Turn On Your Future @ UWTSD's School of Applied Computing & Electronics

Posts tagged ‘University’

Graduate Profile: Thomas Coleman

Thomas Coleman

  1. What was your HE course? BSc (Hons) Web Development
  2. What is your job title and role? PHP Web Developer, the role involves working on the weekly development sprints in conjunction with my colleagues and the other departments.
  3. Could you briefly describe the organization you work for? “Cobalt Telephone Technologies (http://www.ctt.co.uk/) is part of the Parkmobile worldwide group. We specialise in developing and delivering self-service payment and transactional environments, which simplify the lives of individuals and the organisations they interact with. Our solutions, which typically operate via mobile phone, fixed phone or web, are innovative and secure.” Basically a player in the global parking industry. Very cool 😉
  4. Which skills learned at University are helpful to you in your job? The ability to problem solve and be able to work with others. The ability to read code and try to understand how it pieces together. If you view University as training you for the working world, when you work hard and push yourself to deliver assignments, it helps translate over into “The real world”.
  5. Do you have a typical day and how would you describe it? Typically I get in at 8:00am, look to see what active Jira tickets I have to finish, if none I pick another ticket up from the sprint. I will then start working on the ticket and often with my colleagues. Once I finish the development work (if any was needed), I will test it locally, then push the code to the staging environment and test it there. Once that is done I will ask for it to be code reviewed by peers, who would then pass it on to the QA team who will either verify it and close the ticket (pending being put live once a week), or will come back with feedback, and put it back into development. Typically my working hours are 8:00am-4:30pm with a lunch break of an hour.
  6. What aspects of your job do you enjoy most? I enjoy having enough work to do, that I don’t get bored, but not too much that there is too much pressure which would create a bad working environment. I also enjoy that there is quite a relaxed working environment with friendly and social colleagues.

Graduate Project: Space Ships and Tractor Beams

Computer Games Graduate and Director of ChaosTrend Ltd Darren Adams shares his latest little project with New Space Ships and Tractor Beams 😉 LIKE 🙂

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Simon Downes @ UWTSD Student Research Conference 2016

Computer Networking student Simon Downes talks about a Smart University utilising the concept of the Internet of Things (IOT) at this year’s UWTSD Student Research Conference 2016.

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Computing Event: Guest Speakers

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The School welcomes three industry speakers over the next few weeks who will be sharing their experience of working in the Computing  & Technology industry with students. All Welcome (Students, Staff, Graduates and Community). Speakers include:
  • Luke Jenkins  from SureView Systems – Thursday 2/3/2016 – Room MH503 – 11am
  • Ed Turtle from Hoowla – Wednesday 9/3/2016 – Room MH503 – 11.30am
  • Grant Armstrong from Aria Networks – friday 11/3/2016 – Room MH503 – 11.30am.

Guest Speaker: Elliot Thomas

Applied Computing Graduate and Successful Tech Entrepreneur Elliot Thomas (right) returned to the School today to share what he has learned with our students. Elliot (Winner of Start-Up Weekend Swansea) secured funding and support from several backers and has started several Tech Companies since graduating Fuzmo (a Pet Picture sharing App), Skippr (an Instagram Marketing App) and Clockers (a Cloud Software Development Talent Service).
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Students photo-bombing 🙂

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The students thoroughly enjoyed Elliot’s talk and we would like to thank Elliot for returning to the School and look forward to welcoming him back in the future :-). Thank you Elliot – Good luck with your new ventures and we look forward to seeing you again soon.

Zambia School Visit

A delegation from Zambia visited Swansea’s School of Applied Computing last week – please see some of the photos below. The School is now looking to develop further links in the future with the possibility of student project work and the teaching of Zambian school teachers. The delegation also shared some of their innovative teaching methods for Teaching Computing with little resources demonstrating very good practice within the field of frugal innovation.

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Visit to MATLAB EXPO 2015

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Representatives from Swansea’s School of Applied Computing (Arya, Carlene and Archie) recently visited the MATLAB EXPO in Silverstone.

MATLAB (matrix laboratory) is a multi-paradigm numerical computing environment and fourth-generation programming language that allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creation of user interfaces and is primarily used for numerical computing.

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Lecturer Dr Carlene Campbell finds the Simulink element of MathWorks-MATLAB useful in teaching Computer Networks & Internet Security:

I did enjoy the expo, especially the first speaker. The demonstration room allowed one to gain ideas for research projects and more…  – Carlene

While Phd student tutors Archie and Arya both use Matlab for their research:

I found the event very informative and rewarding, especially considering it was free to attend. The keynote was particularly good as it showed how Matlab is used across a diverse range of industries and the types of system it’s been involved with the development of, perhaps most notably the New Horizons Flight Software. The technical talks and demonstrations were also great; they also weren’t too long so it was easy to stay focused. Several sessions will be beneficial to my research and I’d strongly recommend the event to anyone in the faculty. – Archie.

The event was spectacular. I found most of the presentations, relevant and useful. The demonstrations were great. In particular, one of the exhibitions was so helpful that I might be adapting a similar approach in my PhD experiment. – Arya

To view the demonstrations please click the image below:

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For more information about the event please click-here. And for event proceedings  please click-here.

Virgin Graduate scheme : Lewis Meehan

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UWTSD Computing Graduate Lewis Meehan tells us about his exciting new future at Virgin Media:

Q. What was your HE course?

A: BSc Computer Networks

Q. What is your job title and role?

A: Systems Integration Graduate

Q. Could you briefly describe the organization you work for?

A: Virgin Media – Data Services, owned by Liberty Global – the largest telecommunications company in the world.

Q. Which skills learned at University are helpful to you in your job?

A: Independent working/research and also the broad range of industry specific knowledge.

Q. Do you have a typical day and how would you describe it?

A: Every day is different. Some days I’ll be in my local office working furthering my HE studies towards certification [Cisco certifications: CCNA+CCNP+CCNA Specialisation+CCNP Specialisation], alongside providing standardised connection packages to small-medium businesses and assisting on larger  project based work for bespoke networking solutions. Other days I’ll be at a clients site and some might even be spent in hotels going segwaying, raft building or even just days out with the other Virgin Media graduates.

Q. What aspects of your job do you enjoy most?

A: Working with some awesome and expensive technology, which changes from day to day. Also the responsibility I’ve been giving from the start, Virgin Media put a lot of trust in their employees which creates a really nice environment to work in.

Q. Do you have any advice for students who would like to start a Career?

A: Make University a friendly competition; it’ll help both you and other people on your course at the end of it.

> For more information about Graduate positions at Virgin please click-here.

FACE Research Seminar

CarleneCompv5Dear All, You are all welcome on Wed, October 21, to the first FACE lunch-time Research Seminar for the academic year 2015/16. It will take place in MH503 (5th Floor Block H, Mount Pleasant).  A buffet lunch will be provided, starting at 1pm. 

Our Speakers will be Dr John Rees from School of Applied Computing and Komali Kantamaneni PhD Research student From School of Built and Natural Environment.

Dr. John Rees from Applied Computing has been invited to talk on “PhD Outcomes – Analysis and Characteristics of PhD Examiners’ Feedback”The intention of the seminar is to provide a broad guide to the kind of commentary associated with particular outcomes.  The evidence base shows characteristic patterns of conditions associated with the standard outcomes.  This is likely to offer benefits to those acting as internal or external doctoral examiners in gauging the award.

Dr Rees has a long interest in research degrees and research administration.  He chaired Staffordshire University’s Faculty RDC from 2002 – 2005; chaired Southampton Solent’s RDC from 2006 – 2012, and served on both Research Committee and Research and Enterprise Committee for those institutions over the same periods.

Komali Kantamaneni is a PhD research student based at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, United Kingdom. Her research area primarily focuses on the United Kingdom, examining the fiscal costs incurred by coastal communities who face increasing vulnerability to coastal storm and sea level rise because of climate change.  Her talk will be  on Integrated Modelling and Coastal Vulnerability(Development of novel integrated model to evaluate fiscal coastal vulnerability of United Kingdom).

These research talks are open to every researchers, students interested in research or staff from any faculty. This is an opportunity to mix, meet and hear about research within schools.

Venue: MH503 (5th Floor Block H, Mount Pleasant).
Time: 1pm – A buffet lunch will be provided.

Looking forward to see you all!!!

Warming-up for Start-Up Weekend 2015 : o )

We’re Warming-up for Start-Up Weekend Swansea 2015 : o ) Co-founder Adam Curtis talks about the event in the video-clip below:

UWTSD Graduate Elliot Thomas talks about his journey to Winning last year’s event: