Faculty News

Eurographics Ireland 2003 Workshop (29-30 April 2003) The School of Computing and Information Engineering at Coleraine is organising the 4th annual workshop of the Irish Chapter of Eurographics - the European Association for Computer Graphics. This year's workshop theme is "Intelligent Graphics", but we hope to bring together a diverse group of people interested in the theory and applications of Computer Graphics and its intersection with other areas, such as HCI, AI, perception, audio, medicine and simulation. Full details are available from the conference Web site.

New School Structure for Informatics (1 August 2002) From 1st August 2002, the Faculty of Informatics will comprise three schools, organised along campus lines. The Jordanstown campus now houses the School of Computing and Mathematics , while the Coleraine campus holds the School of Computing and Information Engineering. As previously, the Magee campus is the location of the School of Computing and Intelligent Systems.

Computer Science rated as '4' (14 December 2001) The Computer Science Unit of Assessment has been awarded a rating of '4' in the 2001 RAE. This equates to a level of national excellence in virtually all the research submitted

RAE reaction (14 December 2001) Distinguished local industrialists have been quick to react to the Faculty's RAE rating.

CASI 2002: Conference on Applied Statistics in Ireland (15-17 May 2002) The Faculty is organising the 2002 gathering of the Irish Statistical Association in the Marine Hotel, Ballycastle in May next year. The Conference has become the main forum in Ireland for methodological development in Statistics and has gained a reputation for its hospitality over the years. Full details are available from the conference Web site.

Soft-ware: Computing in an Imperfect World (8-10 April 2002) The Faculty, with Nortel, is organising an international conference in Belfast (W5) next year, on the handling of uncertain, incomplete information and knowledge in developing and running computing systems. This covers a number of areas of interest including artificial intelligence, software engineering and information systems. Four prominent researchers, Dr. Piero Bonissone, Professor Sir Tony Hoare, Professor Michael Jackson, and Professor Ray Paul, will present keynote addresses. Papers on the theory and practice of coping with uncertainty in computing, from any perspective, are invited. Deadline: 15th September 2001.

EUNITE Workshop (8 April 2002) The Second European EUNITE Workshop on Computational Intelligence in Telecommunications and Multimedia will take place on the first day of the Soft-Ware Conference. The aim is to promote the application of fuzzy systems, neural networks, evolutionary computation, machine learning, case-based reasoning, agent based techniques and related technologies to problems in the area of Telecommunications and Multimedia. The focus in EUNITE is on intelligent adaptive systems and applications that require the ability to deal with uncertainty related problems by using the techniques listed above. The purpose of the workshop is to stimulate cross-community discussion, to collect state-of-the-art contributions and to show the applicability of academic work to real world problems. Deadline: 15th September 2001.

New RAE Coordinator (10 December 2001) Dr Bryan Scotney has been appointed RAE coordinator for Unit 25 (Computer Science) .

New Director of Research (5 October 2001) Professor Sally McClean has been appointed as Director of Research for the Faculty of Informatics, and Head of the Informatics Research Graduate School.

ESEM2001 (3-5 May 2001) The European Society for Engineering and Medicine Biennial Conference is being held in Belfast in 2001, chaired by the current President of ESEM, Professor Norman Black, Dean of the Faculty of Informatics. Deadline for papers, posters and abstracts: 26 January 2001.

MINEit Scoop Top IT Award (7 November 2000) MINEit is one of three companies, out of a shortlist of twenty, to be chosen as Grand Prize Winners of the European Information Society Technology Awards for 2000. The prize is worth 200,000 euros and, of course, is excellent publicity for MINEit, the web analytics company. In the words of the organisers "... the European IST Prize is an award for groundbreaking products that represent the best of European innovation in information technology. It provides public recognition and a highly visible profile to entrepreneurial teams that excel in generating novel ideas and R&D and converting them into marketable products. The high standards of applicants and the competitive screening procedure for selecting the winners make this prize the most distinguished for new Information Technology driven products."

Soft Computing Workshop (21 September 2000) The Faculty, with Nortel, is organising a workshop on Soft Computing at Jordanstown on 21st September 2000. This will cover the necessity and techniques of handling uncertainty in interdisciplinary research areas: Telecommunication Networks, Intelligent Agents, Machine Learning and Data Mining, Robotics, and Medical Informatics. Most of the presentations are from invited speakers.

Secretary of State Opens NICeB (18 July 2000) The Northern Ireland Centre for e-Business was opened today by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Rt Hon Peter Mandelson. NICeB will be run jointly by the Faculty of Informatics and the Faculty of Business and Management. The Centre will engage in research, development and knowledge transfer, in providing a range of services to industry.

All Change in Informatics (14 June 2000) The Dean of Informatics, Professor John Hughes, who was recently appointed as Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research, has been succeeded by Professor Norman Black. Dr Richard Millar has become Head of School for Computing and Mathematical Sciences, taking over from Professor Terri Scott, who was appointed to the newly created post, Dean of Regional Development.

Maths, Stats & OR Score an 'Excellent' 22 (24 March 2000) The quality of teaching and course provision in Mathematics, Statistics and Operational Research has today been judged 'excellent' by a QAA Peer Review Panel, placing Ulster towards the top end of provision in the UK.

Informatics is Home to the LTSN Centre for Information and Computer Science (22 June 1999) The University of Ulster has been chosen to form part of a new £30 million national initiative to improve the quality of teaching and learning in universities throughout the United Kingdom. The project, which will bring over £1.25m in new funding to the UU, is to begin in January 2000. Known as the Learning and Teaching Support Network Centre for Information and Computing Sciences, it will provide a network for the support, information and discussion of Information Technology teaching and learning issues in higher education. The team, based on the Jordanstown campus, will lead a consortium of four other universities: Loughborough, Warwick, Heriot-Watt and the University of North London.

MINEit Spins Out (15 June 1999) MINEit Software Ltd. is a newly formed company, emerging from the NIKEL Research Centre in Informatics.It will specialise in the use of data mining techniques to develop next-generation Internet software products and services for e-commerce,  information providers, and e-businesses.

SMBPI: Workshop on Systems Modelling for Business Process Improvement (29-31 March 1999) This 3-day research Workshop, organised through the EPSRC RIPPLE project,  brought together speakers and delegates from various parts of the UK, Europe, and as far afield as Australia, Israel, and the US. The main focus of the event was the use of models in socio-technical business process improvement. The keynote speakers were Professor Ian Sommerville (University of Lancaster), Professor Frank Stowell (De Montfort University) and Professor Wendy Currie (Brunel University). A book based on the Workshop presentations, will be published by Artech House in May 2000.

If you have any comments on these webpages, please send them to: informatics@ulst.ac.uk
© 2001 University of Ulster