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MobileHCI 2014

Dr. Sara Diamond the President of the Ontario College of Art and
Design University and I are the general co-chairs for MobileHCI 2014 the 16th
International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction in
Toronto,  Canada.

MobileHCI 2013

I am one on the Associate Chairs for MobileHCI 2013, the 15th
International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile
Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2013) which will be held in Munich, Germany August 27 – 30, 2013.

“MobileHCI is the world’s
leading conference in the field of Human Computer Interaction
concerned with portable and personal devices and with the services to
which they enable access. MobileHCI provides a multidisciplinary
forum for academics, hardware and software developers, designers
and practitioners to discuss the challenges and potential solutions for
effective interaction with and through mobile devices,
applications, and services.”

http://www.mobilehci2013.org/

UbiComp 2013

I am joining the Technical Program Committee of the 2013 ACM International Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2013).

The UbiComp 2013
Program Chairs are Marc Langheinrich, John Canny, and Jun Rekimoto and
they said of UbiComp 2013.

That it is the first merged edition of the
two most renowned conferences in the field: Pervasive and UbiComp. While
it retains the “UbiComp” short-name in recognition of the visionary
work of Mark Weiser, its long name (and focus) reflects the dual history
of the new event, i.e., it seeks to publish any work that one would
previously expect to find at either UbiComp or Pervasive. The conference
will take place from September 8-12 in Zurich, Switzerland. Aaron has
previously served on a number of Pervasive and UbiComp Technical program
committees and looks forward to serving on this first joint conference
UbiComp TPC which is now the premier forum for Ubiquitous and Pervasive
Computing research.
http://www.ubicomp.org/

2012 Talk in the University of Konstanz

Next week I presenting a seminar in the University of Konstanz, Germany as an invited speaker by Professor Harald Reiterer

Abstract:

The computational and contextual edifice around which we will build our ubicomp user interfaces is complex and constantly changing. This context include physiological, environmental and computational state. In this regard, can we model the physiological differences between people and use the models to adapt and personalize designs, user interfaces and artefacts? Can we model, measure and predict the cost of users altering their gaze in single or multi-display environments? If so, can we personalize interfaces using this knowledge. What about when moving and while the distance between user and screen is varying. Can this be considered a new modality and used to personalize the interfaces along with physiological differences and our current gaze. In this talk we seek to answer some of these questions. We define Ubicomp User Interfaces and introduce an Individual Observer Model of human eyesight, which we use to simulate 3600 biologically valid human eyes. We also report on controlled lab and outdoor experiments with real users. This is to measure both gaze and distance from the screen in an attempt to quantify the cost of attention switching along with the use of distance as a modality. In each case, for distance, gaze or expected eyesight we would like to develop models which can allow us to make predictions about how easy or hard it is to see visual information and visual designs, along with altering the designs to suit individual users based on their current context.

Big Data InfoVis summer school

SACHI along with other colleagues in Computer Science and across St Andrews are organising a SICSA supported “Big Data Information Visualisation” summer school in July of 2013. We are working on developing the program for this summer school bringing together expertise in a number of areas. Over the weeks and months ahead we will be adding to this website as we confirm topics and speakers. We already have a number of colleagues locally dealing with big data who are willing to act as mentors and domain experts during the summer

CHI 2013 Workshop

We are organizing with other colleagues a workshop at the CHI 2013 the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Paris in April 2013 called Blended Interaction: Envisioning Future Collaborative Interactive Space.

SICSA Logo

SICSA Knowledge Exchange

As the SICSA Deputy Director and Director of Knowledge Exchange I’m been learning more about the Knowledge Exchange we undertake in SICSA with industry. SICSA includes all staff and students in Informatics and Computer Science in Scotland and as such all the opportunities available are open to all. If you are a new SICSA PhD student I’ll be meeting you and discussing much of this in detail at the new PhD induction day on Nov 26th in Edinburgh.

SICSA knowledge exchange manifests itself in things like the annual DemoFest, complimentary support to the tech transfer office in each Scottish University, entrepreneurial education, mobile apps clubs etc. Most of the support for SICSA knowledge exchange comes out of the AspeKT program in Informatics in Edinburgh.

Examples of knowledge exchange supports SICSA helps with include:

If you are in SICSA and reading this then I’d encourage you to discuss your knowledge exchange plans (spin outs, start ups, engagement ideas etc.) with your own tech transfer office first.

Other details on the different and ongoing mechanisms for sustaining and expanding Scotland’s research excellence in Informatics and Computer Science SICSA has can be seen in an earlier post.

I am, you are, we are SICSA!

SICSA is the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance. I’ve been the deputy director and director for knowledge exchange with SICSA for a little over a month now. Yesterday I attended my first meeting of the SICSA committee with academics representing Universities from
across Scotland. Attending this meeting prompted me to write this post.

SICSA has so far
appointed more than 30 new staff and have offered more than 70 prize
studentships to PhD students from around the world. However, SICSA is more than just these people. Indeed, in my time in Scotland I’ve met a few students and indeed academics in Computer Science and Informatics who said that “they aren’t in SICSA” or that “SICSA events or support wasn’t for them”. This is simply not the case. SICSA was established to “Sustain and expand Scotland’s research excellence in Informatics and Computer Science“. This means all academics, researchers, postdocs, postgrads and others in Informatics and Computer Science across Scotland are part of SICSA. i.e. “we are all SICSA”.  Indeed, given our mandate to work closely with industry and government, I would hope everyone in the ICT industry in Scotland feels they can give and get something from working with SICSA. While there were only 10 Universities involved with SICSA at its
inception, today we have representation and involvement from every
University with Informatics and Computer Science.

Over the past month I have been coming to grips with my new role. Along with learning new things about how Scottish Funding Council funding pools work it’s also given me a new appreciation for the wealth of mechanisms for collaboration my predecessors have put in place. I’m going to be blogging about knowledge exchange in more detail in the coming months but for now I’d like to highlight a number of different and ongoing mechanisms for sustaining and expanding Scotland’s research excellence in Informatics and Computer Science.

Themes:

Firstly, and I’ll admit I’m somewhat biased as I was a former theme leader, but I think the four SICSA themes are an excellent way to get to know people here, share ideas, make new contacts and step into the broader SICSA community. Each theme organises a myriad of activities too numerous to describe here. The four themes are the Next Generation Internet, Multimodal Interaction, Modelling and Abstraction and Complex Systems Engineering. Along with being leading academics in their respective fields, I’ve found the theme leaders and their deputies all to be very approachable people. If you have an idea for something which a theme might be able to help with, get in touch. Each theme has a mailing list which is worth subscribing to so that you are kept upto date.

Summer Schools:

Secondly, and again with no hint of bias, I consider the SICSA summer school support to be an ideal way to spread your research ideas and to generate real impact. In June of 2010, along with colleagues from across SICSA, we organised a summer school on Digital Tourism. The focus of that summer school was to introduce a new generation of researchers to the latest advances in multimodal systems, In this school we focused on multimodal input and output interfaces, data fusion techniques and hybrid architectures, vision, speech and conversational interfaces, haptic interaction, mobile, tangible and virtual/augmented multimodal UIs, tools and system infrastructure issues for designing interfaces and their evaluation. I really enjoyed running this event and I think the students gained a lot from it. The deadline for applications for Summer Schools taking place in 2013 is 30th September 2012. 

Postdoctoral and Early Career researcher Exchanges

Thirdly, my colleague in St Andrews Dr Adam Barker (who leads the big data lab here) was able to take advantage of PECE the SICSA support for Postdoctoral and Early Career researcher Exchanges. This helped support Adam in his time as a Visiting Scholar in the AMPLab, UC Berkeley. While we had to suffer his tweets on the glorious California weather he was able to make a host of exellent connections and has developed new research perspectives which I for one am looking forward to taking advantage of!  The next deadline for Postdoctoral and Early Career Researcher Exchanges is Oct 31st 2012 (PECE). 

Distinguished Visiting Fellowships

Fourthly, SICSA has supported many Distinguished Visiting Fellowships for scholars from across the world to spend time here, working with colleagues across SICSA. While I’ve not yet hosted such a DVF I have been able to take advantage of the program by including such visitors in summer school programs, getting my students to attend their seminars or masterclasses or indeed simply growing my own research knowledge on a particular topic. I’m looking forward to taking advantage of the DVF program over the coming years. The next deadline for Distinguished Visiting Fellowships is Oct 31st 2012.

Pools Engagement in European Research

Fifth, “SICSA is able to provide bursaries for researchers in Informatics and Computing Sciences at SICSA institutions to boost participation in European FP7 projects. The main purpose of PEER is to provide support to for academics to engage and build partnerships with Scottish SMEs in order to submit collaborative proposals for European funding under FP7. ” More details on this funding is available here. One of my roles is to further shape SICSA’s knowledge exchange approach which includes mechanisms such as PEER.

PhD Conference

Sixth, there is a SICSA PhD conference which my students have benefited from attending. This brings together Computing Science and Informatics PhD students, leading academics, and industry practitioners for a number of days of workshops, keynote presentations and social events. The expected dates for the PhD conference in 2013 are June 12/13th in Sterling.

I find I don’t write as much on this blog as I used to as I’m now prone to smaller updates with twitter. You can follow me @aquigley. Likewise you can follow these SICSA account on cybersecurity in Scotland @sicsa_cybersec, of smart tourism @SICSA_Tourism or Mobile Computing @SICSAmobile and the general SICSA account at @SICSA_Scotland.

If you are an academic in Computer Science and Informatics in Scotland please get involved.