Dr. Skillicorn discusses the hack and the ransom paid to recover some of the data.
Source: CBC Radio
Gabor Fichtinger Named Canada Research Chair in Integrated Surgery
Congratulations to Gabor Fichtinger on being named Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Computer Integrated Surgery.
Every year, the Government of Canada invests approximately $265 million through the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) Program to attract and retain some of the world’s foremost academic talent. On May 3, 2018, four Queen’s researchers were appointed to Tier 1 and Tier 2 CRC roles – two of whom have been newly selected and two who were renewed for another term.
“The Canada Research Chairs Program continues to nurture exciting research being conducted at institutions across the country,” says John Fisher, Interim Vice-Principal (Research). “Here at Queen’s we are very proud to have not only two of our current Chairs renewed to their roles, but to also have two faculty members appointed as brand new chair holders. Their leadership within their respective academic disciplines represents the research excellence our university strives to achieve.”
Tier 1 Chairs are recognized by their peers as world leaders in their respective fields, while Tier 2 Chairs are recognized as emerging leaders in their research areas. Queen’s will receive $200,000 per year over seven years for each Tier 1 Chair and $100,000 per year over five years for each Tier 2 Chair. Currently, Queen’s is home to over 40 Canada Research Chairs.
Developed in 2000, the CRC program promotes research excellence in engineering, natural sciences, health sciences, humanities, and social sciences.
Ahmed Hassan Receives NSERC Steacie Fellowship
On Tuesday, May 1 the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) announced the 2018 recipients of the highly-prestigious NSERC Steacie Fellowship. Dr. Ahmed Hassan (School of Computing) is one of six recipients nationally and he marks the first Steacie Fellow from Queen’s since 2009 (Ingrid Johnsrude – has since moved to Western University ). The highly-competitive award is considered one of the highest honours for researchers in Canada and is granted to enhance the career development of outstanding and highly promising scientists and engineers.
Dr. Hassan demonstrated significant research strengths in system and software engineering and has major industrial collaborations with multi-national corporations such as Blackberry, IMB SAP and AliExpress Alibaba. Dr. Hassan is the Canada Research Chair in Software Analytics and the NSERC/RIM Blackberry Industrial Research Chair in Software Engineering for Ultra Large Scale systems.
Dr. Hassan and Principal and Vice-Chancellor Daniel Woolf will attend the award reception hosted by the Governor General at Rideau Hall on May 1st.
For more information, see the the Queen’s Gazette’s interview..
Best wishes for more successes Ahmed.
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Photos by Martin Lipman/NSERC
Creative Computing Showcase 2018
Hundreds of interested faculty, students, and staff gathered at the Biosciences Complex on Thursday April 5th for the Queen’s School of Computing’s annual Creative Computing Showcase. The event highlighted the work of the School’s undergraduate and graduate students with hands-on demos, presentations, and posters from a selection of our courses, with topics including Game Design and Game Technology, 4th year projects, and more.
This year we held a People’s Choice Award and congratulations to:
- For Human-Computer Interaction: Volutime by Sean Remedios, Taylor Simpson, Monica Rao, Ann Fernandes, Krysta Peralto (Runner up: Intalksicated by Mariano Elia, Nikita Maydanyuk, Reid Stobo, Sean Tippett, and Henrietta Virag)
- For Gaming: Michael Pirie, Migael Tolmie, and Edwin Xu (Runner up: Congwei Chen, Yiwen Feng, and Yitong Liu)
- For Research: Xiao Li (Runner up: Nick Radford, Matthew Pollack, Michael Wilson, and Ryan Johnston)
Congratulations to the winners and thank you to all the participants! A special thanks to Doug Martin, Parvin Mousavi, Aaron Visser, Tom Bradshaw, Ben Hall, Erin Gunsinger, Richard Linley and everyone else who helped make the event run smoothly.
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Photos by Doug Martin. Video by Daniel Hughes.
2018 Invitational High School Programming Contest
Congratulations to Team 1 from Holy Cross Secondary School for the team’s win in this year’s School of Computing Invitational High School Programming Contest. Eleven teams of student programmers from seven area high schools attempted to solve four challenging programming problems in three hours. By any measure, it was a great success.
The top teams will compete in the Educational Computing Organization Of Ontario’s East Regional Contest, which is also being hosted by the School of Computing, at Queen’s on April 29.
Thanks and well done to contest organizer, Richard Linley, to Aaron Visser, Doug Martin, Carly Napier, Tom Bradshaw, and Brent Littlefield, a first year student at the School. Brent competed with the Frontenac Secondary School team in last year’s contest.
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Photos by Doug Martin
James Cordy and Former PhD Student Chanchal Roy Win Most Influential Paper Award at SANER 2018
Congratulations to Prof. James Cordy and his former PhD student Prof. Chanchal Roy of the University of Saskatchewan, on winning the ten-year Most Influential Paper award at SANER 2018 this week in Campobasso, Italy.
SANER 2018, the 25th IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering, is the premier international conference on the theory and practice of recovering information from existing software and systems.
Their WCRE 2008 research paper, “An empirical study of function clones in open source software” was chosen from among all those published at WCRE 2008 and CSMR 2008 for its lasting impact on research over the past decade, and was cited “For influencing future studies in software cloning through the development of an extensive benchmark dataset”.
Congrats Jim & Chanchal!
Robin Dawes to Receive Frank Knox Award (with Honourable Mention to Randy Ellis)
Robin Dawes will be awarded the Frank Knox Awards for teaching excellence this year. In addition, Randy Ellis receieved an honourable mention.
From the Centre for Teaching and Learning website:
Each year, the Alma Mater Society of Queen’s University shall honour two professors who have demonstrated an outstanding commitment to the education of students of Queen’s University through their teaching excellence. The award is the highest honour which is given to instructors of Queen’s by Students.
The award is named in honour of Frank Knox, a professor of economics who taught at Queen’s for forty years from the twenties to the sixties. Mr. Knox demonstrated tremendous dedication in his teaching of undergraduates, and thus this award serves as a reminder to all of the necessity for the strong commitment which professors must contribute through the high quality of their teaching to the students of Queen’s.
The award will be presented at a ceremony on March 27. Congratulations to both!
David Skillicorn Talks to Global News About Cyberattack on Family and Children’s Services of Lanark, Leeds and Grenville
Dr. Skillicorn says anti-virus and anti-malware software helps, but unfortunately people don’t use those tools often enough.
Max Garcia Receives Agnes Benidickson Tricolour Award
School of Computing undergraduate student Max Garcia was recently awarded the prestigious Agnes Benedickson Tricolour Award. Induction in the Tricolour Society is the highest privilege that can be conferred by Queen’s University on a student for service to the community. Max joins former Computing PhD student Eric Rapos who was also inducted into the Tricolour Society in 2015.
Congratulations Max on this much deserved recognition!
Two New Tenure-track Faculty Positions Announced
The School of Computing in the Faculty of Arts and Science at Queen’s University invites applications for two Tenure-track faculty positions at the rank of Assistant Professor with specialization in Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Big Data and related areas. The preferred starting date is July 1, 2018.
Successful candidates must have a PhD or equivalent degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related discipline completed at the start date of the appointment. They are expected to play a major role in the delivery of the Data Analytics graduate and undergraduate programs at the School of Computing. The successful candidates are expected to be part of a Queen’s-wide Data Sciences cluster involving the Faculty of Arts and Science, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, Faculty of Health Sciences and the Smith School of Business. They will also be involved in the planned Queen’s Data Analytics Institute with excellent opportunities for funding and collaboration.
For more information, please see the full announcement here.