DCU School of Computing will hold its annual Final Year Project Display & Champagne Breakfast at 8am on Friday 25th May 2007 at Dublin City University, Dublin 9.

Students of the university's B.Sc. in Computer Applications degree will give open demonstrations of their final year projects following the breakfast reception. The event provides an excellent opportunity for IT professionals and potential employers to view the high standard and broad range of development work carried out by the more than seventy graduating students of Ireland's largest computing degree programme.

The solutions developed by students cover a wide spectrum of application areas. These include artificial intelligence, embedded systems, information management, digital signal processing, e-commerce, educational applications, gaming, graphics, Internet, mobile and wireless applications, multimedia, natural language processing, network applications and security.

This year's proceedings are being opened by Ronan Harris, Online Sales & Operations Director at Google EMEA and the event is being sponsored by the Centre for Software Engineering and Fidelity Investments, GIFT.

More details on this event and the project booklet can be found at:
http://www.computing.dcu.ie/fyp

If you are interested in attending, please contact Julie Ann Ennis for an invitation at: Tel: (01) 700 5237 or Email:

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The leading conference dealing with software engineering education and training is being hosted by Dublin City University from July 3-5 2007

CSEE&T deals with the educational and training issues involved in ensuring that graduates and company staff are able to develop quality software in a cost-effective manner. Started in 1987 by Norm Gibbs at the Software Engineerinrg Institute (SEI) at Carnegie-Mellon University, the conference has received the sustained support of the IEEE-Computer Society, and is now in its twentieth year.

Keynote speakers will discuss the software engineering scene and related educational and training developments in P.R. China (Prof. Yulin Wang), the nationally recognised graduate training programme at Fidelity Investments (Marie Moloney), and underlying dilemmas in software education (Prof. David Parnas). Globalisation is a particular focus this year, with twenty-six countries involved in the forty refereed papers being presented. Panel sessions, workshops and other events provide many further opportunities for the exchange of ideas.

Details of the conference programme and other information can be found at:
http://www.computing.dcu.ie/cseet2007

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Dr. Mike Scott of the School of Computing has secured funding from SFI for 2 Ph.D. positions. The project, 'Setting records for discrete logarithms', involves the use high-powered computing resources (a computer grid) to set new records for the calculation of discrete logarithms, in a variety of settings.

Also, Dr. Claus Pahl has secured funding from SFI for 3 Ph.D. positions. The CASCAR project (Context-determined Autonomic Service Composition and ARchitecture) [2 positions] addresses automated techniques in the design of complex service-based software systems. Service composition and an architecture for adaptable service process deployment are central research directions. The project, Graph-based Transformation of Dynamic Dependencies for Service-based Software Architecture Migration and Integration [1 position], focuses on service-based integration and migration based on graph-based foundations.

More informtion is available at our Research vacancies page:
http://www.computing.dcu.ie/research/vacancies.html

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Eoin Murphy, DCU graduate, was part of the Happy Feet production team who won an Oscar for the Best Animated Feature Oscar.

Happy Feet, the popular animation directed by George Miller, who also directed Babe, won the Oscar over competition including Pixal's Cars and Monster House. Eoin, a DCU Computer Applications graduate from Dundrum, was part of a small team of Software people involved in the project.

Eoin explains his role in the production: "We built the infrastructure necessary to run the Happy Feet production. Unlike many industries where 'off the shelf' solutions exist for running a business, these don't exist in the Animation/Visual Effects world. It all has to be built from scratch."

Working as a R&D Software Engineer with Animal Logic based in Sydney in Fox Studios, Eoin found his BSc in Computer Applications stood to him: "[at first] I worked more in the visual side of the multimedia/film business, although eventually returned to more technical work after I realised that many of the problems we faced could only be solved technically. At which stage the Computer Application course obviously became useful - it certainly gave me a solid foundation in many fields."

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On Friday, 13th of April the School of Computing organised in Collaboration with Enterprise Ireland a Research Commercialisation Workshop for our students of the European MSc in Business Informatics.

Lande Gerard and Lisa Keating from Enterprise Ireland provided an overview and a detailed discussion about the commercialization fund and the "proof of concept" model. The scheme focuses on applied projects to develop a product concept through to a stage where a route to commercialisation is clear. The Workshop offered students the opportunity to explore a commercialisation route for their own project.

A key feature of the programme is the European practicum, that allows students to draw on the theoretical knowledge gained over the taught element and to apply it in a practical setting. Conducted in another European country, it will see students conducting research into real-world business problems related to IT.

Further details about the European MSc in Business Informatics:
http://www.computing.dcu.ie/europeanmbi

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DCU School of Computing organises the 2nd International Business Informatics Challenge 2007. We invite Bachelor and Master students to submit Papers and real-live Case Studies to this international competition. The best paper receives an award, and all selected papers will be published in the conference proceedings.

Further details:
http://www.businessinformatics-challenge.org/

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Aron Day (16), a transition-year student in St. Paul's College, Raheny, has won the first prize of a laptop computer for best website at DCU's transition year computing course. Aron, who said that he found ComputeTY to be a great experience, was one of the 518 students who took part in this year's ComputeTY course. ComputeTY, now in its third year running at DCU's School of Computing, is a week-long course for transition-year students. Students such as Aron learn to design their own websites on a topic of their choice. The prize of a Dell Inspiron laptop was donated by Dell Ireland.

Full details...

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Th Fourth Information Quality Forum builds on the successful track record of similar events in 2005 and 2006. Presentations will include practitioner oriented case studies and research contributions in the area of Information Quality. Speakers include:

• John Brazil, HSE Health Protection Surveillance Centre
• Tony O'Brien, Nottingham Business School, UK
• Andrew Kinnear, AKMA Consulting UK / IAIDQ UK
• Daragh O Brien, IAIDQ/IQ Network / eircom
• Michael Mielke, Deutsche Bahn AG & German Association for IQ
• Cinzia Cappielo, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
• Dr Markus Helfert/ Mouzhi Ge, Dublin City University

A wide range of topics will be covered, such as:

• How poor Information Quality can get you sued - mapping IQ Best Practices to legal principles
• An insight into the role of Information Quality Management in managing communicable diseases
• The challenge of maintaining sustainable Data Quality in Business systems

Date: Thursday, 22nd February 2007
Venue: The Helix, Dublin City University
Cost: Free to members of the ICS, IAIDQ or DCU. €120 for non-members.

Register your details online at www.iqnetwork.org

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In co-operation with the MIT Information Quality Programme the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Business Informatics Group at DCU School of Computing launched a PhD Dissertation and Research Web page. The Web page provides recent PhD dissertations in Information Quality for download and aims to provide further information about Information Quality Research. In conjunction with the launch of this Web page, the MIT Information Quality Programme announced to organise an annual Dissertation Award for outstanding PhD research contributions in Information Quality. For further details about Information Quality and Business Informatics research at Dublin City University, please contact Markus Helfert (email: ).

Link:
http://www.computing.dcu.ie/research/dataquality/thesis/

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The latest DCU IT job survey shows that the number of job vacancies in the sector is 13,900 - an increase of 26% on the last survey in May 2006. "While jobs are being lost in other sectors this shows the strength of employment prospects for computer graduates", according to DCU IT expert, Professor Michael Ryan. These figures are based on 16,300 advertisements for IT jobs in Ireland currently appearing on the World Wide Web, adjusted for multiple advertisements for some jobs and multiple jobs in some advertisements.

This series of DCU surveys began in May 2005, revealing 8,000 IT vacancies. The current level of vacancies advertised is up a whopping 74% on the first survey.

The jobs cover a wide spectrum, including roles such as Web Developer, Senior Software Engineer, Embedded Software Developer, Systems Analyst, Financial Software Developer, Game Developer, IT Project Management, IT Sales, and Technical Support. Some of them require a number of years prior experience, others are available for recent college graduates. The variety of activities involved reflects the growing importance of IT to all aspects of the economy.

Full details...

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These proceedings present selected papers from the International Business Informatics Challenge 2006. Papers include themes such as the role of information technology in business, strategic information systems planning as well as methods and techniques in IS development.

These proceedings present selected papers from the International Business Informatics Challenge 2006 as well as selected papers presented at the Business Informatics Workshop held in September 2006 at Dublin City University (Ireland). The International Business Informatics Challenge is an annual event which aims to exchange experiences and findings between students and researchers in Business Informatics and Information Systems and to encourage research in the field. With these proceedings we provide an indication of the richness of topics in Business Informatics. Papers include themes such as the role of information technology (IT) in business process management, the economical impact of IT investment in organisations, strategic information systems (IS) planning in organisations as well as methods and techniques in IS development. A balanced mix of theoretical papers and case studies is presented.

Markus Helfert, Thanh Thoa Pham Thi, Howard Duncan (eds.)
Cases and Projects in Business Informatics
Logos-Verlag, Berlin 2007
ISBN 978-3-8325-1395-5
A pre-print copy can be downloaded here.
Copyright Logos Verlag Berlin 2007.

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