Department News & Events
The latest news and events from the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems.
Lecturer A post
Posted: 17-May-2013 11:03
We have a vacancy for a Lecturer A in Computer Science. The closing date for completed applications is Friday 28 June 2013. Full details and application form.
Samtla
Posted: 22-Apr-2013 12:46
At the recent Digital Humanities event at Southampton University Dr Dan Levene (Southampton) and Mr Martyn Harris (Birkbeck) presented Samtla (Search And Mining Tools with Linguistic Analysis) - Samtla provides a language-agnostic search facility through statistical language modelling, and document comparison tools to identify both local and global patterns of language use and change over time. video of the presentation.
PhD studentship for 2013/14
Posted: 19-Mar-2013 16:46
The Department is inviting applications for a three year PhD studentship commencing in the 2013/14 academic year further details.
Andrea Calì gives keynote speech at LWDM 2013
Posted: 12-Mar-2013 16:17
On March 22nd 2013 Dr Andrea Calì will give the keynote speech at the 3rd International Workshop on Linked Web Data Management. Andrea's presentation is "New tools for ontology querying on Linked Open Data". LWDM 2013.
New Programme in Cloud and Data Technologies
Posted: 21-Feb-2013 09:50
Applications are now being accepted for October 2013 entry to a new programme in Cloud and Data Technologies. This postgraduate programme of study focuses on an area of growing importance in the IT industry which underpins the efforts to develop solutions to the problems of handling "big data". The programme may be followed by 1 year or 2 years of part-time study - programme web page.
Birkbeck participates in iTalk2Learn project
Posted: 21-Feb-2013 09:30
This project is funded under the EU Framework Project 7 and involves four universities and three companies from four european countries. The project tries to find a better way of using technology to improve the way young students (5-11yrs) learn mathematics. further details.
Where do you keep your Booth multipliers?
Posted: 27-June-2012 13:37
Dr. Roger Johnson, Emeritus Reader and Fellow of the college, gave a talk on Monday 26th June as part of Business Week, entitled: Where do you keep your Booth multipliers? The story of Birkbeck’s Computer Science Department. (The slides of the presentation can be viewed here.)
Sergio Gutiérrez-Santos - Alumni of Excellence Award
Posted: 18-June-2012 10:56
Dr. Sergio Gutiérrez-Santos has received an Alumni of Excellence Award from his alma mater, University Carlos III of Madrid. This recognition is awarded to the recent alumnus with the most remarkable professional development as selected by a reviewing board with members of the most recognised Spanish universities and companies; and is announced in a ceremony chaired by the President of Madrid, Dame Esperanza Aguirre, DBE. The board praised Dr. Gutiérrez-Santos' excellent and interdisciplinary research career, that includes positions in industry (Nokia, Intel) and in academia (UC3M, BBK). Original (in Spanish).
Lecturer A/B in Computer Science
Posted: 30-May-2012 10:23
The Department of Computer Science and Information Systems is seeking to appoint a Lecturer A/B in Computer Science. It is a full time, permanent position. further details.
Teaching Assistant
Posted: 29-May-2012 16:06
We have a vacancy for a Teaching Assistant combined with registration as a research student within the Department. further details.
New programme - BSc in Computing
Posted: 16-March-2012 16:22
A new four year part time programme, BSc in Computing is now accepting applications for October 2012 entry. The programme includes topics on java programming, web authoring, cloud computing, computer networking and information security. Applicants with a Foundation Degree in Information Technology or an equivalent qualification may enter year 3 and graduate in two years of part time study. further details.
New programme in Advanced Computing Technologies
Posted: 15-March-2012 12:22
Applications are now being accepted for a new programme in Advanced Computing Technologies with flexible pathways leading to qualifications of Postgraduate Certificate, Postgraduate Diploma and MSc Advanced Computing Technologies, as well as MSc Information and Web Technologies and MSc Intelligent Technologies - further details.
Dr Dell Zhang wins prize for innovative algirithm
Posted: 05-Jan-2012 11:40
Dr Dell Zhang recently won a prize of US$1,000 for the 2nd best valid algorithm contributed to the Wikipedia Participation Challenge organised by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), Kaggle and IEEE ICDM-2011. Dell's solution aims to predict the number of future edits a Wikipedia editor will make, and therefore obtain insights about the sustainable growth of Wikipedia. Using only 21 behavioural dynamics features, he achieved 41.7% improvement over WMF's in-house predictive model, and stood out from 193 scientists around the world who took part in this data mining competition. WMF is now implementing his algorithm permanently and looks forward to using it in the production environment.
Alan Turing and His Contemporaries: Building the World's First Computers
Posted: 10-Oct-2011 11:10
A new book, co-authored by Dr Roger Johnson. One of the book's eight chapters is devoted to Andrew Booth's work at Birkbeck. The Amazon Product Description: "Secret wartime projects in code-breaking, radar and ballistics produced a wealth of ideas and technologies that kick-started the development of digital computers. This is the story of the people and projects that flourished in the post-war period. By 1955 computers had begun to appear in the market-place. The Information Age was dawning and Alan Turing and his contemporaries held centre stage. Their influence is still discernable deep down within today's hardware and software."
Migen paper in IEEE Transactions in Learning Technologies
Posted: 07-Oct-2011 13:10
A paper entitled "Design of Teacher Assistance Tools in an Exploratory Learning Environment for Algebraic Generalisation" by Sergio Gutierrez-Santos, Eirini Geraniou, Darren Pearce-Lazard and Alex Poulovassilis has been accepted to appear in IEEE Transactions in Learning Technologies, in a selected set of best papers from the ECTEL'10 conference. The paper describes ground-breaking work undertaken as part of the ESRC/EPSRC MiGen project on developing intelligent tools that support teachers in monitoring students' progress as they are engaged in exploratory learning tasks.
Joint paper with researchers from the Clatterbridge Centre of Oncology and the University of Sheffield.
Posted: 03-Oct-2011 18:10
Brian Gannon, Visiting Research Fellow in the department, recently published a paper jointly with researchers from the Clatterbridge Centre of Oncology (a leading tertiary care hospital in the North West) and the University of Sheffield. It was presented at the 15th International Symposium on Health Information Management Research (ISHIMR 2011) in Zurich in September 2011. The title of the paper was "An analysis of electronic document management in oncology care".
New book on Technologies for Lifelong Learning
Posted: 20-Jun-2011 09:10
George Magoulas is the editor of "E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning: Next Generation Environments". The book brings together contributions about the development of infrastructures for lifelong learning and shows examples of technologies integration in lifelong learning and e-learning practices. It provides an overview of the state-of-the-art covering theoretical approaches, models, architectures, systems, and applications in real world settings, and could be used as a one-stop reference for those working in the area of lifelong learning technologies. For further information visit the IGI Global website.
IJCAI-11 Distinguished Paper
Posted: 14-Jun-2011 14:10
The paper "On the Decidability of Connectedness Constraints in 2D and 3D Euclidean Spaces" by R. Kontchakov, Y. Nenov, I. Pratt-Hartmann and M. Zakharyaschev has been selected as one of three IJCAI-11 Distinguished Papers out of more than 1400 submissions. The award will be presented at the forthcoming IJCAI conference in Barcelona. IJCAI (International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence) is the leading conference in AI, making this a highly prestigious award.
Geoff Sharman - BCS Advanced Programming SG Talk
Posted: 25-May-2011 11:56
Dr Geoff Sharman, Visiting Professor in Computer Science, gave a talk to the BCS Advanced Programming Specialist Group on 12th May. It's documented at here
MSc Creative Industries (Computing) launched
Posted: 31-Mar-2011 11:55
Applications for the new MSc in Creative Industries (Computing) are now being accepted. further details on MSc CIC
ExODA Project funded by EPSRC
Posted: 21-Feb-2011 14:35
Michael Zakharyaschev was awarded £271,714 for his project ExODA: Integrating Description Logics and Database Technologies for Expressive Ontology-Based Data Access. The project is in collaboration with the Oxford Computing Laboratory.
MSc Business Technologies launched
Posted: 21-Feb-2011 14:35
Applications for the new MSc in Business Technologies are now being accepted. further details on MSc BT
Invited Lectures
Posted: 2-Feb-2011 14:35
Michael Zakharyaschev will give invited lectures at WoLLIC 2011 and WoMO 2011.
Best PhD student paper
Posted: 22-Oct-2010 14:35
The paper "Adaptive Modelling of Users' Strategies in Exploratory Learning Using Case-Based Reasoning" by M. Cocea, S. Gutierrez-Santos and G.D. Magoulas, which describes work done in the context of MiGen project, won the best PhD student paper award at the 14th International Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information & Engineering Systems (KES 2010), Cardiff, Wales, UK, 8-10 September 2010.
Foundation Degree in Information Technology
Posted: 22-Oct-2010 14:35
We are pleased to have concluded progression agreements with three colleges of further education in London: Tower Hamlets, Southwark and North East London. These agreements provide guaranteed places on the Foundation Degree in IT, the Foundation Degree in Web Technologies or the BSc in Information Systems and Management for access course students who have achieved a pass level mark or higher.
Foundation Degree in Web Technologies
Posted: 22-Oct-2010 14:35
The Foundation Degree in Web Technologies welcomed its first cohort of forty students for the October start. It was pleasing to see several students that had completed the Certificate in Continuing Education taking advantage of the opportunity of direct entry into year two of the Degree.
Post-doctoral Research Assistants
Posted: 05-Oct-2010 09:35
The Department is seeking to appoint 2 post-doctoral researchers on an interdisciplinary project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council titled @quot;Weaving Communities of Practice: Textiles, Culture and Identity in the Andes: a semiotic and ontological approach@quot;. Further details of Post 10453 and Post 10456.
Andrew Booth, Computer Scientist, 1918 - 2009
Posted: 05-Mar-2010 15:35
Andrew Booth, who founded computer science at Birkbeck in 1957, died on 29th November 2009, age 91. His obituary [PDF] was published in the Times in Jan 2010 and an audio obituary [MP3] featuring Dr Roger Johnson was broadcast on BBC radio.
ERCIM SERENE 2010 Spring School and Workshop on Software Engineering for Resilient Systems
Posted: 05-Mar-2010 15:35
The Department of is hosting the ERCIM SERENE 2010 Spring School and Workshop on Software Engineering for Resilient Systems from April 13th-16th. Location and preliminary program can be found here
Geoff Sharman, Computer Conservation Society talk on CICS
Posted: 05-Mar-2010 15:35
On April 15th Geoff Sharman will be giving a talk to Computer Conservation Society on CICS. All welcome. more information...
New labs in main building
Posted: 12-Feb-2010 10:05
During the Summer (2010) we are relocating our teaching labs to the 4th floor of the Birkbeck main building. The newly refurbished rooms will accommodate 75 new and 50 existing computer science lab computers running multiple operating systems. They are also available for HTC research using our Condor pool implementation. When fully equipped the labs will look like this. The existing labs will remain open until they are ready.
Course at ESSLLI 2010
Posted: 18-Jan-2010 10:45
Michael Zakharyaschev and Diego Calvanese (Free University of Bozen- Bolzano, Italy) will give a course "Answering Queries in Description Logics: Theory and Applications to Data Management" at the annual European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI 2010).
Steve Maybank in China
Posted: 18-Jan-2010 10:44
On Friday 18th December Steve Maybank gave a talk at the Department of Computer and Information Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnic University, Xian, China. On Monday 14 Dec Steve spoke at at the National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition, Beijing, China.
Roger Johnson receives CEPIS Distinguished Service Award
Posted: 04-Dec-2009 12:35
On 24th November 2009, in Brussels, Roger Johnson was presented with the CEPIS Distinguished Service Award by Byron Nicolaides, CEPIS Vice President in recognition of his work for CEPIS the Council of European Professional Informatics Societies. Photograph.
AHRC-funded project: Weaving Communities of Practice
Posted: 15-Oct-2009 7:10
An AHRC-funded project entitled "Weaving Communities of Practice" has started involving Sven Helmer and partners at ILCA in Bolivia and CILAVS at Birkbeck. The goal of the project is to develop a knowledge base to store 3D Andean weaving textile patterns together with rich cultural and historic context information. This will allow researchers to access information more quickly, as material for study is currently only available in a piecemeal fashion and without contextual information. More details...
Appointment to Editorial Board
Posted: 09-Oct-2009 4:10
George Magoulas has been appointed to the Editorial Board of the journal Evolving Systems: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Advanced Science and Technology, Springer.
Best paper winners at GECCO-2009
Posted: 09-Oct-2009 4:10
Tony Lewis and George Magoulas's paper entitled "Strategies to Minimise the Total Run Time of Cyclic Graph Based Genetic Programming with GPUs" was a best paper winner at The ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2009), Montreal, Canada.
SIKTN 2009 wireless sensing winners
Posted: 14-July-2009 9:10
Michael Zoumboulakis and George Roussos have won the Best Demonstrator, R&D Systems at the 2009 Wireless Sensing Showcase organised by the Sensors and Instrumentation Knowledge Transfer Network (SIKTN). The award was given for their novel approach to in-network data analysis for Intel’s battery-free Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform (WISP) platform. More details...
PRINCE2 Course, Foundation and Practitioner Certificates
Posted: 24-June-2009 10:10
Birkbeck in collaboration with ILX Group is offering students and alumni a course in "Project Management with PRINCE2" with the option to take the PRINCE2 Foundation and PRINCE2 Practitioner Certificates with ILX. Courses start monthly. More details...
Invited lecture at TIME 2009
Posted: 24-June-2009 10:10
Prof M Zakharyaschev will give an invited talk at the 16th International Symposium on Temporal Representation and Reasoning (TIME-2009)
Prof Mirkin joins Experts Advisory Group
Posted: 03-June-2009 11:10
Boris Mirkin has joined the Expert Advisory Group for the project "Care Pathways and Packages" involving six Mental Health Trusts in the North of England and led by Carole Green and Anne Rigby of Fieldhead Hospital in Wakefield. The project involves using crisp and fuzzy clustering for develping a system embracing all stages of the care from diagnosis to treatment, services and payment schemes.
Boris Mirkin appointed Associate Editor
Posted: 03-June-2009 11:10
Boris Mirkin has been appointed as Associate Editor for the new Wiley e-Journal Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery published by Wiley-Blackwell.
Complex Networks in Information & Knowledge Management (CNIKM)
Posted: 08-May-2009 17:10
Dell Zhang, Jun Wang (UCL) and Shi Zhou (UCL) are organising an ACM CIKM-2009 workshop on Complex Networks in Information & Knowledge Management (CNIKM).
Professor Boris Mirkin joins NSF panel
Posted: 03-June-2009 11:10
Boris Mirkin has been invited to be on the panel for evaluation of projects submitted to the CDI Programme of National Science Foundation (NSF) USA; The panel's first meeting was in February 2009 - Boris was the only overseas academic among the 13 panelists. NSF Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI).
Game playing styles
Posted: 08-May-2009 12:34
Research carried out by Prof. Mark Levene and Dr. Trevor Fenner on A Methodology for Learning Players' Styles from Game Records recently featured in Wired and Technology Review.
The research was focused on a preliminary investigation into learning a Chess player's style from game records. The method used attempts to learn features that make up a player's evaluation function using the method of temporal differences, with the aid of a conventional Chess engine architecture. Some encouraging results were obtained in learning the styles of two recent Chess world champions, and an attempt to use the learnt styles to discriminate between the players from game records by trying to detect who was playing white and who was playing black was carried out. The method used may also be applicable to other strategic games, and may even be generalisable to other domains where sequences of agents' actions are recorded.
Intel Research WISP challenge award
Posted: 28-Apr-2009 17:34
George Roussos and the DeTaLe project team have won an Intel Research WISP challenge award to investigate the suitability of the platform for tangible interfaces. WISP = Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform. WISPs have the capabilities of RFID tags, but also support sensing and computing. Like any passive RFID tag, they are powered and read by a standard off-the-shelf RFID reader, harvesting the power it uses from the reader's emitted radio signals and thus requiring no battery.
Computer spellchecking for dyslexics
Posted: 02-Apr-2009 8:04
Jenny Pedler, whose research area is computer spellchecking for dyslexics, has recently been interviewed by Michael Rosen for a forthcoming edition of BBC Radio 4 Word of Mouth series. The programme will be broadcast on Tue 7 April 4-4.30pm and repeated on Mon 13 April at 11pm. Details of the programme can be found here.
Bringing Programming Languages up to Date
Posted: 18-Feb-2009 9:04
John Florentin, Professor Emeritus, and Geoff Sharman, Visiting Professor, in the Department will present a seminar entitled "Bringing Programming Languages up to Date" to the BCS Advanced Programming Specialist Group meeting at 6pm on Thursday 12th March.
Venue: BCS HQ, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2 7HA. The nearest underground stations are Covent Garden and Charing Cross. Further details
Web mining series
Posted: 18-Feb-2009 8:58
Professors Mark Levene and George Magoulas have been appointed as consulting editors for a forthcoming series on Web Data mining.
Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems Conference
Posted: 18-Feb-2009 8:50
Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo has been awarded a Conference Grant of £660 by the Royal Society for her paper "Designing Self-Organization for Evolvable Assembly Systems" presented at the IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems (SASO08) in Venice, October 2008.
Weather Disruption: College Closing Early, Evening Teaching Cancelled - Feb 2nd 2009
Posted: 02-Feb-2009 11:50
A message from the College Secretary - Given the impact of the severe weather conditions teaching this evening is being cancelled. There is an obvious concern, given the current transport situation and the forecast of worse weather, for students and staff being in central London later this evening. The intention is to close College buildings at 5pm this evening. NB in addition the Week II of Maintaining Personal Web Pages Course has been re-scheduled - see below
Weather - Mon 2nd Feb 2009
Posted: 02-Feb-2009 8:25
The Bloomsbury Postgraduate Skills Network: Week II of Maintaining Personal Web Pages Course has been moved to Monday Feb. 9th, 15:30- 17:30 to be held in lab 131 (same place as Week I).
RAE 2008 outcome
Posted: 18-Dec-2008
Almost all of the department's research has been judged as being of international significance, with 15% being world-leading, 50% internationally excellent, and 30% internationally recognised. RAE 2008 Computer Science and Informatics Quality Profiles
Associate Editor of Artificial Intelligence Journal
Posted: 18-Dec-2008
Prof M Zakharyaschev has been appointed as Associate Editor of Artificial Intelligence Journal, Elsevier effective January 1, 2009.
PerAda Research Exchange Program Award
Posted: 18-Dec-2008
Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo has been awarded €1950 by the EU funded PerAda Research Exchange program, which funds interdisciplinary research exchanges. This grant will support travel exchange with the New University of Lisbon, Portugal for the period between January and June 2009. This exchange aims at developing a prototype of self-organizing industrial assembly system.
Koenderink Prize
Posted: 24-Oct-2008
Steve Maybank has been awarded the Koenderink Prize by the European Conference on Computer Vision, 2008. The prize is awarded for papers in previous ECCV conferences that have withstood the test of time. Steve's paper on camera calibration was published in 1992. The coauthors, Olivier Faugeras and Quang-Tuan Luong shared the Koenderink Prize.
Best Student Paper Award
Posted: 24-Oct-2008
Zack Voulgaris and George Magoulas's paper A discernibility-based approach to feature selection for microarray data was judged the best student paper at IEEE International Conference of Intelligent Systems at Varna in Bulgaria in September 2008.
The 2008 Ray Reiter Best Paper Prize
Posted: 26-Sept-2008
The Ray Reiter Best Paper Prize of the Eleventh International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (Sydney, Australia, September 16-19, 2008) was awarded to the paper:
Can you tell the difference between DL-Lite ontologies?
by Roman Kontchakov, Frank Wolter and Michael Zakharyaschev.
ESRC/EPSRC £1M+ Technology Enhanced Learning
Posted: 17-June-2008
The London Knowledge Lab has won a second ESRC/EPSRC award in Technology Enhanced Learning. LKL Prof Diana Laurillard is leading an interdisciplinary team of researchers, including George Magoulas as the Birkbeck PI. This £1M+ grant aims to develop an interactive environment - a Learning Design Support Environment (LDSE) - to enable teachers to lead the discovery of innovative pedagogical designs that exploit the potential of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) and better integrate TEL in the mainstream provision, processes and practice of educational institutions. The LDSE will provide a space where teachers can explore, model and share ways of normalising their uses of technology, and build on each others work. The LDSE promotes a view of teaching that is closer to a science of learning design and is both a personal, reflective journey, and also a social, collaborative activity.
SUTC-08
Posted: 17-June-2008
Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo co-chaired the IEEE International Conference on Sensor Networks, Ubiquitous and Trustworthy Computing (SUTC-08) (http://sutc2008.csie.ncu.edu.tw/), in Taichung, Taiwan, 11-13 June 2008.
50 Years of Computing at Birkbeck
Posted: 25-Feb-2008
The Department is holding a celebration of its 50th anniversary on Wednesday May 21st 2008. All staff and students are warmly invited to join us. Please register your intension to participate by filling in the form at the bottom of: 50 Years of Computing at Birkbeck.
EPSRC funded project: Reliable XML Messaging
Posted: 18-Feb-2008
An EPSRC funded project entitled "Reliable XML Message Management for Web Services" started on February 1st with the appointment of Tadeusz Litak as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant. The project's director Sven Helmer says that the goal on the project is to "provide a robust asynchronous message-based communication framework for web service applications that handles XML data in a reliable and efficient manner" Further information...
Visit to Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Posted: 18-Feb-2008
Steve Maybank has been an invited to visit Hong Kong Polytechnic University for three weeks in July 2008 with an honorarium of 70,000 HKD (approx 4600 ukp).
Congratulations on PhD success
Posted: 10-Dec-2007
Congratulations to David Hardcastle who has been awarded a PhD. His thesis was entitled Riddle posed by computer (6) : The Computer Generation of Cryptic Crossword Clues
Welcome
Posted: 18-Oct-2007
Welcome back to students returning to their studies in the department and a warm welcome to all new students and staff. We have been busily recruiting in the past few months: Nicolas van Labeke joined the MyPlan project in April, the Migen team is nearing full strength with two new RAs, Darren Pearce and Sergio Gutierrez and we are pleased to welcome Eli Katsiri (Lecturer), Jianing Wang (Teaching Assistant/PhD) and PhD students Tony Lewis, Michaela Cocea, Martin O'Shea and Renato Amorim. Further details are on the staff pages and the research student pages.
Congratulations on PhD success
Posted: 18-Oct-2007
Congratulations to the following students who have been awarded a PhD this year:
Jennifer Pedler, Computer Correction of Real-word Spelling Errors in Dyslexic Text
George Papamarkos, Event-Condition-Action Rule Languages over Semistructured Data
Dacheng Tao, Discriminative Linear and Multilinear Subspace Methods
Hideyuki Matsumoto, Cross-Cultural Comparison of Global Strategic Information Systems Management in the Multinational Investment Banking Industry
Full time Post-doctoral Researcher
Posted: 1-Aug-2007
The Department of Computer Science and Information Systems is seeking a post-doctoral researcher on a project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council titled "Reliable XML Message Management for Web Services". The post is for a fixed-term of two and a half years in the salary range: £30,977 per annum rising to £35,484 per annum inclusive of London Allowance. The closing date for applications is Tuesday 14 August 2007 at 12.00 noon. further details...
LKL Knowledge Briefing
Posted: 27-July-2007
The London Knowledge Lab, a unique collaboration between two of the UK's most prominent centres of world-class research - Birkbeck and the Institute of Education has released the first edition of Knowledge Briefing [PDF].
Two PhD studentships available
Posted: 08-May-2007
The Department of Computer Science and Information Systems is offering two PhD research studentships commencing on or before 1 October 2007. These will provide funding for up to three years covering tuition fees (one at the international rate, one at the UK/EU rate) and an annual stipend of at least £12,600. The closing date for applications is 30 June 2007.
£1M+ Technology Enhanced Learning award for LKL
Posted: 18-Apr-2007
The London Knowledge Lab has won a hotly-contested ESRC/EPSRC award in Technology Enhanced Learning. LKL co-director, Richard Noss, is leading an interdisciplinary team of researchers based at the LKL, including Alex Poulovassilis and George Magoulas as the Birkbeck co-PIs. This £1M+ grant aims to co-design, build and evaluate, with teachers and teacher educators, a pedagogical and technical environment for improving 11-14 year-old students' learning of mathematical generalisation. We will be recruiting 4 Postdoctoral Researchers for this project, which will start in October 2008 - the adverts are expected to appear on jobs.ac.uk in May 2007.
EPSRC award for research in the Computational Logic of Euclidean Spaces
Posted: 18-Apr-2007
Professor Michael Zakharyaschev has been awarded £242,579 by the EPSRC to study Computational Logic of Euclidean Spaces. The research project partner is Universiteit Hasselt, Belgium. The project runs from April 2007 to March 2010. Full details...
New staff and leavers
Posted: 18-Apr-2007
Welcome to Dr Nicolas van Labeke who recently joined the Department as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant. Nicolas will be working on the JISC-funded project "MyPlan - Personal Planning for Learning throughout Life" and is based at the London Knowledge Lab.
It is time to say farewell to two staff who will soon be leaving the Department. Sara de Freitas and Niki Trigoni are leaving at the end of April. We wish them every success in their future careers.
New book by Mark Levene and Kevin Keenoy
Posted: 18-Apr-2007
Professor Mark Levene and Kevin Keenoy are contributing co-editors of a new book entitled "TRAILS IN EDUCATION Technologies that Support Navigational Learning". The book is about sequences of learning objects ordered according to time or according to the demands of given learning materials. As users navigate through a learning environment, they follow prescribed trails and create personal trails through their interactions. The book is available as an e-book and in paperback.
Information Technology for Finance
Posted: 30-Mar-2007
In Autumn 2007, Birkbeck will launch a new Graduate Diploma in IT for Finance. The programme is aimed at students and professionals wishing to progress their careers in the finance sector.
The programme features new modules on C++ programming including Monte Carlo simulations and Mathematics for Finance. Teaching will be delivered by academic staff from the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems and the Department of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics. It will be available on a part-time or full-time basis. Further details...
UEC International e-Learning Forum 2007, Japan
Posted: 30-Mar-2007
George Magoulas gave an invited talk on lifelong learning e-infrastructures at the UEC International e-Learning Forum 2007, Tokyo, Japan, on the 2nd of March 2007.
PhD studentship available
Posted: 29-Mar-2007
The Department of Computer Science and Information Systems is offering a PhD research studentship commencing on or before 1 October 2007. This will provide funding for up to three years covering tuition fees (UK/EU rate) and an annual stipend of at least £12,600.
Learning in Immersive Worlds: a review of game-based learning
Posted: 21-Feb-2007
A newly-published, JISC-commissioned report by Sara de Freitas finds that computer games could have an important role to play in learning Learning in Immersive Worlds: a review of game-based learning
2006 Handheld Learning Conference
Posted: 20-Dec-2006
Sarah de Freitas gave a presentation on "Sustaining personalised mobile learning innovation" at the 2006 Handheld Learning Conference in London.
EUMAS'06
Posted: 19-Dec-2006
Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo gave an invited presentation at the European Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems (EUMAS'06) at Lisbon on the 14th of December. The topic of the talk was a service-oriented architecture for specification-carrying code.
New Staff
Posted: 18-Dec-2006
We would all like to welcome Gordon McIntyre who joins the department in January 2007 as a Programme Manager on the Foundation Degree in IT. Gordon joins us from the Centre for Distance Education of the University of London where he has been involved in e-learning course design and development for the University of London External Programme.
House of Commons date for Birkbeck PhD student
Posted: 18-Dec-2006
Robert Stanforth was successful in winning a place at the SET for Britain competition held at the House of Commons on 12th December. SET† for Britain aims to encourage, support and promote Britain's early-stage research scientists, engineers and technologists. Robert presented a poster on Measuring distance to dataset based on k_means clustering. He is studying for a PhD in the department under the supervision of Prof. Boris Mirkin and Dr. E. Kolossov of IDBS.
†SET = Scientists, Engineers and Technologists
JISC awards £200,000 for MyPlan research project
Posted: 14-Dec-2006
Alex Poulovassilis, George Magoulas (co-PIs), Diana Laurillard, Sara de Freitas, Martin Oliver and Ian Harrison have been awarded £200,000 from JISC for a project entitled "MyPlan - Personal Planning for Learning throughout Life", which will develop, deploy and evaluate new techniques and tools that allow personalised planning of lifelong learning. The project which started in September 2006 will continue until November 2008.
BCS accreditation and exemption confirmed
Posted: 27-Nov-2006
The Department has been notified by the British Computer Society (BCS) that students passing the courses below can gain exemption from the BCS Professional Examinations thereby providing a route to BCS Membership. Additionally, as a Nominated Body of the Engineering Council UK and the Science Council BCS has accredited these courses at Chartered or Incorporated Engineer and Chartered Scientist level.
The courses are: BSc Information Systems and Management, MSc Computer Science, MSc Advanced Information Systems, MSc Web Information Management. Students must pass the project at the first attempt to gain exemption.
When the BCS visited us the BSc Information Systems and Computing and the MSc Intelligent Information Systems were just starting so it was too early to apply for exemption for these courses.
Outstanding Paper Award
Posted: 18-Oct-2006
Dionisios Dimakopoulos and George Magoulas won an outstanding paper award at the 4th IADIS International Conference on WWW/Internet 2006, which was held at Murcia, Spain, 5-8 October 2006. The award is based on the blind review of their written paper, entitled "A personalised mobile environment for lifelong learners", and the oral presentation by Dionisios who attended the conference.
Betty Walters
Posted: 17-Oct-2006
Betty Walters retired in October 2006 after a many years of invaluable service. We would all like to thank Betty for the work she has done for Computer Science at Birkbeck and wish her the very best of luck in her retirement. (Watch this space for photos of Betty's leaving party). A warm welcome to Jane Lucas who has joined us as the new Department Manager.
Transactions in Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (TAAS)
Posted: 16-Oct-2006
Dr Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of the new ACM Transactions in Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (TAAS). The first issue of ACM TAAS appeared in September 2006. ACM TAAS is a venue for high quality research contributions addressing different aspects of computing systems exhibiting autonomous and adaptive behaviour.
Brendan Murphy prize
Posted: 17-Jul-2006
Ettore Ferranti won the Brendan Murphy prize, sponsored by Intel Research, for giving the best talk at the Multi-Service Networks Workshop 2006. The workshop is in the context of the EPSRC-supported network called 'Next Generation Networking'. Ettore's talk was entitled "Multi-agent exploration of unknown terrains".
DTI collaborative research and development project
Posted: 22-Jun-2006
Dr Sara de Freitas is part of the research and development team that has been awarded £1 million from the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) and a further £1 million from Vega Group PLC and Blitz Games (TruSim) to explore 'Serious Games: Engaging Training Solutions'. The DTI collaborative research and development project will bring industrial and academic partners together to provide frameworks and guidelines for supporting the development of games applications for solving specific business needs.
Dr Sara de Freitas
Posted: 22-Jun-2006
Dr Sara de Freitas has been awarded £50,000 from the University of London's Centre for Distance Education to explore 'Pedagogical Models for Synchronous Audiographic Conferencing'. The research project will commence in November 2006.
Microsoft "DesignIT for a charity" 2006 competition
Posted: 06-Jun-2006
Congratulations to the FdIT workplace projects team who finished runners up in the Microsoft "DesignIT for a charity" 2006 competition. The project was Rural Focus on village communities - Learn 'n' Train Trailer. The team will receive £1000 to spend on software. Further details.
Lifelong Learning for all: e-learning from concept to practice
Posted: 05-Jun-2006
Sara de Freitas chaired the conference Lifelong Learning for all: e-learning from concept to practice held at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, University of London.
Unified WebCT Portal
Posted: 22-May-2006
The Foundation Degree in IT programme is the first programme in Birkbeck to have a unified WebCT portal enabling students to access all their computer science and management modules plus programme information and news from the portal. All FdIT students in 2006-7 will have access to all management and computer science modules within their MyWebCT portal. Electronic submission of coursework is supported but is an option for the lecturer.
Many thanks to the staff who have made the effort to provide this improved learner support. This is a particularly important achievement where modules are team taught and for programmes which run in more than one department.
£17,000 awarded by the European Office of Aerospace Research and Development
Posted: 21-Apr-2006
Niki Trigoni has been awarded £17,000 by the European Office of Aerospace Research and Development for a project entitled "Robust and Real-Time Event Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks"
£30,000 JISC Award
Posted: 21-Apr-2006
JISC has awarded approx £30,000 to George Magoulas, Alex Poulovassilis, Ian Harrison, Dave Wilson, Sara de Freitas and George Papamarkos, to continue our work on the "L4All - Lifelong Learning in London for all" project for a further 7 months.
DTI Grant of £61,947
Posted: 28-Feb-2006
Mark Levene, in collaboration with University College London and other partners, has been awarded a grant from the DTI. The project is entitled "Process Envelopes for Cement-based Stabilisation/Solidification (ProCeSS)". Birkbeck will receive funding of £61,947 for this project.
EU Grant
Posted: 14-Feb-2006, updated 28-Feb-2006.
George Roussos has just been successful in being awarded a grant from the EU in collaboration with an number of European partners. The project is Association Studies assisted by Inference and Semantic Technologies. The Birkbeck part of the grant is about £113,500 and the project will run for two years from 1st January 2006. The project is currently recruiting two Research Assistants.
New Book - Personalizing Learning in the 21st Century
Posted: 2-Feb-2006
Personalizing Learning in the 21st Century (PDF) - a new book edited by Sara de Freitas and Chris Yapp is now available.
EPSRC Grant Awards
Posted: 1-Feb-2006
Congratulations to Michael Zakharyaschev who has been awarded two grants from the EPSRC:
Knowledge Representation and Reasoning about Distances (£134,517)
Dynamic Ontologies: a Framework for Service Descriptions (£94,885)
Roman Kontchakov and Mikhail Sheremet will be the Research Associates working on these projects at Birkbeck from 1st February. A warm welcome to them.
The Ubicomp Google
Posted: 10-Jan-2006
George Roussos, Mark Levene and several collaborators are working on the ubicomp google, a navigation engine for the emerging ubiquitous computing world. Users moving through ubiquitous computing enabled spaces, that is environments constructed by physical objects augmented with computational, sensing, auto-identification and wireless communication capabilities, create trails of information that must be archived, managed and subsequently retrieved. The navigation engine being developed by the Birkbeck team offers such facilities and thus plays a role in the ubicomp world akin to that of Google on the web.
Sensing pollution in London Fields
Posted: 19-Dec-2005
The Department is a partner in the Robotic Feral Public Authoring project funded by the EPSRC Culture & Creativity Programme. George Roussos, Dima Diall and Dimitris Airantzis are working on the project which aims to design and create practical applications from commercially available technologies for social and cultural public benefit such as adapting a remote control toy car into a powerful sensing device for locating and identifying chemical pollution and radiation.
New Book - 'Ubiquitous and Pervasive Commerce' edited by George Roussos
Posted: 18-Dec-2005
Ubiquitous and Pervasive Commerce edited by George Roussos has recently been published by Springer.
New Staff
Posted: 3-Oct-2005
Welcome to all the staff, researchers and students who have joined us at the start of the new academic year. We are please to welcome two new lecturers, Dr Sven Helmer and Dr Giovanna di Marzo Serugendo. A warm welcome to Professor Michael Zakharyaschev who has joined us from King's College. Dr Roman Kontchakov and Dr Mikhail Sheremet will also be joining us as Research Associates working with Prof Zakharyaschev. Two new faces at Emerald Street - Dr Alexandre Guitton (Research Assistant) and Mr Adonis Skordilis (PhD student) will be working with Niki Trigoni on the TIME-EACM project mentioned below. Last but not least, Ming Tso (Mark) Chiang, Chunhua (Jenny) Hu and Zhu Zheng have recently started their PhD studies with us.
BAIT Award (Birkbeck Award In Teaching)
Posted: 28-Sep-2005
Sara de Freitas has won a BAIT Award (Birkbeck Award In Teaching) for her role in developing the PLATO module (Planning Learning And Teaching Online).
New Staff
Posted: 20-Sep-2005
We are please to welcome Dr Dell Zhang who joined the department on 1st September as a Lecturer.
New Book - 'An Introduction to Search Engines and Web Navigation' by Prof Mark Levene
Posted: 19-Aug-2005
A new book by Prof Mark Levene entitled "An Introduction to Search Engines and Web Navigation" has been published by Pearson Education. Full details.
Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Posted: 11-May-2005
Steve Maybank have been appointed a member of the Academic Committee of State Key Laboratory for Image Processing and Intelligent Control, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, with effect form April 2005. A delegation from Huazhong University visited Birkbeck College on 3 May 2005 to present him with a certificate.
eDIPED
Posted: 1-Mar-2005
Ian Harrison is Birkbeck's representative on the eDIPED project which aims to provide a digital appraisal tool for the collection and presentation of portfolio evidence of European educators' competencies.
New Book - 'Clustering for Data Mining - A Data Recovery Approach' by Prof Boris Mirkin
Posted: 19-Feb-2005
A new book by Prof Boris Mirkin entitled "Clustering for Data Mining - A Data Recovery Approach" has been published by Chapman & Hall. Full details are here.
£132,000 award from JISC
Posted: 1-Feb-2005
George Magoulas, Alex Poulovassilis, Sara de Freitas and Ian Harrison have been awarded £132,000 from JISC for a project entitled: L4All: Lifelong learning in London for all as part of the Distributed e-Learning Programme.
£207,830 award from EPSRC
Posted: 1-Feb-2005
Niki Trigoni has been awarded £207,830 from EPSRC for a project entitled: A Transport Information Monitoring Environment (TIME): Event Architecture and Context Management (TIME-EACM)
£3,500 award from the Nuffield Foundation
Posted: 1-Feb-2005
Niki has also been awarded £3,500 from the Nuffield Foundation for a project entitled: Fault-tolerant data management for sensor networks.
