The latest announcements and news items related to the School of Computing, DCU. http://www.computing.dcu.ie/news/index.html en-uk Mon, 10 Aug 2009 09:00:00 GMT Tue, 18 Aug 2009 09:00:00 GMT Mark Gowing's Virtual Maze final year CA project from this year has been used in DCU's Summer Camp for kids. The project explored location based gameplay - where the player's physical location in a room is used as input, a concept developed from the success of Nintendo's Wii and DS consoles. It consists of a selection of 2D mini games, each one using the players location in a different way. Visual feedback is provided via a large LCD video wall, and real-time tracking is achieved through wearable UbiSense tags. Claire O'Connell of the Irish Times interviewed Mark's project supervisor, Prof Alan Smeaton, deputy director of Clarity, a Science Foundation Ireland centre that links Dublin City University, University College Dublin and Tyndall National Institute in Cork. It's all down to the most simple of sensors, nothing too grand, he explains. "We do all kinds of complex measurements here on phosphates and water quality and we look at the pH of sweat - it's all very high end," says Smeaton. "But sometimes the simplest of sensors can give you applications that you wouldn't have thought of before. So we started to think about what could we do based on games." Out of that grew two approaches - one based on sheep-herding where players run around a virtual "field" steering sheep into a central pen, the other on a dance-mat that encourages children to jump on the correct answer. More.. http://www.computing.dcu.ie/news/index.html Aug, 18 2009 09:00:00 GMT DCU and the Bank of Ireland today announced a unique discounted loan scheme for those recently unemployed who wish to study engineering and computing at postgraduate level at DCU. The scheme is available for students who wish to enter DCU this September or in March 2010. It is the first of its kind in Ireland and is intended for graduates who have recently been made unemployed and who wish to upskill. This unique discounted loan can provide up to EUR15k in funding to cover fees and living expenses. The scheme also allows students defer making any repayment on the loan for 18 months giving them financial freedom to concentrate on their studies. Applicants must be unemployed, but must not be longer than 12 months out of work. They should meet the university's minimum entry requirements and Bank of Ireland's normal lending criteria and terms and conditions apply. More.. http://www.computing.dcu.ie/news/index.html Aug, 14 2009 09:00:00 GMT From July 13-17, CNGL is running two combined modules with CTYI; 'Japanese Language' and 'Culturally Localising Web Pages'. A group of forty students, aged 8-13 years old, are taking the two modules. Joss Moorkens, a CNGL PhD student based in DCU, is teaching the language module. Dr. Dimitra Anastasiou, a CNGL postdoctoral researcher at the University of Limerick (UL), and Naoto Nishio, a CNGL PhD student at UL, will teach the culturally localising web pages. The Culturally Localising Web Pages course is designed to introduce the concept of localisation to the participants by comparing fun Japanese, English and French web sites. This course highlights the differences and similarities of contents among those languages and cultures to explain the importance of localisation. This students will learn the Katakana character set in Japanese and be able to type them when they create their own website. More.. http://www.computing.dcu.ie/news/index.html Jul, 14 2009 09:00:00 GMT CNGL is running a three-week Search Engines course with the Centre for Talented Youth (CTYI). Ten teenagers are attending the course in LG25 in the School of Computing in DCU from June 22nd - July 10th 2009. Headed up Dr. Gareth Jones and Dr. Johannes Leveling, the course aims to introduce the students to the technologies behind current commercial search engines and related natural language and search technologies, and show students some research systems currently under development. In doing this, the presenters will introduce the subjects of information retrieval, machine translation and adaptive hypermedia. Sessions are presented by staff and researchers from CNGL with assistance from researchers in the Clarity research centre. All the instructors are active researchers in the areas that they are talking about. Jian Zhang, an INTRA student working for CNGL Education and Outreach, developed software for the students to use during the course. http://www.computing.dcu.ie/news/index.html Jun, 25 2009 09:00:00 GMT The annual School of Computing Champagne Breakfast took place on 28th May in the School of Computing, and was a great success. Guest speakers at the event included Professor Anne Scott (Deputy President of DCU), and Dr. Stephen Blott (Head of Computing School). The speakers welcomed industry members during the breakfast, and invited them to tour the Final Year project displays in the labs. The Final Year students had obviously worked hard on their business presentation skills and there were some truly impressive projects on display. There has been great feedback from students and industry attendees alike, and we expect several students will hear directly from industry members over the next few months. http://www.computing.dcu.ie/news/index.html Jun, 10 2009 09:00:00 GMT