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

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

We are number one!

Informatics@Edinburgh tops the Guardian rankings for 2008.

We always take league tables with a pinch of salt. They necessarily choose a single perspective, from which to summarise a complex, multi-dimensional picture in a single ranking.

Nevertheless, we are delighted with this result!

Edinburgh's placement at the top of this list recognises the breadth and research excellence that informs our curriculum, the effort we devote to teaching, and the fact that our students build on the high standards they have already achieved when they first arrive here, to become outstanding graduates.

This is a welcome tribute to the quality of teaching and learning within Informatics@Edinburgh — to our staff and our students.