News

On November 1st, 23 Queen’s students boarded the CAN-CWIC express bus from Queen’s University to the Halifax Convention Center to attend the Canadian Celebration of Women in Computing conference. This event is special for the Queen’s School of Computing since the conference was founded by Professor Wendy Powley and the members of the “Women in the School of Computing” group in 2010. At that time, the conference was the “Ontario Celebration of Women in Computing” catering to the needs of the province of Ontario. Three years ago, due the increasing popularity of the conference, it grew to a nation-wide conference which is now attended by students from across Canada. Wendy Powley continues to oversee the organization of the conference as head of the CAN-CWIC Steering Committee.

The conference began on Friday November 2nd with a poster session, keynote and banquet. On Saturday attendees were treated to keynote speakers, panels and workshops on topics such as creating inclusive environments, what to expect as a new grad entering the workforce, tips on starting a student group for women, and technical sessions such as building your own FAQ bot and Natural Language Processing in Finance applications. Three parallel tracks provided plenty of choice for everyone.

What was wonderful to see this year were the number of past students who were involved in the conference from a presenting/sponsorship perspective, now giving back to the students who were in attendance.

There were approximately 450 attendees at CAN-CWIC 2018 with 30 different institutions represented from across Canada. Queen’s had the 4th highest number of attendees among the schools. Many thanks to the School of Computing for sponsoring the bus to transport the Queen’s cohort!

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The inaugural Computing Student Research (CSearch) Conference https://www.csearchconference.com/ took place over the weekend featuring 5 keynote speakers, a panel session on Graduate Studies featuring Professor Qingling Duan, Professor Parvin Mousavi and Professor Hossam Hassanein, 16 undergraduate and graduate research talks from Queen’s students and students from other universities, a programming competition and lots of great food, conversation and networking.

The conference was attended by over 100 students from across Canada – some coming from as far as Manitoba!

Many thanks to the organizers who put in countless hours of volunteer time to provide an excellent learning opportunity and to showcase Queen’s School of Computing.

The organizing committee consisted of:

• Zac Baum – MSc student,
• Brandon Chan – MSc student,
• Rachael House – MSc student,
• Nuwan Perera – MSc student,
• Grace Underwood – MSc student,
• Taylor Smith – PhD student,
• Alex Wojaczek – Undergraduate student

With additional volunteer, planning and logistics support from:

• Ramy Ayash – Undergraduate student,
• Anne Liu – Undergraduate student,
• Justin Gerolami – MSc student,
• Sou Theocharides – Undergraduate student,
• Kenny Patel – Undergraduate student,
• Ftoon Kedwan – PhD student,
• Shahnaz Shariff – MSc student,
• Katherine Le – Undergraduate student

Wendy Powley lent her time and efforts as faculty advisor for the conference – helping with acquiring keynote speakers and additional funding for the conference without which the event would not have been possible.

The conference was made possible by our generous sponsors including Queen’s Faculty of Arts and Science, Dean of Student Affairs Office, Queen’s School of Graduate Studies and CS-CAN/INFO-CAN; and of course the support of the School of Computing.

Congratulations are also in order to our research competition prize winners; in the graduate category Alireza Sedghi took the grand prize, with Sazia Mahfuz as runner up. In the undergraduate category, Eric Steinke claimed the grand prize, with Michael Lombardo taking the runner up prize.

Many thanks also to Aaron Visser who spent his weekend providing technical expertise so that we all looked professional!

We look forward to seeing the event come back to life next year and hope to see some of you back there again!