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 | Newsletter October 1997 Number 3 |
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Cecelia Buchanan PhD Washington
Lecturer (from October)
Multimedia
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Professor Biswanath Mukherjee (July - August)
Computer Science, UC Davis, USA
Computer communications and security
Professor Harold Thimbleby (May)
Computing Science, Middlesex University, London
Human-computer interaction
Professor Tsunetoshi Hayashi (August - March '98)
Computer Science, Ritsumeikan University, Japan
Language processors and computer music
Dr Ryszard Kozera (November - January)
Computer Science, University Western Australia, Perth
Computer vision, numerical analysis, applied mathematics, partial
differential equations
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My other lecture at each campus was rather short, consisting of a few slides of statistics from the USA. The statistics show a dramatic decline, since the mid 1980's, in the percentage of undergraduate computer science degrees awarded to women. This decline is prefigured by an equally-dramatic decline since the early 1980's in the gender ratio of the students who expressed interest in entering our major prior to going to University. Please see for more detail.
The most interesting part of my visits started immediately after my statistical presentation. I moderated a discussion on "why are there so few women in our major, and what should we do about it?" I found most audiences ready to accept that there is a serious problem of gender imbalance in our major. Most departments had grappled with these issues, at varying degrees of intensity, prior to my visit.
Two departments stand out in my recollection. At Victoria University, there has been a long-standing effort to increase the retention of women in first-year computer science. Despite this, retention was not significantly improved from 1990 to 1996. The Victoria staff finds this disappointing, and of course it is; but I'd hazard a guess that all other computer science departments in New Zealand, except Lincoln University's, have experienced a drop in first-year female retention rate over this same period.
At Lincoln University, I found a Centre for Computing and Biometrics that, in many respects, is a "normal" computer science department. However the staff morale was excellent, the pedagogic focus was more on computing applications than on the usual programming and theory, and the gender balance in the classroom was noticeably better than average.
Summarising my impressions of all departments, I'd say that Computer Science in New Zealand is in remarkably good shape, despite a low base of research funding that depresses the size of our postgraduate programmes. We're all also, I think, in an increasingly difficult situation with more-or-less static teaching budgets, growing undergraduate enrolments, low staff salaries (at least in comparison with the USA), and fairly strong and growing demand for our staffs' talents at higher payrates in private industry and in overseas universities. Taking all this into consideration, I was quite favourably impressed with the research programmes everywhere I visited.
I'd like to take this opportunity of thanking everyone who showed me such warm hospitality during my term as Visiting Lecturer. I must apologise for the lateness of this report; I can only hope it's a case of "better late than never".
Clark Thomborson (Auckland)
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Don Kulasiri (http://www.lincoln.ac.nz/ccb/staff/kulasiri.htm) is to depart on study leave at the end of the year, and he will be spending six months in Mechanics and Computation division at Stanford University, California working on computational and mathematical aspects of environmental systems modelling. He also plans to work with developers in the Advanced Simulation Lab, CACI, La Jolla, California, and US Forestry Service during that period.
In December, Don will be presenting two papers in the ModSim'97 (International congress on modelling and simulation), Hobart, Australia; he will also be presenting two papers in The International Conference on Agricultural Engineering in Bangladesh which is organised by the government of Bangladesh and the Michigan State University. He will be the chair for the sustainable agriculture and modelling session.
In June Keith Unsworth (http://www.lincoln.ac.nz/ccb/staff/unsworth.htm) attended an "International Workshop on Computer Aided Geometric Design" in Crete. Computer Aided Geometric Design may be thought of as the "Mathematics of CAD", investigating the representation and manipulation of curves and surfaces. It feeds directly into the facilities offered by CAD software.
Keith presented a paper on "Convexity-preserving B-spline modification". This problem arose in connection with designing ship hulls, a process which is typically solved by "hand methods". Perhaps the next America's Cup winner will have "Lincoln" curves?
Keith also co-authored another paper on "Matching and choice of parameter in sectional interpolation". This is concerned with the problem of reconstructing surfaces from cross-sectional data, a problem which arises in many fields, most notably perhaps the medical field.
Walt Abell (http://www.lincoln.ac.nz/ccb/staff/abell.htm) is off to Toronto at the beginning of November to attend the WebNet97 conference. He will be presenting a paper on the results of a follow-up study on business use of the Internet in New Zealand.
In August a paper written by Mary Avery, Ryan Clements, Glen Harrison and Ken Hughey was presented at Geocomputation'97 in Dunedin. The paper presented results of a prototype GIS based Walkway Management System developed to aid the Department of Conservation (DoC) in there management of walking tracks.
Alan McKinnon and Clare Churcher (http://www.lincoln.ac.nz/ccb/staff/churcher.htm) have just been awarded a GRIF in collaboration with the Christchurch Press. This is to develop software to produce one or more press configurations that are consistent with the daily page layout requirements.
Elizabeth Post
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The Publications home page is http://divcom.otago.ac.nz:800/com/infosci/Publctns/home.htm
The DPS page is http://divcom.otago.ac.nz:800/com/infosci/Publctns/complete/dpsall.htm
You can check the Staff Publications pages for final publication details in
regard to most of the Discussion Papers:
http://divcom.otago.ac.nz:800/com/infosci/Publctns/complete/staffall.htm
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The teams were provided with a set of problems, each worth either 15, 50 or 150 points. The three team members had the use of a single PC running Linux and five hours in which to score as many points as possible. Solutions could be submitted in either C or C++ and were judged automatically. Incorrect submissions cost the teams 1/50 of the value of the question. Real-time marking allowed each team to determine their relative position during the competition. The automated marking process provided time-series graphs of the accumulation of points during the competition.
The breakdown of the undergraduate teams included four 2nd year teams, one 3rd year team and four 4th year teams. Much to the surprise of the 4th year teams, a second year team won the competition by a comfortable margin.
The winning team was called "X", and consisted of Jonathan Purvis (2nd year), Matthew Browne (2nd year) and Perry Lorier (1st year).
Congratulations team X! From the outset, opinion was divided over who would triumph among the two senior programming teams. The PhD team, "Saurs" had the age advantage while the staff team, "Greypower", had experience and also had the advantage of age!
Greypower were the first to score points, although the lead was quickly made up by the Saurs. The lead was repeatedly swapped during the contest...
To find out who won, check out the results and graphs of the competition at http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~singlis/progcomp/results.html
Stuart Inglis
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Tim Bell
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Unconventional Models of Computation Conference
Auckland (Auckland) 5-9 January '98
This conference is sponsored by the Centre for Discrete Mathematics and
Theoretical Computer Science at Auckland University and the Santa Fe
Institute, USA. The conference will feature the following invited
presentations:
For further information about the conference see the UMC'98 conference home page at http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/CDMTCS/docs/umc98.html
SE:E&P'98-Software Engineering: Education and Practice
Dunedin (Otago IS) January '98
This conference is intended as a forum for discussion of new and emerging
approaches to software engineering and how best to impart the knowledge of
software engineering principles to present and future practitioners. It
provides an opportunity for exchanges of ideas and to report on achievements
by experts active in the field. Major themes: the Internet, intranets and
Java; use and development of distributed and multi-agent systems; new
modelling paradigms for systems and software; formal and informal software
engineering approaches, methodologies and tools; curriculum design and
reviews of existing delivery methods. For information contact:
TFCV'98
(Auckland) 16Ð20 March '98
Featured in November 1996 Newsletter.
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Chi-Kou Shi and Holger Thiele recently joined our PhD Programme. Their supervisors are (resp.) Professors Calude and Klette.
We have approximately 15.0 FTE enrolments in our PhD programme this year: twelve full-time students and six half-time students.
Prof Clark Thomborson
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