School of Computing News

The School of Computing has been awarded an Athena SWAN award for gender equality work. The Athena SWAN award recognises the School's commitment to combating underrepresentation, and advancing the careers of women in science research and academia. The University was awarded an institutional Athena SWAN Bronze Award in April 2014, which recognised that Kent has established a solid institutional foundation, through the development of policies, practices a...

Final year undergraduate student Charlotte Hutchinson has very personal reasons for wanting to raise money by running the London Marathon for Children with Cancer UK. Charlotte, who is studying Computing with a Year in Industry, will be running the 26.2 mile route with her sister Harriet on Sunday 26 April. They can be sponsored on their fundraising page. Harriet said, ‘We have chosen to run the marathon as both a personal challenge and to raise money ...

First year computer science student Matt Duff has won the £500 Summerbuzz prize after pitching – Dragon's Den style – to sponsor, Kinetic Solutions. Sixteen students from the School of Computing and Kent Business School  applied for this prize that rewards the best summer plan in terms of employability skills.  Five students from both the Canterbury and Medway campuses were shortlisted, and had to pitch their plan a...

Second year undergraduate student Jodie Perry has been presented with the Kent Union Teaching Award for best course rep. Jodie has held the elected position since October 2014 and has represented the views of students at the School of Computing in the staff and student liaison committee, at the School learning and teaching committee, and at faculty level. The staff and student winners of seven categories were...

The internationally leading research activity at the University of Kent’s Cybersecurity centre has been recognised by GCHQ and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through the award of the title of  Academic Centre of Excellence for Cyber Security Research (ACEs-CSR). This recognition is in the first instance for a two year period from July 2015, and comes with funding for promotion...

Final year Undergraduate student Oliver Florence explores deception detection and a new technology being developed at The University of Kent's School of Computing. Although the idea of being strapped into a polygraph machine might well make you uncomfortable, it seems as though there isn't much to be worried about. The American Psychological Association assert that 'Most psychologists agree that there is little evidence that polygraph tests ca...

A £500 prize is on offer to first year School of Computing students who can demonstrate that their plans for the summer will make them more employable. The prize is being offered by employer Kinetic Solutions, who has a longstanding relationship with the School and has offered employment to placement student and graduates. Stage 1 students are asked to outline a plan for  something they want to do over the forthcoming summer that will aid the...

Cybersecurity experts Julio Hernandez-Castro and Eerke Boiten respond to the European survey on cybersecurity. The European Commission's annual Eurobarometer Cyber Security Survey, the third edition of which was recently released, is a substantial survey of more than 27,000 respondents from 28 countries. It contains interesting and, more often than not, disappointing revelations about the state of Europe's security. As specialists in the field...

An article published on the BBC news website reports that two banks are allowing their customers to access accounts on their smartphones using fingerprint recognition technology. The School of Computing's Eerke Boiten responds to the use of this technology: ‘If users “must activate the feature with their security information, but would only need to use Apple’s Touch ID thereafter”, then there is some scope for...

The School of Computing welcomes Dr Marek Grzes who joined the University of Kent in February after a previous role at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He received his PhD degree in computer science from the University of York, UK. He will be based at the Canterbury campus and will join the computational intelligence research group. His research interests include artificial intelligence, decision-theoretic planning, probabilistic reasoning, and applications thereof.