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News from the School of Computer Science
School Excels in ERA Results
The latest Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) results have been published showing the School of Computer Science at Adelaide as one of the top research schools in computing sciences in the nation.We were recognised especially for research in Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing, which achieved the best possible score of five - indicating quality among the very best in the world and at least equal to the only other Australian university to also achieve that rating in this field (ANU).
Overall the School achieved a four rating, and also achieved the same score for research in Distributed Computing - indicating research performance clearly above world standard. The School of Computer Science at Adelaide was the only computing school in Australia to have all of it's research ratings above world standard (four) or better (five).
The short message from these results is, you can find the very best research in Australia, here at Adelaide.
(The ERA is a research assessment exercise run by the Federal Government of Australia every two years. The ERA rankings are calculated by assessing the quality and impact of publications in each field of research in the previous five years. Ratings are assessed on a five point scale with five being the best possible score. Full details of this year's ERA results can be found: here.)
Australian Google Director gives Guest Lecture at Adelaide
Alan Noble, Head Engineer at Google Australia has presented a guest lecture to the Distributed Systems class in the School of Computer Science on how Google manages scale in its systems. The lecture, titled Scaling while failing describes the challenges Google faces in managing large scale distributed systems. The talk also canvasses how the reality of failure in large scale systems has shaped Google's approach to software and storage. Alan concludes his talk with lessons Google has learned from running large scale systems and future technical challenges it faces.A full video of the talk can be found at: here.
PhD researcher heading to DERI
PhD student Yongrui Qin has secured a competitive research internship position at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), a leading international Web science research organization located at the National University of Ireland, Galway. From November 2012 to May 2013, Yongrui will be working on two European Union sponsored research projects, focusing on linked data in semantic sensor networks.
Yongrui is supervised by Dr Michael Sheng, Dr Nick Falkner, and Prof. Hua Wang of University of Southern Queensland.
For more information on DERI see: http://www.deri.ie/
Microsoft Meet the Company Presentation
Microsoft will bring its most up-to-date technologies to you and let you know what is needed to work in the teams developing these products. Come along on Friday 3rd of August to hear the presentation to learn how to prepare to join an innovative company with fantastic working and living conditions.
For students who would like to attend this session please do not forget to bring your polished resume so as to try your luck to win a Xbox.
Date: Friday, August 3
Time: Presentation from 12:00 - 1:00 PM
Pizza and Networking from 1:00 -2:00 PM
Location: Presentation Flentje Lecture Theatre
Pizza & Networking Level 3, Hub Central, Gaming Lounge
Find more event details at the Career Hub
IT Dominates Best Jobs List
Business Review Weekly and the Great Place to Work Institute Australia have compiled the 2012 best places to work list for Australia. The survey, compiled after researching 291 workplaces and over 68,000 employees, has found that Software firms dominate the top of the list. The award for best workplace was given to Melbourne-based IT Consultancy: OBS. BRW observed: Underlying the company\xD5s success both as a business and an employer are seven core principles: good intentions, teamwork, passion about technology, continuous improvement, agility, trust and pride in being an Australia business.
There were many repeat entrants from last year, including NetApp at number 2 and Google (2011 Winners) at number 3. All the companies making repeat appearances in the top 10 this year were technology companies with IT firms taking 7 of these.
The list of top 10 Australian workplaces for 2012 is:
- OBS (IT)
- NetApp (data management)
- Google (IT)
- E-Web Marketing (IT/marketing)
- A ltis Consulting (IT)
- Salesforce.com (information management)
- Cordelta (professional services)
- The Physio Co (healthcare)
- Atlassian (IT)
- TRC Group (recruitment)
Research Candidate wins Google Fellowship
Trung Pham, a PhD Candidate in the Australian Centre for Visual Technologies, in the School of Computer Science, has been awarded the 2012 Google Australia Fellowship in Computer Vision. Trung was one of only three successful applicants in all of Australia!
Congratulations Trung!
School Awards Night
Outstanding staff and student contributions to the school in 2011 were recognised at the school awards night on the 31st of May.
Prizes for students included:
- Dean's Merit Award
- First year: Aidan Snoswell, Craig Lawrence; Second Year: James Russel, George Solomos, Josiah Saunders; Third Year: Adam Liebhardt; Fourth Year: Martin Hamlyn, Clifford Shum, Monica Yin Kei.
- Google Prize (CS Honours)
- Thomas Haig
- Australian Computer Society Prize (Third Year)
- Saxon Douglass
- Accenture Marketing Sciences Prize (for highest Hons marks in Bachelor of Software Engineering)
- Yin Monica Kei
- Bank SA Prize for Computer Science (Second Year)
- James Russell
- Australian Oracle Users Group Prize
- Zhibin Liao
- The IBM Rational Prize in Software Engineering
- Benjamin Lawrence, Philip Downey, Krystof Dziemborowicz, Elizaveta Klantsataya, Samantha Ramon, Teng Li.
Prizes for staff included:
- Rising Star Award for Teaching
- Dr Claudio Szabo and Dr Frank Neumann
- Students Commendation Award
- Dr Li Jiang
- Outstanding Student Evaluation Award
- David Knight
- Dedicated Support to School Business
- John Bastian
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Congratulations to all the winners!
Microsoft Recruitment Success
Six students from the School of Computer Science have succeeded in securing positions from a highly-competitive nation wide round of interviews by Microsoft.
The positions included four full time positions, three at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond and one in Melbourne. In addition two undergraduate students were successful in securing much-sought-after six month paid internships.
Recruits will fill a variety of highly chanllenging and interesting roles as development engineers and development engineers in test. If you are interested in seeing what is involved in being an intern at Microsoft see the Microsoft internshp page
Google CS for High School Grant Awarded
Four academic staff members from the School of Computer Science have been awarded a Google CS4HS grant in 2012. The grant winners, Cruz Izu, Brad Alexander, Cheryl Pope and Claudia Szabo will collaborate to produce teaching resources and present teaching workshops to promote the learning of Computer Science at High School.
The CS4HS program is run world wide and aims to produce a resource base that makes it easy for both teachers and students to engage in the interesting, creative and challenging aspects of Computer Science at school.
Resources produced by our school include ready-to-use course module materials for year 10 and 11 teachers. These materials can be access at our local Computer Science for High School website. For information about these resources and upcoming activities contact Dr Cruz Izu.
Defence Research Contract Success
Three academic staff in the School of Computer Science, Dr Katrina Falkner, Dr Nick Falkner and Dr Claudia Szabo, have secured a research contract for $490,000 from the Defence Science Technology Organisation (DSTO) for 2012/2013.
This contract will form the next phase of collaborative research on the research and development of new System Execution Modelling capabilities, the next phase of development of the Reference Combat Management System and development of software and hardware architecture visualisation tool suites. The research will also examine new software development philosophies and techniques to complement these research areas.
This research funding one of several recently secured by the Defence Informaton Group (DIG) in the School of Computer Science.
Snap Network Surveillance Expands
Snap Network Surveillance is a startup company founded by Computer Science academics Dr. Henry Detmold and Prof. Anton van den Hengel in 2009, based on research in large scale video surveillance at the Australian Centre for Visual Technologies and with investment from venture capitalist Trans Tasman Commercialisation Fund.
Snap empowers video surveillance operators to take control of large-scale surveillance camera networks. Based on advanced computer vision, Snap's software learns which surveillance cameras view overlapping areas and which view areas nearby to each other. Using this information, Snap's products deliver fivefold improvements in operator speed, effectiveness and efficiency, scaling to even the largest camera networks.
Since launch, Snap has grown to six full time staff (including Dr Henry Detmold as Chief Technology Officer) and raised nearly $2 million in equity capital. Snap will shortly commence its Series A capital raise, seeking further equity financing to launch Snap into the international market. Recent achievements include a successful commercial trial at a major international airport (the results of which validate the business and value proposition for Snap's software products) and the formation of several commercial partnerships. To implement the international expansion, Snap is growing its team, aiming to double its current team of four software engineers within the next year.
School Success in National ICT Teaching Grants
Teams featuring two lecturers from the School of Computer Science have won two nationally competitive grants for ICT teaching awarded by the Australian Council of Deans for Information and Communications Technology (ACDICT). ACDICT Learning and Teaching Academy (ALTA) grants are awarded for projects that, through networking, collaboration and cooperation promote effective approaches to ICT learning and cross institutional educational initiatives. Two school staff, Nick Falkner and Damith Ranasinghe, feature in teams that won two of only three ALTA grants awarded this year.
Nick is leader of a team who have secured a learning and teaching grant on integrating technology to maximise student learning and minimise additional teacher workload, with Craig Willis from Civil Engineering at Adelaide, Michael Docherty from QUT, Elena Sitnikova from UniSA, Chris Pilgrim from Swinburne, Simon from Newcastle and Jocelyn Amarego from Murdoch.
Damith is part of a team who have secured a learning and teaching grant on motivating students to engage in postgraduate research degrees in ICT, with Cally Guerin from Adelaide, Paul Calder from Flinders, and Ivan Lee from UniSA.
The grant announcements can be found at the ALTA website.
School Head to Deliver Opening Plenary at Major Conference
Head of the School of Computer Science, David Suter, will deliver the opening plenary talk at the 15th International Conference on Data Fusion in Singapore this July. The talk, titled: Information Fusion in Computer Vision explores what we know about information fusion in the human visual system, where visual illusions give us insight into how human vision works. The talk then canvasses how we bring this information to bear on problems of information fusion in computer vision.
David Suter is a leading practitioner in the field of computer vision. He has served on the Australian Research Council College of Experts (2008-2010) and the editorial board of several major journals: Int. J. Computer Vision; J. Mathematical Imaging and Vision; Machine Vision and Applications and the Int. J. Imaging and Graphics. He was General Chair of Asian Computer Vision Conference (2002) and is General co-Chair for Int. Conf. Image Processing 2013.
Google Code Jam 2012
The 2012 Google Code Jam is open for registration now, and the Qualification Round will start on Friday, April 13, 2012.
After over 8 years' development, Google Code Jam has become a world's major coding tournament for both students and professional staff in the field of computer science all over the world. The excitement of competing with peers to solve real-time problems via programs, the joy to travel around places to meet people who might share the same idea with you and of course a hefty $10,000 reward as prizes will again be the focus for programmers all over the world.
This is a worldwide Code competition, solving problems with your program language of choice. There are multiple rounds, with the finals being held in New York.
For more information and previous competitions see Google Code Jam 2012
The Inaugural Google Australia PhD Fellowship
The Google PhD Fellowship Program was created to recognize outstanding graduate students doing exceptional work in computer science, related disciplines, or promising research areas. You can find a list of fellows in 2011 here.
In 2012, this program comes to Australia for the first time. Only research students from a small number of selected universities are invited to apply and the University of Adelaide is one of them. Each fellowship includes a $10,000 cash gift for the successful student which they can use towards (tuition/fees/stipend), a Google Research mentor and the opportunity to apply for an internship at Google.
Applicants are selected on a competitive basis and approximately five scholarships will be awarded nationally in the following categories:
- Google Fellowship in Market Algorithms
- Google Fellowship in Natural Language Processing
- Google Fellowship in Machine Learning
- Google Fellowship in Computer Security
- Google Fellowship in Distributed Computing
- Google Fellowship in Programming Technology
- Google Fellowship in Machine Translation
- Google Fellowship in Speech Technology
- Google Fellowship in Human Computer Interaction
- Google Fellowship in Cloud Computing
- Google Fellowship in Computer Architecture
- Google Fellowship in Structured Data Analysis
- Google Fellowship in Search and Information Retrieval
- Google Fellowship in Energy Aware Computing
- Google Fellowship in Mobile Computing
- Google Fellowship in Computer Vision
- Google Fellowship in Social Computing
- Google Fellowship in Computer Networking
- Google Fellowship in Systems Management
- Google Fellowship in Statistics
- Google Fellowship in Computer Graphics
Microsoft is hiring Globally!
Microsoft is recruiting internationally for student interns to work for six months in their product development teams in the US Interns are paid during the internship and for relocation expenses from Australia. Internships are awarded competitively based on programming development skills, especially in C and C++, though great skills in Java and C# .NET are also beneficial. This is a great chance to travel and get unique development experience at the worlds largest software company.
Shortlisted applicants will be flown to Sydney for a formal interview for internship positions. To apply go to the Microsoft stand at the:
Adelaide Careers Expo 2012 Date: Friday, March 23 Time:11:30 AM to 3:30 PM Location: North Terrace Campus, Innova 21 Exhibition Space, Adelaide, Australia
School Head Wins Top Research Honour
Acting Head of School of Computer Science, Michael Sheng, has won the prestigous 2011 Chris Wallace Award for his outstanding contribution to Computer Science research. The award is given each year to the nominee, working Australia or New Zealand, who has made the most significant, post PhD contribution to research in computing in the previous three years. Michael was chosen from an extensive field of nominees for his groundbreaking work in Web Services and RFID infrastructure, extensively published in journals, conferences and books over a three year period.The Chris Wallace award is named in honour of Professor Christopher Wallace, was a pioneer of computing in Australia. Through his research and his teaching he unparalleled contribution to the development of Computer Science as a discipline in this country.
School staff win SA Pearcey Award Again!
The prestigious Pearcey Award recognises young entrepreneurs in the ICT space that have made a significant contribution and taken entrepreneurial risks. Mr. Matthew Michalewicz, a sessional lecturer in the school, is the winner of 2011 SA Pearcey Award for his founding of an quickly expanding IT company, SolveIT Software.
Dr Henry Detmold, a lecturer from our school, is the runner up and awarded a special mention for his contribution as the CEO of SNAP
Congratulations, Matt and Henry.
English School ICT Programme to be Replaced by Computer Science
The British government is replacing the English school ICT curriculum with Computer Science. Speaking at the BETT show for educational technology, the British education secretary, Michael Gove announced plans to free up schools to use curricula and teaching resources that properly equip pupils for the 21st Century. He described ICT in british schools as "a mess" and will withdraw it from the curriculum in September this year and allow schools to teach Computer Science accessing high quality resources freely available on the web.
Mr Gove's announcement was in response to the Livingstone-Hope Review, which "found that the UK had been let down by an ICT curriculum that neglects the rigorous computer science and programming skills which high-tech industries need."
Mr Gove went on to note: "The best degrees in computer science are among the most rigorous and respected qualifications in the world. They're based on one of the most formidable intellectual fields, logic and set theory, and prepare students for immensely rewarding careers and world-changing innovations.
"But you'd never know that from the current ICT curriculum.
"Schools, teachers and industry leaders have all told us that the current curriculum is too off-putting, too demotivating, too dull."
"Imagine the dramatic change which could be possible in just a few years, once we remove the roadblock of the existing ICT curriculum. Instead of children bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word and Excel by bored teachers, we could have 11 year-olds able to write simple 2D computer animations using an MIT tool called Scratch. By 16, they could have an understanding of formal logic previously covered only in University courses and be writing their own Apps for smartphones."
Support for change in Britan is cross-party. The shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg, said "It is right to identify that the ICT curriculum needs to be reformed to fit with the times."
Read more: full speech (The Guardian) and summary (BBC)
2011 eChallenge!
The 2011 Entrepreneurs’ Challenge (eChallenge), run by The University of Adelaide, is starting soon. The competition is open to teams of 2 to 6 people, at least one of whom must be a student from any of SAs tertiary institutions. Teams are offered a series of workshops and the support from a mentor from the business community to help write their business plan and this year we are particularly interested in a new technology.
If you are interested, RSVP for Information Session before Tuesday 24 May, and pay attention to the following flyer.
Postgraduate Study Opportunity at ACVT!
Hosted at the University of Adelaide, a leading G08 University, the Australian Centre for Visual Technologies focuses on Computer Vision, Computer Graphics, and Image Processing. Ranked in the top 3 in Australia for AI and Image Processing by ERA, the Centre is seeking applications for a postgraduate position commencing in 2011.
The Centre is supported by direct research-excellence investment from the University of Adelaide, generates over $2 million annually in research income, and has received significant direct research funding from a diverse range of clients.
An opportunity exists for a highly motivated and talented person to undertake research on an Australian Research Council funded project. The successful applicant must have a strong background in mathematics, and computer science, with a background in statistics an advantage. Applicants must hold a first class honours degree or equivalent and willing to commence study in 2011.
A stipend of $27,000 per annum for three years is offered.
Applications close Friday 20th May 2011.
Interested applicants should contact Professor David Suter, Head of the School of Computer Science, at dsuter@cs.adelaide.edu.au.
Download flyer here.
Google is coming to campus!
Google is coming to campus on Friday, March 11th and we're looking for new grads and interns!
Interested in learning more about how Google employees have applied their education and experiences to work on interesting challenges that impact millions of people around the world? Want to learn more about what we do with cutting edge technology in an inspiring work environment? If so, we'd love to see you at our Tech Talk. We are excited to answer your questions about our work and our company. Read this flyer and RSVP Here!
We'll have pizza and Google giveaways. What more could you want?
- Who: This talk is of interest to the entire school, students (UGrad, PGrad) & faculty alike.
- What: Disaster Relief Maps: Our experiences using technology to share emergency information during the Australian Floods + HTML5 and Chrome: Making the web better for everyone
- Where: Horace Lamb Lecture Theatre (Horace Lamb Building)
- When: Friday, March 11th @ 12:00 PM
WE'RE HIRING! Google is recruiting Software Engineering New Grads, Associate Product Managers, full time and intern candidates! To apply for internships or new grad job opportunities, please check out our special student page for Australia: google.com.au/students/campus. We suggest that you apply online before April 4, 2011 to be considered for University of Adelaide interviews at the end of April/early May. We will accept intern applications throughout the year until internship spots are filled.
Want More? Code Jam 2011 is coming soon! Win cash and a trip to Tokyo for the finals! For inspiration: http://www.newsweek.com/2007/11/03/google-goes-globe-trotting.html.
2010 HDR poster day
The aim of poster day is to allow current HDR students to explain their work to other staff members and fellow researchers and gain valuable feedback for their work. This year's poster day was a half-day event held on 9 Nov 2010. The day started with oral presentations by each HDR student before proceeding to the foyer of Innova 21 building for lively discussions in front of the posters.
This year's "best poster prize" went to Yidong Li, while the "people's choice award" went to Lachlan Fleming. Congratulations to the winners!
Visit the school's facebook page for more pictures of the event.
Prof Anton van den Hengel wins the 2010 SA Pearcey Award!
The prestigious Pearcey Award is aimed at encouraging and rewarding fresh and innovative talent in the ICT profession. This year's winner, Prof Anton van den Hengel from the School of Computer Science and ACVT, is recognised for his contribution to SA's ICT industry, particularly for his invention VideoTrace.
Congratulations to Anton!
DSTO August 2010 Recruitment
DSTO is the Australian government's lead agency charged with applying science and technology to protect and defend Australia and its national interests. DSTO delivers expert, impartial advice and innovative solutions for Defence and other elements of national security.
DSTO are currently seeking applications from bright, motivated people who have completed (or are about to complete) undergraduate or post‐graduate qualifications in disciplines related to:
- Engineering and Technology
- Information, Computing and Communications
- Mathematics
- Physical Sciences
- Human, Social and Health Sciences
Adelaide researchers win best paper award
Dr Anders Eriksson and Prof Anton van den Hengel won the best paper award at Computer Vision and Pattern Recogntion (CVPR) 2010, one of the premier computer vision conferences. Their paper, titled "Efficient Computation of Robust Low-Rank Matrix Approximations in the Presence of Missing Data using the L1 Norm" was judged to be the best among 461 papers accepted at CVPR 2010. This year's CVPR saw almost 2000 attendees, the largest seen so far in CVPR's history.
Congratulations to Anders and Anton!
PhD researcher heading to IBM Almaden Research Centre
PhD student Yanbo Wu has secured an internship position at IBM's Almaden Research Center. The research center, in south east of San Francisco near Silicon Valley, is one of eight laboratories in the world making up IBM research. The Almaden Research Center engages in a wide range of fundamental research, including areas in computer science, computing technology, service science and storage systems. Yanbo will be working on IBM's "Insight on Demand" research project in an internship position that will last for 3 to 6 months.
Congratulations to Yanbo!
International Workshop on Data Networks as Formal Objects
The first WODNAFO workshop was held in February at The University of Adelaide, with local participants from the schools of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics and the Teletraffic Research Centre. International participants attended from Europe and Japan, with representatives from Cambridge, Loughborough and IIJ.
Dr Nick Falkner, the chair, described the workshop as an excellent first step in bringing together experts from a number of fields to consolidate early work in formalising network design and providing strong decision support tools for planned and deployed network environments.
Funding was provided by ACORN and the School of Computer Science.
Research Student wins Web-Application Competition
Smart Adelaide Guide, a context-aware Web application developed from the ContextServ platform, is the winner of the inaugural Web Application Competition hosted by the 11th International Conference on Information Integration and Web-based Applications & Services (iiWAS 2009). ContextServ is an ARC Discovery Project led by Dr Michael Sheng.
Computer Science Graduate Hosts "Prototype This!"
A gradutate of the School of Computer Science, Dr Andrew `Zoz' Brooks, recently co-hosted Prototype This! which aired around the world on the Discovery Channel in 2008 and 2009.
The program, made by Australian company Beyond Productions -- the same company that made MythBusters and Beyond 2000 -- followed a team of inventors whose job was to build a range of engineering prototypes that could have future applications.
Zoz is a three-time graduate of the University of Adelaide. He received his Bachelor of Science degree with majors in Organic Chemistry and Computer Science in 1993, followed by First Class Honours in Computer Science in 1994 and a Graduate Diploma in Education in 1995.
From there he studied for a Masters at the Australian National University's newly established robotics laboratory, before moving to Boston to do a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In the Robotic Life group at MIT's Media Laboratory he conducted research into human-robot communication on a range of projects, such as contributing to NASA's `Robonaut', a humanoid robot designed for space walks.
For more information on this story, in Lumen, follow this link.Two new Discovery grants and two new Linkage grants awarded for 2010
Two 2009 ARC Discovery Grants have been awarded to Computer Science staff:
DP1096053 Computational Intelligence Method for Financial Applications
Prof. Z Michalewicz; Prof R Zurbruegg; Mr A Ghandar2010 $ 55,000 , 2011 $ 55,000 , 2012 $ 55,000
Complex financial problems can be better addressed with software that can learn from available data and adapt to environmental changes. It is therefore essential to develop technologies that enable prediction and optimisation in constrained and dynamic environments. There are currently some limitations in existing business decision support systems despite their ubiquity providing an opportunity for Australia to be at the forefront as new standards in the field are developed. Furthermore, the fund management industry (particularly superannuation) is significant to the Australian economy and development of this technology has the potential to enhance its performance and reputation.
DP1094764 Tracking targets in large scale surveillance camera networks
Dr AR Dick; Dr H Detmold; Prof P Torr
2010 $ 65,000 , 2011 $ 65,000 , 2012 $ 65,000
The research is expected to provide a significant boost in the effectiveness of safety and security measures for public facilities and open spaces that are monitored by surveillance cameras. The general public benefits from this through a decreased need for intrusive security measures, and increased deterrence of crime and anti-social behaviour. This capability is in demand worldwide for both public camera networks, whose usefulness is currently limited by the difficulty of monitoring them. We therefore anticipate considerable commercial interest in Australia and internationally.
LP100100791 Real-time special effects in live video
Prof Anton J van den Hengel; Dr Anthony R Dick, Sydac Pty Ltd.
2010 $ 100,000.00 , 2011 $ 100,000.00 , 2012 $ 100,000.00
The World Wide Web contains tens of billions of images, with personal and industrial collections stretching to many times the number. The potential economic value of these image-based resources is enormous, but largely untapped as we have no practical way of recovering the images we need. This project will develop image search technologies which will allow Australian industry to exploit these important resources. Some of the wide variety of possible applications might include the searching of surveillance video for objects of inters, vision-based guidance of unmanned vehicles, smart-phone and smart-phone systems which understand their environments, and stock tracking systems which can detect spoilage.
LP100100792 Image search for simulator content creation
Prof Anton J van den Hengel; Dr Anthony R Dick, Holopoint Interactive Pty Ltd, MONKEYSTACK
2010 $ 61,858.00 , 2011 $ 64,000.00 , 2012 $ 65,000.00
Allowing a user to model objects in the real world in real time greatly improves the efficiency of the large-scale modelling process. A user might thus generate a model of a city block by navigating it, construct a 3D model of a factory by traversing it, generate a simulation of an industrial process by carrying it out, or design a new building directly upon the space it will occupy. The augmentation of reality will be a critical component of the future of video cameras, computers and phones. The business opportunities associated with developing technologies in these areas offer significant prospects for Australian ICT industries.
Adelaide Student Wins Apple University Consortium Honours Scholarship
The Apple University Consortium has awarded Joshua Swee a $4,000 scholarship to support his Honours Project entitled "Developing Dynamic, Adaptive Service Based Systems Using Aspects and Rules". Joshua's project will explore aspect-oriented and model-driven technologies that allow business processes and rules to be modeled and intermixed in a high-level modeling language, which can then be automatically translated into an executable architecture.
Joshua is supervised by Dr Michael Sheng and Dr Jian Yu.
Only two students in Australia received this scholarship. A full list of the scholarship recipients and details of their projects are available on the AUC Website.
VideoTrace Wins People's Choice Award
VideoTrace, an interative scene-modelling system developed in collaboration with the School of Computer Science has won the Innovic Next Big Thing People's Choice Award.
The award, given to finalist voted by the public to be the most exciting innovation. VideoTrace allows users to quickly build realistic 3-D scene models from video data. It was authored by a team, headed by Professor Anton van den Hengel, at the Australian Centre for Visual Technologies, the School of Computer Science at the University of Adelaide and the Oxford Brookes Computer Vision Group in the UK.
For more information about VideoTrace see the project homepage at the Australian Centre for Visual Technologies.
Computer Science Researcher Wins at TopCoder Open
Yanbo Wu a Ph.D Student from the School of Computer Science has won the title of best component developer at the TopCoder open in Las Vegas this year.
Yanbo (TopCoder handle: assistant) won against a world-class field of developers over several rounds to crowned this year's champion. In the contest, competitors work to write the highest quality code to meet precise requirements in a timely manner.
For more information on the final and TopCoder in general see: the TopCoder Open website.
AUC Scholarships awarded to Computer Science Staff and Students
Congratulations to students Luke Toop who has been awarded Apple University Consortium scholarships to attend the 2009 Apple World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco in June.
The scholarships are awarded annually on a competitive basis. This year, 18 staff and 25 student scholarships were available nationwide. They cover conference registration and subsidise flights and accommodation, to a total value of approximately $5,000.
Computer Science Lecturer Wins Top Teaching Prize
Dr Katrina Falkner, a Lecturer in Computer Science has received Adelaide University's most prestegious teaching award, a 2008 Stephen Cole the Elder award for excellence in teaching. The prize is awarded by the University annually to academic staff whose teaching is regarded by students and colleagues as being of excellent quality.
This award is the latest in a series of recent awards recognising Katrina's excellence in Computer Science teaching including: a national Carrick citation, a Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence, and the Executive Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence.
Eight Computer Science students awarded Summer Scholarships for 2009
Congratulations to Ian Grunert and Kevin Liao who have been awarded University of Adelaide Summer Research Scholarship (2008-2009), and to George Sainsbury, John Tonkin, Alexis Sabarre, Tang Xin, Scott Novak and Lachlan Horne who have been awarded School of Computer Science Summer Research Scholarships (2008-2009).
These students will be working closely within research groups within the School of Computer Science, on topics ranging from Semantic Web Services, Implementing MANET Protocols, Exploiting Graphics Cards and Evaluating Software Designs.
Three new Discovery grants awarded for 2009
Three 2009 ARC Discovery Grants have been awarded to Computer Science staff:
DP0985723 The Next Step in Intelligent Decision-Support Systems (IDSS): Systems that Learn and Adapt
Prof Z Michalewicz2009 : $91,000 , 2010 : $94,000 , 2011 : $96,000
This project will benefit Australia's scientific knowledge and technology base in the areas of evolutionary computation, business intelligence, and decision management. The outcomes will advance Australian companies and organisations, as many common yet complex business problems can be better addressed with systems that automatically learn and adapt to environmental changes. Such complex business problems include dynamic scheduling (in the manufacturing sector), resource allocation optimisation (in the defence, mining, and agriculture sectors), and network design optimisation (in the telecommunications and energy sectors).
DP0985063 Network Management in a World of Secrets
A/Prof M Roughan; Prof H Shen2009 : $ 110,000 , 2010 : $ 95,000 , 2011 : $ 110,000
The aim of this proposal is to provide world leading measurement and management techniques for the Internet and other telecommunications networks. In particular, the methods will improve privacy of network participants (customers and providers) while simultaneously improving network performance. Additionally, the project will create expertise in an area of great future interest -- privacy preserving computation -- expertise that can be transferred to students and the next generation of innovators. Apart from these benefits, the research will provide exposure of Australian research strength in an area of world-wide public interest. Results concerning Internet reliability are of particularly high impact.
DP0988439 Combined shape and appearance descriptors for visual object recognition
A/Prof AJ van den Hengel; Dr AR Dick2009 : $ 80,000 , 2010 : $ 60,000 , 2011 : $ 60,000
The quantity of video generated each year is expanding rapidly. This increasing volume of visual information means that it is more likely that any particular event will be recorded, but that the footage will be harder to find. This applies to a collection of home videos as much as to television and movie footage. The object-recognition method to be developed has the potential to alleviate this situation, in which vast amounts of video data are available but have little value. Such an outcome would be a boon for Australian industry and offer a valuable export opportunity.
New Professor appointed
We are delighted to welcome David Suter as Professor of Computer Science in the School of Computer Science at the University of Adelaide. Professor Suter was previously Professor of Computer Systems in the Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering at Monash University. Professor Suter's main research interests are Image Processing, Computer Vision, Video Compression and Wireless Transmission, Computer Graphics and Visualization, Data Mining and Artificial Intelligence. He has over 200 publications in these areas of which a significant proportion are in the highest ranked journals. He has attracted over $11M in national competitive grants including eight ARC grants as sole or lead investigator. He currently serves on the editorial board of three international journals: Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision; Machine Vision and Applications and the International Journal of Computer Vision. He was previously a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Image and Graphics.
In 2008 Professor Suter became a member of the ARC College of Experts in the Mathematics, Information and Communication Sciences discipline group. He has served as Vice-President of Monash University Academic Board and Associate Dean (Research and Development) for the Faculty of Engineering at Monash.
His appointment in our School will significantly strengthen the research of the Computer Vision research group and firmly establish it as the national leader in the field.
Computer Scientist Wins 2008 Excellence in Teaching Awards
Congratulations to Dr Cheryl Pope, who has been awarded both the 2008 ECMS Faculty Prize for Excellence in Teaching and the 2008 ECMS Executive Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching.
In addition to overall teaching excellence, these awards recognise Dr Pope's recent contributions to the courses Computer Networks and Applications and Mobile and Wireless Networks. These include heading a $36,000 grant funded partnership with Cisco Systems to provide students with hands on networking experience, and the establishment of ambitious, real world practical projects for MWN.
Computer Science Win Learning and Teaching Grant
Dr Fred Brown and Dr Brad Alexander, have been awarded one of the University of
Adelaide's 2008 University Implementation Grants for Learning and Teaching Enhancement.
The $40,000 grant will be used to implement an integrated web based assignment
submission system.
The School of Computer Science has a number of ad-hoc web based applications that directly support learning and teaching. The most useful of these is a web based assignment submission system that requires students to use a version control system to look after their assignment work. The project will redesign and enhance the system in order to achieve the following:
- Support for all University campuses in Adelaide and Singapore. The system will be available 24x7 to any student with an internet connection using freely available software that runs on all common operating systems.
- Ease of understanding and use. Setting and testing of assignments by academic staff will be simple. Students will be able to easily make submissions receive marks and receive feedback. Where appropriate the marking and feedback will be immediate.
- Support for Computer Science programming assignments. The system will be able to run immediate tests over student programming assignments in a secure manner that can quarantine any erroneous or malicious code that is submitted.
- Support for industry best practice. Professional programmers and software engineers rely on version control systems to manage their projects, record all changes they make and record reasons for the changes. This system requires students to use the version control system, subversion.
- Support for improved feedback to students. The web interface of the assignment submission system provides a convenient secure location where personal student feedback can be posted. Student feedback presented via the web interface becomes a permanent record that students and staff can revisit at a later date.
- Support for more effective use of discussion forums. Access to the student version control system permits staff to be better informed when answering students' discussion questions.
- Support for practical examinations. The system's ability to automatically test submissions and give immediate feedback in combination with the requirement to use subversion, provides the ability to run effective practical examinations.
Young ICT Professionals Conference Scholarships Available
The School of Computer Science is offering 10 registration scholarships for students to attend the 2008 International Young ICT Professionals Conference to be held in Adelaide, 28-30 May.
The Young ICT Professionals Conference provides young professionals, recent graduates and university students from all over the world with techniques, skills and confidence to advance their career in Information Communications Technology (ICT). Gain valuable insights into the ICT industry, network with fellow participants, speakers, sponsors, CIOs and potential future employers. Sponsors include Microsoft, Google, CSIRO and NICTA, and will feature talks by Didier Elzinga (CEO, Rising Sun Pictures), Alan Noble (Engineering Director, Google) and Steve Goddbee (CIO, IBM). More information about the conference can be found here: http://www.acs.org.au/youngit/2008conference/
The School of Computer Science is offering 10 scholarships for registration to the conference (individually valued at $199 for non ACS members, and $149 for ACS members), available to current undergraduate or postgraduate Computer Science students. Students must be currently enrolled in an undergraduate Computer Science degree (i.e. Bachelor of Computer Science, Bachelor of Computer Science (Software Engineering), Bachelor of Maths and Computer Science, Bachelor of Computer Graphics, Bachelor of Engineering (Software Engineering)) or a postgraduate Computer Science degree.
To apply, you must complete this form and lodge it with Reception, School of Computer Science by 4pm Friday 14th March.
Welcome 2008 International Students
The School of Computer Science held a welcome meeting for 2008 International students on 18 February 2008. Some graduates and senior fellow students were invited to give short presentations sharing their experiences and giving advice to the newcomers. Dr Brad Alexander also gave some advice on studying computer science courses.
The event was organized by Dr Li Jiang and Dr Michael Sheng.
Google Research Award
When & WhereFriday September the 14th 2007 at 6pmUnion Hall Building The University of Adelaide North Terrace |
Do not miss this presentation delivered by Alan Noble, the Director of Google Australia and New Zealand. Alan graduated from The University of Adelaide and is responsible for managing and growing Google's Engineering, Research & Development centre in Sydney.
Come along to learn more about the future of ICT, how the landscape for commerce and the internet is changing and the exciting opportunities that will be available to students who graduate from ICT degrees over the next few years.
To attend, please register for this event or contact Kirby Gagliardi.
Puzzle Based Learning
Starting in 2009, the School of Computer Science will offer a new course on Puzzle Based Learning, taught by world renowned AI researcher and puzzle lover Prof. Zbigniew Michalewicz. To promote the course, some puzzles were posed to future students at Open Day. And now, as promised, here are the solutions!
New Degree in Computer Graphics
Starting in 2008 a new undergraduate degree in Computer Graphics will be offered by the School of Computer Science and the School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture & Urban Design. This innovative program will combine essential Computer Science skills with a practical foundation in Design Studies and Digital Media providing students with both the technical and artistic skills required within this field.
Shortage of IT Graduates
Australia is continuing to experience a shortage of IT graduates despite increasing demand according to a recent report in ITWire.
Student Successes in Singapore
Congratulations to the 26 new Bachelor of Computer Science graduates from the Ngee Ann Adelaide Education Centre in Singapore. Pictured here after the Singapore graduation ceremony are a few of the graduates along with the Acting Head of Computer Science, Associate Professor David Munro.
Adelaide Student Wins Apple University Consortium Honours Scholarship
The Apple University Consortium has awarded Sam Pohlenz a $4,000 scholarship to support his Honours Project entitled "Development of Context-Aware Web Services". Previous research in this area has explored how the notion of traditional Web services can be extended by incorporating 'context' information - that is, data that can be used by the Web service to adapt itself in order to give more intelligent and more personalised results. Sam's project will focus on building a toolset that can be used to develop these context-aware services so that they can then be deployed into a working environment.
Sam is supervised by Dr Michael Sheng. A full list of the scholarship recipients and details of their projects are available on the AUC Website.
Google Visits Adelaide
Google will be on campus at the University of Adelaide on Friday 23rd March. Come meet Google Sydney's Site Engineering Director Alan Noble and find out:- How does Google deal with massive amounts of data?
- What cool applications can Google build with that data?
- What does Google's Sydney Engineering Centre do? (and is it true there's free food)
Where:Napier Lecture Theatre 102, Napier Building, North Terrace.
When:3.10 to 4pm, Friday 23 March 2007.
To Attend:www.google.com.au/adelaide-talk
Two Successful Learning and Teaching Development Grants
The University of Adelaide's Learning and Teaching Committee allocated $150,000 for 2007 to fund Learning and Teaching Development Grants aimed at improving learning and teaching outcomes in the University. Applicants from the School of Computer Science have been successful in attracting almost $60,000 of this funding for innovative teaching projects.
Congratulations to Katrina Falkner and Brad Alexander (with Edward Palmer (CLPD), Joy McEntee (Humanities), Said Alsarawi (Electrical Engineering), Michelle Coulson, James Botten and Lynn Rogers (Science)) for their success in gaining funding for their project entitled: "Evaluating effectiveness, defining standards and sharing effective methods of assessment across disciplines". The grant is valued at $32,071
Congratulations also to Cheryl Pope and Henry Detmold (with Matt Roughan (Maths)) for their success in gaining funding of their project entitled: "Leveraging an industry partnership to enhance the computer networking student experience". The grant is valued at $27,440
Computer Scientist to Head Research Quality Board
Professor Mike Brooks, Head of Computer Science, has been seconded to the position of Chair of the University's Research Quality Framework Board. The Federal Government is introducing the Research Quality Framework, RQF, as a mechanism for distributing funds to Universities on the basis of research excellence. Professor Brooks' extensive experience in research leadership will help guide the development of the University's submission.
For the remainder of 2007, the School of Computer Science will be led by Associate Professor David Munro in the role of Acting Head supported by Dr Fred Brown in the role of Acting Deputy Head. Associate Professor Munro will retain his role of Associate Dean (IT) during this period.
International Workshop on Parameter Estimation for Computer Vision Problems
The Australian Centre for Visual Technologies is hosting the The International Workshop on Parameter Estimation for Computer Vision Problems. A series of talks will be presented including the following (contact acvt@acvt.com.au for times and locations):- Object Recognition Beyond the Visible Spectrum.
Dr. Antonio Robles-Kelly, National ICT Australia, Canberra - Trace ratio problems revisited.
Dr. Chunhua Shen National ICT Australia, Canberra - Statistical Optimization for Geometric Fitting: Theoretical Accuracy Bound and High Order Error Analysis.
Kenichi Kanatani Department of Computer Science, Okayama University, Japan - Fast Projective Reconstruction: Toward Ultimate Efficiency.
Kenichi Kanatani Department of Computer Science, Okayama University, Japan
Closing the credibility gap
Having recently published a book on the subject, Matthew Michalewicz appeared in an Australian Financial Review article discussing ways in which businesses can establish credibility. The complete article is available here.
New Lecturers Join School
The School welcomed two new lecturers in November 2006, Dr Michael Sheng (left) and Dr Li Jiang. Michael is an expert in web services and pervasive computing and was previously at CSIRO's ICT Centre in Canberra. Li Jiang is an expert in decision support for software engineering and has just come from University of New Brunswick in Canada. Both will play an important role in the School's software engineering teaching and research.
Adelaide student takes on world in design contest
School of Computer Science student Patrick Coleman has finished third in the software component design category in one of the world's top programming events. Patrick was one of only eight students, from a field of over 700 competitors, qualifying to compete in the Component Design final of the 2006 TopCoder Collegiate Challenge.
The final, a gruelling three-day event, required the contestants to create detailed designs for new and challenging software components each day. The contest attracted widespread interest with AOL broadcasting events live on the final day from the contest venue in San Diego.
Patrick, who is also a member of the South Pacific Champion team for the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest in 2006, will now prepare for the 2007 final of the ACM Contest in Tokyo next March.
ICT salaries up 12%
The Ambition Technology Market Trends and Salaries Report: Summer 2007 estimates that ICT salaries have increased by an average of 12% in the last 6 months, as demand for IT professionals outstrips supply. More details here.
Tsinghua University delegation visits Adelaide
The University of Adelaide received a high-level delegation from China's top rating Tsinghua University in late November 2006. The two universities aim to develop collaborative and exchange links at both the staff and student levels. Pictured below is Professor CUI Guowen, Director of COACE, Tsinghua University, along with Mike Brooks. Computer Science's Prof Hong Shen will visit Tsinghua in December 2006 to undertake further discussions.
Student prizes 2006
Congratulations are due to the following students who were awarded prizes for 2006 in the following categories:
Best Poster - Honour/Masters Project
Winner of Apple iPod Prize: Simeon Nasilowski
Honourable Mention ($50 book voucher each) to Smarom Chantratri, An Zhao, John Millard
Best Poster - Mobile & Wireless Networks
The following students each won a $50 book voucher: Vlad Stefan, James Brooks,Ekim Kocadag
ACM Programming Competition - Winners Australia and New Zealand
$50 book vouchers and world finals travel contribution went to: Alex Flint, Patrick Coleman, Khang Thoai Tran
Computer Graphics Project
Winner of project prize (Apple iPod): Tawan Achavanuntakul
Winner of Rising Sun prize (DVD set): Adam Masters
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Prof. Michalewicz appointed SA Ambassador
Congratulations to Professor Zbigniew Michalewicz on his recent appointment as a Business Ambassador for the State of South Australia. The main responsibility of the appointee is to promote South Australia as a wonderful place to live, be educated, visit, work, invest and do business. "I am sure Professor Michalewicz will make an outstanding addition to our program," said Hillary Hurrell, Director, South Australian Business Ambassadors Network (SABAN). The SABAN program was an inaugural project of SA Business Vision 2010 and it provides an important rallying point for business, academic and community leaders committed to making a difference to the future of the State.
PhD Scholarship with the DHPC group
The Distributed High Performance Computing group is offering a PhD scholarship for 3 years commencing in 2007. The project is in the area of performance modelling and prediction of parallel networks and algorithms. Further details are available here.
Honours/Masters projects on display
Computer Science Honours and Masters students recently showcased their projects to staff members from across the Faculty, and representatives from local industry. The presentations were the culmination of a year's work and were of a very high standard. Congratulations to all involved!
New ARC Discovery Grant awarded, 2007-2009
DP0770482 Prof MJ Brooks; Dr AR Dick
Title: Automated acquisition of surveillance-camera network topology
2007: $67,000
2008: $67,000
2009: $67,000
Category: RFCD 2802 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND SIGNAL AND IMAGE PROCESSING
Administering Institution: The University of Adelaide
Project Summary
The development of an automated system for acquisition of camera network topology is a crucial prerequisite to obtaining intelligent surveillance systems operating at the network level. Such systems will contribute improved methods for safeguarding Australia from terrorism and crime by facilitating the tracking of suspicious individuals and vehicles, and detecting anomalous behaviours in busy environments. The leading-edge techniques involved will also constitute smart information use of significant commercial value to Australian industry.
Online IT job ads soar
The Age reports that online job ads have reached a record high, with IT job ads growing particularly strongly.
From the article:
Olivier Group director Robert Olivier said that the IT industry leaped ahead during the month after steadily gaining ground over the last few months.
"Technology once again is becoming the sort of sexy industry it was in the late '90s," he said.
...
Online job ads in the IT and telecommunications sector rose by 4.6 per cent in September from the previous month, while the multimedia internet and graphics sector soared 17.1 per cent, and a massive 90.75 per cent since September last year.
Mr Olivier said the sector was tipped to keep growing, with the industry functioning generally untouched by higher interest rates and petrol prices.
Adelaide Team Crowned Australian Champions - Again
A School of Computer Science student team has won the title of Australian Champions for the second year running in the world's most prestigious ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. The team - comprising Patrick Coleman, Alex Flint and Khang Tran - solved an astounding 8 out of 10 complex problems in the 5 hour session to take first place in a highly competitive field of 80 teams from the best universities across Australia and New Zealand. The team will now represent Australia at the world final to be held in 2007.
Summer scholarships 2006/7
The University of Adelaide runs a summer research scholarship programme for undergraduate students who are interested in the prospect of future postgraduate study and research. The School of Computer Science will match the living allowance offered by the university to successful applicants, bringing the total stipend to $300 per week. Details on the scheme and how to apply are available here. Details of the research projects available in Computer Science are listed here. If you are interested in a project or research area that is not listed, please get in touch with a staff member with relevant research interests.
New professor appointed
We are delighted to announce that Hong Shen will join the School of Computer Science at the University of Adelaide as Professor of Computer Science in October 2006. He received his B.Eng. degree from Beijing University of Science and Technology, M.Eng. degree from University of Science and Technology of China, Ph.Lic. and Ph.D. degrees from Abo Akademi University, Finland, all in Computer Science. He has extensive academic experiences internationally including 9 years service at Griffith University (Australia) from Lecturer to Professor and 5 years service at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology as Professor and Chair of the Computer Networks Laboratory. With main research interests in parallel and distributed computing, algorithms, high performance networks, data mining and multimedia systems, he has published more than 200 papers, including over 100 papers in major journals such as a variety of IEEE and ACM Transactions.
Prof Shen has received over 10 research grants, including national competitive grants from the Australian Research Council (ARC), Japan Society for Promotion of Sciences (JSPS) and Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). He was a core member and stream coordinator in the JSPS 21st Century Centre of Excellence "Verifiable and Evolvable e-Society" led by Prof. T. Katayama. Prof Shen has been an editor/associate editor/editorial-board member for 7 international journals; chaired numerous international conferences; served on Program Committee for more than 100 international conferences. He was the co-recipient of the1991 National Education Commission Science and Technology Progress Award and 1992 Sinica Academia Natural Sciences Award.
PhD project opportunities with Prof Shen are listed here.
2006 Google Anita Borg Scholarship
The Google Anita Borg scholarship is a $5000 scholarship for the 2007 academic year. Female students studying Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering or related technical fields are eligible to apply. The deadline is Friday, September 15, 2006. More details are available at www.google.com.au/anitaborg.
Affordable Adelaide
Statistics from the Economist Intelligence Unit released this week show that it costs 18% less to live in Adelaide than Australia's most expensive city, Sydney. Melbourne is 17% more expensive and it costs students 6% more to live in Brisbane and Perth. (Main story)
"Winning Credibility" book launch
Matthew and Zbigniew Michalewicz launched their new book "Winning Credibility: A Guide for Building a Business from Rags to Riches" (www.credibility.com.au) at a recent American Chamber of Commerce event at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. In attendance were many leading figures from the local academic and business community, including the Vice Chancellor and President of Adelaide University, Dr James McWha, the CEO of Playford Capital, Ms Amanada Heyworth, and the Chairman of the Venture Capital Board, Dr Roger Sexton. The book is currently number 1 in the Dymocks best seller list, published in the Advertiser on August 5 2006.
Matthew is a Visiting Fellow at the School of Computer Science and teaches the Masters course "Commercialising IT Research". Zbigniew is Professor of Computer Science at the school.
Photograph by award-winning photographer Richard Humphrys (www.RichardHumphrys.com.au)
Uni Adelaide highly ranked for research
The University of Adelaide is at the forefront of Australian universities when it comes to research, according to a paper published this week. The paper, 'Ranking and Clustering Australian University Research Performance, 1998-2002' lists the University of Adelaide as #2 in the national research rankings based on research output per academic staff member. The full table is available here.
Student awarded Apple scholarship
Computer Science PhD student Peter Nguyen has been awarded an Apple University Consortium scholarship to attend Apple's WWDC conference in San Francisco in August, 2006. WWDC, the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, provides an opportunity to review latest Apple technology and discuss technical advances with Apple engineers.
Adelaide Team Crowned South Pacific Champions
A team of students from the School of Computer Science has won the title of South Pacific Champions in the world final of the International Collegiate Programming Contest. The final, held this April in San Antonio Texas, brought together 83 teams who qualified from over 6000 teams from 1733 universities in 84 countries. The University of Adelaide Team - made up of Patrick Coleman, Alex Flint, and Khang Tran - successfully answered two questions, during the gruelling five-hour test of programming skill, ranking them in the middle of the elite field and earning them the title of South Pacific Champions.
Preparations are now underway for next year's contest. If you are a student of the University of Adelaide and you are interested in competing please contact Brad Alexander for more information.
Link to the ICPC official website.
