CSI News Archive

CSI Wins GradIreland Postgraduate Course of the Year Award 2012

Gerry Dunnion — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:41:18 +0100

The annual GradIreland Awards were held in The Mansion House on Wednesday evening (25th April) and the UCD MSc in Computer Science by Negotiated Learning programme won the “Postgraduate Course of the Year Award” in the category of IT. The presentation was made at a gala dinner and awards ceremony attended by 470 of Irelands leading employers, third level careers services and professional bodies, making it the biggest gathering of the graduate recruitment community in Ireland. Programme Director, Dr.

CSI Researchers win Best Paper Award at CSMR'2012

Mel Ó Cinnéide — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:09:01 +0100

Iman Hemati Moghadam and Mel Ó Cinnéide were awarded the Best Paper prize at the European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR'2012) for their paper entitled "Automated Refactoring Using Design Differencing." This work shows how the automated refactoring platform Code-Imp, designed and built in UCD CSI, can be used to halt the progression of design erosion. The developer expresses the desired design they wish their program to have, and Code-Imp makes novel use of design differencing in order to refactor the program to its desired design. In experiments on over 150KLOC of open source code the desired design could be achiveved to an average accuracy of 92%.

Computer Science Summer School - June 7th, 2012

Alexander Ufimtsev — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 22:42:58 +0000

In celebration of Dublin's status as European City of Science 2012, UCD is running a one day Computer Science Summer School for students interested in experiencing a day in the life of a UCD Computer Science student. So, if you are going into 6th year or Year 13 (A Level) in September 2012, thinking of studying computer science and want to spend the whole day on the 7^th of June with us:

Congratulations to the Winners of CSI Programming Competition 2012!

Alexander Ufimtsev — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:18:03 +0000

Twenty-six brave souls participated in the CSI Programming Competition on Saturday the 18^th, solving programming problems that helped humanity's fight against the robot uprizing. They were detecting DNA of roboclones, dividing supply rations, configuring shield stabilizers, searching for Carah Sonnor and helping unite separated resistance cells. Some participants competed from home, viewing their classmates via live stream from UCD CSI.

First UCD Robotics Open Day a Smashing Success!

Alexander Ufimtsev — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 19:53:59 +0000

On the 9th of February the first UCD Robotics Open Day took place in the School of Computer Science & Informatics in UCD. Hosted by UCD Robotics Group, the day featured demonstrations of robots big and small, with highlights including the Nao, a 2 feet tall humanoid robot from Aldebaran Robotics, which impressed attendees with his Tai Chi and Irish language skills, as well as a fully autonomous sailing boat, developed by Brian Mulkeen from UCD's School of Engineering. Visitors also quickly made friends with a TurtleBot, a small robot based on the iRobot Create platform, which happily followed people around the room as long as it could keep them in sight.

Inaugural Jobs Award 2011 won by Caitriona Byrne

Mark Keane — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:21:57 +0000

Caitriona Byrne (1st Year CSI) has won the inaugural Jobs Award for the best essay, on the topic of "The Essence of Computer Science is ..." , submitted as coursework for the Computer Science in Practice course (COMP10030). The award was established this academic year in honour of Steve Jobs (1955-2011) and his contribution to Computer Science. Caitriona was presented with a copy of Jobs' biography as a prize, by the module co-ordinator, Prof. Mark Keane.

CSI Researchers win overall best paper award at IEEE/COMSOC CCNC 2012

Alexander Ufimtsev — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:26:39 +0000

Congratulations to a postgraduate student Cristian Olariu and a researcher Dr. John Fitzpatrick, who won the overall best paper award at IEEE/COMSOC CCNC 2012 (Consumer Communications and Networking Conference) for their paper entitled "A QoS based call admission control and resource allocation mechanism for LTE femtocell deployments". John is a member of the Performance Engineering Lab and is currently a visiting researcher at NEC labs Europe. Cristi is a TSSG PhD student working closely with UCD CSI as part of the FAME strategic research cluster. The work was performed in collaboration with Prof. Liam Murphy and Dr. Philip Perry of UCD CSI.

CSI’s ForkStream comes 2nd in NovaUCD Start-up Awards 2011

Nicola Stokes — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:38:02 +0000

ForkStream, a new CSI venture, was announced as second place winner at the NovaUCD 2011 Start-Up Award, which are part of the 16th NovaUCD Campus Company Development Programme. ForkStream is developing a disruptive technology to allow mobile network operators to cost effectively and seamlessly the offloading of smart phone traffic to any available WiFi network.

CSI Student wins best paper award at top Wireless Communications Conference

Nicola Stokes — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:30:46 +0000

Congratulations to CSI student, Patrick McDonagh, who won a best paper award at WPMC’11 (14th International Symposium on Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications) for his paper entitled “Investigation of Scalable Video Delivery using H.264 SVC on an LTE network”. Patrick is working with the Performance Engineering Lab in CSI with Profs Liam Murphy and John Murphy.

UCD Computer Science and Informatics Open Evening for 5th & 6th Years Secondary School Students & Mature Students

Alex Cronin — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:23:07 +0000

Event: UCD Computer Science and Informatics Open Evening for 5th & 6th Years Secondary School Students, Mature Students, Parents & Teachers
Date: Tues 22 Nov 2011
Time: 6:30pm - 8:30pm
Venue: UCD School of Computer Science and Informatics

SIG Group - Invite UCD CSI students to Recruitment Event

Nicola Stokes — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:11:09 +0000

Susquehanna International Group, LLP (SIG) is a leading trading and liquidity provision firm, active on the world’s major securities and derivatives exchanges with more than 1,500 employees worldwide. We established our European headquarters in Dublin 12 years ago and now employ over 200 people here in Trading, Technology, Research, Operations, Compliance, Legal, Finance, and HR.

Henry McLoughlin wins prestigious Chinese teaching award

Nicola Stokes — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:21:07 +0000

Congratulations to Henry McLoughlin who was announced as the only non-Asian winner at a recent award ceremony in Beijing, which honored the top 10 most outstanding external teachers in China's leading Software Engineering schools.

Dr Fred Cummins appointed scientific collaborator on Chinese funded project

Nicola Stokes — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:53:25 +0100

Congratulations to Dr Fred Cummins who has been appointed scientific collaborator on Project 111, Information Structure in Language, a project funded by the National Science Foundation of the People's Republic of China. The project is administered through Minzu University, Beijing, and also features collaboration with Beijing Normal University, the University of Potsdam, and University College London. Project coordination is provided by Dr Wang Bei of Minzu University. Dr Wang was a postdoctoral researcher at UCD in 2003. This 5 year project will examine many aspects of spoken language, and the UCD contribution will make particular use of the linguistic and cultural diversity of China in applied and basic research.

CSI spinout Heystaks reaches final of Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2011

Nicola Stokes — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 12:05:47 +0100

Well done to CSI/CLARITY spinout company Heystaks, who will represent Ireland at the Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2011 final in Amsterdam.

Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2011 is an international contest to identify and develop the best, most innovative, mobile internet start-up companies. This year the competition was open to start-up companies in Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom that have a mobile site, service or application. The competition has a €225,000 prize fund.

UCD CSI researchers shows that verb and noun convergence in financial reporting could predict stock market bubble

Nicola Stokes — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 10:32:37 +0100

Prof. Mark Keane (UCD Chair of Computer Science) and MSc student Aaron Gerow will today present their paper at the prestigious Artificial Intelligence conference IJCAI in Barcelona on how trends in the use of words by financial journalists correlate closely with changes in the leading stock indices (the FTSE-100, the Dow Jones Index and the NIKKEI-225).

CLARITY student on winning team at Irish Open Data 18 hour Challenge

Nicola Stokes — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 13:48:16 +0100

Congratulations to Sandra Garcia-Esparza, a CLARITY PhD student at CSI, who was part of the winning team at Ireland’s first Open Data 18 hour Challenge. The six person team of designers and developers created Bizfit, a website that enables users to find the optimum location for their business. The winning idea was judged as being a clear example of how the release of previously inaccessible Government data can deliver a commercial opportunity.

CSI Staff helped make UCD Science Summer School a real success

Alexander Ufimtsev — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 19:41:43 +0100

The UCD Science Promotion Committee organised two UCD Science Summer events - the one day 8 June Science Summer School and a half day as part of the UCD New ERA Summer School on 9 June.

Students from 11 counties and 50 schools nationwide took part in a one day UCD Science Summer School designed to allow students experience a typical day in the life of an undergraduate student.

UCD CSI centre to spearhead EU cybercrime fighting network

Alexander Ufimtsev — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 14:48:58 +0100

The Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter TD has announced Ireland’s involvement in a €4 million EU initiative aimed at tackling cybercrime across Europe.

The “2Centre” project, part of the European Commission’s strategy to safeguard governments, businesses, and citizens from cybercrime, sees the establishment of a centre of excellence in Ireland (University College Dublin) and one in France (Universities of Troyes and Montpellier).

CSI Newsletter 2011 - January to June

Nicola Stokes — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 14:33:37 +0100

The CSI newsletter - covering stories on CSI research, teaching and learning and other noteworthy news events for the first 6 months of 2011 - is now available in high res and low res formats!

Prof. Barry Smyth elected as a Member of the Royal Irish Academy

Nicola Stokes — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 11:39:15 +0100

Congratulations to Prof. Barry Smyth, Director of the CLARITY research centre and Digital Chair of Computer Science at UCD, who has been elected as a member of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA). Election to membership of the RIA is a public recognition of academic excellence. It is also the highest academic honour in Ireland, and is open only to those resident in the Republic of Ireland or in Northern Ireland. Those elected are entitled to use the designation ‘MRIA’ after their name. The criterion for election to membership is - a significant contribution to scholarly research as shown in the candidate’s published academic work.

Computer Science Summer School ICSP (Introduction to Computer Science & Programming) 2011

Edel Caraway — Mon, 30 May 2011 13:33:11 +0100

If you are interested in finding out what computer science is about and earning 5 credits towards a UCD Computer Science degree, then this three day Computer Science Summer school might be for you.

What happens on each day?

Sessions will take place in our state-of-the-art active learning laboratory where students will work in teams and have the opportunity to:

Springboard - HEA Funded Certificates in ICT for Unemployed

Alexander Ufimtsev — Wed, 25 May 2011 11:19:17 +0100

The Certificates in ICT (University/Graduate) are the first on-line and blended learning, innovative programmes which builds on the established portfolio of CSI graduate taught courses but is customised to individual student needs and their prior learning experiences and allows participants to work with the Programme Director to choose their own software programming modules and design their own certificate focusing on software development training on a part-time, flexible and tailored to their needs mode. The University/Graduate Certificate in Information & Communications Technology offers options for IT graduates wishing to fill gaps in their knowledge, and for non-IT graduates wishing to move into the area.

CSI Opportunities Day Friday 13th May 2011

Edel Caraway — Thu, 12 May 2011 11:18:55 +0100

This year the CSI Opportunities Day took a new twist as it was undertaken in collaboration with the UCD Career Development Centre. The School showcased the 4th Year final projects to the most prestigious companies within the IT Sector. The event provided students with the opportunity to engage with these employers regarding graduate job opportunities we know final year is a busy one and that students may not have had the space to do this before. It also provided the Opportunity for our industry partners to view, first hand, the technical and innovative talent of our students. Twenty six students presented their projects and seventeen companies took a stand at the event.

CSI Natural Computing Group receives 3 Best Paper Awards at top conference - Evo* 2011

Nicola Stokes — Tue, 10 May 2011 14:50:02 +0100

Congratulations to Dr Michael O’Neill and his colleagues from the Natural Computing Research and Applications Group and the SFI funded FMC2 Research Cluster, who won 3 best paper awards at EuroGP, EvoGame and EvoMUSART as part of the Evo* 2011 series of conferences in Italy. Evo* (or EvoStar) is focussed on presenting the best and most innovative work in Evolutionary Computing. In total 9 papers from the group where accepted at the conference series.

The awarding winning papers were:

Computer Science at UCD ranked no. 1 in Ireland and among the top 30 Universities in Europe

Nicola Stokes — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 09:22:33 +0100

UCD has been ranked as the top university for Computer Science in the country, and the only Irish university to be ranked within the top 100 in the world by the first ever international subject ranking by the QS World University Rankings. In a list that was dominated by US universities, UCD was one of only 30 European institutions to make it into the top 100. 

CSI student plays a lead role in U21s All Ireland Cup win for UCD

Nicola Stokes — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 09:06:28 +0100

Congratulations to CSI second year student, Peter du Toit, who has had a fantastic season at both Club and Representative levels this year! Capped for Leinster Under 20’s last September, he went on to play for the Ireland Under 20's team in the Six Nations Championship. His season highlight, he said, came last Sunday when he starred at scrum half for the UCD Under 21 side that brought the All Ireland Cup to Belfield for the first time, beating Lansdowne in the final by 28-27.

Prof. Barry Smyth to give Distingushed Lecture at St Andrews

Nicola Stokes — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:07:34 +0100

Prof. Barry Smyth, Director of the CLARITY research centre and Digital Chair of Computer Science at UCD, will give a distinguished lecture at St. Andrew's on this Friday (22nd of April) . The title of his talk is "From Recommendation to Reputation: Information Discovery gets Personal".

CSI student wins "man of the match" for Wexford U21s

Joe Carthy — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 14:34:56 +0100

Congratulations to CSI's Michael O'Regan who was man of the match for Wexford in their under-21 football Leinster final victory against Longford on Wednesday April 6th.

Michael is a Stage 1 CS student and plays in midfield for Wexford. Michael scored two vital points, one in the closing stages to seal Wexford’s one point win for their first ever U-21 Leinster final victory.

Michael also went on to play a starring role in the All-Ireland semi-final against Cavan. Unfortunately, for Wexford, Cavan were the victors.

IBM Careers Talk Tomorrow Thursday 7th April

Edel Caraway — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 11:21:26 +0100

IBM Careers Talk Tomorrow Thursday 7th April

Don't Miss it....Opportunities for Internships...Bring your CV!

Venue: CSI Lecture Theatre

Time: 13:00 to 14:00

CSI MSc Programme Shortlisted for Postgraduate Course of the Year Award!

Nicola Stokes — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 08:45:39 +0100

The UCD MSc in Computer Science by Negotiated Learning programme has been shortlisted for the “Postgraduate Course of the Year Award” in the category of IT. This is an annual awards event organised by GradIreland. This year attracted a 30% increase in the number of applications received to the awards initiative. A total of 90 nominations were considered with only 4 shortlisted for each category. In the IT category UCD are in the company of TCD, DCU, and UL. The outright winner will be announced at the awards ceremony, which is due to take place on the night of Wednesday, April 13th at the Mansion House. In excess of 100 Graduate employers are expected to attend the event (many of which will be interested in hiring graduates of Computer Science!!).

CSI CLARITY Researcher wins prestigious Globe Award

Nicola Stokes — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 15:49:36 +0100

Congratulations to Anthony Schoofs, a CSI CLARITY PhD researcher, who has been awarded the Globe Sustainability Research Award. The goal of the Sustainability Research Award is to discover and recognize researchers who contribute to advancing knowledge on sustainability.  The jury picked Anthony over 5 other international nominees, from three continents commenting that his research represented “exceptional work which is both unique and practical, demonstrating clear gains in all three dimensions of sustainable development-economic, social and environmental”.

CSI Summer Internships 2011: Fancy working with a research group for the summer?

Nicola Stokes — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:42:08 +0100

Are you a 2nd or 3rd year UCD CSI student? Would you like to learn what it's like to be a Computer Science researcher? Then why not consider getting involved in our exciting summer internship programme. The application deadline is **Tuesday 12th of April**. You can find out more about the programme and how to apply here.

CSI receives funding from Google to run Computer Science 4 High School module

Nicola Stokes — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 12:06:02 +0000

Congratulations to Dr Michael O'Neill who has received funding from Google again this year to run the ICSP Outreach module. This is a module delivered to Secondary School students over the summer that explains what the exciting discipline of Computer Science is all about, and the broad range of career opportunities it offers. It also instills some of the fundamentals of Computer Programming and Problem Solving. This is a full university module and students participate through hands on practical sessions held in the UCD School of Computer Science & Informatics.

No summer job? Why not volunteer to teach ICT skills in Africa

Nicola Stokes — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 13:38:07 +0000

Camara, an Irish-based charity, are now recruiting volunteers for their 4-week Africa 2011 trip this summer! Camara is a volunteer orgaisation dedicated to educating communities in Africa through the usage of computer hardward and software training programs.

For more information go to: www.camara.ie

Top UCD CS graduate wins medal for her achievements

Nicola Stokes — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 10:20:30 +0000

Congratulations to Ursula Redmond, who was awarded the UCD John Kelly Memorial Medal after attaining first place in the UCD BSc (Hons) Computer Science - Class of 2010.

This isn't the first award that Ursula has been a recipient of: she received a medal for achieving the best Junior Certificate results in her year at school (Presentation College, Terenure), and in 2006 she received an Entrance Scholarship to UCD based on her Leaving Certificate results.

International conference organised by UCD researchers receives record numbers of submissions

Nicola Stokes — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:12:03 +0000

A prestigious international computing conference organised by UCD researchers has received a record number of paper submission - 687 compared with 373 in 2010. The ACM GECCO 2011 conference, traditionally a US-based conference, will take place in Dublin this July. GECCO is the largest annual international conference in the field of Genetic and Evolutionary Computing.  This year GECCO is being organised by two UCD academics – Dr Michael O’Neill (UCD CSI) and Prof. Anthony Brabazon (UCD Business) – two Principal Investigators from the SFI-funded Financial Mathematics Computation Research Cluster – FMC2.

CSI Annual Report 2010 available to download

Nicola Stokes — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 08:54:58 +0000

The CSI Annual Report 2010 - covering stories on CSI research, teaching and learning and other noteworthy news events that occured in 2010 - is now available to download in low resolution (8MB) and high resolution (68MB) formats!

HeyStaks featured in New York Times

Nicola Stokes — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:32:56 +0000

Well done to the Heystaks team (Prof. Barry Smyth, Dr Maurice Coyle and Dr Peter Briggs) who were featured in the Technology section of the New York Times on the 13th of January! The full article is available here: http://nyti.ms/e0EgBY

CLARITY Researchers Scoop Top technical Award in Cambridge

Nicola Stokes — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 16:05:19 +0000

CSI researchers from the CLARITY Centre for Sensor Web Research have received the top technical award at this year’s AI-2010 conference in Cambridge, UK. AI-2010 is the 30th Annual International Conference of the British Computer Society's Specialist Group on Artificial Intelligence (SGAI) and is held each year in Cambridge. The prize for the best technical paper at the conference was awarded for a paper entitled "Effective Product Recommendation using the Real-Time Web." The paper was authored by PhD student Sandra Garcia Esparza with Dr. Michael O`Mahony and Prof. Barry Smyth, who are both CLARITY researchers.

Visa Europe and UCD CSI join forces to tackle cybercrime

Nicola Stokes — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 08:33:26 +0000

Visa Europe and the UCD Centre for Cybercrime Investigation (UCD – CCI) have formed a partnership to undertake forensic investigation into high tech financial crimes and cybercrime. The partnership will see UCD CCI assist Visa Europe with criminal investigations, R&D to help develop new security features, and to support in the development of training courses for judges and prosecutors.