CS@Manchester Podcast: Recent Episodes
School of Computer Science
Today's episode features an episode with final year student Teo Stoleru, who during her time as a student here as been working for Google for her placement year and also, applied and was succesful in achieving a place on the prestigious global @womentechmakers scholarship program.
We talk about the process of getting onto the scholarship, her experiences at the retreat and who she met.
We also discuss her time working at google, and how she is finding the course here at Manchester, and what she gets up to when not studying - plenty of hackathons!
Stay in touch with the School by following us on twitter @csmcr
and now we are on Instagram! Search: UoMCompsci
If you're interested in studying on one of our undergraduate programmes then please visit the following link;
http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/
Today's episode of the CS@Manchester podcast features an interview with three academics who are the course module leaders of the brand new elective and cross-discplinary module - AI: Robot Overlord, Replacement or Colleague.
Artificial intelligence (AI), the ability of machines to learn from data, make decisions and perform actions, is now creeping into every aspect of our lives. This unit explores the mechanisms, implications and ethics of an environment where AI plays an increasingly important role.
The academics we speak to are Andy Brass, Professor in Bioinformatics, Dr Caroline Jay, Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science and Dr Iliada Eleftheriou, a Lecturer in Health Sciences.
Find out more about the programme at these links below:
http://www.college.manchester.ac.uk/units/?year=2018&semester=2&course=288
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZlom-G_3Ns
Welcome to Episode 27 of the CS@Manchester podcast!
This episode features a special interview with Experimental Offier Samuel Walsh from the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering and Christian Kinderman, a PhD student from the School of Computer Science.
We talk about their experiences representing the University as part of Project Malawi, an initiative with the Charity Ripple Africa to deliver Computer Science workshops in villages in North Malawi.
We talk about what initially drew them towards taking part in the project, the challenges of delivering the workshops to the schoolchildren there, how they were received and the experiences and relationships that they will take away with them forever.
Explore through some of the photos and videos and images that Samuel was talking about and showing:
Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/KC7usVjaiJYVYEuY7 Videos: https://tinyurl.com/y9vddabk
Read more about the Project Malawi and the team of students and teachers supporting the project here:
Official report: http://www.socialresponsibility.manchester.ac.uk/events/project-malawi-the-school-of-computer-science-visits-africa/
https://manchester.hubbub.net/p/malawi-2018/
http://www.casmanchester.org.uk
Find out more about the charity Ripple Africa and the different support they deliver here:
https://www.rippleafrica.org
The School's latest cohort of final year Undergraduates finished their degrees this summer and celebrated at the Graduation Ceremony in Mid-July.
We caught up with a variety of students and staff as they reflect on reaching the end of this long journey, what have been their highlights and what they have planned for the future.
Those featured in this podcast are in order:
Sarah Akerman, BSc CSwIE (1:21-5:38)
Cameron Allan, BSc CS (5:54-10:00)
Sean Bechhoffer, Senior Lecturer and First Year Tutor (10:19-14:24)
Josh Langley, MEng CSwIE (14:39-18:24)
Gavin Donald, Student Support Staff Member (18:26-21:07)
Sami Alabed, BSc CSwIE (21:24-24:09)
Ben Possible, BSc CSwIE (24:28-29:49)
Prof Robert Stevens, Head of School & Prof Uli Sattler, Deputy Head of School (30:05-33:09)
Stay in touch with the School by following us on twitter @csmcr!
Should you be interested in studying Computer Science here in Manchester, why not come to one of our upcoming UG Open Days on 29 Sep or 13 October.
Register here: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/open-days-visits/open-days/
The CS@Manchester podcast catches up with PhD student and BSc Computer Science University of Manchester graduate Josh Dawes, who is now studying and working at the Large Hadron Collider and CMS experiments at CERN in Switzerland.
Josh's PhD is concerned with developing methods for non-intrusive instrumentation and analysis of the computer systems running on the CMS Experiment. As the energy reached by the LHC increases, the volume of data generated reaches an unprecedented scale. It is therefore vital to understand in detail the services written to work with the data.
Since collecting every single piece of data available at runtime is infeasible, work must be done on reconstructing as much of a service's runtime as possible (to enable an ability to write expressive queries about the runtime), while collecting as little data (thus, intervening as rarely) as possible.
Find out more about Josh and his PhD here: https://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/postgrad/joshua.dawes/
Episode 24 of the CS@Manchester podcast features a conversation between PhD student Ghader Kurdi from Saudi Arabia and her supervisor Dr Bijan Parsia.
We discuss Ghader's initial journey to start her PhD in the UK and then onto her research in writing Multiple Choice questions* examinations and how it has expanded into other research domains and disciplines.
Stay in touch with the School of Computer Science by following us on Twitter.
*Full abstract from Ghader's paper:
Abstract Designing good multiple choice questions (MCQs) for education and assessment is time consuming and error-prone. An abundance of structured and semi structured data has led to the development of automatic MCQ generation methods. Recently, ontologies have emerged as powerful tools to enable the automatic generation of MCQs. However, current ontology-based approaches focus on, mostly simple, knowledge recall questions. In addition, questions that have so far been generated are, compared to manually created ones, simple and cover only a small subset of the required question complexity space in the education and assessment domain.
We present a novel ontology-based approach that exploits classes and existential restrictions to generate questions with complex stems and are suitable for scenarios beyond mere knowledge recall.
We implement our approach as an application for a medical education scenario on top of a large knowledge base in the medical domain. We generate more than 3 million questions for four physician specialities and evaluate our approach in a user study with 15 medical experts.
We find that, using a stratifed random sample of 435 questions out of which 316 were rated by two experts, 129 (30%) are considered exam-ready by both experts and a further 216 (50%) by at least one expert.
We caught up with Dr Andy Harter at the recent BCS/IET Turing Lecture 2018 as it entered it's 20th year at The University of Manchester back in February.
We discussed the topic of his talk on the role of "art" in innovation and technology, including not only the aesthetic but also craft, design, skill, invention and intuition.
We also talk about his background as Director of Research and Engineering at the influential AT&T Cambridge Laboratory and establishing the VNC software for the remote access market.
If you have any questions for the podcast team then please email: jez.lloyd@manchester.ac.uk
Today's episode of the CS@Manchester podcast features an interview with two of our final year students, Sebastien Masaru and Joshua Langley.
Seb and Josh have been heavily involved in the student community in the School and University, with both having roles in the Computer Science Society (http://cssoc.co.uk), helping organise, and presenting at, Hackathons around the country, and hosting regular Staff v Student quizzes inside the School.
We talk what the student social network is like, why they prefer Manchester over London, the relationship between staff and students and some of the memories they will take away with them forever.
Here is a video to the Great Uni Hack event discussed in the podcast: https://www.facebook.com/GreatUniHack/videos/2008728469412393/
If you want to contact the podcast team please email us at jez.lloyd@manchester.ac.uk or catch us on Twitter @csmcr!
Today's episode features an interview with 2016 BSc Computer Science graduate Todd Davies, who came back to Manchester recently to present a guest lecture to our current Undergraduates.
Todd is now working full time as a Software Engineer at the Google Offices in Munich, Germany. After initially undertaking a summer internship, Todd starting working there full time last year.
We talk about a range of things, including the google recruitment process, and what his role entails in Munich. We also discuss his experiences on degree, his infamous 'Todd's Notes' and the surprising price of Lederhosen!
Follow us on twitter for all the latest news from the School of Computer Science: @csmcr
If you are interested in studying a degree in CS please explore our website for more information: http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/
Today's episode features an extended interview with 2 key academic staff that help shape the Software Engineering course here in the School of Computer Science at The University of Manchester, both at Undergraduate level and at Advanced Computer Science for MSc study.
We talk to Dr Bijan Parsia and Dr Suzanne Embury about the many challenges of teaching the subject, what different techniques they use, the importance of team working and collaboration with Industry, and what skill sets they believe make a really good Software Engineer.
Find out more about Bijan and his work: http://staff.cs.manchester.ac.uk/~bparsia/ @bparsia
And Suzanne: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~embury/
Follow the School on Twitter for all the latest news and information @csmcr
Episode 19 of the CS@Manchester Podcast features interviews with a range of our Undergraduate students (now graduates!) at our recent summer graduation.
Gavin Donald from our Student Support office managed to catch up with graduates in the marquee and lawn outside the Alan Gilbert Common Rooms, whilst celebrating their achievements with family and friends, after the graduation ceremony in the Whitworth Hall.
He asks them how they were feeling after graduating, what their highlights have been in Manchester and where they are heading off for the next step of their career.
Featured in the interviews are Theodora Bors, Yazan Mehyar, Grzegorz Jancekow, Josh Dawes, Andi Zhang, Bryn Hanby-Roberts , Joe Razavi and Natalie Silver.
Please subscribe to us on iTunes or your preferred podcast app and follow us on twitter @csmcr for all the latest news from the School.
Music by The Passion Hi-Fi www.passionhifi.com
Episode 18 of the CS@Manchester podcast focuses on life in Computer Science from an Industry perspective, with an interview with Craig Dean, the CEO of Web Applications UK: https://www.webapplicationsuk.com.
We speak to Craig about his first interest in computers, his fascinating career path, including a life changing experience working for a few years in Africa and his thoughts on computer science education. He tells us why he loves to find out something he doesn't know and acknowledging the fact that as a developer there should always be more to learn.
We also talk about his focus on community engagement and instilling a passion for coding and developing to students, school children and adults.
Craig has done a number of guest lectures at the University, including his 'To Boldly Go' talk, which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/user/WebAppsUK
Follow @webappsuk
Follow and get in touch with the podcast team @csmcr
Episode 17 of the CS@Manchester features an interview with Professor David J. Malan from Harvard University.
We were delighted to be joined by David, who visited Manchester to present to the School and support a student hackathon event organised by our own HackSoc Manchester.
We spoke to him about the origins and ethos of CS50, what makes it so unique and how it's delivered on campus at Harvard and the incredible impact it's having on students worldwide.
Find out more about CS50 here: https://cs50.harvard.edu
Episode 16 of the CS@Manchester podcast features an interview with Jon Parkinson, a PhD student here coming to the end of the four-year programme.
Jon talks to us about why he chose to change his career and study computer science, why he came to choose to study in the area of Machine learning.
We talk about how he's enjoyed the course and what it feels like to reach the end of the PhD.
I hope you enjoy today's episode. If you have any ideas for what you would like to be featured in this podcast please contact us!
@csmcr or jez.lloyd@manchester.ac.uk
Find out more about studying a PhD in the School of Computer Science: http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/study/postgraduate-research/ More on the Machine learning research group: http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/mlo/
Part two of our Hackathon special episodes features interviews with organisers, sponsors and hackers at the Student Hack V event at Media City.
Featured in the episode is second year HCI student Stefania Hristea and Ankur Banerjee from @Accenture, who sponsored the event and set a hack challenge (@ankurb).
Also I speak to Luke Beamish, a first year hacking at the event, sponsors Julian Bucknall and Mohammad Azzam from @Barclays bank and finally organiser Ben Possible (@benpossible), a student currently out on his industrial experience year, with former PhD student and mentor Andrew Leeming (@leemingA).
Want to find out more about Hackathons in manchester?
Check out the Hacksoc pages: https://www.facebook.com/groups/HackSocManc/ @hacksocmcr @studenthack
Part 1 of Episode 15 of the CS@Manchester podcast features an interview with Cristian Bodnar, a second year student here and one of the organisers of the Student Hack V event, which is at Media city this weekend (10-12 March 2017). Cristian is also member of the HackSoc here in the School of Computer Science.
I ask him what hackathons are all about, why he's got involved and what someone would expect to get out of attending one of these huge events!
Part two will be released next week, featuring interviews with participants and other organisers at the event this weekend.
If you want to contact us just send us a tweet! @csmcr
Today's episode features an interview with Dave Ames and Sarah Zaman, two members of the CAS Regional Centre, the North West base of the Computing At School.
The Regional Centre is a major new initiative to build regional support for computing in all Primary and Secondary schools. It is run jointly by the University of Manchester (School of Computer Science) and Edge Hill University, and is funded by the Department of Education through BCS (CAS).
We talk about the work that they've been doing across the region with school children, and the role they play in supporting teachers tackle the change in curriculum in Computer Science. We also celebrate their recent successes including a Better World award, recognising their work in Widening Participation. http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/study/news/full-article/?articleid=4995
If you wish to contact the CAS team please email casmanchester@computingatschool.org.uk
Today's episode of the CS@Manchester podcast poses the question - 'What exactly IS Computer Science?' to three academics from the School here in Manchester.
They are Dr Caroline Jay, Dr Gavin Brown and Dr Eva Navarro-Lopez.
We also ask what is unique about the culture here in the School and what reasons a student might consider joining to study at the University of Manchester, the birthplace of Computer Science.
If you would like to contact the podcast team then please either email: jez.lloyd@manchester.ac.uk or tweet us @csmcr
Our latest episode of the CS@Manchester podcast features an interview with Laura Howarth-Kirke from the BBC.
Laura graduated from the School of Computer Science in 2013 and won SET Student of the Year. She has since worked at the BBC under firstly their graduate scheme and now as a software developer.
We discuss how and why she first became interested in Computer Science, her role and experiences working at the BBC and what future technologies she expects to see in the future that will change our behaviour with the web and TV.
You can tweet us @csmcr if you have any questions and see our full archive of podcasts here: http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/about-us/podcasts/
Our final year Computer Science students graduated last week, which included a formal ceremony followed by a Champagne reception celebration in the Kilburn Building. There were over 400 people in the glorious Manchester sunshine toasting our successful graduates, including many families and friends alongside academics and support staff from the School.
We managed to catch up with a few of our students (who are, in order by appearance: George Vanbrugh, Lora Lovchalieva, Veneta Haralampieva & Anmol Khurana) and ask them about their experiences as an undergraduate here in Manchester and where they plan to go next, now they have graduated.
We also speak to Toby Howard (http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~toby/), our Undergraduate director, on a proud day for everyone in the School, where we get to celebrate the fantastic achievements of so many students, as their journey at Manchester comes to an end.
Tweet us @csmcr or if you have any enquiries about our degree programmes then please email ug-compsci@manchester.ac.uk
You can also follow Veneta's full student experience by visiting her blog site: http://www.mub.eps.manchester.ac.uk/veneta-haralampieva/
We interviewed 4 of our recent Computer Science graduates attending a recent Alumni event back at the School of Computer Science at The University of Manchester.
Featured in the episode are:
Stephanie Cook Software Engineer, BBC
Mihai Anca Software Developer, Envoy (Formerly working at Twitter in Silicon Valley)
Qasim Ashraf Software Engineer, Appsense
Zac Hamid, Graduate Software Developer, IBM
Today's episode of the CS@Manchester podcast features an extended interview Prof Danielle George from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
We talk about her experiences doing the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 2014, why she thinks the term Engineer is wrongly reflected in society and her thoughts on the crossover between Computer Science and Engineering, and what they can learn from each other.
You can follow us on twitter @csmcr @EngineerDG
Today's episode of the CS@Manchester podcast features an interview with Dr Simon Harper, a lead academic in the field of Human Computer Interaction and User Experience in the School of Computer Science here at The University of Manchester.
Simon talks to us about his journey into academia, he's research interests, the future of our computer use, our behaviour with them and his role as UG Applicant Tutor in the School.
You can find out more information about Simon here: http://simon.harper.name @sharpic
Stream our archive of episodes here: http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/about-us/podcasts/
Just before Christmas our MSc and PhD students had their graduation ceremony and we caught up with a few of them at the celebrations to talk about their experiences on the course, what they've enjoyed about Manchester and what they may do in the future. We also spoke to some academic staff members about what the day means to them, where our students might further their careers and their personal highlights supervising student projects.
Staff and students featured, in order of appearance:
Dr Jon Shapiro, Director of PGR, School of Computer Science
Dr Chris Seaton, Phd Computer Science, @ChrisGSeaton
Prof Jim Miles, Head of School of Computer Science
Dr David Rydeheard, Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science
Dr Duncan Hull, Lecturer, School of Computer Science @dullhunk
Adones Rukundo, Uganda (MSc Advanced Computer Science)
Abhilash Rai, India (MSc Advanced Computer Science & IT Mgt)
Diego Lavayen Alarcon, Ecuador (MSc Advanced Computer Science)
Crefeda Rodrigues, India (MSc Advanced Computer Science) @crefeda http://www.mub.eps.manchester.ac.uk/crefedarodrigues/
Olesia Proskurnia, Russia (MSc Advanced Computer Science & IT Mgt)
Please tweet us any feedback @csmcr
Today's episode of the CS@Manchester podcast is an interview with comedy act Fox Dog Studios, who are graduates from the Computer Science degree here in Manchester.
We talk about their experiences at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, why they chose to take this career path and the technical challenges they face in producing their interactive show.
You can find more information about them here: https://foxdogstudios.com @foxdogstudios
As part of the celebrations of Ada Lovelace Day last week we interviewed a number of academics and students to find out their thoughts about the challenges facing Women In Computer Science/STEM and what we can do to raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths. Today's episode interviewees include Dr Caroline Jay, Prof Danielle George, Prof Uli Sattler, Prof Sophia Ananiadou, Sarah King and Osnat Katz. If you have any questions for the podcast team then please email schools.liaison@cs.man.ac.uk
Episode four of the CS@Manchester podcast features an interview with Professor Steve Furber from the School of Computer Science at The University of Manchester. Steve talks us through his time before joining the University, his research with The Human Brain Project, SpiNNaker and his interest in historical computer science pioneers Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing.
Today's episode is an interview with one of our final year PhD students, Oscar Florez, and his journey from Colombia to Manchester and his research in BioMedicine and informatics.
Today's episode features interviews with Hannah Roberts, one of the organisers of the Pint Of Science festival and Dr Gavin Brown, a Senior Lecturer in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Manchester.
This panel discussion featuring Professors Steve Furber & Ross King, Tom Higham from Future Everything and Mark Ewart from Barclays Bank, focuses on the Future of Computing, with questions from local schools around the North West of England.