Departmental News 2011
2011-12-12: The departmental Christmas lunch was held recently at the Chateau on the Park, in conjunction with a farewell event for retiring Associate Professor Wolfgang Kreutzer. Here are a couple of pictures from the day:
2011-12-08: Tanja Mitrovic has been awarded the Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education (APSCE) Distinguished Researcher Award, which was presented at their annual conference last week. Read the full story.
2011-10-12: In the recent QS World University Rankings, the Canterbury CSSE department has been ranked in the top 150 computer science departments in the world, and the second in New Zealand.
At the same time the University of Canterbury has become the first New Zealand university to receive a 5-star rating in the newly-established international QS Stars rating system.
2011-10-06:The Software Engineering Showcase 2011 will be held this year at 9am-12pm on Friday 7 January in LAW108.
Come along and check out the Android based projects done by the COSC325 Software Engineering students this year. Each fun presentation will only be 10 minutes long and will include interactive demos. If you wish, you could bring your Android phones (preferably) or laptops with you to join in the interaction! Morning tea will also be provided.
- More info at the Software Engineering Showcase 2011 page.
- Your special invite.
See you there!
2011-09-25: Congratulations to our PhD students Joey Scarr and Stephen Fitchett who both received cash awards in this year's "PhD in 3" competition, where students are given three minutes and a single slide to present their PhD research.
Having been awarded prizes for best and runner up presentations at the Departmental Postgraduate Conference, Joey and Stephen proceeded to the College round. Joey came first, Stephen third, and both received $1000 prizes.
Joey proceeded to the University wide round, coming second and receiving a further $3000 prize. Staff have noted that $1000 per minute is a pretty good pay rate!
Congratulations!
2011-08-07: The NZ Programming Contest was held Saturday 6 August, 61 teams competed at 5 sites around the country. There were five sections: Secondary School, Tertiary Junior, Tertiary Intermediate, Tertiary Open and Open. The Christchurch heat was almost cancelled before CSSE's Adjunct Senior Fellow Richard Lobb stepped in to organise the event locally.
At the Christchurch site there were three teams from Burnside High and five teams from CSSE, covering all sections except Tertiary Intermediate. The Christchurch teams took first place in all the sections in which they competed!
| Section | Team | Points | Team Members |
|---|---|---|---|
| Secondary School | TLA (Burnside High) | 312 | Logan Glasson, Tony Sun, (TBC) |
| Tertiary - Junior | Serenity (CSSE) | 52 | Cain Cresswell-Miley, Patrik Patel, Shaun Phillips |
| Tertiary - Intermediate | TBC | TBC | TBC |
| Tertiary - Open | Eigenvictors (CSSE) | 412 | Michael McGee, Jamie McCloskey, Brendan Bycroft |
| Open (Professionals) | Tripartite Giraffe (CSSE) | 412 | Joey Scarr, Stephen Fitchett, Edwin Flores |
TBC - To be confirmed
There was an extraordinary tie for overall top position between Eigenvictors and Tripartite Giraffe with 412 points. Burnside High's Team TLA also scored an extraordinary achievement with 312 points. Two of the teams have just returned from representing NZ at the IOI (International Olympiad in Informatics), as has Jamie McCloskey from Eigenvictors. Also of note is Logan Glasson from team TLA being one of CSSE's Star programme students.
Congratulations to all teams for a stunning performance.
2011-04-18: The top stage one, stage two, and stage three students for 2010 were presented with their prizes at a departmental morning tea.
Left to right: Sam Dopping-Hepenstal (top stage one student), Tanja Mitrovic (HOD), Joel Harrison (top stage two student). Steven Harvey (top stage three student) was unable to attend.
2011-03-31: Members of Andy Cockburn's research group have received awards in this years "Best of CHI" awards. They are:
A Best Paper award (top 1% of submissions) for
Enhancing Physicality in Touch Interaction with Programmable Friction by V Levesque, L Oram, KE MacLean, A Cockburn, N Marchuk, D Johnson, JE Colgate, M Peshkin.
An Honourable Mention award (top 5%) for
On the Costs of Multiple Trajectory Pointing Methods by P Quinn, A Cockburn, KJ Raiha, J Delamarche.
2011-01-25: Warwick Irwin (Wal) had his teaching recognised at the recent 2011 Australasian Computer Science Week (ACSW conference), where he received the CORE Teaching Award. This award is "for an outstanding contribution to teaching, or an exemplary innovation in teaching by a team or an individual and specifically recognises the ability to arouse students' curiosity, interest, creative endeavour and enthusiasm for computing."
The Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia, CORE, is an association of university departments of computer science in Australia and New Zealand.
Details about the award are at:
http://core.edu.au/index.php/categories/awards/17
2011-01-12:
Amali Weerasinghe and Sagaya Amalathas received the Merit award
to present their papers at the ICCE 2010 conference,
http://www.icce2010.upm.edu.my/images/imgD5_41_jpg.jpg
Amali's paper was also nominated for the best student paper award.
http://www.icce2010.upm.edu.my/paper_awards.html
