News from the Faculty of Computing

London Met BCS Student Chapter Launch
The London Met British Computer Society (BCS) Student Chapter Impact - was launched on 9 March 2010 with invited speakers, including a representative from BCS Young Professionals Group (YPG). The Initiative originated in December 2009 and is supported by the Executive Committee of BCS YPG and Dr. Yanguo Jing (pictured left) of the Faculty of Computing. The organiser, our student Anvar Nazarov, (pictured right) MSc IT Consultancy StAR, says "The chapter intends to provide a unique opportunity for students to develop their professional skills and enhance their experience by organising events and challenges and inspire them to overcome obstacles in education and in the job seeking process after graduation. Some events will be jointly organized with the Faculty's Student Enterprise Workshop. The Initiative will create a platform to help students to become more competitive in the current marketplace and assists the improvement of the university's image as an academic environment providing industry oriented education, targeting its academic and professional study programs according to the needs and requirements of the industry and special interests of students."
(posted March 2010)

FoC would like to welcome the new PhD students on VC Scholarships
"The research and postgraduate dimensions of our Faculty are greatly enhanced by these new scholarship students. Working closely with their supervisors who are drawn from every area of the Faculty they will make an important contribution to our development in 2010 and beyond. They have been selected because of their exceptional academic achievements and the abilities they have shown, as well as their commitment to the research goals we are pursuing. So I am counting on them and their supervisors (including me!) to make sure they complete their PhDs within 3 years. I'm sure everyone will give them a very warm welcome to our Faculty." Dean of Faculty, Professor Dominic Palmer-Brown

Muhammad Sajid Afzal (Director of Studies: Dr Karim Ouazzane)
Kafil Uddin Ahmed (Dr Bal Virdee)
Muhammad Azam (Dr Nick Ioannides)
Victor Castano (Professor Igor Schagaev)
Teresa Formisano (Professor Edward Kissin)
Samson Habte (Professor Dominc Palmer-Brown)
Khurram Majid (Dr Yanguo Jing)
Wondimagegn Mallede (Dr Farhi Marir)
Syed Azhar Shah (Dr Pargat Calay)
Lukman Sharif (Professor Hassan Kazemian)
Aferdita Sula (Dr Zhanyuan Hou)
(posted January 2010)

Year 12 Master Classes in Mathematics
These Master Classes are organised by the Royal Institution (RI), hosted by Mathematics staff from London Met and held on Saturday mornings.
The mathematics subject area will present three of the six master classes.
Last Saturday was the first class (pictured) attended by 67 bright A level students from London and the surrounding area. They were welcomed by Professor Dominic Palmer-Brown and the lecture was presented by Dr. Steve Kane from the University of Hertfordshire on the Mathematics of Earthquakes.
The lecture was received enthusiastically and students were looking forward to next week's talk on Mathematics and the art of juggling.
(posted January 2010)

FoC Students in "Challenge: Future" Semi-final

Students from FoC have successfully reached the semi-final in the "Challenge:Future" Global Student Competition (www.challengefuture.org).

Four of our students are members of the team Brain•Wave under the mentorship of senior lecturer Dr Yanguo Jing. You can support the team by registering on the competition web site and voting for our team. Read more about team Brain•Wave's entry.
(posted January 2010)

Student Enterprise Workshop - January 2010

On Wednesday 13 Jan Carl Davis, of Swift Computers, addressed the latest Student Enterprise Workshop (SEW) organised by Dr Yanguo Jing.


Carl described his experience of setting up and running his own computer business as an aspiration, perhaps for some of our graduates.
Carl was introduced by Professor Dominic Palmer-Brown, Dean of the Faculty of Computing, who described Carl as a valuable and active member of FoC's industrial liaison panel.

The audience of students, staff, alumni and computer industry professionals also heard from FoC students who have set up a BCS Young Professionals Group at London Met, and their exciting programme of events for 2010. See details of previous and forthcoming SEWs
(posted January 2010)

Janet Baker Self Awards

The JBS prize of £900 was awarded to recent Mathematics graduates Eliyes Omar and Chandra Basnet jointly this year, in a ceremony in T9-05 on Monday Jan 11. The awards were presented by the Dean, Professor Dominic Palmer-Brown, who mentioned the history of the prize.

The Janet Baker Self Award was established following the untimely death in 2002 of Janet Baker Self, who was a mathematics lecturer at London Guildhall University, one of the two universities which merged to form London Met. Janet was much loved and admired and the money that was raised for the memorial fund was donated by her family, fellow staff and students. The award is made annually to one or more mathematics graduates each year for outstanding performance in their intermediate level.
(posted January 2010)

Faculty of Computing Awards Ceremony December 2009
Everyone at the Barbican cheered wildly when The Dean, Professor Dominic Palmer-Brown announced the fifty years of research that led to the prestigious award of Doctor of Science for Edward Steers, pictured with Dr Bal Virdee and two of the Faculty's graduates Sajid and Marjid Afzal who are working on various WoW projects. Two other staff were also awarded degrees, Bash Patel, senior technician in Comms Tech, got a first class honours in BSc Computer Networking and Freddy de la Cruz, visiting lecturer for CISCO, was awarded an MSc in Computer Networking with merit. See more photos from the awards ceremony
(posted December 2009)

Faculty takes part in K12 Online Conference

Alan Hudson, one of his MSc E-Learning students Lawal Muhammad, and Virtually Linked, the makers of Second Life London, presented at this year's K12 Online Conference. The conference was centred around a series of online videos supported by blogs and wikis for attendees to comment on, exchange ideas and make connections.

The video showed examples of their work in introducing new users to Second Life. It was created without the three parties meeting in real life. Discussions and plans were made using Skype and Second Life and various very large files were uploaded and downloaded to enable the whole video to be assembled before being uploaded to the conference site.

The conference started officially on December 7th and was free http://k12onlineconference.org/ . The LondonMet video was released on December 9th.
(posted December 2009)