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This Week’s Events

Annotative Indexing

Group: Information Retrieval (IR)
Speaker: Charles Clarke, Waterloo University
Date: 07 October, 2024
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

Title
Annotative Indexing

Abstract
This talk presents and explores annotative indexing, a novel framework that unifies and generalizes traditional inverted indices, column stores, object stores, and graph databases. As a result, annotative indexing can provide the underlying indexing framework for retrieval systems that integrate sparse retrieval, dense retrieval, entity retrieval, knowledge graphs, and semi-structured data. While our reference implementation primarily supports human language data in the form of text, annotative indexing is sufficiently general to support a wide range of other data types. The talk will include examples of SQL-like queries over a JSON store built on our reference implementation that include numbers and dates. Taking advantage of the flexibility of annotative indexing, the talk will also demonstrate a fully dynamic inverted index incorporating support for ACID properties of transactions with hundreds of multiple concurrent readers and writers.

Bio
Charles Clarke is a Professor in the School of Computer Science and an Associate Dean for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Waterloo, Canada. His research focuses on data intensive tasks involving human language data, including search, ranking, and question answering. Clarke is an ACM Distinguished Scientist and leading member of the search and information retrieval community. From 2013 to 2016 he served as the Chair of the Executive Committee for the ACM Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR). From 2010-2018 he was Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Information Retrieval Journal. He was Program Co-Chair for the SIGIR main conference in 2007 and 2014, and he was elected to the SIGIR Academy in 2022. His research has been funded by Google, Microsoft, Meta, Spotify, and other companies and granting agencies. Along with Mark Smucker, he received the SIGIR 2012 Best Paper Award. Along with colleagues, he received the SIGIR 2019 Test of Time Award for their SIGIR 2008 paper on novelty and diversity in search. In 2006 he spent a sabbatical at Microsoft, where he was involved in the development of what is now the Bing search engine. From August 2016 to August 2018, while on leave from Waterloo, he was a Software Engineer at what is now Meta, where he worked on metrics and ranking for Facebook Search. He is a co-author of the textbook Information Retrieval: Implementing and Evaluating Search Engines, MIT Press, 2010, which he has had the pleasure of seeing almost entirely deprecated in recent years. Almost.

Structural and Algorithmic Results for Stable Cycles and Partitions in the Roommates Problem

Group: Formal Analysis, Theory and Algorithms (FATA)
Speaker: Frederik Glitzner, University of Glasgow
Date: 08 October, 2024
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

Frederik Glitzner will deliver the following two short talks. 

Structural and Algorithmic Results for Stable Cycles and Partitions in the Roommates Problem
In the Stable Roommates problem, we seek a stable matching of the agents into pairs, in which no two agents have an incentive to deviate from their assignment. It is well known that a stable matching is unlikely to exist in general, but a stable partition always does and provides a succinct certificate for the unsolvability of such a problem instance. Furthermore, apart from being a useful structural tool to study the problem, every stable partition corresponds to a stable half-matching, which has applications, for example, in sports scheduling and time-sharing. I will present new structural results for stable partitions and show how to enumerate all stable partitions, and the cycles included in such structures, efficiently. I will also show how we adapted fairness and optimality criteria from stable matchings to stable partitions and give complexity and approximability results for the problems of computing such “fair” and “optimal” stable partitions.
 
MATWA: A Web Toolkit for Matching under Preferences
I will (re-)introduce and give an update on MATWA (https://matwa.optimalmatching.com), a web application for matching under preferences which has been in continuous development at UofG for the last two decades. MATWA provides results of algorithm executions as well as visualisations of structural properties and offers the most comprehensive collection to date of algorithms for such problems. It is intended to be a resource for the community of researchers, educators and practitioners, supporting experimentation, as well as aiding the understanding of matching algorithms.
--------
 
This event is part of the FATA Weekly Seminar, which takes place every Tuesday from 3:00 - 4:00 PM in Room 422, Sir Alwyn Williams Building and on Zoom https://uofglasgow.zoom.us/j/83611964233?pwd=CgRyzxK8Z9fP2ULTb5ONWZeUYx2t2E.1

A Bigraphs Paper of Sorts

Group: Programming Languages at University of Glasgow (PLUG)
Speaker: Blair Archibald
Date: 09 October, 2024
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: F121 Lilybank Gardens and Online

Bigraphs are an expressive graphical modelling formalism to represent systems with a mix of both spatial and non-local connectivity. Currently it is possible to write nonsensical models, e.g. with a Room nested inside a Person rather than Person nested inside a Room, or to create a hyperedge from what should be a binary link. A sorting scheme can be used to filter badly-formed bigraphs from those that are well formed. While the theory of bigraph sorts is well developed, none of the existing methods leads to a practical implementation. Instead they are based on tables of descriptions or semi-mathematical notations. We look at sorting bigraphs through a practical lens: developing a new sorting language, and show how an extension to the existing theory of bigraphs, in the form of well-sorted interfaces, paves the way for an implementation of well-sorted bigraphs. We discuss the trade-offs of this approach, and show how it allows s

Upcoming events

Annotative Indexing

Group: Information Retrieval (IR)
Speaker: Charles Clarke, Waterloo University
Date: 07 October, 2024
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

Title
Annotative Indexing

Abstract
This talk presents and explores annotative indexing, a novel framework that unifies and generalizes traditional inverted indices, column stores, object stores, and graph databases. As a result, annotative indexing can provide the underlying indexing framework for retrieval systems that integrate sparse retrieval, dense retrieval, entity retrieval, knowledge graphs, and semi-structured data. While our reference implementation primarily supports human language data in the form of text, annotative indexing is sufficiently general to support a wide range of other data types. The talk will include examples of SQL-like queries over a JSON store built on our reference implementation that include numbers and dates. Taking advantage of the flexibility of annotative indexing, the talk will also demonstrate a fully dynamic inverted index incorporating support for ACID properties of transactions with hundreds of multiple concurrent readers and writers.

Bio
Charles Clarke is a Professor in the School of Computer Science and an Associate Dean for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Waterloo, Canada. His research focuses on data intensive tasks involving human language data, including search, ranking, and question answering. Clarke is an ACM Distinguished Scientist and leading member of the search and information retrieval community. From 2013 to 2016 he served as the Chair of the Executive Committee for the ACM Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR). From 2010-2018 he was Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Information Retrieval Journal. He was Program Co-Chair for the SIGIR main conference in 2007 and 2014, and he was elected to the SIGIR Academy in 2022. His research has been funded by Google, Microsoft, Meta, Spotify, and other companies and granting agencies. Along with Mark Smucker, he received the SIGIR 2012 Best Paper Award. Along with colleagues, he received the SIGIR 2019 Test of Time Award for their SIGIR 2008 paper on novelty and diversity in search. In 2006 he spent a sabbatical at Microsoft, where he was involved in the development of what is now the Bing search engine. From August 2016 to August 2018, while on leave from Waterloo, he was a Software Engineer at what is now Meta, where he worked on metrics and ranking for Facebook Search. He is a co-author of the textbook Information Retrieval: Implementing and Evaluating Search Engines, MIT Press, 2010, which he has had the pleasure of seeing almost entirely deprecated in recent years. Almost.

Structural and Algorithmic Results for Stable Cycles and Partitions in the Roommates Problem

Group: Formal Analysis, Theory and Algorithms (FATA)
Speaker: Frederik Glitzner, University of Glasgow
Date: 08 October, 2024
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

Frederik Glitzner will deliver the following two short talks. 

Structural and Algorithmic Results for Stable Cycles and Partitions in the Roommates Problem
In the Stable Roommates problem, we seek a stable matching of the agents into pairs, in which no two agents have an incentive to deviate from their assignment. It is well known that a stable matching is unlikely to exist in general, but a stable partition always does and provides a succinct certificate for the unsolvability of such a problem instance. Furthermore, apart from being a useful structural tool to study the problem, every stable partition corresponds to a stable half-matching, which has applications, for example, in sports scheduling and time-sharing. I will present new structural results for stable partitions and show how to enumerate all stable partitions, and the cycles included in such structures, efficiently. I will also show how we adapted fairness and optimality criteria from stable matchings to stable partitions and give complexity and approximability results for the problems of computing such “fair” and “optimal” stable partitions.
 
MATWA: A Web Toolkit for Matching under Preferences
I will (re-)introduce and give an update on MATWA (https://matwa.optimalmatching.com), a web application for matching under preferences which has been in continuous development at UofG for the last two decades. MATWA provides results of algorithm executions as well as visualisations of structural properties and offers the most comprehensive collection to date of algorithms for such problems. It is intended to be a resource for the community of researchers, educators and practitioners, supporting experimentation, as well as aiding the understanding of matching algorithms.
--------
 
This event is part of the FATA Weekly Seminar, which takes place every Tuesday from 3:00 - 4:00 PM in Room 422, Sir Alwyn Williams Building and on Zoom https://uofglasgow.zoom.us/j/83611964233?pwd=CgRyzxK8Z9fP2ULTb5ONWZeUYx2t2E.1

A Bigraphs Paper of Sorts

Group: Programming Languages at University of Glasgow (PLUG)
Speaker: Blair Archibald
Date: 09 October, 2024
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: F121 Lilybank Gardens and Online

Bigraphs are an expressive graphical modelling formalism to represent systems with a mix of both spatial and non-local connectivity. Currently it is possible to write nonsensical models, e.g. with a Room nested inside a Person rather than Person nested inside a Room, or to create a hyperedge from what should be a binary link. A sorting scheme can be used to filter badly-formed bigraphs from those that are well formed. While the theory of bigraph sorts is well developed, none of the existing methods leads to a practical implementation. Instead they are based on tables of descriptions or semi-mathematical notations. We look at sorting bigraphs through a practical lens: developing a new sorting language, and show how an extension to the existing theory of bigraphs, in the form of well-sorted interfaces, paves the way for an implementation of well-sorted bigraphs. We discuss the trade-offs of this approach, and show how it allows s

Jinyuan Fang IR Seminar

Group: Information Retrieval (IR)
Speaker: Jinyuan Fang, University of Glasgow
Date: 14 October, 2024
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

Title
TBC

Abstract
TBC

Bio
TBC

GwiCS Seminar: Widening Participation in STEM Research

Group: Glasgow Women in Computing Science (GWiCS)
Speaker: Tiffany Vlaar, University of Glasgow
Date: 15 October, 2024
Time: 14:00 - 15:00
Location: 423 SAWB

Abstract: In this talk I will discuss my involvement with Women in Machine Learning and as co-founder of the Piscopia Initiative. WiML organises various events aimed at empowering women and non-binary people in machine learning, including a flagship annual workshop at the NeurIPS conference. The Piscopia Initiative aims to encourage women and non-binary people to consider doing a PhD in Maths and wider STEM and support them throughout this process. I also hope to give insights to those interested in increasing diversity in research: how to raise funding for events, ideas for reaching your target audience, making events more inclusive, and how to work towards leaving a lasting legacy.

Bio: Dr Tiffany Vlaar (she/her) is a lecturer at the University of Glasgow with research interests in mathematics of deep learning and climate change AI. Prior to this, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Mila-Quebec AI Institute and McGill University and a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. As co-founder of the Piscopia Initiative she is passionate about increasing diversity in postgraduate research in STEM.

 

 

SICSA REALLM Workshop 2024

Group: Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA)
Speaker: SICSA Event, SICSA
Date: 17 October, 2024
Time: 01:00 - 01:00
Location: Robert Gordon University, United Kingdom

Announcing the SICSA Reasoning, Explanation and Applications of Large Language Models (REALLM) Workshop 2024 at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. The SICSA REALLM workshop will provide a forum to share exciting research on LLMs. Our goal is to foster connections among SICSA researchers interested in NLP and Generative AI by highlighting and documenting promising approaches, and encouraging further work. We expect to draw interest from AI researchers working in a number of related areas including NLP, ML, reasoning systems, explainable artificial intelligence, conversational AI and applications of generative AI. The SICSA REALLM Workshop Organisation Committee would like to invite submissions of novel theoretical and applied research targeting LLMs. Example submission areas include (but are not limited to): • Novel architectural updates to large language models, including those targeting the integration of reasoning and and retrieval components. • Evaluation and/or explanation of language modelling tasks, including novel metrics or methods for assessing model output. • Applications of LLMs within new domains, including fine-tuning or adaptation of existing models. Accepted papers will be considered for publication through CEUR. Please see the workshop website for further information and submission instructions. Registration for the workshop is free. To register, please complete our registration form. We look forward to welcoming you at RGU!

SoCS Upwards Seminar: Establishing Research Group Culture

Group: School of Computing Science
Speaker: Dr Graham McDonald and Professor Vihar Georgiev, University of Glasgow
Date: 17 October, 2024
Time: 16:00 - 17:00
Location: SAWB 423, Sir Alwyn Williams Building

Our Upwards seminar resumes with a first seminar instance for AY 24/25 on Thursday 17 October at 4 pm:
 
We will hear about "Establishing Research Group Culture" from 
 
Dr Graham McDonald (Computing Science), a senior lecturer in our School's Information Retrieval group (https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/computing/research/researchsections/ida-section/informationretrieval/), which was founded ~ 38 years ago, and
 
Professor Vihar Georgiev (Engineering), who started the DeepNano group (https://deepnano.org/) this year.
 
The session will be held in SAWB 423 and you are encouraged to join us in person if you can, but we will also be streaming the seminar on Zoom (https://uofglasgow.zoom.us/j/88286483984?pwd=vuD32EAmWqz7a6ZhBpcIaUZ0nez9s2.1) for everyone unable to join us in SAWB on the day.
 
-- -- --
 
What is Upwards?
 
Upwards is the School’s long-standing research culture seminar, covering all facets of developing, conducting, and advertising research and related topics, e.g. managing a research team, time management to do research, connections between research and teaching. It’s open to everyone in the School, but a specific aim is to support ECR development and also to have some sessions aimed mainly at PGRs and/or PDRAs.
 
What will this session be about?
 
It is up to our two speakers to set the agenda for their talks – but the idea is to hear, for instance, about lessons learned, best practices, and useful strategies on how to organise as a research group, how to establish team spirit and a collaborative group environment, and how to set the scene for peer learning and research excellence.

Title TBA

Group: Programming Languages at University of Glasgow (PLUG)
Speaker: Christopher Brown, University of St Andrews
Date: 21 October, 2024
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Lilybank Gardens, F121 Conference Room

Chris Brown from St Andrews will give a talk.

Title / Abstract TBA.

Chuan Meng IR Seminar

Group: Information Retrieval (IR)
Speaker: Chuan Meng, University of Amsterdam
Date: 21 October, 2024
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room

Title
TBC

Abstract
TBC

Bio
TBC

GLACSIL - Topic TBC

Group: Glasgow Computing Science Innovation Lab
Speaker: TBC
Date: 29 October, 2024
Time: 12:00 - 13:30
Location: Advanced Research Centre

At this Glasgow Computing Science Innovation Lab Session, we'll look again at research skills, but this time taking comparative views of research skills that are required in industry to those learned and used within academia. 

This session will be of interest to industry partners in innovation roles or with responsibility for growing and developing innovation teams.  It will also be of interest to PhD students and early career researchers considering their career direction. 

Further details on how to register to follow soon...

Location - Advanced Research Centre, Suite 2 and via Microsoft Teams

Scottish Programming Languages Seminar

Group: Programming Languages at University of Glasgow (PLUG)
Speaker: Various
Date: 06 November, 2024
Time: 12:00 - 17:30
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422+423 Seminar Room

The Programming Languages Theme will be hosting the Scottish Programming Languages Seminar in SAWB422/423.

CENSIS Tech Summit 2024

Group: Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA)
Speaker: SICSA Event, SICSA
Date: 14 November, 2024
Time: 00:00 - 00:00
Location: TBA

Join us in Glasgow for Scotland’s premier sensing, imaging and IoT event Whether you’ve been to every Summit or will be attending for the first time, you are warmly invited to join us at our CENSIS Tech Summits. Hear about new innovations, challenges and solutions Meet exhibitors showcasing new technologies and products Understand how businesses are delivering digitalisation across a range of markets Network and connect with key business people, policy makers and researcher

Title TBA

Group: Programming Languages at University of Glasgow (PLUG)
Speaker: Jan de Muijnck-Hughes, University of Strathclyde
Date: 20 November, 2024
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: F121 Lilybank Gardens and Online

Former PL-themer Jan de Muijnck-Hughes will give us a talk about Idris -- exact specifics to be confirmed nearer the time.

The 35th British Machine Vision Conference

Group: Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA)
Speaker: SICSA Event, SICSA
Date: 25 November, 2024
Time: 00:00 - 00:00
Location: Scottish Event Campus, Scottish Event Campus, Glasgow, United Kingdom

The British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC) is the British Machine Vision Association’s (BMVA) annual conference on machine vision, image processing, and pattern recognition. It is one of the major international conferences on computer vision and related areas held in the UK. With increasing popularity and quality, it has established itself as a prestigious event on the vision calendar. Find out more details on the MBVC 2024 Conference Website.

Upwards x GWiCS seminar: Effective management of time, people, and projects

Group: School of Computing Science
Speaker: Professor Simone Stumpf and Dr Matthew Barr, University of Glasgow
Date: 27 November, 2024
Time: 13:00 - 14:00
Location: SAWB 423, Sir Alwyn Williams Building

Topic: Effective time, people, and project management

 

Speakers:

- Professor Simone Stumpf (Computing, GIST Section lead)

- Dr Matthew Barr (Computing, EAP Section lead)

 

Location:

- in Room SAWB 423

- and on Zoom (to join remotely): https://uofglasgow.zoom.us/j/83133204070?pwd=pGhpQIgXyjebI0xKhRv0U4tI5ZF6Qb.1

This is a joint Upwards and GWiCS seminar.

 

 
What is Upwards?
 
Upwards is the School’s long-standing research culture seminar, covering all facets of developing, conducting, and advertising research and related topics, e.g. managing a research team, time management to do research, connections between research and teaching. It’s open to everyone in the School, but a specific aim is to support ECR development and also to have some sessions aimed mainly at PGRs and/or PDRAs.
 
What will this session be about?
 
It is up to our two speakers to set the agenda for their talks – but the idea is to hear, for instance, about lessons learned, best practices, and useful strategies on how to organise one's weekly and daily schedule, how to protect time set aside for research development, how to manage postdocs and PhDs as their supervisor, how to keep small and large research projects on track, and how to keep a healthy balance between the many tasks one has to do and life outside of the job.

 

ACI 2024 - The Eleventh International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction

Group: Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA)
Speaker: SICSA Event, SICSA
Date: 02 December, 2024
Time: 00:00 - 00:00
Location: TBA

ACI is the leading International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction. It is a highly multidisciplinary event drawing researchers and practitioners from diverse backgrounds to share and discuss work and topics related to the research and design of computing-enabled and interactive technology for and with animals. We are keen to be as inclusive as possible. We wish to welcome a wide range of contributions and participants to the conference, promote a constructive dialogue around the animal-centred research and design of computing-enabled systems, and foster the development of ACI as a discipline. The conference is open to contributions from researchers and practitioners in a wide range of fields, including (but not limited to) ethics, behavior analysis, psychology, veterinary behavior, zoology, ethology, interaction design, computer science, and electrical engineering. Find out more about the conference and submission deadlines.

1st International Workshop on Low carbon Computing (LOCO 2024)

Group: Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA)
Speaker: SICSA Event, SICSA
Date: 03 December, 2024
Time: 00:00 - 00:00
Location: Advanced Research Centre (ARC), 11 Chapel lane, Glasgow, G11 6EW, United Kingdom

The 1st International Workshop on Low Carbon Computing (LOCO 2024) will bring together researchers and practitioners with a keen interest in low carbon and sustainable computing. The workshop will provide a forum for sharing new ideas, for presenting ongoing work and early results, as well as for bringing forward well-founded criticism. LOCO 2024 is an initiative of the Scottish Programming Languages Institute (SPLI), supported by the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA), and was inspired by the Programming for the Planet (PROPL) workshop. View more information and register online.

GLACSIL Industrial Studentship Showcase

Group: Glasgow Computing Science Innovation Lab
Speaker: TBC
Date: 03 December, 2024
Time: 14:00 - 17:00
Location: Advanced Research Centre 237C

At this event we'll celebrate the work and achievements of the industrial research students sponsored by GLACSIL partners via talks, technology demonstrations, plus festive drinks and nibbles. 

Further details will be added in due course. 

Past events

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