Google Europe Anita Borg Memorial Scholarships

The Google Europe Anita Borg Memorial Scholarships were awarded for the first time in Europe in 2007. Two students from Informatics@Edinburgh received awards.

180 students from 93 different universities across Europe applied. Initial selection criteria included academic performance, accomplishments within the science and technology community, letters of recommendation, and answers to four short essay questions. After two rounds of review, the committee selected 31 finalists, who were then interviewed by members of the review committee.

Twelve outstanding young women, including Sabrina Pei-Yun Hsueh, received a €5,000 Scholarship for the 2007/2008 academic year.

The remaining 19 finalists, including Vera Demberg, received a €1,000 award.

Multiple scholarships will be awarded in 2008 based on the strength of candidates' academic background and demonstrated leadership. The competition is open to women studying Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Informatics, or a closely related technical field, with an excellent academic record (e.g. a First Class Honours degree). European citizens, permanent residents, and international students, who will enter the final year of a Bachelor’s degree in 2008/2009, or be enrolled in a Master’s or PhD programme (or equivalent), at any University in Europe, are eligible to apply.

Iain Whiteside: most enterprising student in UK

Congratulations to Iain, currently in third year, just over half-way through the CS&Maths degree. He has been named the UK's most enterprising student.

On his summer placement under the Shell Step programme, with Martin Energy Limited: Flexitricity, Iain wrote a program that is expected to generate a £4.3M revenue stream.

Impressive!

The program will remotely turn off air-conditioning and other non-essential systems during spikes of peak domestic demand. Firms that sign up to use the program—Tesco are the first customer—will be rewarded through cheaper tariffs. The savings are projected to total £4.3M over the next year.

Work experience student brings in £4.3m
Scotsman, United Kingdom - Oct 11, 2007
Award for £4.3m work experience student
Director of Finance online, UK - Oct 11, 2007
Student controls ac with £4.3m energy-saving idea
www.acr-news.com, UK - Oct 11, 2007
Blame it on the work experience kid
Startups.co.uk, UK - Oct 11, 2007

LISA 07

Large Installation System Administration Conference

The 21st annual meeting will be held November 11–16, 2007, Dallas, TX

Paul Anderson is program chair.
For twenty years, the annual LISA conference has been the foremost worldwide gathering for everyone interested in the technical and administrative issues of running a large computing facility. Administrators of all specialties and levels of expertise meet at LISA to exchange ideas, sharpen old skills, learn new techniques, debate current issues, and meet colleagues and friends.

General Announcements

an updated account of items discussed at the general meeting held in Appleton Tower 2007-09-14-1600 Z+1

Research

Ten new members of academic staff are joining us this year (see individual announcements on this blog for more details): Subramanian Ramamoorthy, Michael Hermann, Rahul Santhanam, Amin Coja-Oghlan, Graham Steel, Elham Kashefi, Richard Mayr, Victor Lavrenko, Sharon Goldwater, and Vincent Danos.

We have four Distinguished Visiting Professors this semester: David Harel, Hector Geffner, Diane Litman, Vassilis Christophides.

Our research grant expenditure reached £10M for the year 2006-2007 (up from £8.35M in the previous year).

We expect around 60 new Ph.D. students to join our Graduate School this year (50 have already matriculated; we currently have a total of 210 matriculated PGR students in years 1-4).

Teaching

Floors 3-5 of the Appleton Tower have now been refurbished to accommodate our teaching. We have 150 M.Sc. students matriculated, almost 40 more than last year. We also have 117 new undergraduates, around 20 more than last year, with a total of 345 undergraduates matriculated over all years of study.

Commercialisation

The PROSPEKT team, now established on floor 8 of Appleton Tower, will extend its operations occupy floors 6-8 (along with some of our industry-facing research) once we have occupied the Forum.

Outreach

We have made two new appointments designed to support our engagement with students before they arrive, and after they graduate: Morna Findlay our Schools Liaison Officer, and Naomi Nunn our Informatics Alumni Officer.

Our engagement with the Arts, led by Jon Oberlander and our artist in residence, Richard Brown, continues. We sponsored The Turing Test, an opera by Julian Wagstaff, in the Fringe this summer, and we are working on plans (and sponsorship) for inSpace, the 300m² public engagement venue on the ground floor of the Wolfson Wing of the new building.

Migration

Marije Vugts has been working steadily, and tirelessly, as our Migration Co-ordinator. We are advised that the offices in the Forum will be ready by January. All going well, we hope to install office furniture and equipment in February. March and April will then be removals months, and we hope to have everyone installed by Mayday.

Hui Sun - Young Software Engineer of the Year

Congratulations to Hui Sun, BEng., who graduated this summer with First-class Honours in Software Engineering. Hui has won The 2007 Young Software Engineer of the Year Award, presented at a ceremony organised by the trade association ScotlandIS in Edinburgh.

This award, which includes a cheque for £1500, presented by Ann Budge of Sopra Group, and the ScotlandIS Young Software Engineer of the year trophy, is given to the student who has undertaken the best final year software engineering project from amongst all Scottish universities.

Hui Sun’s project Face Recognition on J2ME-enabled mobile phone was supervised by Dr. Gillian Hayes of the Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour. The judges considered his work to be exceptional, with a clear commercial application.

Hui Sun is the sixth Informatics student to win one of these prestigious awards:

2007	First prize	Hui Sun	BEng. Hons. Software Engineering	1st class
2006	First prize	Nicholas O’Shea	BSc. Hons. Computer Science	1st class
2003	First prize	Tim Angus	BSc. Hons. Computer Science	1st class
2000	First prize	Will Bryson	BSc. Hons. Computer Science	1st class
1999	First prize	Edward Knowelden	BSc. Hons. Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science	1st class
1998	Second prize	Hugh Leather	BSc. Hons. Computer Science	1st class