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Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 22 January, 2019
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

Using haptic rhythms and multilimb wearable metronomes for gait rehabilitation of hemiparetic stroke and brain injury survivors

Group: Human Computer Interaction (GIST)
Speaker: Theodoros Georgiou, Heriot-Watt University
Date: 24 January, 2019
Time: 13:00 - 14:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

Abstract
Rhythm, brain, and the body are closely linked. Humans can synchronise their movement to auditory rhythms with little apparent effort. 
This is demonstrated through the widespread inclination to spontaneously move to music, either by tapping, nodding, or in more committed cases, 
dancing.
Current research has shown that walking to a steady audio rhythm can lead to improvements in various aspects of gait and have significant 
benefits to the gait rehabilitation of people suffering from hemiparetic gait. 
This talk will mainly present work I conducted as part of my PhD (successfully completed last year - 2018) looking at an alternative approach 
to rhythm-based gait rehabilitation, where steady haptic rhythms are used instead of audio. To investigate this approach, a multi-limb metronome 
capable of delivering a steady, isochronous haptic rhythm to alternating legs was developed and purpose-built for gait rehabilitation of stroke 
survivors, together with appropriate software for monitoring and assessing gait.

Bio
Theodoros Georgiou has an Honours degree in Computer Science from the University of St. Andrews, an MSc in Human Centred Interactive 
Technologies and an MSc by Research in Computer Science from the University of York, and a PhD from the Open University. 
He is currently a Research Associate in the School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, whose research 
focuses on Human Computer Interaction and more recently Human Robot Interaction. His research interests include: haptic technologies, 
wearables, and wearable sensors.

COMPUMATCH drop-in session

Group: Formal Analysis, Theory and Algorithms (FATA)
Speaker: COMPUMATCH
Date: 25 January, 2019
Time: 12:30 - 14:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

All members of the university interested in forming research collaborations with colleagues in theoretical computer science are warmly invited to come and discuss their research problems.  A light buffet lunch will be provided.

tbd

Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 29 January, 2019
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

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Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 05 February, 2019
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

Weighted Congestion Games: Price of Stability, Price of Anarchy and Computation of Approximate Equilibria

Group: Formal Analysis, Theory and Algorithms (FATA)
Speaker: Yiannis Giannakopoulos, Department of Mathematics, TU Munich
Date: 12 February, 2019
Time: 13:00 - 14:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

The central theme in this talk is the study of the behaviour of autonomous agents in congestion games; important special cases of such games include traffic routing in networks and scheduling.

We give exponential lower bounds on the Price of Stability (PoS) of weighted congestion games with polynomial cost functions. In particular, for any positive integer d we construct rather simple games with cost functions of degree at most d which have a PoS of at least \Omega(\Phi_d)^{d+1}, where \Phi_d is the unique positive root of equation x^{d+1}=(x+1)^d. This essentially closes the huge gap between \Theta(d) and \Phi_d^{d+1} and asymptotically matches the Price of Anarchy (PoA) upper bound. We further show that the PoS remains exponential even for singleton games and approximate equilibria. All our lower bounds extend to network congestion games, and hold for mixed and correlated equilibria as well. On the positive side, we give a general upper bound on the PoS of \rho-approximate Nash equilibria, which is sensitive to the range W of the player weights and the approximation parameter \rho. We do this by explicitly constructing a novel approximate potential function, based on Faulhaber's formula, that generalizes Rosenthal's potential in a continuous, analytic way.

Furthermore, we will briefly discuss how this new potential can be used to derive a polynomial-time deterministic algorithm for computing d^{d+o(d)}-approximate equilibria. This is an exponential improvement of the approximation factor with respect to the previously best algorithm. An appealing additional feature of our algorithm is that it uses only best-improvement steps in the actual game, as opposed to earlier approaches that first had to transform the game itself. A critical component of the analysis of the algorithm, which is of independent interest, is the derivation of a new bound for PoA of \rho-approximate equilibria. More specifically, we show that this PoA is *exactly* equal to \Phi_{d,\rho}^{d+1}, where \Phi_{d,\rho} is the unique positive solution of the equation \rho (x+1)^d=x^{d+1}.


This talk is based on joint work with

(1) George Christodoulou, Martin Gairing and Paul Spirakis (Liverpool)
(2) Georgy Noarov (Princeton) and Andreas S. Schulz (TU Munich)

and the actual papers can be found at the following links:

(1) https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.09952
(2) https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.12806

tbd

Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 12 February, 2019
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

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Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 19 February, 2019
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

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Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 26 February, 2019
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

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Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 05 March, 2019
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR)

Group: Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA)
Speaker: SICSA Event, SICSA
Date: 10 March, 2019
Time: 00:00 - 00:00
Location: The University of Strathclyde, Richmond Street, University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom

SICSA is pleased to be sponsoring the ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR) which is taking place in Glasgow from 10 - 14 March 2019 Online information influences every aspect of our lives: work, leisure and learning. As information systems become more embedded in our day-to-day experiences, it becomes increasingly important to understand how people interact with information and the consequences of those interactions. Access to information is critical to preserving democracy. Beyond designing effective and engaging information retrieval systems and interfaces, understanding how users access and use information is crucial to designing fair and ethical systems. ACM CHIIR 2019 invites submissions focused on user-centered approaches to design and evaluation of systems for information access, retrieval, and use. This includes studies of interactive retrieval systems, novel interfaces and interaction paradigms, new evaluation methods, and related areas. Alongside focused studies on specific information retrieval systems and situations, we also welcome longitudinal, real-life, and ethnographic research of contextually embedded search tasks. Topics covered include but are not limited to: Information seeking, including task-based and exploratory studies Search interfaces, including those for specialized tasks, populations and domains User-Centered Design approaches to humans interacting with information and systems Interaction techniques for information retrieval and discovery Online information seeking, including log analysis of search and browsing Modeling and simulation of information interaction Information use, including measures of use as well as broader sense-making Field and case studies relevant to understanding prerequisites for information searching, design and access User-centered evaluation methods and measures, including measures of user experience and performance, experiment and search task design, eye-tracking and physiological approaches, data analysis methods, and usability Human interaction and experience with mobile searching and services Context-aware and personalized search, including design, contextual features and analysis of information interaction Information visualization and visual analytics, including search result presentation Collaborative information seeking and social search, including social utility and network analysis for information interaction Conversational search and other types of stateful and multi-turn interactions between users and search applications Full details of the CHIIR 2019 can be found on the web-site: http://sigir.org/chiir2019/index.html

tbd

Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 12 March, 2019
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

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Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 19 March, 2019
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

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Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 26 March, 2019
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

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Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 02 April, 2019
Time: 16:00 - 17:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

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Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 09 April, 2019
Time: 16:00 - 17:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

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Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 16 April, 2019
Time: 16:00 - 17:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

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Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 23 April, 2019
Time: 16:00 - 17:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

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Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 30 April, 2019
Time: 16:00 - 17:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

ACM CHI 2019

Group: Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA)
Speaker: SICSA Event, SICSA
Date: 03 May, 2019
Time: 00:00 - 00:00
Location: The Scottish Event Campus, Glasgow, Glasgow, G3 8YW, United Kingdom

SICSA is extremely pleased to be sponsoring the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems which is the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction. CHI – pronounced ‘kai’ – is a place where researchers and practitioners gather from across the world to discuss the latest in interactive technology. We are a multicultural community from highly diverse backgrounds who together investigate new and creative ways for people to interact. This will be the first time that CHI has taken place in the UK and it will be hosted at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow. Our theme is ‘Weaving the Threads of CHI’. This is reflected in our celtic knot logo, a symbol of strength and friendship. Threads are interconnected and interwoven, without clear beginning or end. We are the threads of CHI, people from different disciplines, cultures, sectors, communities, backgrounds – designers, researchers, practitioners – weaving together into one community, with the common purpose of technology that works for people and society. Full information on CHI 2019 can be found here: https://chi2019.acm.org/ Stephen Brewster and Geraldine Fitzpatrick CHI 2019 General Chairs generalchairs@chi2019.acm.org

tbd

Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 07 May, 2019
Time: 16:00 - 17:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

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Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 14 May, 2019
Time: 16:00 - 17:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

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Group: Systems Section
Speaker: Thomas Koehler
Date: 21 May, 2019
Time: 16:00 - 17:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

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Group: Systems Section
Speaker: S Waqar Nabi
Date: 28 May, 2019
Time: 16:00 - 17:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

SICSA PhD Conference 2019

Group: Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA)
Speaker: SICSA Event, SICSA
Date: 18 June, 2019
Time: 01:00 - 01:00
Location: University of Stirling, Pathfoot Building, University of Stirling, United Kingdom

The SICSA PhD Conference 2019 will take place on 18th & 19th June at the University of Stirling. The SICSA PhD Conference has become one of the highlights of the SICSA events calendar, bringing together Computing Science and Informatics PhD students, leading academics, and industry practitioners for 2 days of workshops, keynote presentations, poster sessions and social events. The conference is an event aimed specifically at Informatics and Computing Science PhD students and is organised each year by a hard working committee of PhD students and members of the SICSA Executive. Registration for the Conference will open in Spring 2019. If you wish to be considered to be a member of the organisation committee, please complete the short Application Form. If you are a PhD student in Informatics/Computer Science, working in a SICSA institution you are eligible to apply to be part of the committee More information on the 2019 Conference will be posted here in the near future but if you have any questions please email the SICSA Executive Team at admin@sicsa.ac.uk