Abstract: Impact is a major buzzword for REF and the funding councils. It's all about how our research makes a difference outside of academia: where it happens it can be very rewarding as well as being a good thing from a funding perspective. We'll look at the topic in more detail in this session. Further details TBC.
"Sharing a secret: how to read a paper on how to share a secret"
Abstract: We will be dealing with three papers, two pages each. One is interesting for the topic, one has 13k+ citations, one is on a very interesting topic. The goal of this session is to discuss an approach to reading scientific papers effectively, and to compare it with other/our existing approaches. Accessible to anyone, it will be a hands-on session/discussion. If someone can guess the three papers (or some of them), send me an e-mail.
Abstract: These are challenging times for us all: our workload has gone through the roof, everything seems to take twice as long as usual (at least!), we are separated from our support networks, and the future is uncertain. Come to this session to check-in, to re-connect, and to gain some strategies for staying well.
Abstract: This talk will let me practice a presentation I will give in Muscat
about using R-Studio. I've chosen to do a tutorial on Bayesian
inference using the binomial distribution. I hope to offer a nice
insight into Bayesian methods with some simple, interactive R scripts.
Abstract: In this session I would like us to round-robin some sample problems of varying difficulty. If you aren't familiar with Java or are a beginner, we can translate pseudocode for each other. All welcome to listen in and not take part if you prefer.
Abstract: R is a statistical programming language. It is very powerful allowing everything from basic stats to machine learning and sophisticated visualisations. It's also free! This talk will cover the basics of syntax, and via some practical examples demonstrate just some of the things that are possible
Abstract: A brief introduction to the principles of deep work and generative writing, followed by specific examples of how to organise your project flow, manage your time, and keep track of papers you read. This talk will be of particular use to ECRs who are looking to maximise their writing efficiency, but is open to anyone who has an interest in organisation. There will also be time for input from anyone who has organisational/time management tips to share, so feel free to bring examples along!
"How to get published with the IEEE"
Author: Ed Wong, IEEE
Date: 6th February, 2pm
Abstract: Increase the visibility of your research and build author credibility by publishing in a leading IEEE journal or conference. Learn how to identify the best journal or conference for your work and navigate the IEEE paper submission and peer review process. Review the required elements and proper structure of a manuscript to avoid reasons why papers may be rejected. Also learn about IEEE's Open Access options!
2018
"How can we support equality and diversity within the department?"
Abstract: In this session we will look at some of the data on equality within computing and maths (more broadly than the department) and touch on unconscious bias. I will also look at some hints and tips on how to support one another, particularly by being an active bystander. Although the material comes from discussions about women in STEM they are much more broadly applicable than that. One the best “justifications” I have heard for making these changes is that good practice benefits everyone but bad practice has a disproportionate impact on women (and other minorities) .
"How to be a Productive Researcher (with less effort)"
Abstract: We are all under pressure to do more and more with our time and often some of the most important things can fall to the bottom of the list as pressure to do the urgent things mounts. In this session I will look at tips and tricks for how to carry out research more effectively with limited time. Most of these ideas will be taken from the book “the productive researcher” by Mark Reed, mixed with some more personal observations. We will also discuss which opportunities to say yes and no to!
Abstract: Since practical 3D printers became available there’s been much talk about the subject by futurists and the media in general. This brief walk around the world of 3D printing will try to bring the subject into clearer focus by looking at the people and ideas that drove the development of 3D printing, the different technologies, their limitations and the workflows involved. Has 3D printing delivered on its promise? How can you make use of the facilities in the university?
Slides:[Slides PPTX] Photography copyright Ken Reid
Abstract: While many techniques and best practices can be come across by chance, there are thousands of libraries out there which can improve the efficiency of your work, save you hours of programming and utilize external packages. In this discussion I'll bring up some of my preferred Java libraries, and also discuss some that have been suggested to me by industry professionals and colleagues alike. This presentation will assume a basic knowledge of Java, but will demonstrate the manual installation of external libraries (in the form of JAR files) in Eclipse.
"Git and GitHub: Version Control and Social Coding"
Abstract: Version control allows you to automatically track changes to a software project over time, enabling the ability experiment with and revert changes, and to merge contributions with collaborators. Git is currently the most used version control system. It was built by Linux-creator Linus Torvalds, and is used to manage changes to the Linux kernel. Even Microsoft is in the process of migrating Windows development to Git. No discussion of Git would be complete without GitHub, a free, web-based storage platform for your Git repositories. GitHub acts as a home for hosting and contributing to open-source projects such as Node.js, Ruby on Rails, the Android operating system, and many more. In this seminar we will demonstrate how to get started hosting your project with Git and GitHub, and how to use GitHub to manage your project with branching, issue tracking, releases, and continuous integration. We will also see how to use GitHub to contribute to open-source projects with forks and pull-requests.
Abstract: This will take the form of a brief introduction, followed by a discussion. The discussion will be on some specific points about making the transitions from PhD student to paid researcher to lecturer/assistant professor. There’s no simple answer: each person who has achieved a measure of success (counting success as getting the RA/RF post, the lectureship/assistant professorship, the SL/associate professorship, the Readership, the Full Professorship as success: certainly not financial success!) has done it in a different way. But there are some things in common, and perhaps some things to avoid.
*The greasy pole: Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881, “I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole”, a remark to a friend after being named prime minister.
Abstract: The Java language has included threads from the very first version, back in 1994. Multi-threading supported the development of features such as responsive GUI and garbage-collection. Today, with multi-core CPUs replacing the old Moore’s law of ever-increasing CPU clock speeds, it is becoming increasingly important to take advantage of threads. This talk will provide a primer for writing concurrent code with threads. We will see what can go wrong when threads share variables and objects. We will discuss levels of thread-safety, and how we can write thread-safe applications using locks, thread-isolation, state minimisation, lock-free concurrency, and concurrent collections.
"Research Communication: What it is and how you raise your research profile"
Abstract: We are all used to the idea of communicating our research to a specialised audience either via peer reviewed journal papers or through talks at conferences.
However, nowadays we can make user of social media both to make the specialised audience aware when we publish and to reach a wider audience. This should result in more citations and a wider uptake of our research . Some of this needs to be done by us as individuals but much of it can be done through the new departmental initiatives to enhance our external (and internal) profile.
In this session I will discuss some of the options open to us including twitter, Kudos, writing for the Conversation and writing blogs. I will also tell you how to make the most of what we are doing as a department so that you can get maximum impact for minimum effort.
"Being and Becoming a Professor - a personal view of work–life (im)balance"
Abstract: 2016 was a weird year for me. On the plus side I was one of twelve women in Computing and Mathematics to receive a Suffrage Science Award, recognising both scientific achievement and ability to inspire others. I’m involved in lots of work to promote careers in science for women, having initiated and led the Athena SWAN programme of actions at Stirling for four years, and started building Cygnets: a good practice network of UK computing departments engaged in gender equality work. But 2016 was also one of the worst years of my life, with lots of stress, and consequent depression. I'll talk about my journey from student to professor, with some thoughts about the people and qualities that lead to success, and how those qualities can also be enemies. This should be relevant for everyone, no matter their career stage, academic or professional services, or discipline. (Spoiler alert: I don’t have the answers!)
Abstract: Most Java developers have encountered generics at some point. Introduced in Java 5.0, generics provide compile-time type safety for homogeneous collections and eliminate the need for much explicit runtime type casting. However, the addition of generics to the language brings a lot of complexity in the form of parameterized types, unbounded and covariant/contravariant unbounded wildcards, generic methods, and runtime type erasure. In this this session we will see how to start using generics to increase the flexibility and reusability of your code with maintain compile time type safety, demystify some of the complexity, and avoid some of the pitfalls you may encounter along the way.
Abstract: This talk is a summary of my attendance in February at a workshop for early career researchers run by the EPSRC ICT theme. I will summarise the new cross-theme priorities that EPSRC have recently revised, as well as passing on some useful tips that were given on responding to grant reviewers, embedding impact in research, cross-disciplinary working and schemes targetted at early-career researchers such as fellowships. This should be of particular interest to newer lecturers, but anyone looking for research funding might find it useful.
Abstract: LaTeX is a powerful document preparation system for high-quality typesetting. This session, part 2, will cover more specific topics such as Beamer presentations and different packages.
"Scrapy: an insight on Crawling Data from the Web with Python "
Author: Don Giovanni Battista Spinelli Barrile di Marianella
Date: Friday February 24th, 1500-1600, 4B96.
Abstract: Data Scientists' job rely on having access to (large) datasets. However, the data is not always directly available to be processed and analysed; it often needs to be retrieved initially from external sources. Such sources may be an API (application protocol interface) or even web pages from the Internet. Web Scraping or Web Harvesting is the technique of extracting large amounts of information directly from the source code standing behind web pages. During this seminar we will have a quick overview of the Python tools available to perform Web Scraping. A fter this, our focus will shift to Scrapy, an elaborated, free, open-source, web crawling framework written in Python. After explaining the framework's overall structure and its main components, we will see Scrapy in action during an interactive session; this will be done by coding some scripts that are able to recursively collect information from thousands of web pages. During the last stage of the seminar, we will learn how to select, retrieve and store specific information from web pages.
"Social Engineering, Penetration Testing and Ethical Hacking."
Abstract: An introductory session into the professional world of ethical hacking, including discussion on social engineering and manipulation, where one can bypass systems without typing a single character; penetration testing where organizations pay hackers to break into their systems, and ethical hacking and the training available. In a world where people willingly provide personal information, is technical knowledge even necessary to gain intel on someone? This presentation also includes a demonstration of software which makes use of modern day social networking to track people.
Abstract: Writing is an important skill: and one we all need to master.
There is no silver bullet, but here are a list of tips and dos and don't.
I have been to all the writing course given at Stirling - so this is just a short overview.
This session is about sharing any ideas and avoiding pitfalls.
I hope some of the techniques work for you.
Abstract: LaTeX is a powerful document preparation system for high-quality typesetting. The talk will cover different aspects of creating a technical document, from the compilation pipeline to handling floats gracefully.The aim of the talk is to lessen LaTeX's learning curve for motivated beginners and provide general tips and tricks for the more advanced user. Part 2 (date TBC) will cover more specific topics such as Beamer presentations and different packages.
Abstract: Like other massively successful organizations and tools, when the search engine became viral the proper noun became a verb, and now we all Google, and no longer surf the web. Almost two decades since the inception of the Google search engine, most people still use it as a simple keyword search tool. Yet Google now has the capability for specific file type searches, powerful remote desktop capabilities, cloud storage, simultaneous multi-user spreadsheet usage, document editor, PowerPoint creating tools, and smart artificial intelligence embedded into its search engine to help us with daily tasks based on your individual preferences and situations. The debate as to whether the cost of our data is worth the use of these powerful toolsets is ever ongoing, but one thing is for certain: these tools can certainly make your life easier.
"A Brief Tour of Automata Theory: from Finite State Automata to Turing Machines."
Abstract: We will look at two “simple” models of computation; finite state automata (FSA) and Turing Machines (TM). Regarding FSA, we will look at their relationship to regular expressions, their equality, and minimization. Regarding TMs, we will look at universal TM, the halting problem, Rice’s theorem, and the Church/Turing thesis.
