91¸£Àû

Dr Dmitry Chistikov and Professor Mike Paterson, together with physicists Olga Goulko (Boise State University) and Adrian Kent (Cambridge), have published an interdisciplinary paper , solving a probabilistic puzzle on the sphere that has applications to quantum information theory.

Suppose a lawn must cover exactly half the area of a sphere. A grasshopper starts from a random position on the lawn and jumps a fixed distance in a random direction. What shape of lawn maximizes the chance that the grasshopper lands back on the lawn? A natural guess would be that a hemispherical lawn is best. It turns out, however, that this is nearly never the case — there are only a few exceptional jump sizes.

This work involving spherical geometry, probability theory, basic number theory, and theoretical physics appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A and shows, apart from concern for the well-being of grasshoppers, that there are previously unknown types of Bell inequalities. The Bell inequality, devised by physicist John Stewart Bell in 1964, demonstrated that no combination of classical theories with Einstein's special relativity is able to explain the predictions (and later actual experimental observations) of quantum theory.

A University press release can be found here.

We are very happy to report that Alexander Noll, PhD student at the department’s Institute for the Science of Cities, has been rewarded with the 2019/2020 91¸£Àû Award for Teaching Excellence for Postgraduates who Teach. As a commendee, the recognition of his teaching comes in addition to a £200 teaching endowment. Alexander, who comes from an interdisciplinary academic background and has been teaching on several undergraduate modules of our department as well as the Department of Sociology, commented:

The thought that I was able to contribute positively to somebody’s learning and their time at 91¸£Àû in general sparks great joy. It is a great honour to be recognised for my tiny contribution to a community of teachers who work hard on creating a positive learning environment.

WATE seek to recognise outstanding teaching and support of learning across the University. Since 2003, the Awards have helped showcase innovation and commitment from across 91¸£Àû's teaching community. Nominations can be made by both students and staff and a panel of judges then creates a shortlist of up to ten nominees. Based on additional personal statements, 10 winners are selected from the shortlist, split into five awards and five commendations.

By the start of the Autumn Term, the department will boast seven new staff who have joined us in 2020: Associate Professor , Assistant Professor Dr Weiren Yu, Senior Teaching Fellow Dr Andrew Hague, Teaching Fellows Dr Greg Watson, Dr Rossella Suma and Richard Kirk, and Research and Teaching Fellow Dr Matthew Bradbury.

Coming from Southampton, Aston and 91¸£Àû universities, our new colleagues bring a wealth of teaching and research excellence, with expertise in areas including artificial intelligence, agent-based systems, data mining, information retrieval, educational technologies, image processing, high-performance computing, and cyber security.

A further piece of excellent news: Dr Paolo Turrini has been promoted to Associate Professor, effective from 1 September 2020. Many congratulations to Paolo, whose recommendation says:

Dr Turrini has maintained an internationally recognised publication trajectory, with papers appearing in highly-ranked journals and conferences. He has also grown his research group to 4 PhD students currently, and developed fruitful research collaborations with several academics in the department. … Dr Turrini has contributed to designing two 4th-year/MSc modules. He has been attentive to his teaching to an exemplary degree, resulting in consistently positive feedback from students...

We are very happy to report that Dr Andrew Hague has been promoted to Senior Teaching Fellow, effective from 1 July 2020. Quoting from his recommendation,

Dr Hague... has built on his successful experiences of design and delivery of teaching in 91¸£Àû Foundation Studies, already demonstrating a high standard in module development as well as delivery of lectures, seminars and laboratories in Computer Science. Both feedback from students and references from colleagues testify to his excellence and initiative. … Dr Hague is recognised within a valuable network of contacts on campus, in the computer games industry, and other educational and community organisations, where he is known for his capacity for impactful innovation in the wide domain of educational technology. Dr Hague has also already proved himself in several successful outreach initiatives and events.

it remains to say many congratulations!

We are very happy to report that the Department has won a Bronze Award from the . This is a key Equality Charter of , and it recognises advancement of gender equality: representation, progression and success for all. Commenting on the award, the University's Provost, Professor Christine Ennew, said:

This is excellent news for Computer Science and the wider 91¸£Àû community. I would like to offer my congratulations to everyone in the Department for the significant progress that has been made on gender equality in recent years, and I wish them every success in implementing their Action Plan for this area in the coming years.

We are especially grateful to the Self-Assessment Team, and all students and staff who contributed to the questionnaire, the analysis and the consultation. This Bronze Award will be held by the Department until at least November 2023.

Dr Criseida Zamora has joined the department to work together with , (UCL) and a number of other world-leading experimental laboratories on an MRC-funded project "Virtual presynaptic nerve terminal". This project aims to develop a unified computational modelling framework which will allow the neuroscience community to explore mechanisms of synaptic transmitter release that cannot be directly determined experimentally.

Criseida is a Bionic engineer working in the Systems Biology field. She received a PhD degree in Biomedical Engineering and Physics working on the analysis of biochemical noise in synthetic genetic circuits at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico. Her academic background and research experience have focused hitherto on building in silico models to study emergent properties of molecular systems to answer physiological questions. She has also worked as a postdoctoral scholar at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan and the University of Bristol.