Category Archives: undergraduate

Nov 2008 ODCSSS 2009 – Theme Announced “Technologies for bridging the digital-physical divide: sensing the environment”

We have announced the theme for ODCSSS 2009 “Technologies for bridging the digital-physical divide: sensing the environment”.

ODCSSS is 12 week undergraduate summer research internship program between the University College Dublin (UCD) and Dublin City University (DCU) Ireland. This program offers a distributed and interdisciplinary research environment at the forefront of ICT research.

Each ODCSSS student is engaged in a research project with a faculty member and mentor which provides them an opportunity to experience research. The program offers paid internship awards and opens for applications in December of each year for the following summer. The selection of interns is highly competitive but we encourage anyone interested in research who is eligible to apply. Our Introduction page and Objectives pages have more details on the overall program. Our News page has extensive updates of the ongoing ODCSSS activities each year and our Students page has details of our over 60 past students.

Aug 2007 ODCSSS research internship

[ ODCSSS Feed ]

Over the past 12 weeks we have had 24 students from around the world working on 12 research projects in DCU and 12 projects in UCD. The site involved two directors, myself and Dr. Gabriel Muntean in DCU along with 24 supervisors and dozens of mentors and postgraduate students. The experience for the students was a very good one and the research outcomes are still being distilled into research publication (5+ so far) along with follow on research projects.

ODCSSS is an SFI funded Undergraduate Research Experience and Knowledge Award that we were awarded through a competitive grant process in late 2006. This site lasts for 3 years and the grant supported the intake in 2007 and will do so again in 2008 and 2009. We hope the theme for 2008 will grow out of our experience, projects, students and mentors from 2007. While running this site was a lot of work, the opportunity to see undergraduate students engaging in computer science research is invaluable for them and for the further development of 4th level Ireland.

Friday the 24th of August saw the final research day for the DCU-UCD ODCSSS UREKA research site. This event held at DCU attracted over 60 people and was of great interest to all. Starting with a prize giving ceremony and introductions the day progressed to the main research event which was held as a research poster session. The event finished with a certificate presentation to all 24 students who participated in this years research internship. Other events from this day included a tour and a social event see [ ODCSSS Feed ].

An email from the SFI came out today to announce the calls for other people to apply for a UREKA grant. I’m including it here in case any academic in Ireland would like to talk to us about our experience in developing and running a UREKA site.

From the SFI:
Proposals for the 2008 Undergraduate Research Experience and Knowledge Award (UREKA) are now invited.
Application submission deadline for UREKA Sites and International Exchange Programme is 1pm on Friday, October 26th 2007
Application submission deadline for UREKA Supplements: 1pm on Friday, 25th January 2008

Group Shot

July 2007 Panelist – 20th Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training

CSEET 2007 Logo

In early July 2007 I was an invited panelists at the Conference for Software Engineering Education and Training, 2007 (CSEET 2007) on “Preparing Students for Software Engineering Research“.
Along with these panelists:
Dr. Laurie Williams, North Carolina State University, USA
Mr. Austin Hanley, Head of School of Engineering, Athlone Institute of Technology, Ireland
Dr. Brian O’Donovan, IBM, Blanchardstown, Dublin, Ireland
My discussion points were built around the following point from [Shaw 2000] “Software Engineering Education: A Roadmap” that says:
“Preparation for research, of course, is different from preparation for engineering practice. A researcher needs deeper preparation in underlying principles, in problem formulation, and in validation of results as well as a special kind of inquisitiveness and creativity.“
My points included:

  • Software Engineering Research is about discovering, interpreting, and revising our knowledge of the field
  • I believe that preparation for research in industry can only be achieved in the scope of postgraduate education
  • in teaching we should emphasise where current engineering practice fails when teaching it, identify problems as research opportunities
  • we should rovide opportunities for summer research internships in 2nd and 3rd year undergrads, such as our ODCSSS program in UCD-DCU
  • we should build awareness of open software engineering research issues faced in academic and industrial research labs
  • in teaching underlying principles try ideas such as eg. comparative learning (programming, development)
  • in teaching problem formulation try to weave learning how to describe a problem (not the solution) into course work
  • in teaching validation of results incorporate experimental methods into courses
  • to support inquisitiveness provide bottom up support for competitions, clubs, internships, industry prizes
  • to support creativity provide scope in all course work to step beyond the practice to discover an alternate approach.

The overall moderator Ita Richardson framed the question as:
“Discussions of software engineering education tend to focus on the needs of industry and the preparation of graduates for professional careers. This is understandable, and may even be appropriate, but what about those who hope to go on to do research in software engineering – how well are we catering for them?“

June 2007 Hdip and ODCSSS Feeds

The School of Computer Science in UCD has been running a very successful and popular H. Dip. in Computer Science for a number of year. As the new course director I have started to revamp this course and improve its industrial relevance starting in 2007. Ongoing developments will solidify our role as the leading conversion course for non-computing majors into computer science in Ireland. I maintain an RSS feed which you can subscribe to in a number of ways: Higher Diploma Computer Science News Feed

The H. Dip. in Computer Science UCD is a conversion course which gives graduates from non-computing disciplines a sound theoretical foundation and practical exposure to Computer Science. In addition, the course may qualify participants to study for an M.Sc. in Computer Science. The course is made up of 10 modules of Computer Science, where a module typically consists of 24 lectures and additional practical sessions.

ODCSSS Poster

June 5th saw 12 students join us in Computer Science and Informatics in UCD for the UREKA (SFI) funded ODCSSS research summer school. In total there are 24 International research undergraduate projects in Ireland for “Technologies for Aiding Human Memory”. ODCSSS 2007 News

ODCSSS the Online Dublin Computer Science Summer School is a paid research internship program for undergraduate students funded in part by the Science Foundation Ireland under their UREKA program. ODCSSS is a four-year collaborative internship program between the School of Computer Science and Informatics at the University College Dublin and the School of Computing at the Dublin City University.

This year we had over 100 applications from around the world. In 2007 we have students coming from Universities in Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Slovenia, Spain, Thailand and the USA. The primary goal of this research program is to afford exceptional undergraduate students the opportunity to participate and contribute to exciting yet challenging research projects and to inspire them to go on to undertake research careers.

Mar 2007 ODCSSS News Item DCU

DCU Research News on ODCSSS: An Online Dublin Computer Science Summer School (Odysseus) will run for a period of 12 weeks from June to August in both UCD and DCU. This is a paid internship programme designed for undergraduate students to experience and participate in ongoing world class IT research. This project is a Science Foundation Ireland funded Undergraduate Research Experience & Knowledge Site (UREKA).

Aug 2006 ODCSSS Final Research Day

The Online Dublin Computer Science Summer School (Odysseus or ODCSSS) 2006 brought together 17 students from around Ireland, Europe and the USA. The grand finale research day was held on Aug 25 2006. This undergraduate summer research program has been held between the School of Computer Science & Informatics at University College Dublin and the School of Computing at Dublin City University and is supported by the Adaptive Information Cluster. [More]