School of Computing News

New figures from the University of Kent have revealed that around forty per cent of victims of an advanced form of malware called CryptoLocker have agreed to pay the ransom, of typically $300 to $750, to recover their files. This is one of the more surprising and worrying findings in the second Survey on Cyber Security by members of the University's Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Cyber Security. The research als...

Five students from the School of Computing took part in FloodHack on Google Campus in Shoreditch on Sunday 16th February. They joined developers from, among others, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft at the hackathon designed to find solutions to the current flooding affecting the UK. The organisers stated; ‘Thousands of people have been affected by the floods in the UK. While tech can’t fill sand bags, there’s a lot we can d...

‘Can we trust the reassurances from the NHS on how they will treat our data?’ That is the question posed by The School of Computing’s Dr Eerke Boiten in his latest article for ‘The Conversation’, about the new care.data database, which will upload patients’ data from UK medical practices to a central database. Eerke states; ‘Contradictory information is being circulated about just w...

Three teens from the Simon Langton schools in Canterbury have won a trip to the FIRST LEGO League World Festival, after winning the national final of the IET's FIRST LEGO League (FLL) UK robotics competition. ‘Team Invicta’ were winners at the Kent and Medway regional finals, hosted at the University of Kent in December 2013. They went on to compete in the national final at Loughborough University on 1 February 2014 and will now co...

Students have formed a new society at the Medway campus which will provide a range of social and academic events for students interested in computing. David Laban, a 2nd year student studying Information Technology at Kent, is the president of the newly formed Medway Computing Society (MCS) at the Medway Campus. David said: ‘We feel that there is no real community for computing students at Medway and want to change that. MCS will aim to bring everyone together who has a common inte...

Professor Frank Wang has been reappointed as Head of School for a second term. An interview committee, chaired by Vice-Chancellor Julia Goodfellow, was impressed by the progress the School is making and therefore agreed to re-appoint Frank as Head of the School of Computing. After the interview, Julia wrote to Frank saying "It was great to hear your vision and recognise the successes of the school." Frank said: "I am pleased to take on the role of Head of School for another ter...

David Barnes and Julio Hernandez-Castro from the School of Computing have been successful in securing a Windows Azure Research Award. The award consists of 12 month access to massive computational resources offered in the cloud infrastructure of Azure, for the joint project “Mining chess data to distinguish human from computer play” in order to detect chess cheating. The servic...

The University is holding two Postgraduate Open Days for people interested in pursuing further study. The Canterbury Open Day runs from 10am-2pm on Saturday 1 February and the Medway event from 5pm-7pm on Wednesday 5th February. Anyone interested in gaining a postgraduate degree to launch or further their career in computing is welcome to attend. The Canterbury campus event will cover the School of Computing’s extens...

We are delighted to announce that Dr Fred Barnes has been appointed Undergraduate Director of Studies (QA) with effect from 1st January 2014 for three years. The School teaching management structure was recently reviewed and this post was established to respond to new challenges. Fred will be working closely with Deputy Head of School (Academic & Teaching) – Gerald Tripp, and the two Directors of Undergraduate Studies (Student...

Over 250 pupils from schools across Kent took part in the First Lego League regional finals at the University's Canterbury campus on Tuesday 3 and Wednesday 4 December 2013. First Lego League is an international programme designed to bring science to life for school-children aged nine to sixteen through themed activities, including a hands-on robot challenge and scientific research. The event showcased specially designed robots made ...