Meet and Greet event:
The Computer Science Dept. held a meet-and-greet event on Wednesday, Feb. 8 at 1:30pm in MC-325. In this event, the Western CS professors and the CS students had the opportunity to communicate and bond together in an informal setting. And yes, snacks were provided!
(Link to Flickr Photo Album)
Design Team Win!
In December 2016, the Computer Science Department collaborated with the Information Services Department of the Schulich School of the Medicine and Dentistry at Western University to provide a ‘real world’ problem for twenty project teams to study and solve. This is an example of a real-world software system developed by Western for Western, giving students an exposure to real-world environment in the classroom.This year, the Schulich IS team selected ‘Team Titawin’ from the cs3307a class. as the project team that delivered the best project of the twenty projects submitted.
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Best Paper:
We are pleased to announce that Yi Liu, Weiping Sun, Baozhen Shan, and Professor Kaizhong Zhang received “Best Paper Award” at the 2017 Asia Pacific Bionformatics Conference in Shenzhen, China, held Jan 16-18. The paper was entitled “DISC: Disulfide Linkage Characterization from Tandem Mass Spectra”.
Diagnosing Concussions
Dr. Mark Daley appeared on CTV News on December 31, 2016, discussing a new test under development at Western to aid in the diagnosis of concussions. An extended interview with Dr. Daley is also available here.
NSERC Award
Congratulations to Charles Ling, who has been awarded the NSERC Engage Plus grant for the collaborative research with Highstreet Asset Management Inc (a part of AGF). The research is about machine learning from big data (stock market data) for an optimal portfolio.
Competition Results!
We are pleased to announce that Stephen Solis-Reyes, a recent graduate from Western Computer Science, has placed 2nd at the IBM Master the Mainframe competition in California.
$66 Million Grant
Western University's BrainsCAN initiative received a substantial $66 million investment from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) today – the largest research grant in the university's history – providing a significant boost to ongoing research in cognitive neuroscience and imaging at Western.
Western will partner with researchers at McGill University, who also received CFREF funding, to leverage complementary expertise to better understand disorders such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, traumatic brain injury, and schizophrenia.
Professor Jörn Diedrichsen, of the Computer Science Dept, is a Principal Investigator on this project
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New Faculty
We are pleased to welcome Dr. Anwar Haque as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, as part of Science’s Industry Expert in Residence program. This position is supported with funds from Telus and Nordicity. Dr. Haque is also appointed as an Industry Expert in Residence in the Faculty of Science. He comes to Western from Bell Canada where he spent fifteen years as a Researcher, Manager, and Associate Director in a number of core business units including Network Planning and Operations, Technology Development, and Business Decision Support. Dr Haque is a proven champion of Canadian industry-academia partnerships.... (more)
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Western CS Grad Achievement
Stephen Solis-Reyes, who recently graduated from Western Computer Science, has obtained a spot in the distingushed IBM Master the Mainframe competition in California. Stephen is the only person from North American who obtained a spot at this competition.Click HERE for more details on the upcoming competition.
New Faculty
We are very pleased to welcome Dr. Kostas Kontogiannis as the Western Research Chair in Software Engineering for Cyberphysical Systems. Dr. Kontogiannis comes to Western from the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens. He will start on August 1, 2016. Dr. Kontogiannis works in important areas relevant to software cyber physical systems including software maintenance, service computing, intelligent systems, and model driven engineering.
Acting Chair
We are very pleased to announce John Barron’s appointment as Acting Chair of the Department of Computer Science for one year, effective July 1, 2016.
John Barron received his MSc and PhD in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, and has been teaching in the Department of Computer Science at Western since 1989. Professor Barron has served in a variety of capacities in addition to his teaching duties, including service on a wide variety of committees. Professor Barron was also Associate Chair of the Department of Computer Science from 2008-2011.
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Western News
Big Blue Bubble COO Claudette Critchley, BSc’94, BEd’95, and Computer Science professor Mike Katchabaw are partnering to develop the future of Western’s game design program, making the university a leading destination for studying and launching a career in the industry. ... (more)
Western News
Western was named today among the top destinations in the world to study – and launch a career in – Game Design, according to The Princeton Review’s seventh annual rankings of the best undergraduate and graduate schools ... (March 15, 2016) (more)-
Western News
Jörn Diedrichsen was profiled in the March 9 Western News. As the Western Research Chair for Motor Control and Computational Neuroscience, and part of the Brain and Mind Institute, Diedrichsen explores how the brain produces movement, particularly for the hand ... (more) 
GlucoGuide on CTV
Charles Ling was interviewed by the CTV 6pm news on January 29. Along with John Wreford of GlucoGuide he introduced some of the features of the GlucoGuide app... (Watch Here!)
Western News
Mouth Abuaysha, third year Computer Science Student and research assistant at Western’s Brain and Mind Institute, was profiled in Western News on Januay 21, 2016. In "Computer Science student takes ambition into another dimension", they reported on how he uses 3D printing to explore ways to assist individuals with a wide array of physical limitations... (more)
Canadian Diabetes Expo
Charles Ling, with some of his graduate students and members of GlucoGuide, show-cased their diabetes management App in Toronto's CDA Diabetes Expo. It was well received. Several celebs also came to see the GlucoGuide system. (more)
Coming to London, Nov. 28
MacLeans Magazine
Two Computer Science alumni, Claudette Critchley and Jenna Butler, as well the Dean of Science, Charmaine Dean, are featured in an advertorial entitled "Women in Computing" in the latest MacLeans Magazine. Get your copy today! (more) (more)
Rozenberg Tulip Award
Lila Kari was recently presented with the Rozenberg Tulip Award at the 21st International conference on DNA Computing and Molecular Programming. This award recognizes a prominent scientist - the DNA Computer Scientist of the Year - who has shown continuous contributions, pioneering, original contributions, and who has influenced the development of the field.
Brain Access
Imagine a world where people converse with someone who appears to be in a vegetative state, or hospitals where critical care teams detect a looming crisis long before it erupts. “As far as I know, we’re the first group in the world doing this,” said Mark Daley, principal investigator for the Brain and Mind Institute at Robarts Research Institute. (more)
Amazon Grant
The Computer Science Department at Western University would like to thank Amazon Web Services again for their generous donation of 3500 dollars worth of credits towards their cloud services. This year, the third year database course will be using Amazon Virtual Machines to make PHP online applications that access back-end databases. THANK YOU AMAZON!
Compute Ontario
On Thursday, May 21, 2015, Ruipeng Lu gave a platform presentation entitled "Discovery of Primary, Cofactor, and Novel Transcription Factor Binding Site Motifs by Recursive, Thresholded Entropy Minimization" at the 2015 Compute Ontario Research Day conference at the Conestoga College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning.
GlucoGuide
Charles Ling launched GlucoGuide, a research spinoff for diabetes management and wellness, on May 15 in London. Over 60 people attended including researchers and healthcare managers from US, Toronto, and KW. Dignitaries included Mayor Matt Brown, Federal Minister of State for Science and Technology Ed Holder, and Western VP Research Dr. John Capone. (more)
3 Minute Thesis
Congratulations to Jenna Butler, who competed for Western at 3MT Ontario 2015 and earned second place. The competition was held Thursday, April 23, at the Ivy Business School. Jenna's talk covered her PhD research under supervisor Dr. Mark Daley.
NSERC RTI Grant
Dr. Yuri Boykov and Dr. Olga Veksler have been awarded an NSERC Research Tools & Instruments Grant for close to $96,000. This grant covers the purchase of high-performance workstations for a combinatorial approach to their research. The grant will be good for one year with the possibility for a one year extension.-
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Charles Ling will give a keynote talk at the 2015 Canadian Undergraduate Computer Science Conference to be held July 8th to 11th at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. The title of Charles' talk is "How to Choose A Graduate Program? Or not at all?". An abstract of his talk can be found at http://cucsc.ok.ubc.ca/en/keynotes.php. 
Invited Speaker
Dr. Steven Beauchemin will give an invited symposium talk at the 2015 Computer and Robot Vision Conference on instrumented vehicles. The title of Steven's talk is ""Vehicular Instrumentation for the Study of Driver Intent and Related Applications". An abstract of his talk can be found at www.computerrobotvision.org.
CAS Award
Marc Moreno Maza has been awarded a professorship under the CAS President's International Fellowship Initiative for Visiting Scientists by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This very distinguished award is received by 200 foreign scholars across all disciplines and laboratories of the Chinese Academy Sciences. The funds associated will support a joint research project between Chongqing Institute of Green & Intelligent Technology (CIGIT) and the research group of Marc Moreno Maza. These funds will also enable a summer school and mini-courses. (more)
New Faculty
We are very pleased to announce that Dr. Joern Diedrichsen, who is currently at University College of London, has accepted a faculty position at Western between Computer Science and Statistics & Acturial Science. He will start September 2015. Joern is coming in as a Western chair in computational neuroscience with interest in computational models, motor control and analysis of MRI data of the human cerebellum. (more)
CEO in Training
Robert Goldfarb, a fourth year double Major in Computer Science and Medical Science at Western University, is an aspiring entrepreneur whose ease with innovation and willingness to assume calculated risks and learn from experience has prepared him for his latest opportunity: to shadow Aly Rahemtulla, President and CEO of BSM Wireless. (more)
Big Data - Tiny Assassin
Kemi Ola’s research mission is to dethrone the deadliest animal on the planet; the mosquito. With rising cross-border trade, international tourism and global-warming, malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases are reappearing in regions where they had been eradicated and are spreading to new geographic locations including North America. (more)
New Appointment
Stephen Watt has been appointed dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. “Stephen Watt’s experience as an administrator is combined with a track record of distinguished scholarship and strong experience in private sector leadership,” said Ian Orchard, Waterloo's vice-president, academic and provost. (more)
Poster Award
Paul Parsons and Maryam Khordad were among the Western researchers who were recently awarded best poster in the Science of Information category at the Western Interdisciplinary Science Showcase, which was a research showcase led by Western Science highlighting prescient research taking place across campus.(more)-
Network Prof
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Anwar Haque, an Associate Director at Bell Canada, will teach a course in Advanced Networks/Distributed systems for both undergraduate (CS 4457) and graduate students(course number to be determined). Dr. Haque is currently an Associate Director at Bell Canada where he oversees Bell`s service costing, as well as the company’s multi-million-dollar network capital portfolios.(more) 
Invisible Mutations
Former CSD undergrad Coby Viner and Professor Peter Rogan are among the co-authors of a paper which outlines some recent discoveries which may allow some women with breast cancer to avoid chemotherapy. The research which led to this finding used computers to probe mutations that until now have been invisible.(more) (London Free Press)
Latest Game
Computer Science graduate Kan Gao has done it again. He has followed up his award winning game "To The Moon" with another well received game called "A Bird Story". Gao describes the game as "the simplest but most difficult thing I've had to make," and it's not hard to see why. This hour-long spectacle manages to convey narrative through its visual cues, without a single letter or digit to drive it. (more1) (more2)
Smarter Future
Even with access to 200 million pages of content, consuming four terabytes of disk storage, IBM’s Watson supercomputer wasn’t able to answer correctly every question during its 2011 Jeopardy appearance. The computer sometimes faltered and flopped – seemingly failing to understand the questions. Computer Science graduate student Lareina Milambiling’s research explores why that is, and looks to bridge the gap between artificial intelligence and natural language – in the gaming industry.
New Faculty
We are very pleased to announce that Dr. Daniel Lizotte, who is currently at the University of Waterloo, has accepted a faculty position at Western between Computer Science and Epidemiology. He will start January 1, 2015. Dan is interested in the areas of machine learning, reinforcement learning, and statistics, particularly as they apply to problems in medical health informatics.
Big Data
Mark Daley is one of the researchers at Western University who are using IBM Cloud and Analytics to watch regions of the human brain communicating with each other to diagnose and describe brain disorders in real time.-
Teaching Award
Jenna Butler has received a Faculty of Science Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. This award is given based on evidence of excellence in academic endeavours with particular emphasis on exceptional performance in undergraduate classroom teaching and undergraduate course/curriculum development. The official presentation will be made at the Faculty and Staff Recognition lunch in December. Congratulations Jenna! -
NSERC i2i Grant
Charles Ling was recently awarded an NSERC i2i (Idea to Innovation) grant for the R&D of GlucoGuide, a data-analytic based system for people with diabetes. For more info, see http://cling.csd.uwo.ca/GlucoGuide.html. In addition, he was recently awarded NSERC Engage Grants (EG) entitled "Personalized content management using collaborative filtering" with Arcane Digital Inc. in London. 
GitHub Gift
Western Computer Science would like to thank GitHub for their support once again in providing free, private Git repositories for use in our courses here in the department. Among other courses, students in the third year networking course will use GitHub to submit their assignment code, all the while gaining experience with Git, a relevant and in-demand version control system.-
Research Day Award
At the recent Compute Ontario Research Day held at the Perimiter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Computer Science undergraduate student Coby Viner received the Best Talk Award for his talk entitled "Validation of Predicted mRNA Splicing Mutations Using High-throughput Transcriptome Data". Congratulations and well deserved! -
USC Teaching Award
Jenna Butler was recently awarded a 2014 University Students’ Council Award of Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Sponsored by Alumni Western, the award demonstrates the value Western students place on quality teaching and outstanding professors. The winners have dedicated a significant amount of time to enhance classroom learning, and have inspired their students through their passion and care. -
Infrastructure Innovation
Steven Beuachemin has received a grant through the Ministry of Transportation Ontario's Highway Infrastructure Innovation Funding Program for a proposal titled "The Role of Environmental Information in Predicting and Directing Driver Intent" The grant is about understanding how Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) information can a) influence the sensing and functionality of Advanced Driving Assistance Systems and b) influence short and long term driver decision making (intent). 
Distinguished Research
Charles Ling and Yuri Boykov have both been selected to receive Distinguished Research Professorship Awards. Terms of the research professorship will be for one year and will allow an opportunity for a dedicated full-time effort in research. Selection will be made on the basis of a distinguished record in research and a special opportunity which the release may offer. Congratulations Charles and Yuri.
3 Minute Thesis
The Computer Science department would like to congratulate Oluwakemi (Kemi) Ola on winning the people's choice award at the 3MT (3 Minute Thesis) competition held April 10, 2014. 3MT is a research communication competition where graduate students have 3 minutes or less to present their research and its impact to a panel of non-specialist judges and peers. Well done Kemi!
Winning Poster
CS1033 announced the winners for it's bi-annual poster contest. This year the students designed posters for the Epilepsy Support Centre. The winning poster will be used extensively in this year's marketing campaign. Josh's poster was selected out of over 700 posters. Congratulations! The other top seven posters can be found here.
Editor-in-Chief
Lila Kari has been named Editor-in-Chief of the premium theoretical journal in Europe entitled "Theoretical Computer Science". This journal has been published by Elsevier since 1975. The journal publishes 52 issues a year and is abstracted and indexed by Scopus and the Science Citation Index.
NEXT36
Shenglong Gao was recently chosen for The NEXT 36 program, one that aims to bolster young entrepreneurs in order to help them become innovative leaders of tomorrow. The highly selective program sees more than 1,000 applications across Canada each year.
Award of Merit
At the Science's Faculty and Staff Recognition lunch, Laura Reid received the Dean's Special Award of Merit for service. The Dean especially noted Laura's efforts in outreach for the Faculty of Science. Great job and Congratulations Laura.
Rogers TV Interview
Mike Katchabaw was recently interviewed on Rogers TV's Daytime London Show. The topic of discussion was the state of video game development in Canada, London and Western University with special emphasis on the new Diploma in Game Development program. The Department of Computer Science at Western has had a Game Development program for the last 10 years and has ties to game development companies in London and across Canada.
CANARIE Funding
CANARIE has approved funding of $652,000 for the Network Enabled Platform project: “Research and Educational Activities using Laboratory Mechatronics (REALM)”, with Michael Bauer as the Principal Investigator. The objective of REALM is to exploit and generalize previous work done in the Science Studio project so that it can be used by a wide range of researchers to observe, control and collect data from remote experiments in environments that are not easily accessible by reason of distance or danger.
