The School of Computing plans to launch two new one-year full-time programmes for Sept. 04 (both subject to accreditation). The first, an M.Sc. in Software Engineering, prepares graduates for a professional career in software development and exposes them to the latest ideas and practices in industry. Participants will develop the skills to rigorously analyse, specify and implement software systems from requirements based on best practice and quality. Full details.

The second programme, a European M.Sc. in Business Informatics, provides an international perspective on the application ICT in solving business problems. The programme has a strong international focus, culminating in students spending the summer months undertaking a research project or work placement in a European country. Full details.

These two new programmes are offered alongside the School's existing taught postgraduate programmes in Information Technology, Electronic Commerce, Bioinformatics, and Security & Forensic Computing.

The School of Computing at Dublin City University is a recognized site for Young Researcher Awards sponsored by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). Each award is for five years with grants normally ranging up to 400,000 for the 1st year and 200,000 for years 2 - 5. Dublin City University will nominate five outstanding researchers to SFI.

These prestigious awards are for young computing researchers from around the world. They should have obtained a PhD degree or equivalent in the last 5 years and have already shown exceptional potential for leadership at the frontiers of knowledge.

Researchers will be selected on the basis of exceptional accomplishments in any area of software of interest to the School of Computing. Applicants will be expected to offer a creative research plan that builds on work that has already attracted international attention.

Interested researchers are invited to discuss the opportunity with Dr David Sinclair (email David.Sinclair@computing.dcu.ie or tel: +353 1 7005510). More details of the award are available at SFI's website www.sfi.ie. Closing date for submission of completed research plans to SFI is May 28th 2004, with a second closing date of January 14th 2005.

Professor Josef Van Genabith and Dr Andy Way of the School of Computing and the National Centre for Language Technology have been appointed as two of eight CAS Scientists by IBM under their Centre for Advanced Studies scheme. Josef is particularly interested in working with IBM on the automatic acquisition of wide-coverage grammars for use in parsing sentences of human language, while Andy intends to collaborate with IBM employees in the area of Machine Translation, especially for Arabic-English, Chinese-English and Japanese-English.

Language is the key modality in communication. Computational Linguistics researches the processing of human language by computers. This involves the use of computers in speech recognition and production, translation, human-computer interfaces, information retrieval and extraction from the world-wide web, the teaching and learning of languages using computers and software localisation and globalisation. Research in Human Language Technology is interdisciplinary has substantial economic implications and potential. The National Centre for Language Technology at the School of Computing carries out basic research and develops applications.

• National Centre for Language Technology

Dr. Andy Way is to be among the first recipients of the new China / Ireland Science and Technology Collaboration Research Fund sponsored jointly by the Chinese and Irish governments. The award will support a joint project in machine translation with Harbin Institute of Technology.

This project aims to develop a bidirectional Example-Based Machine Translation (EBMT) system for English-Chinese capable of translating sports news items as its first application, given that the Olympic Games will be held in China in 2008. The system will facilitate cross-language Chinese-English information acquisition and improve communication between speakers of the world's two largest languages.  [DCU news piece]  [SFI Press Release]

[Follow Up]
Following on from Dr. Andy Way success with China / Ireland Science and Technology Collaboration Research Fund, he has recently been successful in achieving another research award from Udaras na Gaeltachta for a pilot study to investigate Irish-English machine translation...

The School of Computing is a recognised host for the Embark Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme. These fellowships offer funding over two years to researchers at an early stage of their career who plan to complete postdoctoral level research in the sciences, engineering or technology. The Scheme is open to researchers at an early stage of their research career (within 4 years of the award of their Ph.D. degree). The aim of the fellowships is to empower them to build upon their PhD work and to benefit from the experience of established research teams. The fellowships are administered by Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) and full details of the scheme can be found at http://www.ircset.ie/grant_schemes/postdoctoral.html

The closing date for receipt of applications by IRCSET is 27th February, 2004. Applicants interested in applying for an Embark Postdoctoral Fellowship to be held at the School of Computing are invited to contact Dr. David Sinclair (email: David.Sinclair@computing.dcu.ie) to discuss their application.