Computing Department News

HCI student wins The Chancellor's Medal!

Congratulations to the School of Computing and Communications' Alfonso Gugino who was one of five to be presented with The Chancellor's Medal of outstanding achievement for his studies on the MSc in Human Computer Interaction. more …

SCC PhD student wins the Deans Award for excellence!

Congratulations to SCC's Dominik Schmidt for winning the Dean's award for excellence for his 3rd year postgraduate studies! Dominik's work looks at supporting users to improve their experience with shared interactive surfaces. more …

Prof Alan Dix to be keynote speaker for first International Conference on User Science and Engineering!

The i-USEr 2010 Conference on 13-15th December aims to address the main issues of concern within Human Computer Interaction with a particular emphasis on the aspects of design, development and implementation of interfaces and the generational implications for design of human and technology interaction. This conference aims to explore and discuss innovative studies of technology and its application in interfaces and welcomes completed research, work in progress and case studies. SCC's Prof Alan Dix will be a keynote speaker and will also organise a workshop for the conference. more …

iPhone App Development Day!

Local businesses joined students during Global Entrepreneurship Week for an iPhone App Development Day with Lancaster University's SCC mobile experts Dr Reuben Edwards and Dr Paul Coulton. more …

Professor Jon Whittle quoted in La Repubblica!

Professor Jon Whittle (School of Computing and Communications) was quoted in La Repubblica (2nd largest Italian general newspaper),talking about his research project Voice Your View. The project, which is being developed by scientists from the Research Councils UK Digital Economy Programme, allows people to express their views either through public terminals or software on mobile phones. Last month it attracted the attention of the Minister of State for Universities and Science David Willetts MP who praised the instant feedback technology demonstrated by Lancaster University as one of the most innovative projects he encountered during presentations at the House of Commons. It was also featured in the Times Higher Education supplement, see here: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=414155. more …

SCC Student wins iPhone App competition!

A Lancaster University student was part of a team which scooped first prize in a mobile game competition. TriBlu, made up of Chris Winstanley, from the School of Computing and Communications and Stuart Allardes and Jack Bulmer, (UCLan) won the final of this year"s Mobile Bullets Competition, a showcase for the skills and expertise of Lancaster's programming students and UCLan"s game design students.Chris was featured on the Gamers Daily News website, in an article about his success as being part of a team to scoop first prize in a mobile game competition. more …

Professor Awais Rashid featured on BBC radio!

Professor Awais Rashid (School of Computing and Communications) was featured on BBC radio and also in the Lancashire Evening Post about the recent conference "Online Child Protection: Future Technologies for Policing the Internet", which took place last month in London. more …

A New Generation of Cyber Security Specialists!

Lancaster University is training a new generation of Cyber Security specialists. The Government announced that cyber crime is one of the key dangers to UK security and 500 million pounds has been allocated from the National Security Strategy to strengthen cyber security, focusing on protecting key infrastructure and defence assets. Lancaster University spotted the skills gap in this area in 2008 and began developing a new Masters Degree in Cyber Security, accredited through the School of Computing and Communications (SCC). Teaching started this month and recruitment has exceeded expectations more …

Government Minister impressed by Voice Your View technology!

The Minister of State for Universities and Science David Willetts MP has praised instant feedback technology demonstrated by Lancaster University as "one of the most innovative projects" he encountered during presentations at the House of Commons. The minister was among an audience of MPs, peers and businesspeople at a "Science in the New Parliament" exhibition hosted by the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology in collaboration with Research Councils UK. Dr Will Simm from the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University, which is leading the research, gave a demonstration of Voice Your View technology more …

Protecting Children Online

Online child protection experts will meet in London next week to discuss ways in which technology can help keep children safe on the internet. Police, politicians, researchers, children"s charities and computer scientists will discuss the future challenges and opportunities technology offers parents and law enforcers working in this complex and challenging area. The conference, organised by a team led by Professor Awais Rashid(School of Computing and Communications) will see leading experts from different fields discussing their perspectives, and showcase the latest technological developments in child online safety. The conference is aimed at people working in law enforcement, child protection, education, internet governance, and to anyone who is interested in the latest technologies that can be used to help protect children online. more …

VoiceYourView to demo in the House of Commons!

School of Computing and Communications Dr. Will Simm will be demo-ing the latest version of VoiceYourView software in the House of Commons on Tues October 26th. This is part of an event called "Science in the New Parliament". VoiceYourView allows semantic navigation of a body of comments, such as those entered into social media sites such as facebook or twitter. The demo will illustrate the use of the software for intelligent navigation through public comments entered into fixmystreet.co.uk, a website where people can report local problems. The software clusters comments according to theme, sentiment and actionability; it can be used by local authorities, government, and the public itself to quickly and easily peruse a database of comments and to look for other comments with (e.g.) opposite sentiment on a similar theme. The event will be attended by 50 MPs and peers. more …

Project ISIS success in the news is featured on RCUK Global Uncertainties Programme!

Project ISIS success in the news was featured on RCUK Global Uncertainties Programme. The EPSRC/ESRC-funded ISIS project has recently gained national and international media coverage for its work on helping children understand risks of online interactions, and the accuracy of the project"s toolkit on identifying masquerading adults in chat rooms. more …

School of Computing and Communication's Distinguished Lecture Series!

The School of Computing and Communications is happy to announce its tenth Distinguished Lecture. The speaker is Professor Daniel M. Berry from University of Waterloo. The title of the talk is: The Inevitable Pain of Software Development: Why There Is No Silver Bullet. It is scheduled on Tuesday 19th October from 10:00 at C60 b/c, InfoLab21. more …

School of Computing and Communication's Distinguished Lecture Series!

The School of Computing and Communications is happy to announce its ninth Distinguished Lecture. The speaker is Dr Frank Tip from IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. The title of the talk is: Test Generation and Fault Localization for Web Applications. It is scheduled on Friday 15th October from 10:00 at C60 b/c, InfoLab21. more …

Professor Hans Gellersen and Dominik Schmidt's research is featured in Technology Review!

Technology Review has written a feature on the School of Computing and Communication's Professor Hans Gellersen and his PhD student Dominik Schmidt's research on identifying different users(via mobile phones) on tabletop touch screens. They created a prototype system, called PhoneTouch, which lets users manipulate onscreen objects, such as photos, or select buttons, by touching any part of their phone to the screen, also making it possible to personalize interactions. more …