UCC Department of Computer Science RSS Newsfeed

' Barry O'Sullivan to give UCC lecture on teaching computer science to kids '

' Computers are extremely important in modern life. Understanding how they work, how they reason, how they �think�, what are their limitations, is a fascinating subject called computer science. In the next lecture of the Annual College of Science, Engineering and Food Science (SEFS) Public Lecture Series titled: �Teaching the Principles of Computer Science to Primary-Aged Children� on February 1st, Professor Barry O�Sullivan, Computer Science Department, UCC will focus on making the fundamental ideas of computer science accessible to children from the ages of 7-12 and their families. He will present a set of learning activities that teach computer science through engaging games and puzzles that use cards, string, crayons and lots of running around. Professor Barry O�Sullivan is Director of the Cork Constraint Computation Centre in the Computer Science Department at UCC, SFI Principal Investigator, President of the Association for Constraint Programming, Chairman of the Artificial Intelligence Association of Ireland, Coordinator of the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics Working Group on Constraints, and Executive Council member of the Analytics Society of Ireland. The lecture will be delivered on Wednesday, February 1st 2012 at 8pm in Boole IV Lecture Theatre. The lecture series is organised by Emeritus Professor William Reville, Public Awareness of Science Officer, SEFS and will continue until March 14th. Full details of the lectures can be consulted by visiting website http://understandingscience.ucc.ie/Lecture2012.pdf Admission is free, and as always, members of the public are invited to attend. '

' Young Scientist Award for Munster Programming Training Student '

' Some good news from this year's Young Scientist Competition. Abdullah Mohammed of Carrigaline Community School is currently in the MPT Cycle 2 class. He has won the Marie Keating Foundation award and achieved 3rd prize in the Technology senior individual section with a project in Cancer Virology Modelling. Abdullah was featured on RTE http://audioboo.fm/boos/622543-cancer-virotherapy-simulator giving some explanation about the project. He spent one month in the Boole Centre for Research and Informatics (BCRI) last summer working on this project. '

' Munster Programming Training (MPT) course in October a Success '

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' Computer Scientists win Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Award '

' Sean Og Murphy, Ken Brown and Cormac Sreenan of the Department of Computer Science, with collaborators Dennis O'Mahony (Geriatrics), Stephen Byrne (Pharmacy), Cristin Ryan (Pharmacy), and Gerry Moran (CSIS) shared the Enterprise Ireland 2011 Commercialisation Award for Life Sciences at the Big Ideas Technology Showcase in Dublin on 10th October Clinical Support Information Systems Ltd (CSIS) - winner of The Enterprise Ireland Lifescience & Food Commercialisation Award 2011 Clinical Support Information Systems Ltd (CSIS) is a company built around the STOPP-START technology developed at University College Cork by an inter-disciplinary group of clinicians, pharmacists and computer scientists. Gerry Moran, the CEO of CSIS, is working in partnership with the researchers, the UCC Technology Transfer Office and Enterprise Ireland to bring the STOPP-START to market. The research team behind the technology which was developed with commercialisation funding from Enterprise Ireland are: Denis O'Mahony, Stephen Byrne, Sean Og Murphy, Cristin Ryan, Ken Brown and Cormac Sreenan. STOPP/START is designed specifically with the older patient in mind and the particular medication problems encountered in this age group (older people consume about half of all prescription medicines in Ireland and Europe). STOPP/START lists the common instances of potentially inappropriate medicines (STOPP list) and potential prescribing omissions (START list); the presence of STOPP medicines and the absence of START medicines may be highly detrimental to the older patient, in particular the frailer person with multiple chronic disorders. The UCC research team has successfully converted the STOPP/START rules to an electronic prototype which has very significant market potential as a tool for routine assessment of older people’s medication, with a view to optimization of drug therapy and avoidance of preventable side-effects. Drug-related morbidity and mortality are recognized internationally as a highly significant public health problem; STOPP/START provides one possible method for addressing the growing problem of medication-related morbidity and mortality in older people. The total addressable market for the STOPP-START technology is estimated to be �300 million in Europe and up to �1 billion globally. . CSIS is taking this technology to market by collaborating with IT providers in the healthcare sector targeting primary care, pharmacies and hospitals in export markets in the UK, Europe, USA and other jurisdictions. '

' UCC Research Centre 4C Plays Leadership Role in Award-Winning JAVA Specification Request '

' The Java Specification Request JSR 331: Constraint Programming API, has won the 2010 Java Community Process Award for Most Innovative JSR. The Specification Lead of JSR 331, Jacob Feldman, and Expert Group member Helmut Simonis are both on the staff of the Cork Constraint Computation Centre (4C) at UCC. The winners were announced on September 22 at a JCP community event held during the JavaOne 2010 conference: http://www.oracle.com/us/javaonedevelop/index.html. Winners and nominees are included permanently in the JCP program's hall of fame: http://jcp.org/en/press/news/awards/awards_main From www.java.com: "To date, the Java platform has attracted more than 6.5 million software developers. It's used in every major industry segment and has a presence in a wide range of devices, computers, and networks. Java technology's versatility, efficiency, platform portability, and security make it the ideal technology for network computing. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere! Java powers more than 4.5 billion devices including: * 850+ million PCs * 2.1 billion mobile phones and other handheld devices (source: Ovum) * 3.5 billion smart cards * Set-top boxes, printers, Web cams, games, car navigation systems, lottery terminals, medical devices, parking payment stations, and more." From www.4c.ucc.ie: "Difficult problems can offer too many choices, many of which are incompatible, few of which are optimal. The Cork Constraint Computation Centre develops the basic science that will make it easier for computers to help us make these choices. We work with Irish and multinational industry to put our technology to practical use." '

' Cork Constraint Computation Centre (4C), EU FP7 project, FlexWood '

' The Cork Constraint Computation Centre (4C), Department of Computer Science, University College Cork, will be working with thirteen other partners across Europe on a two and a half year EU FP7 project, FlexWood, to enable better use of timber resources. The project aims to determine the optimal ways of cutting a forest and distributing its products effectively, and in particular to reduce wastage, which is currently estimated at 700M� annually across Europe. Crucial to this research is the technology provided by a local Irish partner TreeMetrics to scan standing trees for their shape. The FlexWood research group at 4C is headed by Dr James Little. The overall FlexWood lead is Professor Barbara Koch of the University of Freiburg, Institute for Forest Economy, Department of Remote Sensing & Land Information Systems. The project brings together European Forestry Researchers from the disciplines of Forest Inventory, Terrestrial & Airborne Measurement, Quality Measurement, Harvesting, Timber Logistics, Industrial Requirements, Timber Processing and Advanced Decision-support Systems. The focus is to deliver a new generation of software tools designed to match the forest with industry demands through innovative models and algorithms in harvesting simulation and distribution. This software will be delivered through Web2.0 based portals allowing freer interaction and discussion between buyers and sellers based on informed decision-support from the FlexWood system For further information contact: Dr James Little, j.little@4c.ucc.ie, 021 420 5957. '

' Choose Computer Science and learn that IT's happening here! '

' Watch this video and learn about the number of IT opportunities available to graduates in Ireland: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zHNJpb3o7w '

' Computer Science Department UCC hosts HEA IT Summer Camp! '

' From 13th - 17th June 2011 an interactive IT summer camp for 14 - 16 year olds was held in the state-of-the-art IT facilities at the Western Gateway Building in UCC. This initiative was sponsored by the Higher Education Authority as part of a scheme to attract more students into Information Technology courses at third level. The aim of the camp was for students to have fun while learning new and exciting IT skills. Participants in the course gained many skills during a highly enjoyable and informative week, such as web technologies, robotics, multimedia, games, virtual reality and cartoon design. These areas are fun to work with and most young teenagers can easily relate to them. One of the course objectives is to exhibit many aspects of modern living that have a large computer science background. The Summer Camp also serves the purpose of enabling kids who might have thought of themselves as non-technical to expand their horizons and discover interesting and fun ways to use and design for computers. The coordinator of the Summer Camp described the huge public demand for it, saying: "We advertised the course (on the Examiner) on Friday 13th May with a prospective intake of 20 students. The minute the paper hit the streets, the advertisement generated a huge response and demand was such that, even after increasing our intake to 30 students, the course was heavily over-subscribed by the following Tuesday." The Summer Camp finished on 17th June and the 30 kids enjoyed themselves thoroughly. The teenagers learnt how to design interactive web pages, build programmable robots, set up their own blogs, design cartoons, 3d games, and build multimedia websites. Cian Holland (14) from Turner's Cross said: "The week was a very educational experience. There was obviously a lot of hard work put into the Summer Camp and it has definitely paid off. The subjects were varied - each very enjoyable in its own right. Everyone got a great kick out of building the Lego robots. I wouldn't change a thing about this course. It's ideal - exactly what I was hoping for and more than I expected. This has been a wonderful experience and most of the things I learned will be put to good use." Helen Moriarty (15) from Bandon added: "The course is great fun, as you get to know lots of people. The robots were cool. My favourite topics are blogging and web design. I didn't realise how easy and how much fun it was to do. I'm really enjoying the week". '

' ASIST European Workshop (AEW) 2011 '

' ASIST European Workshop (AEW) 2011 Twenty eight delegates attended the ASIST European Workshop (AEW) 2011 which took place in the Western Gateway Building, UCC on Wednesday and Thursday, 1st and 2nd, June, 2011. The workshop, in the field of information science and digital libraries, was sponsored by and organized under the auspice of the European Chapter of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST). ASIS&T is the leading professional society for information science founded in 1937. The 2011 ASIST European Chapter Meeting was also held in Cork. The workshop - chaired by Cathal Hoare and Adrian O�Riordan, Computer Science, UCC - consisted of paper presentations by researchers and PhD students, a panel discussion, an industry session, and an interactive session on library digitisation. There was an award, sponsored by EMC2, for the best paper presentation by a doctoral student. The keynote talk �Visioning Studies: Exploring the Potential of Future Technologies� was given by Prof. Diane Sonnenwald, Professor of Library & Info Studies, UCD, and President-elect of ASIST. Plans are already afoot to hold the 2nd ASIST European Workshop in Sweden in 2013 and the 3rd in Croatia in 2015. '

' UCC Installs Dell High Performance Computing Cluster Solution '

' University College Cork has purchased a High Performance Computing Cluster solution (HPCC) from Dell. The UCC solution, which was manufactured at Dell's European Manufacturing Facility in Limerick, consists of 50 Dell PowerEdge 1655MC modular servers, each with two processors and 1GB RAM, in nine chassis and one 42U rack. The system will be used in the Boole Centre for Research in Informatics, a new centre funded by the Higher Education Authority involving the School of Mathematical Sciences and the Department of Computer Science. The cluster will be used by researchers and will also be connected to Grid-Ireland. Dr John Morrison, Department of Computer Science, University College Cork, commented, "This solution has enabled us to enter the realms of high performance computing in terms of processing power at a fraction of the cost. Ultimately this will enable research to take place at UCC, which might not otherwise have happened". Press Coverage: ITWeb: Growing demand among HPCC customers for Dell in Europe: 24 February, 2003 InfoWorld: Dell signs European cluster customers: March 11, 2003: by Nancy Weil Nashville Business Journal: Dell broadens European presence: March 11, 2003 CNET News.com: IBM nabs hot supercomputer deal in Arctic: March 12, 2003: by Stephen Shankland '

' Ang Gao has been awarded the IBM Extreme Blue premier internship award '

' Ang Gao has been awarded the prestigious IBM Extreme Blue premier internship award. Ang joined UCC as one of Computer Science's Chinese third year students from Beijing Technology and Business University and is currently a PhD graduate student at UCC's Centre for Efficiency Oriented Languages (CEOL) in the department of Computer Science. Ang's prior awards include: Winner of IBM Open Source Software Competition, 2009 Finalists Accenture Innovation Award 2009 and the Motorola Scholarship in Computer Science 2008. Ang currently works under guidance of professor Michel Schellekens and will join IBM in Cork on the 20th of June 2011. The internship will involve a stay at IBM in Brussels for the team competitions. The internship runs until 16th September 2011. The Extreme Blue� program is IBM's premier internship program for top-notch students pursuing software development and MBA degrees. Once selected into the program, interns become part of a team working in one of the 15 Extreme Blue labs worldwide. Their team's challenge is to develop the technology and business plan for a new product or service that addresses an existing market challenge. Through the program, interns have submitted more than 400 patent disclosures and have made more than sixty open source contributions to the open source community. They helped create solutions for key clients and bring-to-market the next generation of IBM products. Not bad for just 12 weeks of work. The Extreme Blue teams work on leading technology that helps grow skills and evolves participants into more attractive candidates in the technology field. Interns in this high-performance environment get to roll up their sleeves and work with "hot" technologies such as Cloud Computing, Web 2.0, and petabyte-scale data analysis. http://www-01.ibm.com/employment/us/extremeblue/ '

' CEOL Researchers shortlisted for US PhD Forum '

' http://www.ucc.ie/en/news/fullstory-124110-en.html '

' Munster Programming Training (MPT) Summer Camp 2011 '

' Munster Programming Training (MPT) Summer Camp 2011 7th-11th June 2011. Participants must have already completed an MPT one year training course, to be eligible to attend. See http://multimedia.ucc.ie/Public/training/ for further details. '

' Munster Programming Training awards ceremony 18th May '

' Computer Science at University College Cork presentation of awards ceremony takes place today 18th May, 2011 in Western Gateway Building, UCC to Munster Programming Training participants and competitors. http://www.cs.ucc.ie/training '

' Applications for HEA summer camp now closed due to overwhelming demand '

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' COMPUTER SCIENCE SUCCESS IN UCC LICENCES 2010 AWARDS '

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' Transition Year students do IT for real at Computer Science Department, UCC! '

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' Professor Des McHale will deliver the 8th Annual Boole Lecture '

' Professor Des McHale will deliver the 8th Annual Boole Lecture on Tuesday, December 7th 2010 at 8:00 pm - Title: "GEORGE BOOLE �?? A PORTRAIT OF THE MAN AND HIS WORK" Venue: G5 Western Gate Building, UCC '

' Downturn is no bar to Irish tech success '

' http://www.thepost.ie/story/ojcwgbsnql/ '

' Walid Trabelsi, Nic Wilson, Derek Bridge and Francesco Ricci win Best Paper Award '

' Walid Trabelsi, Nic Wilson, Derek Bridge and Francesco Ricci have won the Best Paper Award at the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI). Nic Wilson of 4C and Derek Bridge, the leader of the Knowledge Engineering Group in the CS Department, supervise Ph.D. student Walid Trabelsi. Francesco Ricci is at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano in Italy. '

' The CS MPT program is starting on the 30th of October 2010 at 10 am in Room G01 of the Western Gateway Building '

' Prof. Eugene Freuder featured on SFI website '

' Prof. Freuder's interview on Constraint Computation is a featured SFI video. It can be viewed on the SFI website http://www.sfi.ie. The video is also available on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHiL5SEaxk0 '

' Helmut Simonis in the July/August issue of Enterprise Ireland's Technology Ireland Magazine '

' Helmut Simonis' CPTV is appearing on pages 14-15 of the July/August issue of Enterprise Ireland's Technology Ireland Magazine: http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/Technology+Ireland/Current+Issue/. '

' CS Department on RTE News '

' In collaboration with the Parents' Association of Scoil Chlochair Mhuire Girls' National School in Carrigtwohill, Co. Cork, Dr. Barry O'Sullivan of the Department of Computer Science has established an outreach programme for schools called the George Boole School Computer Laboratory Project. This is both an outreach and recycling project. The objective is to refurbish computer equipment no longer in use at UCC and deploy it in local national and secondary schools. Scoil Chlochair Mhuire Girls' National School is the first participant in this project. more ... '

' MISL paper selected as "Spotlight" in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. '

' A paper co-authored by Dr. Ahmed Zahran and Prof. Cormac J. Sreenan of the Mobile & Internet Systems Laboratory has been selected as the "Spotlight"article from the June 2010 issue of IEEE journal "Transactions on Mobile Computing". Entitled "Threshold-Based Media Streaming Optimization for Heterogeneous Wireless Networks", the paper presents a novel framework for optimizing the delivery of audio/video to mobile devices using heterogeneous networks such as 3G and WiFi.

http://www.cs.ucc.ie/~cjs/pub/ieee-tmc-june2010-portal.pdf '

' Research Partnership established between UCC and Altobridge '

' Research Partnership established between UCC and Altobridge 13.04.2010 A research project which will enable cost-effective mobile internet access for remote communities has been announced between UCC and Altobridge Ltd. The UCC-led project, BACOPT ("Back-haul Optimisation in Heterogeneous Wireless Access Networks"), which will lower the cost of 3G mobile Internet in remote villages, airplanes, boats and oil platforms, is being led by Professor Cormac Sreenan of UCC�s Computer Science Department. The BACOPT project under Enterprise Ireland�s Innovation Partnership programme is part-funded by Irish company Altobridge Ltd, a world leader in the development of mobile communications over satellite for remote communities, including the aeronautical and maritime industries. The research will involve a team of computer scientists at UCC collaborating with telecommunications engineers from Altobridge to conceive novel approaches for optimising data delivery, leading to reduced costs for satellite usage and thus opening up the Internet for new users. Professor Sreenan said the ubiquity of mobile Internet that we take for granted does not naturally extend to remote sites that rely on expensive satellite links to connect mobile networks to the Internet. Users in such remote communities are increasingly seeking Internet access but at tariffs that are not sky high! This collaboration is particularly significant for users in developing countries where wired networks are less prevalent and so mobile access to the Internet is relied upon for education, commerce, medical, entertainment and social needs. The research is challenging and will require breakthroughs in the design of software and communication protocols for these remote networks. Outcomes of the BACOPT project will be evaluated on an experimental mobile network that links UCC and the Altobridge headquarters in Tralee. Dr Michael Murphy, President, UCC welcoming the establishment of the project said: �Partnering with industry and funding agencies such as Enterprise Ireland is a fundamental aspect of the university�s strategy. I am particularly proud of the partnership between Altobridge (a company founded by UCC graduate Mr Mike Fitzgerald) and the School of Computer Science and Information Technology. Core to the partnership is the BACOPT project which will provide exciting research opportunities for UCC staff and students while enabling further innovation at Altobridge. Relationships such as these are critical for all partners and for economic growth". Visit http://www.altobridge.com Picture L-R: Professor Cormac Sreenan, Department of Computer Science, UCC; Karen Kelly, Development Manager, UCC; Mike Fitzgerald, CEO, Altobridge and Richard Lord, CTO Altobridge. '

' UCC/CIT: A Decade of Collaboration '

http://www.ucc.ie/en/mandc/news/fullstory,89581,en.html/ '

' Press Release FP7 Project '

' Press Release 17 November 2009 Cork Constraint Computation Centre Department of Computer Science University College Cork The Cork Constraint Computation Centre (4C), Department of Computer Science, University College Cork, will be working with thirteen other partners across Europe on a two and a half year EU FP7 project, FlexWood, to enable better use of timber resources. The project aims to determine the optimal ways of cutting a forest and distributing its products effectively, and in particular to reduce wastage, which is currently estimated at 700M� annually across Europe. Crucial to this research is the technology provided by a local Irish partner TreeMetrics to scan standing trees for their shape. The FlexWood research group at 4C is headed by Dr James Little. The overall FlexWood lead is Professor Barbara Koch of the University of Freiburg, Institute for Forest Economy, Department of Remote Sensing & Land Information Systems. The project brings together European Forestry Researchers from the disciplines of Forest Inventory, Terrestrial & Airborne Measurement, Quality Measurement, Harvesting, Timber Logistics, Industrial Requirements, Timber Processing and Advanced Decision-support Systems. The focus is to deliver a new generation of software tools designed to match the forest with industry demands through innovative models and algorithms in harvesting simulation and distribution. This software will be delivered through Web2.0 based portals allowing freer interaction and discussion between buyers and sellers based on informed decision-support from the FlexWood system For further information contact: Dr James Little, j.little@cs.ucc.ie, 021 420 5957. '

' International Olympiad on Informatics - Bronze Medal for MPT Student '

' International Olympiad on Informatics - Bronze Medal for MPT Student

David McCarthy former pupil of the CBS Midleton won the Bronze Medal in the 2009 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) which took place in Bulgaria few weeks ago. David was the only Irish participant to win a medal and he is one of the fewest Irish people who have won a medal in the competition for the last 20 years. The IOI contest consisted of two days of competition in which the participants had to solve extremely difficult computer programming problems. Usually, the each test consisted of four problems that had to be programmed in a language of choice e.g. C or C++. More about the competition can be found at http://www.ioi2009.org/.

David performance is more remarkable as the disciplines of Computer Programming or Algorithms are not studied in Irish schools. David overcame this barrier by studying these disciplines in the Department of Computer Science of UCC. For the last 2 years David was a student in the Munster Programming Training (MPT) programme where he studied topics like fundamental algorithms, data structures or computer programming. These classes built for David a strong background in Computer programming which allowed David win the national programming competition several times. David also attended the summer schools organised in UCC by the Department of Microelectronics. This gave him a chance to understand the principles of microelectronics or circuit design. On this basis David developed two mobile wireless projects which won the IT category in the Young Scientist in two distinct years.

The main achievements that recommend David McCarthy for this award are:

David won the All Ireland Schools Programming competition in three consecutive years.
David won the IT/Technology section of the Irish Young Scientist in 2009 and 2007 with projects related to mobile wireless.
David participated to two consecutive International Olympiads in Informatics in 2009 and 2008. In the 2009 IOI Olympiad David won the silver medal becoming the 8th Irish student to have won a medal in this competition.

' Dr. Dan Grigoras is the ACM Computing Reviews' featured reviewer for the month of October '09 '

' Dr. Dan Grigoras is the ACM Computing Reviews' featured reviewer for the month of October '09 - see http://www.reviews.com/todaysissue/todaysissue_featured.cfm '

' We Have Moved '

' The Department of Computer Science has now moved into the new state-of-the-art Western Gateway Building, finally locating all staff and all research groups under the one roof. The building includes state-of-the-art teaching laboratories and world-class research laboratories, and is designed to encourage a spirit of innovation and collaboration. Come and visit us!

' Hat trick! '

' We are pleased to report that, at the Eighth International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning, which was held in Seattle between 20th-23rd July 2009, the paper "Maintenance by a Committee of Experts: The MACE Approach", by Lisa Cummins and Derek Bridge, was awarded the Best Paper Prize. Lisa is a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science. For Derek, who is supervising Lisa's PhD, this is his hat trick, having previously won best paper prizes at the Case-Based Reasoning conferences in 2004 (with colleagues in Trinity College Dublin) and 2006 (with colleagues in the Cork Constraint Computation Centre). '

' Chinese Government Awards for UCC Postgraduate Students 14.05.2009 '

' Two UCC postgraduate students, Ms Fang Fang and Mr Jun Wang, both working on research funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), have received awards from the Chinese Government for being outstanding PhD students in Ireland. Since 2003, the Chinese Government has recognised the academic achievements of Chinese nationals studying at prestigious universities abroad by making National Awards for Outstanding Self-financing Overseas Students. The 305 winners across the world in 2008 cover a wide range of subjects including arts, science, engineering, medicine, and commerce. Four students in Ireland received awards valued at $5,000 each � two from UCC and one each from DCU and DIT. Ms Fang Fang is a fourth year PhD student with Dr Paul O�Toole at the Department of Microbiology, UCC and Alimentary Pharmbiotic Centre (APC), a Centre for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET) funded by Science Foundation Ireland and industry. She is a graduate in Bioengineering from Wuxi University of Light Industry and has an MSc in environmental bioengineering from the same university now called Jiangnan University, Jiangsu province, China. Her research at the APC focuses on the development and application of novel genetic tools for probiotic lactobacilli. Mrs Fang has four publications related to her PhD project and has presented several posters at Irish and international conferences. She has collaborated on her research work on high-throughput cloning and protein purification at the Oxford Protein Production Facility (OPPF), University of Oxford and on protein crystallography at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), Grenoble, France. Mr Jun Wang is pursuing the PhD Degree in the Computer Science Department at UCC. He is supervised by Professor Gregory Provan, who is director of the Cork Complex Systems Laboratory. Mr. Wang received the Bachelor and Master Degrees in Computer Science from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China. His current research focuses on analyses of complex systems and networks, and their applications in real-world applications. He has published eight papers in leading journals and the most prestigious conferences on artificial intelligence and complex systems. Speaking at this delight on receiving the award, Mr Wang said: �It is a great honour to receive this award from the Chinese government and China Scholarship Council. UCC and SFI have provided me with excellent research facilities, and an intellectually stimulating academic atmosphere.� '

' European Doctoral School on Decision Making held at UCC '

' The 2009 COST Action IC0602 Doctoral School will be held at the Cork Constraint Computation Centre from April 18th-22nd 2009. The�theme of the doctoral school will be �Advanced Topics in Decision Theoretic Artificial Intelligence�. Specifically, the school will comprise major courses on topics such as an introduction to constraint programming using ECLiPSe, reasoning under uncertainty, explanation generation for decision-making, and a variety of other short tutorials. In addition to the course content, students from countries such as�Australia, Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Turkey, and the UK will�give short presentations of their work in an informal�workshop environment throughout the week. The Doctoral�School is chaired by Dr. Barry O'Sullivan, Associate�Director of the Cork Constraint Computation Centre. The doctoral school will be followed by a meeting of the Management Committee of COST Action IC0602 (Algorithmic Decision Theory) on Thursday 23rd and Friday 24th of April. Delegates at this meeting come from universities in the USA, Europe, Middle East and Australia. COST Action IC0602�aims to put together researchers coming from different fields such as Decision Theory, Discrete Mathematics, Theoretical Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence in order to improve decision support in the presence of massive data bases, combinatorial structures, partial and/or uncertain information and distributed, possibly interoperating decision makers. Such problems arise in several real-world decision making problems such as humanitarian logistics, epidemiology, risk assessment and management, e-government, electronic commerce, and the implementation of recommender systems. The Action will coordinate ongoing research projects and provide a more solid framework to already existing networked activities. Web:�http://www.cs.ucc.ie/~osullb/IC0602/Welcome.html _____________________________________________________________ Dr. Barry O'Sullivan - http://www.cs.ucc.ie/~osullb Associate Director, Cork Constraint Computation Centre (4C) Computer Science Department, University College Cork, Ireland '

' Computer Science Final Year Project Open Day '

' The Department of Computer Science at UCC will hold its Open Day for Final Year Projects on 26th March 2009. We are delighted to have on display a wide range of interesting projects spanning topics as diverse as Robotics, E-Commerce, Reconfigurable Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Music - to name just a few. The projects on display are the culmination of six months of hard work by our Fourth Year BSc (Computer Science) students, building on the knowledge they have acquired at UCC and during their industrial placement. We are delighted to welcome visitors from industry to see this showcase of projects, and to chat to the students and staff involved. If you would like to avail of this opportunity, please contact our secretary at Tel: 021 4902795, email: secretary@cs.ucc.ie for further details. '

' EWSN 2009, 6th European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks, February 11th-13th, Cork, Ireland '

' Major International Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks 09.02.2009 Over 140 delegates from Ireland, UK, Continental Europe, Asia, US and Australia will gather in Cork this week (February 11th-13th) for the 6th European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks (EWSN). Organised by Professor Cormac J. Sreenan of UCC's Department of Computer Science, together with Dr Utz Roedig of Lancaster University, EWSN is one of the most competitive and prestigious peer-reviewed conferences on sensor networks. The aim of the conference is to create a forum where researchers with different experiences and backgrounds, from hardware to applications, can discuss cross-layer integration, novel solutions for specific problems and envisage the future development of WSN functionalities. Delegates will hear of many groundbreaking results at the conference which will focus on the general theme on how to control the performance of wireless sensor networks - also the subject of a recent European FP7 project coordinated by Professor Sreenan. The conference includes a keynote talk by Professor John A. Stankovic of the University of Virginia on "Wireless Sensor Networks: Time for Real-Time?" and a panel discussion moderated by Dr Jorge Pereira of the European Commission on "What is holding WSNs back? Breakthroughs or Mindsets?" A special session of practical demonstrations of sensor networks has been organised by Dr Dirk Pesch from Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) and Dr Sajal Das from University of Texas at Arlington. "Computer scientists at UCC have a vision of the future that involves a fundamental shift in the way we use and perceive computers", said Professor Sreenan. "In this view, small embedded computers will be integrated into settings such as buildings, roads, rivers, factories and farms, and significantly enhance applications such as industrial automation, pollution monitoring, natural disaster management, building control, security, traffic management and agriculture. The core enabling technology is a miniature computer equipped with wireless communication and sensors. These computers will be deployed on scales of hundreds and thousands, forming a sensor network that conveys information back to the Internet for storage and analysis. The obvious potential is causing a major buzz in industry and academia, with researchers enthusiastic to address a host of inter-disciplinary research challenges, and companies eager to exploit the new markets and applications that are enabled. In Ireland, there has been significant investment in this emerging technology with many promising research projects currently underway in third-level institutions", explained Professor Sreenan. EWSN 2009 is supported by Cork Institute of Technology, Tyndall National Institute, CONET and UCC. The formal proceedings will be published by Springer-Verlag. The Conference takes place at the Clarion Hotel in Cork from February. For details visit:

http://www.ewsn.org '

' Transition Year students do IT for real at Computer Science Department, UCC! '

' The Computer Science Department�s first formal Work Experience Programme for Transition Year students was launched on Monday, February 9th, by Professor Pat Fitzpatrick, Head of College of Science, Engineering, and Food Science. Fourteen Transition Year students from different parts of Cork, including Charleville, Castletownbere, and Cork city, have registered on the course which will run from 9th � 13th February 2009. The aim of the course is to give interested students work experience and the knowledge needed to make an informed decision on whether to consider a career in Computer Science. �There seems to be a general uncertainty amongst secondary school students about Computer Science, what it is all about, what the course entails, and the various career options available to potential graduates�, says Martin Moriarty, Chairman of the Computer Science Public Relations Committee. This course is one of a range of services that the Department has introduced, in order to bridge the gap. The students will gain exposure to the following skills during the week: System Administration, Hardware, designing a web page, Programming skills, as well as talks and presentations on Careers, Admissions, and Computer Science in general. It is envisaged that this course will be extended and built on over time, to give secondary school students greater exposure to Information Technology, and the opportunities on offer.

Any enquiries about the Department�s Transition Year courses, School Visits or Munster Programming Training may be made to doit4real@cs.ucc.ie '

' The time has come for Computer Science '

http://fionnmurtagh.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/the-time-has-come-for-computing-science/ '

' IT sector beats downward salary pressures '

' 13.01.2009 Salaries in the local IT sector remain healthy despite the recent threat of job losses, the latest salary guide from SalesJobs.ie maintains. According to Niall Kelly, director of Salesjobs.ie, there was an obvious large decline in the property and construction sectors advertising for staff, although technical sales reps remain high in demand. "The IT sector remains quite healthy, despite the recent threat of job losses," Kelly said. "Facility service providers and renewable energy companies continue to hire staff as their sector continues a steady growth path despite the economic downturn." Kelly said he also saw a large growth in job roles advertised in the medical sales sector, which has surpassed the FMCG sector, as well as the media sales sector which saw a high demand for online marketing sales executives as more businesses compete for high search engine positioning and sales online. "The business sales executive role was highest in demand in 2008, with average salary offerings of �45,000," Kelly said. In the IT/telecoms sector, sales directors can expect to earn between �76,000 and �112,000; sales managers between �58,000 and �80,000; account managers/executives between �40,000 and �52,000; technical sales between �48,000 and �59,000; and software sales between �41,000 and �51,000. By John Kennedy '

' Good growth in RD&I investments in 2008, says IDA Ireland '

' 06.01.2009 IDA Ireland's end-of-year statement shows a 22pc increase in research, development and innovation (RD&I) projects, and its CEO Barry O'Leary is "guardedly optimistic" of Ireland's ability to continue to attract high-level foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2009 and beyond. New RD&I investments planned in 2008 reached �420m, including a �50m R&D investment at Boston Scientific in Galway. Announcements in 2008 in ICT included a �29m R&D investment in Dublin by Business Objects, a subsidiary of SAP and the largest business intelligence company in the world, with the creation of 100 jobs; an expansion by Synopsis, the world leader in providing software and intellectual property products, of its R&D operation in Dublin, creating 50 software and electrical engineering positions; and global IT leader EMC announced a �20m investment in R&D activities, resulting in the creation of 20 jobs. IBM made encouraging moves in the RD&I area with three major announcements in 2008. The company is to establish an Exascale Stream Computing Research Collaboratory in Dublin, creating 40 jobs; a new Green Data Centre and Global Supply Chain Hub includes an investment of �30m; and Europe's first Cloud Computing Centre was established in Dublin, creating 21 jobs. Meanwhile, ON Semiconductor established an R&D centre in Limerick, creating 49 highly skilled positions. Almost one third of RD&I investments involved collaboration with Irish third-level institutions and research institutes, many of which have been supported by Science Foundation Ireland. IDA Ireland won a total of 130 FDI projects in 2008, and new investments secured were up 14pc on 2007. The number of new companies investing in Ireland for the first time was 16pc compared with the previous year. Despite such positive messages, industry observers have focused on the jobs report. In 2008, there were 10,044 job losses at IDA Ireland-supported companies, accounting for 7.4pc of the employee base. However, 8,837 jobs were created, resulting in an overall decline of 1,207 jobs or 0.8pc of the employee base. "Building on the successes achieved in 2008, IDA Ireland continues to see good opportunities for FDI over the next three to four months, and a number of key project announcements will be made in this timeframe," said O'Leary '

' Five Japanese firms to create 150 jobs here '

' Wednesday, 14 January 2009 08:08 Japanese companies are to make five investments in Ireland, creating around 150 jobs. IDA Ireland is backing the investments, which were announced by the Taoiseach Brian Cowen on a Government trade mission to Japan. Online games firm Gala is to expand its European headquarters in Dublin's Digital Hub, adding 50 jobs, while internet security company Trend is to recruit 100 people over the next three years in an expansion of its Cork operation. The three other investments are in research and development. Alps is to set up a project to design new car safety technology for the European market, while Shimadzu is collaborating with The Applied Optics Group in NUIG Galway in the area of imaging techniques. Advertisement Meanwhile, Sony and Toshiba - as well as US giant IBM - will be involved in a research centre into the Cell Broadband Engine, the computer chip which powers Sony's Playstation 3 and some of Toshiba's lap-tops. Trinity College has been chosen as the centre's location. '

' Ceol receive best regular paper award '

' Members of the CEOL and embedded systems group receive best regular paper award in the context of the Synopsys IDA project. T. English, K.L. Man, E. Popovici, M.P. Schellekens, "HotSpot : Visualising Dynamic Power Consumption in RTL Designs", in the proceedings of the 6th IEEE East-West Design and Test International Symposium - IEEE/EWDTS'08, Lviv, Ukraine, October, 2008 [Best Regular Paper Award]. '

' Ceol involved in major collaboration '

' Synopsys announced major expansion in R&D, involving a collaboration with the Centre for Efficiency Oriented Languages, Department of Computer Science, headed by Michel Schellekens, and the Embedded Systems group, Department of Microelectronics, headed by Emanuel Popovici. http://www.entemp.ie/press/2008/20081208.htm Prof. M. P. Schellekens Science Foundation Ireland Investigator Director of Centre for Efficiency-Oriented Languages (CEOL) National University of Ireland, Cork (UCC) Department of Computer Science Center for Efficiency-Oriented Languages (CEOL) Lancaster Hall Little Hanover Street 6 Cork, Ireland WWW: http://www.ceol.ucc.ie/ Tel. + 353 (0)21 490 1917 '

' Dr. Sabin Tabirca wins it@cork award for his outstanding contribution to IT in Education, 2008 '

' In 2004 Dr. Sabin Tabirca established the Munster Programming Training (MPT) programme as an outreach initiative run by the Computer Science Department, UCC. The MPT programme was designed to attract talented students to computing, and to foster and develop students' interests in computing and IT. The MPT addresses the lack of formal IT training in schools by providing a significant introduction to the field, engaging students in computer programming, and by developing students' problem solving skills. Students attend UCC for 20 Saturdays between 10 am and 1 pm for formal lectures and practical classes in Computer Programming, Algorithms, Web Design and Video Animation. The classes are delivered by Computer Science staff and postgraduates on a voluntary basis. On average there are 30 students per year coming from all of the counties in Munster. Students are encouraged to participate in the National Schools Programming Competition, and this year MPT students won six medals at both Junior and Senior levels. Three of the medal winners went on to represent Ireland in the 2008 International Olympiad in Informatics in Egypt. Dr. Tabirca has worked tirelessly and in a voluntary capacity with the MPT programme and has contributed to the promotion of Computing and IT in Munster. it@cork recognises Dr. Tabirca's work by awarding him the Outstanding contribution to IT in Education award. '

' UCC-led European Project, GINSENG, to improve performance control in sensor networks '

' UCC-led European Project, GINSENG, to improve performance control in sensor networks 15.10.2008 An EU-funded project on research into how greater performance control can be achieved in sensor networks for use in everything from patient monitoring to oil refinery control, is being led by Professor Cormac Sreenan of UCC's Computer Science Department. The �4.8 million GINSENG project under the EU's Framework 7 Programme, involves seven other partners - University of Coimbra, Swedish Institute of Computer Science, TU Braunschweig, Lancaster University, University of Cyprus, SAP (Germany) and GALP Energia (Portugal). Professor Sreenan said that while Business Week magazine had chosen wireless sensor networks as one of the 21 most important technologies for the 21st century, and MIT's Technology Review ranked it among 10 emerging technologies that will change the world, the fact is that the technology is not being used as widely as predicted. It seems that existing applications have focused on agriculture and the environment where performance is not a crucial factor. The UCC-led project, he explained, aims to change this by developing sensor networks with assured performance - a challenging task that will require research breakthroughs in the design of software and communication protocols for these new networks. A tangible outcome of the GINSENG project is that it will demonstrate improvements in production efficiency and quality at an oil refinery, as well as enhancing site safety and environmental impact. '

' 4c News - September 2008 '

4C News
September 2008

Cork Constraint Computation Centre
Department of Computer Science
College of Science, Engineering, and Food Science
University College Cork

www.4c.ucc.ie

Brief summary of recent highlights at 4C

4C Works with Cork City Council

Alan Holland and Barry O'Sullivan, working with the Cork City Council and support from Enterprise Ireland, were responsible for what is believed to be Europe=92s first ever public-sector combinatorial tender for procurement. This project was the basis of a two page spread in Technology Ireland Magazine. The Cork City Council has nominated this procurement project for a 2008 Chambers Ireland Excellence in Local Government Award in the Technology category.

4C Wins Third International Constraint Satisfaction Problem Solver Competition

CPHydra, the 4C CBR-based solver portfolio won the the Third International CSP Solver Competition overall, coming first in 4 out of the 5 categories, and second in the fifth. The people involved in CPHydra are: Barry O'Sullivan, Eoin O'Mahony, Emmanuel Hebrard, Conor Nugent, and Alan Holland. Special recognition is due Eoin, a UCC undergraduate, who was responsible for putting CPHydra together.

Ted Scully and Ken Brown Win Best Application Paper Award

Ted Scully and Ken Brown won the Best Application Paper at AI2008, the Twenty-eighth Annual International Conference of the British Computer Society's Specialist Group on Artificial Intelligence, for their paper on "Wireless LAN Load-Balancing with Genetic Algorithms". This is the second time in three years that Ken has won this award.

4C Team Wins International Timetabling Competition Prize

A team of researchers at the Cork Constraint Computation Centre (4C) in the Department of Computer Science at University College Cork have won the Post-Enrollment Course Timetabling Track of the International Timetabling Competition. The team members were Hadrien Cambazard, Emmanuel Hebrard (Embark Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow), Barry O'Sullivan (Science Foundation Ireland Principal Investigator) and Alexandre Papadopulous. A Prize of 500 pounds sterling goes to the winner of each track. Final results, rankings and winners of each track were presented and discussed during the the 7th International Conference on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling in Montreal in August. This year's competition is sponsored by the International Series of Conferences on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling and the Working Group on Automated Timetabling of the Association of European Operational Research Societies, and was organised and run by the eventMAP research group at Queen=92s University with partners from Cardiff University, Napier University, University of Nottingham and the University of Udine.

4C Technology Transfer Progress

So far in 2008 4C has logged a patent filing, a preliminary patent filing, a patent assignment, 3 license agreements, and an evaluation license.

Barry O'Sullivan Reelected to the Association for Constraint Programming Executive Committee

4C Associate Director Barry O'Sullivan has been reelected to the Association for Constraint Programming Executive Committee, garnering the highest vote total among the candidates.

Gene Freuder Invited Speaker at FLAIRS Conference

Gene Freuder will deliver an invited talk at the 22nd International FLAIRS Conference in Florida on "5C: Convergence at the Cork Constraint Computation Centre".

Igor Razgon and Barry O'Sullivan Paper Honoured at STOC Conference

"A Fixed-Parameter Algorithm for the Directed Feedback Vertex Set Problem" by Jianer Chen, Yang Liu, Songjian Lu, Barry O'Sullivan and Igor Razgon was short-listed as being amongst the best papers at the 40th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing. An extended version, "An FPT Algorithm for Directed Feedback Vertex Set" has been accepted for publication in the Journal of the ACM.

Barry O'Sullivan Becomes Coordinator of the ERCIM Working Group on Constraints

Barry O'Sullivan has been selected as the new coordinator of ERCIM's Working Group on Constraints. The previous coordinators were Krzysztof R. Apt of CWI (1997-2002) and Francois Fages of INRIA (2003-2008). ERCIM is the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics. It aims to foster collaborative work within the European research community and to increase co-operation with European industry. Leading research institutes from nineteen European countries are members of ERCIM.

Ioannis Dokas Obtains Environmental Protection Agency Grant

Ioannis Dokas, who came to 4C originally as a postdoc on our EU Transfer of Knowledge project, has obtained an 800,000 euro grant from the Environmental Protection Agency for a project on Early Warning System for Water Treatment Plants as Basis for Defining and Supporting the Concept of Early Warning Analysis. The funding comes from the EPA's DERP scheme (Developing Environmental Research Potential) which is part of the EPA's STRIVE programme. Rick Wallace is acting as 'mentor' for this project.

Alan Holland Advisor to Commission for Energy Regulation

Alan Holland has been selected as a member of the Panel of Experts to advise the Commission for Energy Regulation in Ireland.

Nic Wilson Gives Invited Talk at ERCIM Workshop

Nic Wilson gave an invited talk on reasoning with comparative preferences in June at CSCLP 2008, the Annual ERCIM Workshop on Constraint Solving and Constraint Logic Programming.

Helmut Simonis Awarded Enterprise Ireland Proof of Concept Grant

Helmut Simonis has been awarded an Enterprise Ireland Proof of Concept grant for a project on Constraint-Based Personalized TV Schedules (CPTV).

4C Alumnus Wins Thesis Award

4C alumnus Onur Koyuncu has been awarded "best thesis of the year" at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey, for his thesis on "Constraint Programming for Test Set Optimisation". He was supervised by 4C alumnus Armagan Tarim of Hacettepe and Steve Prestwich of 4C.

Helmut Simonis Obtains Gift for 4C from Cisco

Helmut Simonis has obtained a $100,000 gift for 4C from the Cisco Collaborative Research Initiative.

Embark Initiative Awards

Radu Marinescu, sponsored by Gene Freuder, has been awarded an Embark Post-doctoral Fellowship. Radu was a student of Rina Dechter's at UC Irvine in the U.S. David Devlin, sponsored by Barry O'Sullivan, has been awarded an Embark Postgraduate Scholarship.

James Little Obtains SFI Research Frontiers Programme Grant

James Little has obtained a Science Foundation Ireland Research Frontiers Programme grant for New Approaches to Handling Uncertainty and Change in Manufacturing. James will be collaborating with Intel and with Dublin City University on this project.

Rick Wallace Collaborates with the UCC Coastal and Marine Resources Centre

Ric Wallace has obtained funding as a collaborator with the UCC Coastal and Marine Resources Centre and Oregon State University on a Marine Institute grant for Data Management for Marine Geological and Geophysical Datasets (including integration with the marine data repository).

Barry O'Sullivan Lectures at the 2008 ACP Summer School

Barry O'Sullivan lectured at the Association for Constraint Programming 2008 Summer School, held in St. Andrews, Scotland. The topic of this year's school was Modelling with Constraints: Theory and Practice.

Barry O'Sullivan Obtains Ulysses Grant

Barry O'Sullivan obtained a Ulysses grant to work with French scientist Helene Fargier, on Approximate Compilation of Flexible Constraints: Algorithms, Experiments and Application.

4C Director and Co-Director Participate in Management and Supply Chain Organisations

Gene Freuder has become a member of the Executive Committee of the Supply Chain Forum and Barry O'Sullivan has become a member of the Council of the Management Science Society of Ireland.

Barry O'Sullivan Delivers Invited Talk

Barry O'Sullivan delivered an invited talk at ASPL 2008, the First Workshop on Analyses of Software Product Lines, which co-located with the 12th International Software Product Line Conference, in Limerick, Ireland.

Steve Prestwich Contributing Chapters to Three Books

Steve Prestwich is contributing chapters to the "Handbook of Satisfiability", to "Hybrid Metaheuristics - An Emergent Approach For Optimization", and (with Ian Miguel) to "Trends in Constraint Programming".

Dylan Evans Becomes Lecturer in UCC School of Medicine

Dylan Evans, who joined 4C as part of our Marie Curie Transfer of Knowledge grant, will be staying on at UCC as a lecturer in the School of Medicine.

4C Obtains 128-Node Cluster

Barry O'Sullivan has obtained a 128-node cluster for 4C with an SFI Equipment Grant.

4C Obtains SFI Supplementary Awards

4C Director Gene Freuder obtained an SFI industry research supplement award and 4C Associate Director Barry O'Sullivan obtained an SFI UREKA supplement award (UREKA supplements support undergraduate summer research).

'

' Whizzkids Summercamps and Computer Science Department promote IT at UCC '

With increased availability of jobs in the IT sector highlighted in the wake of CAO applications, Whizzkids Summercamps is one way of opening your child�s mind to the possibility of this area as a career.

Very different to the traditional Gaelscoil or sports camp, Whizzkids Summercamps celebrated it�s fifth anniversary at UCC this summer. The brainchild of a University of Limerick graduate, it was launched there in 2003, but the Computer Science Department immediately saw the potential of this unique camp and was the next venue to open. It�s focus on technology was immediately popular and the three weeks at UCC book out as early as April with many children returning year after year.

Over the course of a week, boys and girls aged from 9-15 cover web design, movie making and a host of mobile technologies through high-tech challenges in the Whizzkids Spy Academy. They will learn a lot, but the focus is on having fun.

The children�s websites are about their interests and when their video is screened it�s a real thrill to see themselves up on screen. For the movie, they will put together a storyboard and then go shoot the scenes. The movie is then edited and at the end of the week the videos are premiered and each Whizzkid will receive a copy of their video on CD along with their website as a keepsake of the week.

Over the years the �Whizzkids spy academy� has evolved to facilitate the use of mobile technologies. With activities like code breaking, navigation, computerised identikits, reaction tests, observation tests and the use of devices such as digital cameras, PDA's and Blackberry's, it showcases the summercamps approach of blending education with fun.

Camp Director, Garry Lowe says that �the facilities that a University can provide for a camp such as Whizzkids are tremendous. Not only do they have a large number of computer labs for our web design classes, they also have campuses that provide an excellent back drop and safe environment for the videos that we shoot and other outdoor activities that we undertake over the course of the week. There are other advantages too. Whizzkids encourages being creative with technology and the striking architecture and the wealth of statues and fountains that exist on campus provide a rich environment to run digital camera tasks. Simply being in a University environment inspires those attending�.

Anne Hawes, Manager of the Computer Science Department, says, �even for the X-box generation a University campus still has a wow factor. At all times a University is a vibrant place. Even in the summer months, the academic body is still at work as well as some of the undergraduates and the students from Europe learning English bring a cosmopolitan feel to the campus, but with the bulk of the student body away for the summer the pace is more relaxed. Hopefully being switched on to the subject at an early age will encourage them to return as an IT undergraduate in the future�. For more information, check out www.whizzkids.ie. or call 061-339178.

' Barry O'Sullivan becomes Coordinator of the ERCIM Working Group on Constraints '

Barry O'Sullivan becomes Coordinator of the ERCIM Working Group on Constraints

Barry O'Sullivan has been selected as the new coordinator of ERCIM's Working Group on Constraints. The previous coordinators were Krzysztof R. Apt of CWI (1997-2002) and Francois Fages of INRIA (2003-2008). ERCIM is the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics. It aims to foster collaborative work within the European research community and to increase co-operation with European industry. Leading research institutes from nineteen European countries are members of ERCIM.

Web:http://www.ercim.org '

' Strong Future and Opportunities for ICT Sector in Ireland '

Strong Future and Opportunities for ICT Sector in Ireland

23 June 2008

The ICT (information and communications technologies) sector will continue to provide job and growth opportunities for the Irish economy and workforce according to the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs (EGFSN), which today (23 June 2008) launched its latest report, Future Requirement for High-Level ICT Skills in the ICT Sector.

Speaking at the launch of the report Tan�iste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Coughlan commented, �The ICT sector is of strategic importance to the Irish economy � representing one third of Ireland�s total exports, sales of approximately �50 billion per annum and 70,000 skilled people employed. Ireland has proven itself as an excellent location for ICT companies with many of the world�s top ICT companies already located here and taking advantage of Ireland�s unique offering. This report from the Expert Group highlights clearly that the ICT sector can continue to provide opportunities and jobs for Ireland into the future. There are undoubtedly challenges for us in maximising these opportunities not least of which is ensuring that we can provide the graduate skills for the industry�s development. I would like to thank the Expert Group for its recommendations on how this can be achieved�.

Also speaking at the launch Minister for Education and Science, Batt O�Keeffe, T.D., commented �Education will have a critical role to play in defining whether we can take advantage of the opportunities which this sector presents. We need to focus on ensuring that those coming through education and those currently in the workforce have the right skills for this evolving sector. The report by the EGFSN is a valuable contribution to the further development of policy in this regard�.

Anne Heraty, Chairperson, EGFSN said, �Our challenge is three-fold: we need to boost the supply of high level graduates, up skill those already working in the sector and continue to attract high skilled individuals through migration where necessary. The recommendations set out in this report are aimed at increasing the numbers studying in ICT related areas and attracting others to the industry with specific initiatives�.

�Mathematical skill remains critical. The EGFSN report recommends that bonus points for higher level maths in the Leaving Cert should be reintroduced and that consideration should be given to introducing incentives for high performing students to enter and stay in ICT related disciplines. It is also important that a proactive approach is taken to encourage overseas ICT graduates to come to study and work in Ireland meet the expected shortfall in domestic supply.�

�Implementation of recommendations outlined in this report will contribute to ensuring that the quality, quantity and diversity of skills required by the ICT industry are available in Ireland. Graduates alone will not meet the projected supply of highly skilled computer electronic engineers and we will have to work to ensure that through re-skilling and migration we meet those demands. We have an opportunity now to build on Ireland�s profile as a location for highly skilled, high value ICT activities and maintain the important role of the ICT sector in our economy,� concluded Anne Heraty.

Findings

The Irish ICT industry has largely recovered from the global downturn experienced in 2001 and that there now is a substantial shift in the skills mix and levels.
Projected demand for ICT skills is set to exceed domestic supply. Industry has also identified issues relating to the supply of people with high levels of technical skills due in part to the lower numbers of high performing school leavers choosing to study in computing and electronic engineering disciplines.
A greater share of all ICT employment is now accounted for by people with high-level skills, with lower skills jobs being replaced by those with requirements for strong technical, computing and engineering based skills.
Graduate numbers in computing and electronic engineering have declined from a peak in 2002 although overall the intake into these courses appears to have stabilised. The numbers entering computing courses have seen a small increase and the number of PhD graduates in computing and electronic engineering is expected to increase significantly over the coming years.
Inward migration will continue to be an important source of ICT skills into the future. Ireland is seen as a location to which experienced talent can be attracted from all over Europe.

Recommendations

Incentives for studying higher level maths at Leaving Certificate

A system of college entry bonus points for higher level maths should be introduced to compensate students for greater effort considered to be required for the subject.
Introduce bursaries to boost the numbers studying in ICT related disciplines

These bursaries would be, partly funded by industry, valued at up to �4,000 annually, dependent on the achievement of over 500 CAO points and conditional on students maintaining acceptable grade averages and undertaking relevant industrial experience.
Enhance the professional mathematical development of primary and second level teachers

The quality of teaching is central to increasing interest in maths among students and building proficiency. The professional development of both primary and second level teachers would be enhanced through the introduction of Professional Masters Degree Courses. For primary level teachers more time and resources should be given to the development of maths competences in teacher training courses. At second level consideration should be given to the introduction of a 4 year honours degree in mathematical education to provide another source of maths teachers.

Interactive approaches to the teaching of maths at primary and second levels have been successful and further development of these teaching methods should take place.
Better communication of career opportunities and skills needs of the ICT sector

A revitalised initiative should be launched to communicate the rewarding career opportunities that exist in the fields of computing, software and electronic engineering. Targeted at second level students, parents and teachers/guidance counsellors the scheme should address concerns relating to job security and opportunity within the industry.

The EGFSN recommends that this initiative should be led by Discover Science and Engineering given their experience in this area. Industry must demonstrate that rewarding and attractive career paths are available for young people.
Increase the number of graduates/postgraduates in ICT related disciplines and develop cross-disciplinary skills

There is a need both to boost the numbers of students who choose to study computing and electronic engineering courses at undergraduate level and to develop graduates skilled for the most technically challenging work such as systems software, electronic design and complex networked applications.

More graduates are required with expertise both in computing and the business sectors in which the Irish ICT sector has a strong presence, such as telecommunications, banking and financial services.
Better preparing Graduates for the Workplace

Graduate internships and placement programmes which provide practical work experience are an invaluable means of preparing students for work and helping them get a job. They should become integral parts of all computing and electronic engineering undergraduate and postgraduate courses.
Boost postgraduate training

Postgraduate training should be boosted in order to upgrade the skills of both students and professionals and provide greater opportunities for specialisation in a particular technology or industry area.
Encourage high skilled overseas graduates to study and work in Ireland

A new initiative should be launched aimed at attracting a greater number of overseas computing and electronic engineering graduates to come to Ireland to study and seek to retain them following graduation. Industry, the higher education system and government agencies should work to develop an package to attract students to study in Ireland which would include the certainty of internships and graduate placements. Programmes to encourage foreign recruitment and mobility between Ireland and other major ICT locations worldwide should also be considered to ensure the availability of highly skilled people for the industry in Ireland.
Continuing professional development

Higher education should engage with enterprise to develop more short term and part time courses to allow those working in the ICT sector to continue their professional development and upskill, retrain or specialise in ICT related areas. Industry representative bodies should support the development and networking of professionals working in the ICT sector.

' And the MPT Oscar goes to ... '

A Short Film competition was organised with the MPT students as part of the Munster Programming Training which is an outreach programme organised by the Department of Computer Science at UCC for Secondary School students. 12 short films were submitted by the MPT students with topics from comedy and braniac science to fiction or documentary. Dr Tabirca, the MPT coordinator remarked that the students showed in their films good creative abilities as well as solid technical skills. [DOC] '

' Computer Science UCC forges links with sid2U.com '

' The Department of Computer Science is forging links with SID2U [PDF] '

' CEOL research center awarded new SFI grant '

The center for Efficiency-Oriented Languages (CEOL, www.ceol.ucc.ie) has attracted a new SFI award. Principal investigator Michel Schellekens and co-principal investigator Emanuel Popovici lead the project "Expanding the scope and applicability of static average-case analysis via MOQA". CEOL is currently recruiting PhD students and post docs in this area. See our [ PDF of Advertisement for Positions ] '

' Dr Sabin Tabirca and Dr. John O'Mullane win the President's Award for Research on Innovative Forms of Teaching and Learning '

Dr Sabin Tabirca and Dr. John O'Mullane win the President's Award for Research on Innovative Forms of Teaching and Learning

The Department of Computer Science had two winners of the President's Awards for Research on Innovative Forms of Teaching and Learning.

Dr Sabin Tabirca in conjunction with Dr. Mark Tangney (Cork Cancer Research Centre) for "Computer Animations In The Real and Virtual Classroom"

Dr. John O'Mullane, in conjunction with Ms. Kathleen O'Sullivan (Statistical Consultancy Unit) for "Capturing Learner Attention with Direct Manipulation Interfaces - A Case Study in Teaching Statistics"

President Murphy together with Dr O’Mullane and Dr Tabirca.

' James Little obtains SFI Research Frontiers Programme grant '

' James Little has obtained an SFI Research Frontiers Programme grant for: New Approaches to Handling Uncertainty and Change in Manufacturing. James expects to collaborate with DCU and Intel on this project. '

' 4C Team Wins International Timetabling Competition Prize '

' 4C Team Wins International Timetabling Competition Prize A team of researchers at the Cork Constraint Computation Centre (4C) in the Department of Computer Science at University College Cork have won the Post-Enrollment Course Timetabling Track of the International Timetabling Competition. The team members were Hadrien Cambazard, Emmanuel Hebrard (Embark Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow), Barry O'Sullivan (Science Foundation Ireland Principal Investigator) and Alexandre Papadopulous. A Prize of 500 pounds sterling will be presented to the winner of each track. Final results, rankings and winners of each track will be presented and discussed during the the 7th International Conference on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling in Montreal in August. This year's competition is sponsored by the International Series of Conferences on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling and the Working Group on Automated Timetabling of the Association of European Operational Research Societies, and was organised and run by the eventMAP research group at Queen's University with partners from Cardiff University, Napier University, University of Nottingham and the University of Udine. Further information: http://www.cs.qub.ac.uk/itc2007/winner/finalorder.htm '

' Licence for new learning channel granted to UCC '

' Licence for new learning channel granted to UCC 04.02.2008 An indigenous national learning channel could be beamed into every home in Ireland by 2010, after the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) granted a licence to the service. Dubbed 3LC, the station's programming will include lectures from local third-level institutions, documentaries and open university-style distance education shows. UCC has been granted the licence and plans to set up the station as a joint venture with Cork Institute of Technology (CIT). "The aim is to have other universities involved as well, so the whole body of third-level providers can contribute to distance education," said 3LC chief executive Professor James Bowen. The station has already secured coverage on UPC's NTL and Chorus's cable networks. Professor Bowen said the ultimate plan, however, was to go on RTE's digital platform once Digital Terrestrial TV comes in in 2009 or 2010. RTE's platform will allow it to broadcast about eight channels, including RTE1, RTE2, TV3 and TG4. UCC staff member Stephen Bean has been working full time on the project for several years, along with a number of part-timers. Mr Bean said it would be "12 to 18 months" before 3LC had built up the bank of programming it would need ahead of its launch. 3LC will initially be funded to the tune of 2m Mr Bean said, which will be sourced from grants. The station's licence proposal provides for some sponsorship and advertising revenue. Professor Bowen said only "content appropriate ads" would be carried. The proposal stresses that 3LC will be a "not-for-profit enterprise" with all commercial income "used to improve the quality and range of programming. '

' MPT Student Success '

' PRFeb2008.pdf '

' CEOL Student wins Science Graduate of the Year '

' Diarmuid Early, was selected as Science Graduate of the Year during his BSc in Mathematics and Physics (Joint Honours). Diarmuid joined CEOL during an SFI UREKA fellowship in his second year of undergraduate studies and currently is a CEOL MSc student. '

' UCC researchers awarded €2.8 million for research on networked embedded systems ' UCC researchers awarded €2.8 million for research on networked embedded systems UCC researchers awarded €2.8 million for research on networked embedded systems 18.12.2007 UCC researchers have been awarded €2.8 million for research on networked embedded systems (NEMBES). NEMBES is an inter-institutional and multi-disciplinary research programme that will investigate a "whole system" approach to the design of networked embedded systems, marrying expertise in hardware, software and networking with the design and management of built environments. The ambitious four-year NEMBES programme, launched in Cork recently, is led by Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) and involves researchers at UCC, UCD, TCD and Tyndall National Institute. The research agenda will be directly influenced by Cork City Council and Cork University Hospital, who are partners in the project and will also provide facilities for experimental trials. Areas of application include automated monitoring of sterilisation procedures and improved efficiency in the use of roads infrastructure. The leaders of the UCC/Tyndall team are: * Architectural Education (Professor Kevin McCartney) * Civil & Environmental Engineering (Professor Karsten Menzel) * Computer Science (Professor Cormac Sreenan, Professor Gene Freuder, Dr Ken Bro '

' Lord Mayor congratulates Alan Holland for ISA award '

' Lord Mayor congratulates Alan Holland for ISA award http://www.corkcity.ie/news/mainbody,8572,en.html '

' 4C research group have won an R&D Project Award, a Student Medal, the Ramamoorthy Award, and a new multi-million euro research cluster has been announced in which 4C is participating. '

' 4C News November 2007 Cork Constraint Computation Centre Department of Computer Science College of Science, Engineering, and Food Science University College Cork www.4c.ucc.ie In the past two weeks members of 4C have won an R&D Project Award, a Student Medal, and the Ramamoorthy Award, and a new multi-million euro research cluster has been announced in which 4C is participating. Brief information on these and other highlights from the last year and a half follow. * Alan Holland wins Irish Software Association Student Medal 2007 On November 9, 2007 Alan Holland won the Irish Software Association Student Medal 2007, given to the post graduate student who has "developed the most innovative and commercially viable software project". Alan, supervised for his Ph.D. by Dr. Barry O'Sullivan, received some of his student support from Enterprise Ireland and some from Science Foundation Ireland. He is now working with Dr. O'Sullivan on an Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Fund Technology Development Grant, RECAP, Robust & Expressive Combinatorial Auctions for Procurement. Part of this effort involves a project that was shortlisted for the it@cork R&D Project Leaders Award (4C was involved in two of the four shortlisted projects). This project involves the supply of a combinatorial tender system for the leasing, maintenance and repair of a new fleet of vehicles for Cork City Council. 4C hopes to save the council millions of euro in their procurement costs. * 4C and TreeMetrics Winner in the R&D Project Award category in the it@cork Leaders Awards. On November 1, 2007, 4C (www.4c.ucc.ie), together with the Irish company TreeMetrics ( www.treemetrics.com) won the it@cork Leaders Award in the R&D Project category. This project is led on the 4C end by a Science Foundation Ireland funded staff member, Dr. James Little, and also has support from an Enterprise Ireland Innovation Partnership, TRIO: Timber Recovery using enhanced Information and Optimisation. TreeMetrics and 4C are working together to develop a new set of forest planning tools based on the combination of several Artificial Intelligence and Optimisation technologies. Treemetrics delivers accurate scanning information of trees in a forest. 4C uses this as the input for a set of decision support tools to predict the shape of the whole tree, how to cut it, where to send the resulting logs, and when in the year this should be done. 4C's technology has increased the value of the information; turning it into key knowledge with which to make better decisions within forest management. Although Ireland is small in forestry terms globally, TreeMetrics software, developed in conjunction with 4C, gives it an opportunity to sell into the major forestry markets around the world. * ICTAI 2007 Ramamoorthy Award The ICTAI 2007 Ramamoorthy Award, the best paper award at the Nineteenth IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence has been equally presented to two papers, one of which is "Semiring-Based Constraint Acquisition" by Xuan-Ha Vu and Barry O'Sullivan. "The annual IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI) provides a major international forum where the creation and exchange of ideas relating to artificial intelligence are fostered among academia, industry, and government agencies. The conference facilitates the cross-fertilization of these ideas and promotes their transfer into practical tools, for developing intelligent systems and pursuing artificial intelligence applications. The ICTAI encompasses all the technical aspects of specifying, developing, and evaluating the theoretical underpinnings and applied mechanisms of AI tools." * 4C Participant in new 8M Euro Science Foundation Ireland Strategic Research Cluster "ITOBO" Science Foundation Ireland has funded a new SFI Strategic Research Cluster, ITOBO: ICT for Sustainable and Optimised Building Operation. The Cluster Director is Prof. Karsten Menzel of the UCC Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. Gene Freuder is Co-Director; Ken Brown and Greg Provan are also among the seven PI's. ITOBO also involves the Tyndall National Institute and the Environmental Research Centre at UCC, and the Cork Institute of Technology and the National University of Ireland, Galway, along with industry partners, Cylon, Vector FM, ARUP, HSG, and Intel. The funding for the Cluster is 6M euro (plus overheads) over 5 years. * Barry O'Sullivan Elected President of the Association for Constraint Programming Barry O'Sullivan has been elected to be the next President of the Association for Constraint Programming (ACP). The ACP is in the international association for researchers working in the field of constraint programming. * 4C Participant in 13.5M Euro PRTLI NEMBES Programme 4C, led by Ken Brown, working with Cormac Sreenan of the Computer Science Department will participate in the 13.5M Euro PRTLI programme, NEMBES: Networked Embedded Systems, a multi-institutional programme led by Dirk Pesch of Cork Institute of Technology. * Best Paper Shortlisting at K-CAP 2007 The paper "Maintaining Constraint-based Applications", by Tomas Nordlander, Gene Freuder, and Rick Wallace, was shortlisted for a best paper prize at the Fourth International Conference on Knowledge Capture. * Barry O'Sullivan Becomes Chair of the Artificial Intelligence Association of Ireland Barry O'Sullivan has been appointed Chair of the Artificial Intelligence Association of Ireland (AIAI). The AIAI is the national association for researchers working in the area of artificial intelligence in Ireland. AIAI is one of the members of ECCAI, the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence. * Ken Brown Co-Investigator on Enterprise Ireland Proof of Concept Grant Enterprise Ireland have agreed to fund the following Proof of Concept project STOPP/START: minimising inappropriate prescribing in geriatric patients. The PI is Dr Denis O'Mahony of UCC's Dept of Geriatric Medicine. The co-investigators are Dr Stephen Byrne, Dept of Pharmacy, Dr Ken Brown, 4C/Dept of Computer Science, and Prof. Cormac Sreenan, Dept of Computer Science * Barry O'Sullivan and Hadrien Cambazard Win Best Paper Prize Barry O'Sullivan and Hadrien Cambazard won the best paper prize at the 18th Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science. The winning paper was entitled "Automated Constraint Reformulation for Explanation". The prize was sponsored by Google. * Steve Prestwich has Nectar Track paper at AAAI-07 Steve Prestwich has co-authored a paper, Refutation by Randomised General Resolution, with Ins Lynce (Instituto Superior Tcnico INESC-ID Lisboa) that has been accepted for the NECTAR track of the 2007 conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. The goal of the Nectar track is "to make the most significant AI results presented at other conferences in the last two years available to a broad AI audience". * 4C Involved in Two EU COST Actions 4C became involved in two EU COST (European Cooperation in the Field of Scientific and Technical Research) Actions: Barry O'Sullivan is the Irish representative for COST Action Algorithmic Decisionw.cost.esf.org/index.php?%20id=1089). Ioannis Dokas became a member of the Cost Action MAUSE - towards the Maturation of IT Usability Evaluation ( http://www.cost.esf.org/index.php?id=110&action_number=294) * Steve Prestwich Joins the Editorial Board of the Journal on Satisfiability, Boolean Modeling and Computation Steve Prestwich has joined the editorial board of the Journal on Satisfiability, Boolean Modeling and Computation. * Gene Freuder Elected to Royal Irish Academy Gene Freuder has been elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy. "The Royal Irish Academy / Acadamh Rga na heireannis an all-Ireland, independent, academic body that promotes study and excellence in the sciences, humanities and social sciences. It is the principal learned society in Ireland and has approximately 300 members who are elected in recognition of their academic achievements." The Academy was founded in 1785. * Barry O'Sullivan Vice-Chair of DCC'08 Barry O'Sullivan is Vice-Chair for Ireland of the Third International Conference on Design Computing and Cognition, DCC'08. * Bord Gais (Irish Gas Board) Project of the Year Award Keith Bourke, supervised by Steve Prestwich, undertook a project for the MSc in Applied Science (Intelligent Systems for Business and Manufacturing) that was awarded the Bord Gais (Irish Gas Board) Project of the Year Award for this MSc programme. It was entitled Template Design Using Constraint Based Local Search. It applied Laurent Michel & Pascal van Hentenryck's constraint-based local search COMET system, to a well-known problem from the colour printing industry: the template design problem, originated by Les Proll and Barbara Smith. * Tomas Nordlander Co-Organizes K-CAP 2007 Workshop Tomas Nordlander is organizing, with Jim Blythe of the USC Information Sciences Institute, a Workshop on Knowledge Capture and Constraint Programming, to be held in conjunction with The Fourth International Conference on Knowledge Capture, (KCAP 2007). * Barry O'Sullivan Co-Chair of AAAI-07 Workshop Barry O'Sullivan is Co-Chair, with Klas Orsvarn, Tacton Systems AB, Sweden, of the AAAI 2007 Workshop on Configuration, a workshop affiliated with The 22nd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-2007). * Emmanuel Hebrard and Tarik Hadzic Receive Embark Initiative Post-doctoral Fellowships Emmanuel Hebrard and Tarik Hadzic have received Embark Initiative Post-doctoral Fellowships to work with Barry O'Sullivan at 4C. * Barry O'Sullivan Joins Editorial Board of the journal Advances in Artificial Intelligence Barry O'Sullivan has become an Associate Editor of the journal Advances in Artificial Intelligence * Steve Prestwich Joins Editorial Board of the Journal of Digital Information Management Steve Prestwich has joined the Editorial Board of the Journal of Digital Information Management * Barry O'Sullivan and Steve Prestwich Join Editorial Board of Constraint Programming Letters Barry O'Sullivan and Steve Prestwich have joined the Editorial Board of Constraint Programming Letters. Barry has also become the Area Chair for Design and Configuration. * Barry O'Sullivan Co-Edits Book on Trends in Constraint Programming Barry O'Sullivan is the co-editor, along with Frederic Benhamou, University of Nantes, France and Narendra Jussien, Ecole des Mines, Nantes, France, of Trends in Constraint Programming * 4C Collaborates with TreeMetrics on Enterprise Ireland Innovation Partnership 4C is collaborating with TreeMetrics on an Enterprise Ireland Innovation Partnership. This work is directed by James Little, Steve Prestwich, and Tomas Nordlander. TreeMetrics is an award-winning Irish software company servicing the forest industry. * 4C Collaborates with British Telecom on Embark Enterprise Partnership Barry O'Sullivan and Nic Wilson are collaborating with Nader Azarmi and David Lesaint of British Telecom on a project jointly funded by British Telecom and the Embark Initiative under the Embark Initiative's Enterprise Partnership Scheme. * 4C Receives received two Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Fund Technology Development grants 4C has received two Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Fund Technology Development grants. Barry O'Sullivan and Alan Holland are directing work on RECAP - Robust & Expressive Combinatorial Auctions for Procurement, and Gene Freuder, James Little, and Jacob Feldman are directing work on CP-Inside - Embedding Constraint-based Decision Tools in Successful Commercial Software. * SFI Principal Investigator Awards Barry O'Sullivan and Gene Freuder received joint SFI Principal Investigator Awards for Applying Artificial Intelligence to Make Constraint Programming Easier to Use for Decision Making. * Nic Wilson Paper among ECAI 2006 Best Nic Wilson's paper, An Efficient Upper Approximation for Conditional Preference, was judged to be among the 10 best papers at the 2006 European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, as selected by the ECAI-06 chairs. * 4C Authors Receive Rob Milne Memorial Award at AI-2006 Alfio Vidotto, Ken Brown, and 4C alumnus Chris Beck won the Rob Milne Memorial Award for the best refereed application paper at AI-2006, the Twenty-sixth SGAI International Conference on Innovative Techniques and Applications of Artificial Intelligence. The memorial trophy, which was instituted in 2005 in memory of the contribution that Rob Milne made to AI, was presented to them during the conference, along with a cheque for 500. * Ross Nicholson, Derek Bridge, and Nic Wilson Win Best Paper Award Ross Nicholson, Derek Bridge, and Nic Wilson won the best paper award at the 2006 European Conference on Case-Based Reasoning. * Alan Holland and Roberto Rossi Shortlisted for Irish Software Association Student Medal for Commercially Viable Software 2006 Alan Holland and Roberto Rossi, both of the Cork Constraint Computation Centre, were two of the four short-listed candidates for the Irish Software Association Student Medal for Commercially Viable Software 2006. * Industrial Paper Prize at INCOM2006 James Little and summer intern Paidi Creed, along with Suresh Goyal, Steve Berry, and Doug Cokely of Lucent Technologies, were awarded an Industrial Paper prize at INCOM2006, the 12th IFAC Symposium on Information Control Problems in Manufacturing. * Rick Wallace Receives EU Transfer of Knowledge Funding Rick Wallace has received an EU Transfer of Knowledge grant for Constraint Reasoning Extended to Enhance Decision Support (CREEDS). CREEDS will provide approximately 600K euro to bring complementary expertise into 4C. '

' Alan Holland wins the Irish Software Association Student Medal 2007 '

' The ISA Student Medal is made to the post graduate student, who in the opinion of the judges, have developed the most innovative and commercially viable software project. Judging criteria includes innovation, quality of products/services and commercial potential. Alan completed his PhD in the 4C research laboratory under the supervision of Barry O'Sullivan, and it was entitled 'Risk Management for Combinatorial Auctions'. These auctions permit conditional bids on any number of desired packages of items, thus allowing suppliers to attain combinations of contracts that complement one another and enabling bidders to operate more efficiently. Alan's research focused upon providing robust solutions for such auctions when faced with uncertainty in the supply chain. http://www.software.ie/Sectors/ISA/webisaawards2007.nsf/whome?OpenForm '

' Success at IT@Cork R&D awards '

' Prof. Gene Freuder (Department of Computer Science and Director of 4C), Dr. James Little, and Conor Nugent (4C) and Enda Keane (TreeMetrics) receive the inaugural it@cork R&D award. The award was presented by Declan O Mahoney (Firecomms Ltd.) - Chair of the judging panel, and John Riordan, Smart Telecom (sponsor).

' Barry O'Sullivan and Xuan-Ha Vu win the IEEE ICTAI Ramamoorthy Award '

' Barry O'Sullivan and Xuan-Ha Vu won the IEEE ICTAI Ramamoorthy Award for best paper at the 19th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence. The winning paper was entitled "Semiring-Based Constraint Acquisition". The award is in honour of Professor C. V. Ramamoorthy, who has been one of the co-founders of the ICTAI conference series. This year, the ICTAI 2007 Ramamoorthy Award was equally presented to 2 papers, out of 370 submissions received (30% were accepted). Web: http://ictai07.ceid.upatras.gr/?q=node/32 __________________________________________________ '

' Barry O'Sullivan becomes Irish National Representative on COST Action IC0602 '

' Barry O'Sullivan has been appointed the Irish National Representative onEuropean-funded COST Action on Algorithmic Decision Theory (COST Action IC0602).He is also the coordinator of its working group on Decision Theoretic Artificial Intelligence, and Steering Committee member. The Action aims to put together researchers coming from different fields such as Decision Theory, Discrete Mathematics, Theoretical Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence in order to improve decision support in presence of massive data bases, combinatorial sructures, partial and/or uncertaininformation and distributed, possibly interoperating decision makers. Such problems arise in several real world decision problems such as humanitarian logistics, homeland security, epidemiology, risk assessment and management, e-government and the implementation of recommender systems. The Action will coordinate ongoing research projects and provide a more solid framework to already existing networked activities. Web:http://www.cost.esf.org/index.php?id=110&action_number=IC0602 '

' Munster Programming Training goes from Strength to Strength! '

' Muster Programming Training Started Again

Munster Programming Training goes from Strength to Strength!

The Department of Computer Science at University College Cork started again its outreach programme Munster Programming Training which is aimed at secondary school transition year students from the Munster area. This year more than 50 secondary school students from all over Munster area were enrolled to the programme. The aim of this program is to offer special training in computer programming as preparation for participation in the All Irish Schools Programming Competition. The training will also cover topics like web design, Flash animation and Multimedia production which the students can use in their scholar activities. The program will consist of a series of 20 formal and practical lectures that will be delivered by lecturers from the Department on Saturday mornings from 10.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m. between October and May.

By providing this program, we hope to achieve the following:

1. To give a short and basic introduction to computer programming.

2. To foster interest in computers by encouraging young students to learn about programming at an early age.

3. To prepare them for national and international programming competitions.

4. To give the students fundamental elements on web design, web animation, image and video production.

The programme is now in its 4^th year of running and more that 100 secondary school pupils have graduated from it. As a consequence of this programme many of the 2004-2005 MPT students are now studying Computer Science or computer related programmes in UCC. Moreover, the MPT students have won the junior and senior sections in the all Ireland School Programming Competition for the last 3 years. We are also proud to mention that Katie O Mahony, 6^th year pupil in St Aloysius School in Cork and Barry Hurley, former pupil in Colaiste Choilm in Ballincollig, now CS student in UCC, represented Ireland to the International Olympiad in Informatics that took place in August 2007 in Croatia.

Dr Sabin Tabirca, the MPT Coordinator and Daniel Doolan with some of this year MPT students

' Barry O'Sullivan elected President of the Association for Constraint Programming '

' Barry O'Sullivan has been elected to be the next President of the Association for Constraint Programming (ACP). The ACP is in the international association for researchers working in the field of constraint programming. Web: http://slash.math.unipd.it/acp/ '

' Barry O'Sullivan becomes Chair of the Artificial Intelligence Association of Ireland '

' Barry O'Sullivan has been appointed Chair of the Artificial Intelligence Association of Ireland (AIAI). The AIAI is the national association for researchers working in the area of artificial intelligence in Ireland. AIAI is one of the members of ECCAI, the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence. Web: http://www.eccai.org/member/aiai.shtml '

' Barry O'Sullivan and Hadrien Cambazard Win Best Paper Prize '

' Barry O'Sullivan and Hadrien Cambazard won the best paper prize at the 18th Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science. The winning paper was entitled "Automated Constraint Reformulation for Explanation". The prize was sponsored by Google. Web: http://www.comp.dit.ie/aics07/ '

' Multimedia Innovation Network launch at UCC '

' In response to the growing number of multimedia companies in the greater Cork area, the Technology Transfer Initiative (TTI) at UCC and the Computer Science Department, UCC are launching an innovative networking initiative on Thursday, July 5th. The Multimedia Innovation Network aims to promote Cork as a centre of excellence in multimedia as well as promoting research between UCC and the Multimedia Industry, and also establish connections in the Multimedia sector. Guests at the launch will be welcomed at 5.30pm by Brendan Cremen, Director of Technology Transfer, UCC who will give an overview of UCC followed by Miriam Collins, Programme Manager, TTI who will discuss ?How to Collaborate with UCC?. UCC Computer Science Lecturer, Dr John O?Mullane will speak on ?Multimedia Academic Programmes? while David Murphy, also from UCC?s Computer Science Department will discuss ?Multimedia Research at UCC.? Keynote speaker Dr Anil Kokaram, Senior Lecturer & Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin will address the delegates at 6.30pm. Dr Kokaram?s research interests include Motion Estimation, Removal of Degradation in Motion Pictures, object tracking and Bayesian analysis. Dr Kokaram is currently a consultant for The Foundry, which is a leading developer of visual effects and image processing technologies that boost productivity and workflow in film and video post production. He is a prominent researcher, and renowned in the film industry, as illustrated by his recent award of a Technical Oscar for his work. There is no cost involved in membership. The launch of the Network takes place in the Cavanagh Pharmacy Building, Room LG51, UCC on Thursday, July 5th. For more information please visit: http://min.ucc.ie '

' Abell Distinguished Lecture in Computer Engineering and Computer Science Department Seminar at Colorado State University '

' Abell Distinguished Lecture in Computer Engineering and Computer Science Department Seminar at Colorado State University Sponsored by the George T. Abell Endowment, and in cooperation with the CSU Information Science and Technology Center (ISTeC) "WebCom-G, a Candidate Operating System for Grid-Ireland" Dr. John P. Morrison University College Cork, Ireland Monday May 3 4:10 p.m. Lecture 107 Guggenheim Hall Refreshments will be served prior to the lecture Abstract If it is accepted that Grid computing will be an important technology in the near to long term then wide spread acceptance will depend on making that technology easily accessible to general exploitation. In practice, this will not only involve making Grid computing resources available to end user communities but, most importantly, it will require that non specialists be facilitated in constructing grid independent applications that run efficiently on the dynamic architecture the constitutes the Grid. The original problems of programming parallel and distributed systems still hold true and so solutions must be developed to free programmers from the low level details whose consideration gives rise to these problems. In effect, grid programming environments must evolve to a point where grid (and, in general, parallel) programs are freed from architecture details such as data locality, machine availability, inter-task synchronisation, communication topologies, task load-balancing, and fault tolerance - in the same manner as present day sequential programmers are freed from explicit memory management, disk access protocols and process scheduling. At that point in the evolution of the Grid, the grid middleware will adopt the character of a grid operating system and many, if not all, of the issues that make grid programming difficult will migrate out of grid application programs. When this is achieved, the vision of hiding the Grid will have been realised and exploitation of the technology can begin in earnest. The WebCom metacomputer is an abstract machine model that supports an expressive computing model (the Condensed Graphs model) that automatically handles task synchronisation in which load balancing, fault tolerance, and task allocation are handled at the metacomputer level - without burdening the application writer. These characteristics, together with the ability of the computing model to mix evaluation strategies to match the characteristics of the dynamic hardware environment, make the grid enabling of WebCom a promising candidate to act as a grid operating system. The resulting system is referred to as WebCom-G. This talk will briefly introduce the current, conventional, Grid-Ireland environment. It will show how computations can be described as Condensed Graphs and how these graphs are executed by the WebCom metacomputer. Finally, the steps that we are taking to build WebCom-G for incorporation into the Grid-Ireland environment will be outlined. Biographical Information Dr. Morrison has spent 13 years as a member of staff in the Computer Science Department of University College Cork, Ireland, where is a senior lecturer. Before coming to Cork, he worked as a research scientist at the Philips' Natuurkundig Laboratorium in the Netherlands and received his Ph.D. in the Parallel Architecture Group in the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven under the direction of Prof Martin Rem. He is the founder and director of the Centre for Unified Computing, which has a staff of 20 researchers. He is a cofounder and co-director of the Boole Centre for Research in Informatics. This centre focuses on research at the interface between Mathematics and Computer Science. It has a staff of 60 researchers and faculty members. Dr. Morrison is a cofounder and co-director of Grid-Ireland. Established in 1999, Grid- Ireland is a participant in the "European Data Grid" and the "Establish Grids for e-Science in Europe" projects. X-Mozilla-Status: 0009four virtual organisations across 64 institutions on the island of Ireland. Dr. Morrison is a Science Foundation of Ireland Investigator award holder and has attracted more than Euro 20M in research funding since 1997. He is a member of many international programme committees and is a founder of the International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Computing. He is a member of the ACM and the IEEE. His web page may be viewed at http//www.ics.ucc.ie/staff/jmorrison.html/ If you wish to meet with the speaker, please contact his host, Professor H. J. Siegel at hj@colostate.edu For more information please go to http//www.istec.colostate.edu/ '

' Sensor Network Focus at UCC '

' See: http://www.ucc.ie/en/NewsandEvents/PressReleases/Headline,37029,en.html '

' David Murphy profiled in Irish Times '

' David Murphy profiled in Irish Times . '

' Munster Programming Training (MPT) Graduation Day at the Department '

' Munster Programming Training (MPT) Graduation Day at University College Cork (UCC) '

' Professor Gene Freuder awarded membership of Royal Irish Academy '

' Gene Freuder will today become a Member of the Royal Irish Academy: http://www.ria.ie/members/index.asp Over the past few years Professor Freuder has been recognised by prestigious organisations including: o Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science http://www.aaas.org/aboutaaas/fellows/2005.shtml o Fellow of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence http://www.eccai.org/c/fellows?sort=year '

' Keith Bourke wins Bord Gais Project prize '

' Congratulations to Keith Bourke on winning the Bord Gais Project of the Year Award for best research project in Intelligent Systems MSc programme. His project was entitled "Template Design using Constraint Based Local Search" and was supervised by Steve Prestwich.[PHOTO]. Congratulations also to Chenzie Zhu who received an honourable mention for his project entitled "Multi-level Modelling for Analysis and Design of Traffic Networks". This project was supervised by Gregory Provan. '

' Michel Schellekens awarded Synopsis/IDA Project on low power design '

' Michel Schellekens received an award, jointly with Emanuel Popovici (Microelectronics), for a Synopsis/IDA project on low power design. The grant will fund one post doc and two PhD's and the research is an R&D project with Synopsis. '

' New savings products website '

' A new website providing impartial comparisons of saving products was launched this week by a computer science student from University College Cork. Kristian Johansson set up sparu.com, which gives detailed information on the highest paying regular saving accounts, as a final- year computer science project. Sparu.com contains listings for 44 savings products but will develop to cover other areas such as banking, borrowing and investing. '

' Taught MSc in Intelligent Systems: Computer Science Department '

' '

' Gradireland competition '

' Take part in Ireland's biggest ever student and graduate survey and enter a draw to win E300! It will only take a few minutes and your votes will determine the 100 most popular employers in Ireland and Northern Ireland/ CHANCE TO WIN Euro300 ... by voting for your favourite graduate employer Vote at http://www.gradireland.com/100 '

' CS/MISL to Host International Workshop on Wireless Sensor Networks '

' The UCC Mobile & Internet Systems Laboratory is organising the 4th International Workshop on Embedded Networked Sensors (EmNets) which will be hosted in Cork on June 25-26 2007. Held in co-operation with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the workshop is the first international event on this important emerging technology to be held in Ireland. Previous EmNet workshops were in Harvard University, Sydney and Florida. For further details see: http://www.cs.ucc.ie/emnets2007 '

' CS/MISL to Co-host International Mobile/Wireless Conference '

' In a joint initiative with CIT's Adaptive Wireless Systems Laboratory, the UCC Mobile & Internet Systems Laboratory is organising the 9th IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Mobile & Wireless Communication Networks (MWCN) to be held in Cork on September 19-21 2007.This is a well-established conference in the mobile/wireless world and attracts significant interest from both industry and academia. For further details see: http://www.mwcn2007.org/ '

' CS/4C Postgrad wins Microsoft Research Prize Trip to India '

' David Stynes won the prize for the best presented research poster at the annual Microsoft Research Cambridge European Scholars PhD Summer School - the prize was an expenses-paid trip to the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Hyderabad, India, January 2007. '

' Alfio Vidotto and Ken Brown Win Best Application Paper at AI-2006 '

' Alfio Vidotto and Ken Brown, along with Chris Beck of the University of Toronto, received the Rob Milne Memorial Award for the best Application Paper at AI-2006, the Twenty-sixth SGAI International Conference on Innovative Techniques and Applications of Artificial Intelligence, Cambridge, UK, in December 2006, for their paper "Restaurant Table Management using Constraints", describing software developed for Eco restaurant, Douglas. '

' CS/4C Postgrads Shortlisted for Irish Software Association Award '

' Alan Holland and Roberto Rossi were both shortlisted for the Irish Software Association's Student Medal for the Most Commercially Viable Software, for their software systems "A robust combinatorial auction server for procurement auctions" and "Optimal Stochastic Inventory Management." '

' CS Postgrad and The Honan Chapel '

' The Honan Chapel celebrates its 90th anniversary with the launch of the Honan Chapel & Collection Online Website April 1916 saw the Easter Rising in Dublin. July 1916 saw the carnage of the Battle of the Somme in France. November 1916 saw the opening of the Honan Chapel in Cork. The 5th November 2006 marks the 90th anniversary of the Honan Chapel. The Honan Chapel & Collection Online website aims to build upon recent scholarship by promoting awareness of the chapel and its liturgical collection. It features new essays on the chapel and its collection linked to a comprehensive image gallery and a virtual tour of the chapel. The site also includes image downloads and a discussion forum. The sited was developed by Daniel C. Doolan and Xiaoye Dai, from the Department of Computer Science. The design team was organised by Dr. Sabin Tabirca at a request from the Project Coordinator James Cronin, UCC. This new online resource would not have come to fruition without the help and corporation of the many other persons, centres and departments: Rev. Seosamh A. O Cochlain the Honan Chapel, University College Cork, and the Quality Promotion Unit, University College Cork. Site address Honan Chapel & Collection Online http://honan.ucc.ie '

' WebCom-G: middleware to hide the Grid appears in the new publication Grid Technologies '

' Congratulations are due to Professor John Morrison, Dr. David Power, Dr. Philip Healy, Dr. J.J. Kennedy, Brian Clayton, and Adarsh Patil, whose article WebCom-G: middleware to hide the Grid appears in the new publication Grid Technologies Emerging from Distributed Architectures to Virtual Organisations Chapter 10), published by WIT Press. '

' Dan Grigoras invited speaker for the 5th International Symposium on Parallel Computing in Electrical Engineering '

' Dan Grigoras was an invited speaker for the 5th International Symposium on Parallel Computing in Electrical Engineering, PARELEC 2006, Bialystok, Poland, September 13-17, 2006. Dan gave a presentation on "Challenges to the Design of Mobile Middleware Systems". '

' Derek Bridge wins best paper at European Conference on Case-Based Reasoning '

' At the Eighth European Conference on Case-Based Reasoning, the prize for best paper was awarded to "Decision Diagrams: Fast and Flexible Support for Case Retrieval and Recommendation" by Ross Nicholson, Derek Bridge and Nic Wilson. It's two in a row for Derek - he was one of the co-authors of the prize-winning paper at the Seventh European Conference too. '

' Two new staff Associate Professorships have been awarded to Computer Science '

' Congratulations to Professor Michel Schellekens (director of Centre for Efficiency Oriented Languages - CEOL) http://www.ceol.ucc.ie/ Congratulations to Professor John Morrison (director of Boole Centre for Research in Informatics - BCRI) http://www.bcri.ucc.ie/ '

' Professor John Morrison awarded a President's Award for Excellence in Teaching '

' Professor John Morrison has recently been given one of the President's Awards for Excellence in Teaching. Funding of these awards has been made available by the Higher Education Authority from the Strategic Initiatives Fund under the National Development Plan. Each recipient of the award receives EUR4,000. '

' Fourth Year Projects 2006 '

' Welcome to the Department of Computer Science Open Day for Final Year Projects! We are delighted to have on display a wide range of interesting projects spanning topics as diverse as Robotics, E-Commerce, Reconfigurable Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Music - to name just a few. Several of the projects have been completed in co-operation with industry partners. The projects on display are the culmination of six months of hard work by our Fourth Year BSc(Computer Science) students, building on the knowledge they have acquired at UCC and during their industrial placement. '

' Computer Science Student reaches finals of "Science for All" Competition '

' Daniel Doolan, who is a PhD student in Computer Science is one of five finalists in the Science for All 2006 Competition. Listen to his campus radio interview on his chosen topic (http://www.cs.ucc.ie/news/ddoolan_interview.mp3) Daniel Doolan, Computer Science: "Think BIG, play small, Think Mobile". Check out his abstract and further information through the remaining links. The interview was run on the RadioActive (Science) program of Cork Campus Radio, Tuesday 7/03/2006 http://www.ucc.ie/ccr/ http://corkcampusradio.ucc.ie/schedule.htm Info for this year: http://apc.ucc.ie/content/scienceforall2006.htm '

' Recent Irish IT Industry News '

' The outlook is very good for the Irish ICT sector. There have been many recent positive IT industry news articles. A sample can be seen at http://www.cs.ucc.ie/news/press.html '

' UCC Computer Science students awarded Embark Microsoft Research Scholarships. '

' UCC Computer Science students David Stynes and Tony O'Donovan were awarded Embark Microsoft Research Scholarships: See http://www.embark.ie/news/releases/060209.html. '

' Flashes of Brilliance The cutting edge of Irish science by Dick Ahlstrom. '

' A new book by Dick Ahlstrom, published by the Royal Irish Academy, will be available from: http://www.ria.ie/shop/publications.asp Flashes of Brilliance The cutting edge of Irish science by Dick Ahlstrom. This is the first book to highlight science in Ireland today and features 75 of the men and women whose work is transforming the world of science in Ireland today. Launch date: 17 March 2006. ``Flashes of Brilliance'' will include an article on CEOL and Dr. Schellekens' work, published in the Irish Times on June 9, 2005. ************************* Dr. Schellekens received an invitation from Science Foundation Ireland to attend the SFI/NSFC workshop in Beijing, June 2006. This regards a joint workshop with the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) as the first step in building future international programs with China and, as such, SFI intends to showcase their brightest and best talent in ICT. '

' Schools Initiative by UCC's Department of Computer Science Advances '

' See http://www.cs.ucc.ie/news/MPT.pdf '

' Dr Michel Schellekens is an invited speaker for the International Symposium on Domain Theory ISDT '06. '

' The International symposium on Domain Theory will take place on the campus of Hunan University in Changsha, China, from June 2 to June 6, 2006. This is a forum for researchers in domain theory and its applications. '

' UCC Research Professor elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science '

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' Irish Times Article on CEOL '

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' Computer Science postgraduate student Hongbin Zhou receives China National Award for Outstanding Overseas Students '

' On 23rd April, Hongbin Zhou received a China National Award for Outstanding Overseas students at an award ceremony at the Chinese Embassy in Dublin. Mr. Hailin Sha, Chinese ambassador in Ireland, attended the ceremony and, along with Mr. Jiwei Tang, the officer of education section, Chinese embassy, and Chinese student representatives from Irish universities. Hongbin, who holds BEng and MEng from Tsinghua University, is pursuing a PhD in the Department of Computer Science. His research area is Computer Security under the supervision of Dr Simon Foley. The National Award for Outstanding Self-financing Overseas students is an award from Chinese Government since 2003. The motivation is to encourage and help self-financing Chinese students. The applicants must be Chinese citizens who are studying abroad for PhD Degrees, under 40 years old, and his/her financial support is not by Chinese Government. In the year 2004, the applicant range of National Award for outstanding self-financing overseas students is extended from 5 countries to 28 countries. According to the following process: applicants self-applied to local Chinese embassy; then applicants' qualification are examined, reviewed and selected by education officers of Chinese embassy and local experts, and announced in internet for public feedback; then selected applicants were recommended by local Chinese embassy, and then, their applications were send back to China. China Scholarship Council invited experts from ten+ research areas to constitute an expert committee which includes academicians of the Chinese Science Academy. By collecting and evaluating applications, the committee honors 204 outstanding oversea students worldwide and the winners will receive a one-time cash award $5,000. The winners cover a wide range of subjects, such as arts, science, engineering, medicine, and commerce, etc. Most of them are studying in distinguished universities abroad. '

' Dr Joseph Manning receives Research Frontiers Award '

' Dr Joseph Manning has been awarded a E 93,650 grant from Science Foundation Ireland under the Research Frontiers Programme. According to SFI, "The main aim of this programme is to support the very best research in a broad range of disciplines in Science, Mathematics and Engineering. The competition will be driven by the scientific merit of the proposals." The award will be used to support the ongoing project "Practical Computer Programming in ACETT" at the Centre for Efficiency-Oriented Languages (CEOL) . Its goal is to take a prototype computer programming language, which is build built around a recent theoretical breakthrough in semantics and complexity, and develop it into a practical and usable language. '

' Dr. Michel Schellekens receives award from the University of Denis Diderot '

' Dr. Michel Schellekens, Senior Lecturer with the Department of Computer Science, has received an award from the University Denis-Diderot Paris ,7 for an invited Research Professorship at the Department of Computer Science during March 23 - April 23 2005. '

' Fellow of the British Computer Society(FBCS) '

' Professor Cormac J. Sreenan has been invited to become a Fellow of the British Computer Society(FBCS) '

' ISPDC 2004 & HeteroPar'04 '

' International Workshop on Algorithms, Models and Tools for Parallel Computing on Heterogeneous Networks HeteroPar'04 In conjunction with ISPDC 2004 3rd International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Computing July 5-8, 2004 Cork, Ireland www.cuc.ucc.ie/ispdc-heteropar04 '

' OPENING OF NEW UCC SOFTWARE RESEARCH CENTRE MAY PROVIDE INDUSTRY WITH ANSWERS TO KEY QUESTIONS '

' How reliable are the ABS braking systems in our cars, the failsafe systems designed to prevent disasters in chemical plants, the fly-by-wire technology that keeps aircraft like the Airbus aloft, or the embedded software that make games work? Such systems have one thing in common - they are governed by real-time computer languages that require them to perform in a certain way when the situation demands. They must work now! At UCC's Centre for Efficiency-Oriented Languages (CEOL) which will be opened formally on Monday November 10th next, Dr Michel Schellekens, Director, and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science, together with his 11-strong team, are engaged in the critical work of designing a new Real-Time Language to aid the testing and evaluating of real-time software and how fast it runs when called on to deliver immediate responses. The research work is of crucial interest to industry, given that real-time software is widely used in a variety of applications such as chemical plants, satellite communications and the space industry, telephone exchanges, the motor industry, medical equipment, stock market analysis, and robotics, etc. Based at the Cork Airport Business Park, the Centre, which is part of UCC's Department of Computer Science, has received funding of EUR1 million over the next four years from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and is at present discussing a possible collaboration with one of the world leaders in the field, Sun Microsystems. The distinguished engineer, Dr. Greg Bollela, one of the most senior researchers at Sun Microsystems, will be one of two keynote speakers at the opening ceremony. Dr. Bollela also holds a position at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories as Distinguished Visiting Scientist. The other speaker will be Professor Gordon Plotkin of the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh. "Industry needs to know if embedded systems that run on real-time software can perform in accordance with its needs in an emergency. Our work in CEOL is to develop a new Real-Time Programming Language, ACETT (the "Average Case Execution Time Tool"), that can predict the average time software components will use. This aids to verify these systems and to find ways of improving the computer languages that operate them. Chemical plants, for instance, have a very keen interest in verifying the performance of their real-time software so that what is supposed to happen will happen should an emergency arise. The ABS breaking system in your car is another example of a critical piece of equipment that must work at the very moment it is required. Obviously, embedded systems like these cannot be verified in the heat of the moment, as it were, so our work is to development a new programming language ACETT intended to help verify them in the future and improve them in a research environment. Science Foundation Ireland makes a major difference in attracting and retaining top quality research in Ireland. Its concept is brilliant and unique in a European context!," Dr. Schellekens said. The opening ceremony will take place at Cork Airport Business Park on Monday, November 10th, from 10 am to 3.00 pm. For further information please contact: Dr Michel Schellekens, Department of Computer Science, University College Cork, Tel. 4322104, Or Marie McSweeney, Assistant Press Officer, University College Cork, Tel. 021 4902371. Information on CEOL is available at: http://www.ceol.ucc.ie/ 28 October 2003 '

' PhD Research Studentship (Security) '

' Security research in the Department of Computer Science at University College Cork covers both theoretical foundations and practice. Much of our current research aims to better understand the meaning of trust, authorization and security properties within systems. A PhD studentship is available on the project "Foundations of Integrity and Analysis" funded by the Enterprise Ireland Basic Research Grant Scheme. The student will work under the supervision of Dr Simon Foley on the development of a formal theory and tools for the analysis of security properties. The studentship provides a stipend of up to €17,000 per annum for three years for suitably qualified candidates. Students must have at least 2H1 honours degree in Computer Science or cognate subject and will be expected to register/pay fees for a PhD in Computer Science at UCC. Postgraduate experience (masters degree) and experience in a number of the following areas would be an advantage: computer security and security models, formal methods (including process logics and logic) and automated reasoning. Applications must include a full CV, a statement of research interests and the details of at least 2 academic referees. Applications and/or enquires to: Dr Simon Foley Department of Computer Science University College Cork, Ireland. +353 21 4902929 '

' FEXCO Sponsorship for Mobile & Internet Systems Laboratory '

' The Department of Computer Science are delighted to announce new industry sponsorship from the Foreign Exchange Company of Ireland (FEXCO). FEXCO is an international financial services company based in Killorglin, Co. Kerry. FEXCO provides a range of well-known payments and tourism products and services. As wireless Internet access and mobile technologies become ever more ubiquitous, FEXCO's customers on the move will increasingly wish to connect to FEXCO to access information and make payments. The facilities presented to the customers should be based on their location, preferences and immediate requirements - in other words, to their "context". The research challenges to providing large-scale context-aware mobile transactions are significant, and will be the focus of the UCC research sponsored by FEXCO. The funding for this 3-year project will be used to employ a postdoctoral Research Fellow, working within the Mobile & Internet Systems Laboratory headed by Prof. Cormac J. Sreenan. '

' Centre for Efficiency Oriented Languages (CEOL) '

' The research centre CEOL (http://www.ceol.ucc.ie/) will be established at this department by Dr. Michel Schellekens, who received a ?1 million Science Foundation Ireland Investigatorship Award. Full time academic staff involved in CEOL include Dr. Schellekens, Dr. John Herbert and Dr. Joseph Manning. Two PhD students and one Post Doc already joined the Centre and hiring will continue throughout the coming year. The Centre for Efficiency Oriented Languages broadly aims to bridge Semantics of Programming Languages and Complexity and focuses on the study of Real-Time Languages. Real-Time software is widely applied in telephone exchanges, satellite communications, medical equipment, chemical-plant control, stock-market analysis and robotics. The Centre aims to narrow the gap between Worst Case Execution Time analysis and Average Case Execution Time analysis for Real-Time languages and takes a unique approach by combining three areas: Semantics, Complexity and Real-Time Languages. CEOL researchers have expertise in Semantics of Programming Languages and Domain Theory, Real-Time Languages, Compiler Design and Graph based algorithms. CEOL will maintain close links with top level international research centres and industry, including Sun Microsystems Laboratories. Dr. Schellekens obtained his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University. Following his graduation from CMU, he joined Imperial College London as an EC Marie Curie Fellow. He was a Post Doc at the University of Siegen before joining the Department of Computer Science at UCC where he is currently a Senior Lecturer. His work includes fundamental contributions to Quantitative Domain Theory and new models for Complexity Analysis. He is an editor of the journals Annals of the Marie Curie Fellowship Association and Applied General Topology and received prior funding from the Belgian National Science Foundation (NFWO), the German Science Foundation (DFG), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Enterprise Ireland and the Royal Irish Academy. '

' Professor Gregory Provan, Department of Computer Science, UCC has been invited to give a talk at the Academy of Sciences in New York '

' NY Academy of Sciences 15.10.2009 Professor Gregory Provan, Department of Computer Science, UCC has been invited to give a talk at the Academy of Sciences in New York. Professor Provan will deliver his presentation today (October 15th 2009) at a meeting on �Green Building Solutions: What's Working? Considering the Brains Behind a Smart Building�. In his talk, Professor Provan will present control and diagnostics material based on the Information and Communication Technology for Sustainable and Optimised Building Operation (ITOBO). Speakers at the meeting include: Kurt Roth (Fraunhofer Center for for Sustainable Energy Systems), Stephen Samouhos (MIT), and Jane Snowdon (IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center). Picture: Professor Gregory Provan '

' 7th Annual Public Boole Lecture in Informatics '

' Dr. Peter Norvig Director of Research Google Tuesday 15th December 2009 at 8.00 PM Boole 4 Lecture Theatre, UCC Admission is free. All are welcome. Title: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data Subtitle: How Billions of Trivial Data Points can Lead to Understanding Abstract: In decades past, models of human language were wrought from the sweat and pencils of linguists. In the modern day, it is more common to think of language modeling as an exercise in probabilistic inference from data: we observe how words and combinations of words are used, and from that build computer models of what the phrases mean. This approach is hopeless with a small amount of data, but somewhere in the range of millions or billions of examples, we pass a threshold, and the hopeless suddenly becomes effective, and computer models sometimes meet or exceed human performance. This talk gives examples of the data available in large repositories of text, images, and videos, and shows some tasks that can be accomplished with the resulting models. Peter Norvig is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and the Association for Computing Machinery. At Google Inc he was Director of Search Quality, responsible for the core web search algorithms from 2002-2005, and has been Director of Research from 2005 on. Previously he was the head of the Computational Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center, making him NASA's senior computer scientist. He received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Award in 2001. He has served as an assistant professor at the University of Southern California and a research faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley Computer Science Department, from which he received a Ph.D. in 1986 and the distinguished alumni award in 2006. He has over fifty publications in Computer Science, concentrating on Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing and Software Engineering, including the books Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (the leading textbook in the field), Paradigms of AI Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp, Verbmobil: A Translation System for Face-to-Face Dialog, and Intelligent Help Systems for UNIX. He is also the author of the Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation and the world's longest palindromic sentence. The Annual Boole Lecture Series in Informatics was established and is sponsored at University College Cork by the Boole Centre for Research in Informatics, the Cork Constraint Computation Centre, the Department of Computer Science, and The School of Mathematical Sciences. '