School of Informatics

2016

All the news from 2016.

Principal’s Teaching Award

Dr Areti Manataki and colleagues from Moray House and Information Services have won an award for their project, Exploring flexible modes of online education.

Cyber Security Christmas Lectures

We warmly invite local schools to join us for this year’s Cyber Security Christmas Lectures, 15 December 2016.

Enhancing Assembly Rooms' green credentials

The Enhance research project will help Edinburgh's historic Assembly Rooms to reduce their energy usage.

Postgraduate prize winners 2016

Congratulations to those outstanding MSc students awarded School prizes after our winter graduation ceremony.

Alexa prize bid for talking robot

A team of Edinburgh Informatics PhD students has been chosen by Amazon to compete for an inaugural $1.5M prize.

Undergraduate prizewinners

Congratulations to the outstanding students awarded School prizes for their work last year.

World software challenge award

Dr Giulio Caravagna and colleagues won Silver at the 10th Open Source Software (OSS) World Challenge.

RSE Christmas Lecture event

Dr Maurice Fallon will be part of a panel discussing Robots and Rockets, Saturday 26 November.

Built it, broke it, fixed it!

Final year undergraduate Thomas Kerber has come second in the international security programming contest, ‘Build it, Break it, Fix it.'

Cyber Challenge winners

Emilia Bogdanova, Joshua Green, Paul Sinclair and Dylan Ashcroft have won the Scottish University Cyber Challenge.

Industrial engagement event

Exclusive to the EPSRC CDT in Pervasive Parallelism & CDT HiPEDS.

Postgraduate Open Day: 16 Nov 2016

Potential MSc, MPhil and PhD Informatics students are warmly invited to come along and find out more about us.

MICRO Hall of Fame

Dr Boris Grot has been inducted into the MICRO Hall of Fame.

Athena SWAN Silver Award 2016

The School of Informatics has achieved its second Athena SWAN Silver Award for supporting women in science.

Data Science Research Day 2016

The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Data Science is holding its annual research day today.

Best ECCB 2016 Paper

PhD student Andreas Kapourani won best paper at the prestigious European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB).

Alumnus gains £1m investment

Grant Passmore’s company Aesthetic Integration has attracted funding backed by Google's Chief Business Officer.

ACM SIGPLAN Award

Professor Philip Wadler has won the ACM SIGPLAN Distinguished Service Award 2016.

Congratulations Ronan Turner

Ronan Turner has been Highly Commended in The Undergraduate Awards.

New Assistant Principal for Data Technology

Jon Oberlander, our Professor of Epistemics, has been appointed Assistant Principal for Data Technology.

NASA robotics lectures

Dr Rob Ambrose, Principal Technologist for NASA’s Game Changing Development Program, will deliver two lectures in the Informatics Forum, 27 September 2016.

University open days

Book now to attend.

Principal’s Medal for Colin Adams

In November, the alumnus will receive the University’s highest honour for his significant contribution as our Director of Commercialisation.

Cross-CDT student workshop

Postgraduate students of statistics and machine learning from across the UK are meeting in Edinburgh, 30-31 August 2016.

Design Informatics at the Festival

Work by Design Informatics is showcased at the new Edinburgh Digital Entertainment Festival, 4-28 August 2016.

EU award for Bonseyes

Dr Amos Storkey and Professor Mike O’Boyle have been awarded €680,876 from Horizon 2020, the EU Research and Innovation programme.

Areti scoops Outreach Prize

Senior Researcher and MSc/PhD alumna Dr Areti Manataki has won a coveted Head of College Prize.

British Logic Colloquium 2016

This year’s British Logic Colloquium (BLC) will be held here in the Informatics Forum.

Quiz a Whiz with the RSE

Professor of Robotics Sethu Vijayakumar FRSE discusses his research in the latest video from the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Sutton Trust summer school

S5/Year 12 pupils experience life as an Informatics student.

Sethu joins Robot Wars

Robotics expert Professor Sethu Vijayakumar debuts as a judge in the new TV series.

Sorcha's soapbox for science

Research postgraduate Sorcha Gilroy will speak at Edinburgh’s first Soapbox Science event.

Music Informatics and Cognition

PhD student Andrew McLeod is organising the first UK Music Informatics and Cognition (MIC) workshop of its kind.

Compucast podcasts are back!

Hugh Leather has relaunched Compucast: podcasts by computer scientists for computer scientists.

Stanford Bing study visit

Building trust in autonomy has been the focus of a month-long programme of lectures and research, organised for 16 Stanford students.

Building links with Peking

Four Peking University students join us, 6 July-30 August 2016.

Saltire Scholar

Gregor McCreadie has won a digital strategy internship in Boston, 11 June-19 August 2016

Google PhD Fellow

Martino Sorbaro Sindaci has been awarded a 2016 Google European PhD Fellowship in Computational Neuroscience.

Summer 2016 prizewinners

Congratulations to those outstanding students awarded School prizes after our summer graduation ceremony.

INSPIRE summer school

Our first INSPIRE summer school for S4/Year 11 girls takes place 4-6 July 2016.

Informing the EU debate

Cutting-edge techniques developed in Informatics are being used to gauge public opinion on the EU referendum.

Principal's statement on EU referendum result

“No change for existing and future EU students arriving in 2016/17 and 2017/18.”

Undergraduate open days 2016

Come and see our School and University for yourself.

Sandy’s little robot is a winner

Enterprising PhD student Sandy Enoch has scooped several awards for Marty, a robot that children can build and programme for themselves.

Edinburgh Award recipients 2016

Congratulations to 23 students in the School of Informatics who completed an Edinburgh Award this year.

Valentino Braitenberg winner

Professor Emeritus David Willshaw has been awarded the Valentino Braitenberg Award for Computational Neuroscience.

Design workshops for children

Wanted: games designers aged 6-14 years, Saturday and/or Sunday 4-5 June 2016.

SIGMOD Test of Time Award

A paper by Professor Peter Buneman, Dr Adriane Chapman, and Dr James Cheney has won the 2016 ACM SIGMOD Test of Time Award.

Talks by Professor Andrew Blake

Informatics alumnus, Professor Andrew Blake, Director of the Alan Turing Institute, will give two presentations at King’s Buildings, Friday 27 May 2016.

€1.9m funding for Skye project

Dr James Cheney has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant.

TransModal success

Professor Mirella Lapata has received five years’ funding for her project, TransModal: Translating from Multiple Modalities into Text.

EPSRC Fellowship is MAGIC

Professor Leonid Libkin has been awarded a £1.14M EPSRC Fellowship.

Valkyrie press coverage

Our NASA humanoid robot has made headlines.

'3DT and Friends' Presentation Day

Our three EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs) will co-host a presentation day, Thursday 26 May 2016.

Scotland and Estonia: building digital services

Estonian Ambassador Lauri Bambus will visit the University, 26 April 2016, to discuss digital success.

Nominated for EUSA Teaching Awards

Congratulations to staff and students nominated for this year's EUSA Teaching Awards.

Student engagement with industry

Examples from the Centre for Doctoral Training in Pervasive Parallelism

Informatics 'Summer of Code'

Undergraduates are being offered an informal opportunity to improve their coding skills this summer.

Alumnus awarded Lovelace Medal

Professor Andrew Blake has won the 2016 BCS Lovelace Medal, the top award in computing in the UK.

Dr Goldwater wins BCS Award

Sharon Goldwater has won the BCS Roger Needham award for outstanding work in computational linguistics.

Science Festival 2016

Informatics staff and students are involved in a number of events, 26 March–10 April.

Jon Oberlander FRSE

Informatics Professor Jon Oberlander has been made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Now recruiting Lecturers/Readers

Application deadlines from 18 March 2016

Data and the Future City

Research by the Schools of Informatics and Engineering will inspire an evening of new writing at the Traverse Theatre.

Smart Data Hack highlighted

The hackathon has been showcased in Teaching Matters and the ILW Awards.

Live at launch of BBC micro:bit

Staff and students from Edinburgh Centre for Robotics will take part in the launch of BBC micro:bit, 24 February 2016.

BCS highly commended dissertation 2015

Congratulations to Domagoj Vrgoc, whose dissertation was highly commended in the BCS Distinguished Dissertation Competition 2015.

New funding for UK and EU masters

The University of Edinburgh has announced new funding for UK and EU masters students who are starting their studies in 2016/17.

Big Edinburgh data: California Bay Area meetup

Tech-centric Informatics alumni are warmly invited to a networking event, 14 March 2016.

Understanding privacy concerns

Social media users want and need more control over the visibility of their private profile information such as phone numbers in communication apps, according to a recent study.

Alumnus wins GCHQ Christmas puzzle

Over half a million tried but Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics graduate David McBryan is one of only three people who came close to solving the brain teaser.

Innovation grants

Donor-funded small project grants of up to £5,000 are available to students and staff to support innovations in teaching, research and student life.

SNACK Club

Postgraduates! Don't miss Synergising Non-Aligned Centres of Knowledge (SNACK) Club, 6pm Friday 12 February 2016.

Public debate: How robotics will reshape our lives

Thursday 4 February 2016, Informatics Forum

Collaboration with Honda Research Institute Europe

Edinburgh Centre for Robotics has signed a contract with Honda Research Institute Europe to fund a PhD studentship in learning control and manipulation using tactile information

CDT open days Spring 2016

Our EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs) are inviting prospective research students to come and meet them, in person or online.

Professor Fisher in the spotlight

This month’s University Staff Spotlight features Informatics’ own Professor Robert Fisher.

‘Wee ARCHIE’ supercomputer comes to visit

Members of the School of Informatics are being given an exclusive opportunity to see digital dinosaurs put bite-sized supercomputer ‘Wee ARCHIE’ through its paces.

Automation of mathematical reasoning processes

A team of researchers from Edinburgh, Heriot Watt and Goldsmiths College London has been awarded over £1.6m to continue their work on the integration and interaction of multiple mathematical reasoning processes.

Alan Turing Institute appoints Professor Chris Williams as a Director

Professor Christopher Williams is one of five senior academics appointed as University Liaison Directors by the Alan Turing Institute.

Innovative Learning Week 2016

The University’s programme for Innovative Learning Week, 15-19 February 2016, includes a series of exciting events from Informatics.