WAIS seminar: Ontologies on the Web: An Alternative Model

Wednesday 2nd April 2014 Speaker(s): Stefan Decker Time: 02/04/2014 11:00-11:50 Location: B2/1083 File size: 897 Mb Abstract Ontologies have been promoted and used for knowledge sharing. Several models for representing ontologies have been developed in the Knowledge Representation field, in particular associated with the Semantic Web. In my talk I will summarise developments so far, and will argue that the currently advocated approaches miss certain basic properties of current distributed information sharing infrastructures (read: the Web and the Internet). I will sketch an alternative model aiming to support knowledge sharing and re-use on a global basis.

Web Teaching Day

Collection of resources related to the talk by me at MMU 2014 web teaching day.

WAIS Seminar:Let's SoFWIReD!

Title: Let’s SoFWIReD! Time: Wed, 21 May 2014 11:00-11:50 Location: Building 32, Room 3077 Speaker: Dr Sepi Chakaveh Abstract The information age as we know it has its roots in several enabling technologies – most of all the World Wide Web – for the provision of truly global connectivity. The emergence of a Web of Big Data in terms of the publication and analysis of Open Data provides new insights about the impact of the Web in our society. The second most important technology in this regard has been the emergence of streaming processes based on new and innovative compression methods such as MP3 so that audio and video content becomes accessible to everyone on the Web. The SoFWIReD team is developing comprehensive, interoperable platforms for data and knowledge driven processing of Open Data and will investigate aspects of collective intelligence. Insights generated in the project will form the basis for supporting companies through consulting, organisational development, and software solutions so that they can master the collective intelligence transition. The seminar will present how the project addresses the research topics of web observatory, dynamic media objects, crowd-sourced open data and Internet services. At the end of a talk a number of demos will be shown in the context of SoFWIReD’s Dynamic Media Object.

WAIS Seminar:Secure Multi-Party Computation for the Masses

Speaker(s): Prof. David Evans Organiser: Dr Tim Chown Time: 22/05/2014 10:45-11:45 Location: B53/4025 Abstract Secure multi-party computation enables two (or more) participants to reliably compute a function that depends on both of their inputs, without revealing those inputs to the other party or needing to trust any other party. It could enable two people who meet at a conference to learn who they known in common without revealing any of their other contacts, or allow a pharmaceutical company to determine the correct dosage of a medication based on a patient’s genome without compromising the privacy of the patient. A general solution to this problem has been known since Yao's pioneering work in the 1980s, but only recently has it become conceivable to use this approach in practice. Over the past few years, my research group has worked towards making secure computation practical for real applications. In this talk, I'll provide a brief introduction to secure computation protocols, describe the techniques we have developed to design scalable and efficient protocols, and share some recent results on improving efficiency and how secure computing applications are developed.

WAIS Seminar:Modelling the Web: Examples of modelling language, network evolution and physical-social systems

Speaker(s): Prof. Steffen Staab Organiser: Dr Tim Chown Time: 23/05/2014 10:30-11:30 Location: B53/4025 Abstract The Web is constructed based on our experiences in a multitude of modalities: text, networks, images, physical locations are some examples. Understanding the Web requires from us that we can model these modalities as they appear on the Web. In this talk I will show some examples of how we model text, hyperlink networks and physical-social systems in order to improve our understanding and our use of the Web.

WAIS Seminar:Evaluating the Cognitive Side of Information Interaction

Abstract In this talk, I'll focus on the work we've been doing on evaluating the cognitive side of dealing with information resources and increasingly complex user interfaces. While we can build increasingly powerful user interfaces, they often come at the cost of simple design and ease of use. I'll describe two specific studies: 1) work on the ORCHID project focused on measuring mental workload during tasks using fNIRS (a blood-oxygen-based brain scanner), and 2) a evaluation metric for measuring how much people learn during tasks. Together these provide advances towards understanding the cognitive side of information interaction, in working towards building better tools for users.

Mining Events from Multimedia streams, Jon Hare

peaker(s): Jon Hare Organiser: Time: 25/06/2014 11:00-11:50 Location: B32/3077 Abstract The aggregation of items from social media streams, such as Flickr photos and Twitter tweets, into meaningful groups can help users contextualise and effectively consume the torrents of information on the social web. This task is challenging due to the scale of the streams and the inherently multimodal nature of the information being contextualised. In this talk I'll describe some of our recent work on trend and event detection in multimedia data streams. We focus on scalable streaming algorithms that can be applied to multimedia data streams from the web and the social web. The talk will cover two particular aspects of our work: mining Twitter for trending images by detecting near duplicates; and detecting social events in multimedia data with streaming clustering algorithms. I'll will describe in detail our techniques, and explore open questions and areas of potential future work, in both these tasks.

University and College Union

Unions and collective negotiation are essential in maintaining good working conditions for all staff, in particular those who are on Fixed Term Contracts (FTC) and are often starting out in their academic/research careers. The FTC group is particularly vulnerable to discrimination and the pressure to produce outputs and bring in funding to secure more secure employment. The very nature of being on a FTC greatly reduces the amount of funding sources that can be applied to.This talk provides an overview of the University and College Union (UCU), how it operates, what the benefits are, what we have achieved nationally and at a local level. Joe Viana, a FTC research er at the University, and the FTC rep of the Southampton UCU branch, will be on hand to answer questions and to provide feedback on local and national level activities.The talk should be of interest to all FTC staff, their supervisors and any postgrads considering a research career in higher education.

Mendeley: background information

Quick overview of mendeley plus a video of a talk about the startup process from 2010. Interesting from a new business model perspective

Provenance: Beyond Standardisation

Abstract: Provenance is a record that describes the people, institutions, entities, and activities, involved in producing, influencing, or delivering a piece of data or a thing in the world. Some 10 years after beginning research on the topic of Provenance, I co-chaired the provenance working group at the World Wide Web Consortium. The working group published 4 recommendations and several notes about the PROV standard for provenance in 2013. In this talk, I will present some use cases for provenance, the PROV standard and some flagship examples of adoption. I will then move onto our current research area in exploiting provenance, in the context of the SmartSociety and ORCHID projects. Doing so, I will present some methods, algorithms, and tools that we have developed in Southampton.

IT and other training in the always connected era

Abstract Google and YouTube are quickly becoming the training resource of choice for the IT literate, especially in relation to computer based applications. Many businesses are addressing this training issue in a number of ways, some more successful than others. Find out what the IT services at the university are doing to adapt to this change and contribute to the discussion on how the approach could be improved. Before the talk you could have a look at the following; * One service that has been licenced is Lynda http://go.soton.ac.uk/lynda or lynda.com (note you have to enter www.southampton.ac.uk as the organisation if you don’t log in through the go.soton link) * The IT training team publish a portfolio of systems and courses at http://www.southampton.ac.uk/isolutions/computing/training/portfolio/index.php. * More and more internal systems are being supported through online guides such as http://go.soton.ac.uk/bgsg

Work less, teach better and get better feedback: why we tried innovative teaching methods

Speaker: Patrick McSweeney Organiser: Time: 15/10/2014 11:00-11:45 Location: B32/3077 Abstract Having started at Southampton in 2005 I have seen quite a few changes to the way courses are taught and studied. I will reflect on some of the interesting changes I have observed and suggest their causes. As a practical example I will talk about codestrom, a peer feedback tool for learning programming. We have found that this teaching method has improved the student experience and reduced the work load for the module team. Together we will discuss how this and other recent developments can enable other teaching innovations which benefit staff as well as students. Hopefully the new class of PhD students will be able to contribute from the point of view of having recently been undergraduate students here and else where.

How Minecraft Affects How Young People Learn About Computer Science

Abstract: As one of the newest art forms available to young people, gaming has become an increasing influence on young people’s education, even if not used in a classroom environment. This talk aims to explore examples of how video games have changed how young people understand and learn about certain subjects, with particular focus on how the indie title Minecraft allows them to learn about the world of Computer Science and how groups are looking to forward the cause of education though games.

Anonymisation, Deanonymisation and Data Management

Speaker: Dr Kieron O'Hara Organiser: Time: 04/02/2015 11:00-11:45 Location: B32/3077 Abstract In order to reap the potential societal benefits of big and broad data, it is essential to share and link personal data. However, privacy and data protection considerations mean that, to be shared, personal data must be anonymised, so that the data subject cannot be identified from the data. Anonymisation is therefore a vital tool for data sharing, but deanonymisation, or reidentification, is always possible given sufficient auxiliary information (and as the amount of data grows, both in terms of creation, and in terms of availability in the public domain, the probability of finding such auxiliary information grows). This creates issues for the management of anonymisation, which are exacerbated not only by uncertainties about the future, but also by misunderstandings about the process(es) of anonymisation. This talk discusses these issues in relation to privacy, risk management and security, reports on recent theoretical tools created by the UKAN network of statistics professionals (on which the author is one of the leads), and asks how long anonymisation can remain a useful tool, and what might replace it.

More women in informatics research and education

Speaker: Lynda Hardman Organiser: Time: 04/02/2015 12:30-13:30 Location: B32/3077 Abstract The challenges of addressing gender inequalities in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine is widely acknowledged. We currently hold a bronze award and ECS is one of many academic units in the University which has gained Athena Swan Charter status. In this seminar, Professor Lynda Hardman, Chair of the Informatics Europe working group "Women in Informatics Research and Education” will be explaining the causes of issued underlying gender inequality and constructive routes to addressing this important agenda. In undertaking to commit to an action plan which is a prerequisite of gaining charter status, the University or academic department agreed to accept and incorporate the Athena Swan six principles listed below: * To address gender inequalities requires commitment and action from everyone, at all levels of the organisation * To tackle the unequal representation of women in science requires changing cultures and attitudes across the organisation * The absence of diversity at management and policy-making levels has broad implications which the organisation will examine * The high loss rate of women in science is an urgent concern which the organisation will address * The system of short-term contracts has particularly negative consequences for the retention and progression of women in science, which the organisation recognises * There are both personal and structural obstacles to women making the transition from PhD into a sustainable academic career in science, which require the active consideration of the organisation. This seminar is designed to provide an opportunity to explore these issues NOTE: Lynda will be basing here talk on some of the work she directed as chair of the "Women in Informatics Research and Education” working group. The purpose of the working group is to actively participate and promote actions that contribute to improve gender balance in Information and Communication Sciences and Technologies. The first concrete result of the working group's activities was the publication of the booklet "More Women in Informatics Research and Education" in 2013. The booklet is a compact source of clear and simple best practices to deans and heads of departments that aim to increase the participation of women as both students and employees in their institutions. Many tips included were also inspired by colleagues already in leading positions who have already implemented actions in their institutions to attract more women and ensure their continued participation in the organization at commensurate ratios with their male colleagues. The booklet is endorsed by the European Commission and features a foreword by Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission, responsible for the Digital Agenda.