Professor Joël Ouaknine, University of Oxford

Thursday 16th May 2013 – 7:30pm

Oxford e-Research Centre, 6 Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3QG

In his talk for us last year on real-time systems, Prof. Ouaknine gave his audience a deeper understanding of a complex topic, which was very well received. For his return visit, expect more of the same, this time on Discrete Linear Dynamical Systems, which are simple mathematical models used in a wide range of fields. These give rise to many deep and interesting decision problems, relating to everyday computer-science concerns. This talk will also discuss some of the fascinating links which have recently emerged with other parts of computer science and mathematics, inspiring some of the best minds in these fields around the world. Expect to be challenged and enlightened in equal measure.

About Professor Joël Ouaknine

Joël is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St John’s College. He was awarded a BSc and MSc in Mathematics from McGill University, and received a PhD in Computer Science from Oxford in 2001. He subsequently did postdoctoral work at Tulane University and Carnegie Mellon University, and more recently held a visiting professorship at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Cachan, France. In 2009, he was awarded an EPSRC Leadership Fellowship, enabling him to focus (almost) exclusively on research for a period of five years.

Joël was the 2010 recipient of the BCS Roger Needham Award, given annually “for a distinguished research contribution in Computer Science by a UK-based researcher within ten years of his or her PhD”. His research interests include the verification of real-time, probabilistic, and infinite-state systems (e.g. model-checking algorithms, decision problems, complexity), logic and applications to verification, linear dynamical systems, automated software analysis, concurrency, and theoretical computer science. 

Event Information

The meeting is on Thursday 16 May 7.00 for 7.30 and ends around 9.00.

It will be held at the Oxford e-Research Centre, 6 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3QG.

Sandwiches and light refreshments are available from 7.00pm.

Meetings are open to non-members and free.

The audience was pleased to welcome Dr Sam De Silva for his second visit to speak for us.

He gave many interesting insights into how to negotiate a good IT outsourcing contract which is commercially a successful arrangement for both customer and outsourcing supplier.

He spoke about the due diligence needed on both sides, identifying the standards and legal aspects that need to be conformed to. This included the need to drive to define the right level of detail in the contract. Using his extensive experience he gave lots of good examples of how to document not too much or too little detail to create a manageable long term relationship. As a lawyer he was keen to highlight important items to be agreed before the contract is signed and itemised in the contract particularly from a security view point to ensure the customer and the customer’s clients are protected.

Key aspects of the talk covered:

• Due diligence
• Defining the contract and Service Level Agreements
• Negotiation
• Legal and standards requirements, at this point he also touched on negotiating contracts with suppliers in other countries
• Risks and Benefits of outsourcing
• Cost savings or not. (He discussed the idea that you may actually choose to enter into a contract which does not save you money) e.g. the specialist skills provided by the supplier provide compelling benefits in other areas. Ensuring security of your file servers being one very good example.
• Transitioning to the new outsourcing arrangement
• Maintaining the relationship

At the end of the talk Sam opened the event up to questions from the audience. There followed a good interactive discussion around many of the points from the talk particularly the challenges that new technology and the cloud bring to setting up contracts of this nature.

Video Available

The visit to ECMWF was scheduled to start with a short introduction about ECMWF, the Computer infrastructure used at ECMWF and a guided tour to the computer hall where all the supercomputers used by ECMWF reside.

Manfred Kloeppel started by introducing ECMWF as an independent intergovernmental organisation currently consisting of 37 Member and Co-Operating states. Established in 1975, ECMWF’s original goal defined by a Convention is to provide medium-range weather forecast to member and co-operating states twice daily and up to 10 days ahead. Each day, more than 300 million observational data elements are collected round the clock by a variety of Earth observing systems, including satellites, automatic and manned stations, aircrafts, ships, weather balloons and buoys. The production of a medium-range weather forecast (up to 15 days ahead) consists of four key requirements: a state-of-the-art data assimilation and analysis system, sophisticated weather prediction models, a constantly updated database of global weather observations and ultra-powerful computers.

ECMWF is not known to the general public because their key customers are the government’s environment department such as the Met Offices of Member and Co-Operating states. ECMWF will typically provide the numerical forecast data to the UK Met Office (or equivalent of the Member or Co-Operating states) and the UK Met Office will apply their weather forecast model to ECMWF’s data and then disseminate the results to the general public via news weather reports, Met Office website etc. Some Member or Co-Operating states do not have their own weather forecast model so they will then just circulate ECMWF’s numerical forecast in their appropriate medium.

Isabella Weger, Head of Computer Division spoke into detail about the need for high compute power to process complex data algorithms being applied to 300 million varieties of data from different sources to come up with the 15-day medium-range forecast.

ECMWF’s High Performance Computing Facility (HCPF) currently consists of two identical IBM Supercomputer 1600 clusters. Each one is based on 272 IBM pSeries p6-575 compute servers interconnected by a low latency high-speed network. The HPCFs have a ~17,400 total number of processes, 330 TFlops Peak Performance and a Sustained performance of ~20TFlops.

ECMWF’s forecast products are disseminated over Regional Meteorological Data Communications Network (RMDCN). The main aim is to provide a network infrastructure for both the connections between ECMWF and its Member and Co-Operating States. The Supercomputers have a 50% resource allocation to Research, 25% for Operational forecasts and another 25% allocated to Member States for any activities they wish to perform.

Alison set the scene by promising us stories to illustrate the points she wanted to make that: data, information and personal knowledge form the main areas of an organisation’s Knowledge Management content. She discussed the costs to the organisation of information not being readily available (the story of “the lost document”), of duplication between departments (“duplication, duplication, duplication”) and of not having the full facts before making decisions (“if only we’d known ….”).

Whilst technology has a central place in the management and dissemination of knowledge in many organisations, there are other methods of knowledge sharing which can be encouraged, or otherwise. She said it could be unclear which department or company function was best placed or indeed held responsible for KM and gave examples where HR, IT or accounts took that responsibility. Alison suggested it was important to spot opportunities for cross organisational links or getting people to talk across hierarchical boundaries. If such sharing is not part of the culture any change would need sponsors, champions or a community of practice to be set up to encourage the organisation to value collaboration, learning and innovation.

Alison used quotes, cartoons and video clips to enliven the presentation and amuse as well as inform the audience.

The evening was finished with a very enjoyable trip to the Lamb and Flag where the subject discussion continued.

Alison’s slides are available in the Meeting Downloads section.

From left to right:
Mr Frampton, Peter Marshall, Undergraduate Programme Lead for the under-graduate programmes of the Department of Computing and Communication Technologies, Paul Oliver, Sheila Lloyd Lyons, Ian Peter Frampton,
Nigel Crook, Head of Department, Department of Computing and Communication Technologies, and Mrs Frampton.

Each year the British Computer Society recognises the efforts of students at Oxford Brookes through the presentation of prizes in the area of computing. The 2012 winners are Paul Oliver and Ian Peter Frampton.

The British Computer Society (BCS) Prize

(awarded for the best results by a first year student in a computing subject)

BSc Mobile Computing

Prize Awarded: student membership plus certificate

Student: Paul Oliver

From left to right:
Paul Oliver, Sheila Lloyd Lyons and Nigel Crook

"It was a great surprise to hear that I had won this award. I feel honoured and proud to have received it. I am determined to achieve the best results I can on my degree course in Mobile Computing and this award gives me even greater motivation to succeed. I am enjoying my studies at Oxford Brookes where there is a great mix of young and mature students."

— Paul Oliver

The British Computer Society (BCS) Project Prize

(awarded for the best final year project in a computing subject)

BSc Computer Science

Prize Awarded: £150 plus certificate

Student: Ian Peter Frampton

From left to right:
Ian Frampton, Sheila Lloyd Lyons and Nigel Crook 

"To be recognised by such an established institution as the BCS is an honour of the highest accord. I was able to use everything I had learnt in my previous 3 years both at Brookes and also whilst on placement to produce this project and for me this is the culmination of 3 years of effort to produce the final outcome. I owe a great amount of gratitude to both the staff (both teaching staff and support staff) and also the BCS in recognising my work and also the effort put in to produce it. This is an accolade which I will talk proudly of for many years to come and it has made the late evenings and early mornings very much worthwhile.

I am now starting the next stage in my career as a Graduate Developer for Golfbreaks.com and I am very much looking forward to making the next steps in my career. Oxford Brookes have provided me with an ideal toolkit filled with skills and ideas, which is testament to the fantastic staff and services which have proven invaluable to me. Thank-you again for the gift and award and I will talk proudly about my achievements for many years to come."

— Ian Peter Frampton

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17 May 2012 – Prof. Joel Ouaknine, University of Oxford

Professor Ouaknine gave an extremely enjoyable talk on Automated Verification, and the theoretical underpinning of the subject. Although a highly technical area, the presentation covered a potentially difficult subject in a way which was accessible to non-specialists, and was appreciated by the large audience. The combination of theory and practice showed how the body of theoretical work could be translated into concrete engineering achievements. Examples were provided from work with industrial partners in the automotive and avionics sectors. It was definitely a session which got the "grey matter" working.

We had a very successful visit to the Museum of Computing in Swindon, with 24 attendees, and everyone had a very enjoyable time.

Jeremy Holt, the chairman, gave us some history of the Museum: t was the first physical Museum of its kind in the UK dedicated to the history of computing. This was followed by Simon Webb (the curator) giving us a tour of the current exhibits. The exhibits are changed regularly either using items from its vast store room, or provided by individual collectors.

The exhibits we saw included:

• The evolution of calculators from log tables to electronic calculators, through mechanical devices and slide rules,
• the development of the "home" computer from 1970 onwards,
• the development of the PC, and Apple Mac systems

Many of these were accessible to "hands on" usage. Do you remember typing Basic programs into a BBC Micro Model B machine?

Their most recent specialist exhibition related to gaming, and showed the evolution of "games machines" over the last 35 years, and again there was the opportunity to play many of these.

The Museum also runs a Saturday Club for children, which is actively supported, and they have a significant waiting list.

I would encourage everyone who could not make it with us to visit on their own. The Museum is open Fridays and Saturdays. Further information can be found at their web site: http://www.museum-of-computing.org.uk/

From left to right: Sheila Lloyd Lyons, Joshua Kilburn, Nigel Crook

"Receiving this prize from the BCS was a great honour and something that was totally unexpected.  During my first year I was determined to do as well as I could and with the high standards of teaching at Oxford Brookes I was able to achieve the grades I did."

– Joshua Kilburn

After the presentation Nigel hosted Sheila and Joshua to a gorgeous lunch at the Brookes University restaurant. The restaurant, run by the students, is open to the public. Sheila found the menu to be imaginative and the food absolutely delicious.

13th October 2011: Ian Hughes, Director, Feeding Edge Limited

Following our short Annual General Meeting, Ian Hughes (known as ePredator online), Metaverse Evangelist, talked about how computer games and virtual worlds are changing the way that we look at technology and the way that we communicate in business. Ian writes an entertaining blog at www.feedingedge.co.uk/blog and is Chair of the BCS Animation and Games Development Specialist Group.

Ian explained that for the last few years, he has mostly worked as consultant online in a virtual workplace. Anything else now seems strange to him. He is also the resident ‘Super Geek’ on the TV programme Cool Stuff Collective currently showing on ITV1 on Saturday mornings.

Ian pointed out that most people now play games of all sorts and Gamification is a recognised way to make technology more engaging. Gaming and virtual worlds are also big business. The server side of WoW consists of 20,000 computers, 1.3 petabytes of storage, 75,000 CPU cores, 5.5 million lines of code and 2 million words of text. Second Life’s in-game user-to-user economic activity totalled $567 million in 2009.

We can use this type of technology to improve the effectiveness of what we do and to make it a richer and more memorable experience. For example, the user experience of Second Life can be far superior to that of telephone and video conferencing. We should not regard these technologies as just for amusement; they can help people learn, they can be used to effectively get across messages and can greatly assist the creative process. Ian encouraged us all to embrace these technologies, as otherwise we will be left behind by young people who understand what is possible now and in the future.

"It is a privilege to receive this award from an organisation such as the BCS and I am grateful for the recognition of my academic achievement during my time at Oxford Brookes which this brings. An achievement that I would not have accomplished without the excellent teaching and support network in place at Oxford Brookes." – Stephen Drain