Information Science - Archive, University of Otago

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please follow School of Computing, University of Otago as this page is now archived.

We’re also giving away three $20 University Union vouchers to new followers.

Thanks so much for following our posts! We really appreciate your active engagement. This page will be kept as an archive until Facebook fixes page merging, or we manually migrate the content.

Professor Tobias Langlotz talked to the University of Otago Newsroom about leading a multidisciplinary MBIE-funded project that’s using innovative technologies to support sustainable tourism. Thanks for highlighting the awesome work happening in the School of Computing 🙌

MBIE grant funds sustainable tourism research | University of Otago Reimagining the tourism experience using innovative technology is the vision for a project as a recipient of MBIE Endeavour Fund Research Programme funding last year.

A sunny day to mark the last day of Summer School classes ☀️🥰 Best of luck to everyone with exams - kia kaha!

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Senior Lecturer Veronica Liesaputra and Professor Zhiyi Huang showed the ODT how a mind-controlled drone works and talked about how it could be used to improve mental health. Thanks for representing us so well 👏

Drone designed to help mental health When it comes to operating the University of Otago’s new drones, it truly is a case of mind over matter. School of Computing lecturer Dr Veronica...

Ngā mihi mō tēnei rā o Waitangi!

The University is closed today in observation of Waitangi Day.

AskOtago is closed on public holidays and will reopen as usual tomorrow, 7 February. For library hours, visit https://www.otago.ac.nz/library/hours

Congratulations to Veronica Liesaputra for being promoted to Senior Lecturer 👏👏👏 Veronica’s research focuses on human-oriented AI. We are all very proud to have you as a colleague!

Last week, we hosted high school students for the Otago University Advanced School Sciences Academy programme. A big thank you to Professor Zhiyi and (our recent graduate) Ruth for your mahi organising fun and educational projects 🙌

Here's our honours student Rosie showing how mind-controlled drones work. Soaring to new heights!

The future is here 🤯

This week we hosted secondary students for Hands-On at University of Otago 🙌 Teaching Fellow Chris Edwards ran a research project using digital forensics techniques to find who kidnapped the toy panda, Ruffles. Teaching Fellow Reuben Crisp also ran an afternoon taster programme to control robots using a graphical programming language 💻

We hope you all enjoyed your time here and that you want to come back as first year students!

Hello everyone! 🌞

Hope your summer's been fantastic! As we embrace the arrival of the new year, we're excited to announce the Summer Portfolio Competition! 🎊

Picture this: an opportunity to express your unique self through a dazzling portfolio website. Yes, it's your chance to showcase creativity, skills, and personality in a way that screams YOU.

Teaming up with IMC, we've got an amazing prize – a $100 voucher to PB Tech! 🌟

To join, create your fabulous portfolio and submit it through the form we'll share soon by March 1st.

Let the coding adventure begin! Good luck, and may your journey be filled with joy, inspiration, and the thrill of creating something extraordinary. Happy coding! 🚀✨

Meet Scary Maclary, our robot dog!

Meet Scary Maclary | University of Otago What ‘sleeps’ on his own mattress, can walk, dance and take photos? If you answered ‘Scary Maclary’ - the University’s robot dog - you’d be correct.

Today marks the first day of Summer School! Best wishes to everyone studying this summer 💪 Karawhiua!

Nau mai, haere mai, welcome to 2024 🎉 To start the new year, we congratulate Madeline who graduated in December with a BSc in Computer Science 🙌 Pictured here with her dad (and Professor) Brendan McCane.

Happy New Year ✨

Whether you're crunching code or enjoying a well-deserved break, may your night be filled with joy, laughter, and moments unplugged from technology. Here's to a brighter 2024 🙌

Source: Programming Jokes,Memes and Anecdotes

Professor Zhiyi Huang runs Hi2, a programming club for high school students. Aaron Young (Yr 11) made a Piano Pitch Detector. Check out his video explaining how it works! Well done Aaron 👏 And thank you Zhiyi for inspiring our next generation of programmers!

Aaron's Piano Pitch Detector

This month, Professor Stephen Cranefield caught up with Aladdin Shamoug in New York at the United Nations where he works. Aladdin completed his PhD (supervised by Stephen and Associate Professor Grant Dick) in 2020 and now is the Chief Data Scientist, leading the Data Analytics Section at the Department of Management in the UN Secretariat.

Fantastic photo by The Knotted Gun sculpture!

Meri Kirihimete e te whānau! Merry Christmas!

Wishing you all a Christmas full of family, fun, and fantastic weather! Cheers to good times, good company, and good eats 🎄🥂🎅

Source: Meme Arcana, 𝕏

Congratulations to everyone who graduated this month 💙 💛 🎓 Caps off to Dr Travis Dai and Dr Waqas Ahmad for receiving a Doctor of Philosophy, and Laurie Lloyd-Jones for receiving a MSc. Thank you to their supervisors Yawen Chen, Zhiyi Huang, Haibo Zhang, Holger Regenbrecht, and Claudia Ott for all of their support along the way!

📸 Laurie with his supervisors Claudia and Holger, and Head of School Grant Dick
📸 Dr Travis with his supervisor Zhiyi
📸 Nick Brown (BSc), Zoe Smith (BAppSc), Zoe’s friend Zac Henry (BA in Theatre), Andrew Booth (BSc)
📸 Ruth Huang (BSc) with her father Zhiyi. Two generations of computer scientists!

Also a big congrats to Yaser Dorgham (MBusDataSc); Kirsten Flathaug, Matthew Kennedy and Hanna Corre (PGCertDigHeal); Ian Holding, Lalomilo Varea, Trisha Haslam, Vincent Withers and Yvonne LeFort (PGDipDigHeal); Helen O'Leary (DipGrad in Information and Communications Technology); Irsyaad Rijwan, John Marshall, Katelyn Harlan and Liam Wilson (BSc Honours majoring in Computer Science); Finn O'Neill, Hyo Yoo, Nicholas Patterson and Patrick Borthwick (BA majoring in Computer Science); Ella Dixon (BA majoring in Information Science); Lucas Colonna (BACom majoring in Information Science); Daniel Prvanov, Andrew Goh, Angus Henderson, Emelia Hogg and Mia Wright (BAppSc majoring in Data Science); Enrico Condino, Put Suthisrisinlpa, Maaha Ahmad and Zoe Smith (BAppSc majoring in Software Engineering); Toby Dawn-Sugrue, Will Rushton and Marion Millard-Grelet (BASc majoring in Computer Science); Thirza Smith and Junghwan Oh (BCom majoring in Information Science); Callan Keenan-Smith (BComSc majoring in Data Science); Padraig Carnegie, Oliver O'Connor, Callum Teape, Petra Fisher, William Johnstone, Andrew Booth, Anh Lê, Anton Cenaiko, Austin Donnelly-Davey, Denzel Lozano, Hongyu Huang, Jackson North, Jared Dance, Jay Lee, Liam Iggo, Luke Piper, Madeline McCane, Matthew Tyler, Michael Young, Nathaniel Price, Nick Brown, Oscar Jary, Poppy Schlaadt, Riley Flanagan, Ruiyi Qian, Ruth Huang, Sean Russell, Shuo Mao and William Frame (BSc majoring in Computer Science); Alexander Matthews (BSc majoring in Data Science); Alissa-Mae Lemaire, Christine Anesone, Steven Ung and Yuki Nishikawa (BSc majoring in Information Science).

On Friday, our Teaching Fellow Gary Burrows and Client Services Administrator Gail Mercer had their retirement party. Our Head of School Grant Dick found the perfect words for the occasion.

“I won't embarrass you [Gary] with quotes from students, but the one thing that rings out in the comments made by students is that you: a) know your stuff, b) help them solve their problems, c) don't talk down to them, and d) do so with a happy demeanour. Yes, I know that's four things, but they all add up into one amazing teacher!”

“Gail has been a consummate problem solver for the department since Day One, making sure that new students are safe and comfortable, and ensuring that staff get their last-minute travel arrangements sorted. In many ways the heart and soul of the department, nobody knows how this place runs better than you, and even fewer know how it could be run better!”

Gary and Gail, we will greatly miss having you in the department/school. We hope you enjoy more time for boating, op-shopping, and family. But please don’t be strangers 🤗

Last week, the Otago Business School awards were held, including Information Science in its final year as part of the Business School. A huge congratulations to many people in the department for receiving awards 👏👏👏 Thank you to our Head of School Associate Professor Grant Dick for all the hard work writing the nominations!

Best Contribution to Research Environment: Professor Stephen MacDonell.

Mātauranga Māori Research Award: Professor Holger Regenbrecht.

Mātauranga Māori Research Commendation Award: Sea-level Rise Visualisation Project (including Lecturer Nigel Stanger, Senior Lecturer Brendon Woodford).

Outstanding Early Career Researcher: Dr Caitlin Owen.

Distinguished Researcher Award: Professor Holger Regenbrecht.

Outstanding Doctoral Student – Academic: Noel Park.

Last week, the Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS) was held in Wellington. Senior Lecturer Sander Zwanenburg co-delivered a workshop titled “Three tools to help you navigate the literature” with Blair Wang and Sebastian Boell (photo below).

Sander also presented the paper “Digital distraction: An initial exploration of recorded use of digital devices by New Zealand children”, co-authored with our recent MBusDataSc graduate Kodie Vincent and Associate Professor Jeremiah Deng, as well as Marcus Gurtner, Ryan Gage, Moira Smith, and Louise Signal.

Well done Sander for doing a great job representing the School of Computing 🙌

📢 Hot off the press 📢 Congratulations to Peter Whigham for being promoted to Professor 👏 This will take effect from February next year. We are all very proud to have you as a colleague and can’t wait for your IPL!

Peter is pictured doing a demonstration for a CSIS seminar (“Atmospheric Methane Modelling”), which he co-presented with his PhD student Cristhian Fajardo.

https://www.otago.ac.nz/news/news/otago-announces-29-new-professors

On Friday, we had our end of year Christmas and farewell party for Professor Stephen MacDonell. A big thank you to Paradiso: The Music of Joy Division for performing Stephen's favourite songs, and Black Sabbath for Gary Burrows (who will be retiring in 2024). Thanks so much Rewind Dunedin for hosting, with a delicious spread of food and computer-themed cocktails!

Stephen, we wish you all the best with your future endeavours!

Have you ever had morning tea with an astronaut? Our Computer Science student Petra Fisher was able to meet Captain Stefanyshyn-Piper with other members of AeroSpace South 🛰

Congrats Petra on securing an internship with RocketLab (an open access end-to-end space technology company in Auckland) this summer 🥳

Kawhe and kōrero with NASA | University of Otago Have you ever had morning tea with an astronaut? Petra Fisher has. For Petra, meeting an astronaut was particularly inspiring because she has been honing an interest in space science during her last two summer projects.

Last week, the International Conference on Image and Vision Computing NZ was held at Massey University. Three of our papers were accepted into the conference 👏👏👏 The papers were presented by Associate Professor Steven Mills, and PhD students Shazia Gul and Stuart Duncan.

Yesterday, during Digital Health Week, Senior Lecturer Chris Paton presented on telehealth and healthcare design at the HiNZ conference in Hamilton 🙌🩺 📸 Emma Collins

Tomorrow’s out-of-cycle seminar will be presented by Stephen Kell, who is a Lecturer in Computer Science at King's College London 🙌 Not to be missed!

Stephen will give an overview of how compiler-generated metadata enables source-level debugging, the challenges of making it work for optimised code, and his recent work on doing better.