Medal (Early Career Prize) to Dr Catherine Cazin, Royal Society University Research Fellow and Lecturer, School of Chemistry, for her outstanding research work and breadth and depth of experience in her chosen field of homogeneous catalysis. Dr. Cazin is also a Member of the RSE Young Academy of Scotland.

NVIDIA Corporation award for Big Data researchers

NVIDIA Corporation has awarded Dr Blesson Varghese, from Computer Science, two Tesla K40 GPU accelerators worth over £11,000. The Tesla K40 GPUs were launched last month and Blesson’s winning proposal was ‘GPU Acceleration for Real-time Predictive Analytics’ which will be pursued at the Big Data Lab in collaboration with Dr Adam Barker from Computer Science and Prof Peter Donnelly from the School of Medicine.

5 University of St Andrews RSE Young Academy members announced

The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) has announced the second group of RSE Young Academy of Scotland appointments, which consists of 50 new members, including 5 from St Andrews.

• Catherine S J Cazin - School of Chemistry
• Chris S Jones - School of English
• Per Ola Kristensson - School of Computer Science
• Christian Rutz - School of Biology
• Andrew R Timming - School of Management 

The RSE Young Academy of Scotland fosters interdisciplinary activities among emerging leaders from the disciplines of science and humanities, the professions, the arts, business and civil society. Established by the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2011, the Young Academy of Scotland provides a platform for able and innovative young entrepreneurs, professionals and academics to develop a coherent and influential voice, and to address the most challenging issues facing society in Scotland and beyond.

Inaugural Lecture: Prof. Aaron Quigley

Professor Aaron Quigley, of the School of Computer Science, will deliver his Inaugural Lecture, "Human Computer Interaction: Bridging the digital physical divide” in School III, St Salvator’s Quadrangle on Wednesday, 31 October 2012 at 5.15 p.m. All are welcome.

Professor Quigley's talk will be framed around three interrelated topics: Ubiquitous Computing, Novel Interfaces and Visualisation. Ubiquitous Computing is a model of computing in which computation is everywhere and computer functions are integrated into everything. Everyday objects are sites for sensing, input, processing along with user output. Novel Interfaces, which draw the user interface closer to the physical world, both in terms of input to the system and output from the system. Finally, the use of computer-supported interactive visual representations of data to amplify cognition with visualisation. In this talk, Prof Quigley will demonstrate that advances in human computer interaction require insights and research from across the sciences and humanities if we are to bridge the digital-physical divide.

Inaugural Lecture: Prof. Simon Dobson

Professor Simon Dobson, School of Computer Science, will deliver his Inaugural Lecture 'The Computer is the New Microscope' in the Lecture Theatre, Medical and Biological Sciences Building on Wednesday, 7 December 2011 at 5.15 p.m. All are welcome.

Professor Dobson's research centres around building software for adaptive sensor-driven systems. These are found in applications as diverse as environmental monitoring to study climate change and assisted living for supporting the elderly or infirm in their homes. Simon's work aims to span both theory and practice, improving foundational understanding while being demonstrated in practical applications.

Virtual reconstruction of the Acropolis Basilica

Following excavation and survey of an Early Christian Basilica in Greece, the Acropolis Basilica in Sparta, a collaboration between the School of Classics and the School Computer Science have brought the church to life once more in a virtual reconstruction, aiding our understanding of the function and use of the church.

Awards for SACHI papers

Two papers with SACHI (University of St Andrews Computer Human Interaction research group) authors have been recently recognised for their value. Aaron Quigley, in collaboration with Michael Farrugia and Neil Hurley, presented the paper, Exploring temporal ego networks using small multiples and tree-ring layouts, which has won the best paper award at ACHI. In addition, Miguel Nacenta co-authored (with Robert Xiao, Regan Mandryk, Andy Cockburn and Carl Gutwin) the paper, Ubicursor: A Comparison of Direct and Indirect Pointing Feedback in Multi-Display Environments, which won the Michael A. J. Sweeney Award at this year’s Graphics Interface conference.

Improving the provenance of scientific data on the web

Professor Simon Dobson of the School of Computer Science has been appointed as an invited expert to the World Wide Web Consortium's Provenance Working Group.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the international body charged with developing and maintaining standards for the web such as HTML and CSS. It also has a substantial activity in developing the ‘semantic web’, making information available in a form that can be read, processed and reasoned with directly by machines. This has enormous implications for science (amongst other areas), by letting scientists share data more easily and construct more complex automated workflows.

The provenance working group is developing ways to record and publish provenance information about semantic web data such as the organisation creating it, its dependencies with other data, licencing restrictions and processing history. Professor Dobson was appointed to provide expertise in the provenance of data collected from sensor networks, allowing the history of scientific data to be tracked from the moment of its collection all through the analysis process. The group is chartered to deliver standards recommendations by autumn 2012.

Cloud computing project soars

Prof. Ian Sommerville, of the School of Computer Science, working with colleagues in Robert Gordon University, is leading an SFC Horizon project, Services to the Cloud, to transfer St Andrews cloud computing expertise to industry. He will be working with a number of software companies serving the oil and gas industry.  The project recognises St Andrews expertise in cloud computing where we are one of the leading research centres in Europe, with world-leading work focused on migrating current software systems to the cloud.