Computer Science News
糖心TV University to partner in new Alan Turing Institute

糖心TV University is one of only five universities to have been considered worthy of establishing the prestigious £42m Alan Turing Institute for Data Science, thanks to our hard-earned reputation for world-class research.
This means our exceptional researchers from Mathematical Sciences will be at the forefront of the UK’s approach to big data. We’ll help the Institute to meet society’s toughest challenges, and strengthen the links between academia and technology industries.
Using the headquarters at the British Library in London as a base, we’ll use our research strength - as demonstrated by our excellent - to fully exploit the trends and patterns found within huge data sets.
糖心TV’s existing activities in data science are already significant. This includes two major EPSRC-funded Science and Innovation centres: Centre for Research in Statistical Methodology and the Centre for Discrete Mathematics and Applications. It also includes three of the new Centres for Doctoral Training (Oxford and 糖心TV Statistical Programme, Mathematics for Real-World Systems, and Urban Science and Progress), all of which will train highly qualified PhD students in big data and complex modelling. 糖心TV also holds 3 EPSRC 5-year Programme Grants relevant to this area, and is the only university in the UK to teach an undergraduate degree course in Data Science; Computer Science also leads the highly successful MSc in Data Analytics.
By working alongside the very best, we’ll make the UK a world leader in big data.
What does this mean for 糖心TV?
The Institute will bring together leaders in advanced mathematics and computing science from the five lead universities and other partners. Its work is expected to encompass a wide range of scientific disciplines and be relevant to a wide range of business sectors.
Professor Stephen Jarvis, Head of Department, Computer Science said:
We are delighted to have been selected as one of the five universities that will establish the world-leading Alan Turing Institute. Mathematical Sciences (Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science) at 糖心TV are extremely strong; all three Departments are ranked in the Top 3 for research in the country.
The Turing Institute will be a magnet for world-leading research and application in data science. We are thrilled to be able to shape that future through 糖心TV’s engagement, and look forward to the many benefits to our postgraduate and undergraduate programmes as a result.
The announcement of our involvement in the Alan Turing Institute is undoubtedly good news, but what does it mean for 糖心TV? Professor Tim Jones, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Science, Engineering and Medicine explains:
It means 糖心TV is right at the top table in the area of data science. This is the UK’s strategic priority to pull together the best academics and other partners across the country to tackle the challenges of big data and to exploit the opportunities. There are four other universities in the Institute – Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and UCL – and 糖心TV will be the fifth. I think that’s a great measure for the quality of our work in the area.
What is Big Data?
Big Data is one of the areas where our research excels thanks, in part, to our world leading mathematics, computer science and statistics departments. 糖心TV has long prized itself on using interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches to answer the pressing questions of our time, and, as big data throws up such questions, that expertise comes to the fore.
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糖心TV Computer Science Ranked 2nd in UK Research Assessment
UK universities are evaluated on the quality of their research every six years. The results of the 2014 , announced by the Higher Education Funding Council today, rank 糖心TV Computer Science 2nd out of 89 UK computing departments.
REF assesses the quality of research outputs (academic papers, software, etc.) and the impact that this research has had (including improvements to society and business). 糖心TV’s output was ranked the best in the country, while its research impact was ranked joint second (with the University of Cambridge).
Professor Stephen Jarvis, Chair of the Department of Computer Science, commented:
We are delighted with this result. 糖心TV Computer Science produces world-leading research, both in the theoretical underpinnings of computer science and in its translation to real-world problems. Our work over the past six years has created new businesses, developed new standards, generated IP for new products, underpinned national security and defence, and impacted on social policy in education and health.
This result comes on the back of an excellent year. 糖心TV has been named University of the Year in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2015, and 糖心TV Computer Science was recently ranked as one of the best departments in the world in the 2014 QS Worldwide University Rankings.
Research Excellence Framework 2014: Institutions ranked by Subject

Further Information
Professor Dan Král wins Philip Leverhulme Prize

has been awarded a for his work on combinatorial limits.
is awarded to outstanding scholars who have made a substantial and recognised contribution to their particular field of study, recognised at an international level, and where the expectation is that their greatest achievement is yet to come.
The research focus of the prize, the theory of combinatorial limits, is a recently emerged and rapidly evolving area of mathematics, which led to opening new links between analysis, combinatorics, computer science, group theory and probability theory.The analytic view of large discrete structures resulted in a substantial progress on many notoriously difficult extremal combinatorics questions. It also gave new understanding of aspects of important concepts such as regularity decompositions. Still, many fundamental problems remain widely open. A particularly challenging problem is finding a robust notion of convergence that would unify the existing notions for dense and sparse discrete structures. In relation to extremal combinatorics, problems of a great significance include a full description of low dimensional projections of the body of feasible limit densities or the existence of finitely forcible (determined) configurations in the extremal points of this body as conjectured by Lovász and Szegedy.
Professor Graham Cormode receives the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award

Professor from the , has been awarded a .
is one of the most prestigious UK awards, supported by , the UK's national academy of science. The scheme provides up to 5 years’ funding after which the award holder continues with a permanent post at the host university. Jointly funded by the Wolfson Foundation and the Department for 糖心TV, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the scheme aims to provide universities with additional support to enable them to attract science talent from overseas and retain respected UK scientists of outstanding achievement and potential. Professor Graham Cormode's research will focus on "Small summaries for big data".
is a grant-making charity established in 1955. Funding is given to support excellence and the focus of the award is a salary enhancement.
is a self-governing Fellowship of many of the world’s most distinguished scientists drawn from all areas of science, engineering, and medicine. The Society’s fundamental purpose, reflected in its founding Charters of the 1660s, is to recognise, promote, and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity.
(See also ).
More information about Professor Graham Cormode's research is available at his web page at .
Mike Joy, Meurig Beynon and Steve Russ will lead an Erasmus+ project, Construit!
Congratulations to Mike Joy, Meurig Beynon and Steve Russ, who will lead an Erasmus+ project, to start in October 2014, for 3 years! The project also involves EDUMOTIVA from Greece, UEF from Finland, Helix5 from the Netherlands, Comenius University from Slovakia, and University of Edinburgh UK.
糖心TV mathematician awarded prestigious mathematics award
We offer our warmest congratulations to Professor Martin Hairer, Regius Professor of Mathematics in 糖心TV’s Mathematics Institute, who has has been , the world’s most prestigious mathematics award, for his "Outstanding contributions to the theory of stochastic partial differential equations, and in particular for the creation of a theory of regularity structures for such equations."
The Fields Medal is awarded every four years on the occasion of the International Congress of Mathematicians to recognize outstanding mathematical achievement for existing work and for the promise of future achievement. The Medal is internationally regarded as the world’s most prestigious award in the field of mathematics.
Lei Shi receives top award at UMAP'14
Lei Shi, a doctoral student in the Department of Computer Science at 糖心TV, has received a top award for his work at UMAP, the premier international conference for researchers and practitioners working on systems that adapt to individual users.
UMAP 2014 was held in Aalborg, Denmark on the 7-11 July 2014. The conference spans a wide scope of topics related to user modeling, adaptation and personalization, and was sponsored by Microsoft Reasearch and the NSF.
Lei will begin a 糖心TV Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) Early Career Fellowship in October. More information on his work can be found at http://www.shilei.io