News and Events

ACM-SIGMOD Best Paper award

Cutting-edge database research at the School of IT has been recognised with the Best Paper Award at the Association for Computing Machinery's SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data. PhD student Michael Cahill has been investigating an innovative change to the internals of database management systems that will have an impact on commercial databases around the world. ACM-SIGMOD is considered the most important international conference in the field of databases, and the award is one of the highest honours bestowed on researchers in the area.

Many popular database systems allow operations to run in parallel using a technique known as Snapshot Isolation. Software developers reason about databases as if operations are run one after the other, but Snapshot Isolation does not provide the strong guarantees that making their reasoning valid. An example from the paper is from a hospital rostering system: if two doctors rostered on in a shift try to reschedule at the same time, databases using Snapshot Isolation could leave the hospital with no staff.

Michael's paper suggests some change to the Snapshot Isolation algorithm that allow operations to run in parallel but avoids situations where the data consistency is violated. In the hospital example, only one of the doctors would be able to reschedule. This work has the potential for significant impact on commercial databases and applications in fields ranging from scheduling, online bookings and financial transactions. Industry are showing a keen interest in the research. Dave Lomet, Head of the Database Research group at Microsoft Research in Redmnond says "More concurrency - plus serializable transactions! This is a technology with great promise that could change the industry."

Michael graduated from The University of Sydney in 1997 with BSc Honours and the University Medal for Computer Science, and has since worked in the IT industry in both Australia and overseas. He is currently the Principal Software Engineer at Oracle Berkeley DB and is completing his PhD in the School of IT with Associate Professor Alan Fekete and Dr Uwe Roehm. This paper will form the core of his thesis.

ACM-SIGMOD was held in mid-June 2008 in Vancouver, Canada.

Carrick Institute grant and IBM Faculty award

Associate Professor Joseph Davis is celebrating a double success this month after winning a Carrick Institute grant and an IBM Faculty Award.

The prestigious and extremely competitive Carrick Institute (Australian Learning and Teaching Council) grant, titled 'Curriculum renewal in postgraduate information technology education: a response to growing service sector dominance" is a 2-year, multi-institutional grant for $218,500 involving University of New South Wales, University of Queensland, and University of Melbourne.

Joseph was the only Australian awarded a prestigious IBM Faculty Research Award in 2008. The competitive worldwide program fosters collaboration between researchers at leading universities worldwide and those in IBM research, development and services organizations and promotes courseware and curriculum innovation to stimulate growth in disciplines and geographies that are strategic to IBM.

Sanjay Chawla, 16 June 2008.

Faculty Teaching and Research Awards 2007

The winners of the 2007 Faculty Teaching and Research Awards were recently announced at the Faculty Board meeting by Professory Gregory Hancock, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and IT. I am pleased to report that the winners included:

Faculty Teaching Award
Dr Irena Koprinska from the School of Information Technologies for outstanding teaching, including new curriculum design

School Teaching Awards
Dr Tara Murphy and Dr James Curran (Shared)

Congratulations to Irena, Tara and James.

Sanjay Chawla, 27 May 2008.

Professor John Hopcroft awarded Doctor of Engineering

Professor John Hopcroft, MS PhD Stanford Hon DHumanities Seattle was awarded an Honorary degree of Doctor of Engineering at a graduation ceremony today.

Professor Hopcroft is the IBM Professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics in Computer Science at Cornell University. He received the Turing Award – the most prestigious award in the field – in 1986 "for fundamental achievements in the design and analysis of algorithms and data structures." In 1994 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. In addition to his research work, he is well known for his books on algorithms and formal languages which are regarded as classic texts in the field.

The School is very pleased to be able to honour him in this way.

Professor Hopcroft also very kindly presented awards at the School's Prizes and Scholarships Ceremony, and is pictured here with prize winner David Day.

Sanjay Chawla, 16 May 2008

Vance Gledhill awarded Order of Australia

Professor Vance Gledhill has been appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in this year's Australia Day honours. Vance works with the School as an Honourary Associate with the Knowledge Management Research Group, and is the Director of the National Computer Science School run by the School.

The appointment was made in recognition of his service to computer science as an academic, researcher and administrator, through contributions to the development of computer applications, particularly in the education and health sectors, and to the community.

Please join me in congratulating Vance.

Joseph Davis, 29 Jan 2008

2008 CORE Teaching Award

Please join me in congratulating Judy Kay on receiving the 2008 CORE Teaching Award. The award recognises the importance of providing high quality education teaching for undergraduate and postgraduate students in Computing. Well done!

Sanjay Chawla, 29 Jan 2008

TIES Grant

Congratulations to Joseph Davis, who has successully secured a TIES Large Grant of $67,320 for the project 'A model for innovative postgraduate education in IT enabled services'.

Sanjay Chawla, 16 Jan 2008

Committee Meetings Schedule

Please be advised that the committee meetings for the year will be held from 12 noon on Wednesdays, in the Board Room, as follows, except otherwise advised:

RESEARCH COMMITTEE
Chair: Masa Takatsuka
Members: Bernhard Scholz, Tom Cai, Bob Kummerfeld, Albert Zomaya (but meeting is open to all staff members of SIT).
Minutes: Katie Yang
Every first Wednesday of the month from February - December
Dates: Feb 20, March 5, April 2, May 7, June 4, Jul 2, Aug 6, Sept 3, Oct 1, Nov 5, Dec 3.
First meeting to be held 12noon, Wednesday 20 February, in the Board Room

TEACHING AND LEARNING COMMITTEE
Chair: Irena Koprinska
Members: Josiah Poon, Bing Bing Zhou, Uwe Roehm, Michael Charleston, Kalina Yacef, Ying Zhou (s1)/Simon Poon (s2) (but meeting is open to all staff members of SIT).
Minutes: Linda Kristian
In attendance: Cecille Faraizi
Every second Wednesday of the month from February - December
Dates: Feb 13, Mar 12, Apr 9, May 14, Jun 11, Jul 9, Aug 13, Sept 10, Oct 8, Nov 12, Dec 10

STAFF DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Chair: David Feng
Members: Sanjay Chawla, Bing Bing Zhou, Bernhard Scholz, Byounggu Choi
Minutes: Shari Lee
Every third Wednesday, or as advised by Chair of Committee.
First meeting to be held 2pm, Wednesday 6 February, in the Board room.

MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE/SCHOOL MEETINGS
Chair: Sanjay Chawla
Members of Management Committee: Head of School, all committee chairs, UG & PG coursework directors, Greg Ryan and Shari Lee
Minutes: Shari Lee
Every fourth Wednesday of the month from February - November
Dates: Feb 27, Mar 26, Apr 23, May 28, Jun 25, Jul 23, Aug 27, Sept 24, Oct 22, Nov 26.