Hot on the heels of most influential paper award from ASWEC98 earlier this year, James Noble was awarded another Most Influential Paper award, this time from the ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications - OOPSLA.

The Most Influential OOPSLA Paper Award is presented annually to the author(s) of a paper presented at the OOPSLA held 10 years prior to the award year. The award includes a prize of $1,000 to be split among the authors of the winning paper. The papers are judged by their influence over the past decade.

OOPSLA is the largest and most prestigious conference in the area of Object-Oriented programming languages. It is CORE A+ rated and has consistent low acceptance rate of around 15%.

Prof Noble received the award for his paper "Ownership Types for Flexible Alias Protection", along with co-authors David G. Clarke and John M. Potter. The citation is as follows:

In their 1998 OOPSLA paper, "Ownership Types for Flexible Protection," David Clark, John Potter, and James Noble introduced the notion of "ownership types" to control inter-object aliasing statically, making it easier to reason about the dynamic topology of an object-oriented program. This work is part of the broader trend of trying to handle issues of isolation and modularity while retaining expressiveness.

More details of the award can be found at http://www.sigplan.org/award-oopsla.htm

Paul Teal has recently featured in the Dominion for his research on developing a less invasive way of monitoring foetal heart beats. Senior Lecturer Paul Teal says his aim is to find a more passive method of determining the heart beat of infants in the womb than the active method currently used by physicians and midwives.

“A popular method used in New Zealand is the SonicAid, which is a Doppler device that puts an ultrasound pulse into the mother. You can tell what the heart is doing from the change in frequency of the reflected sound.”

Paul says most clinicians believe that Doppler ultrasound is perfectly safe, but anecdotal evidence suggests many mothers don't like this method, as it actively puts energy into their bodies, and many midwives report that babies aren't too keen on it either.

“So I've been looking at a passive way to measure the foetal heart rate. You can do this either by putting electrodes on the mother and then detecting the Electric Cardiogram (ECG) signal, or by listening with microphones, which is what my research has focused on. This is more like using the Pinard – the foetal stethoscope that midwives used before the invention of Doppler ultrasound, but much more reliable and easy to use.”

Paul, who previously worked at Industrial Research Limited (IRL) in Gracefield, has been collaborating with his former colleagues to develop a method of using microphones to separate out the mixture of signals emitted from the womb by using a technique called Blind Source Separation.

“This isolates the foetal heart rate from the mother's heart rate, and the background noise. It's also a more passive method of monitoring that doesn't negatively impact upon either the mother or the baby.”

Paul says he and his IRL counterparts are now working closely with Wellington midwives to collect data from mothers using this less invasive method.

“We've proved the method works in the last few weeks of pregnancy, but we're hopeful that eventually we will be able to use it from when a foetus is 18 weeks. Doppler ultrasound can work from about 12-14 weeks, but the important stages are later in the pregnancy.”

Victoria University security researchers are excited to be involved in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) this year. Peter Komisarczuk and Ian Welch currently lead the New Zealand chapter of the Honeynet Project which has been selected as a GSoC mentoring organisation and two of the projects are focused around work from Victoria University.

Ian and Peter lead a team of post graduate developers at the Network Engineering Research Group at the School of Engineering and Computer Science that are researching and developing client honeypot technology to detect drive-by-downloads and determine web servers that are compromised. Drive-by-downloads have become one of the most used mechanisms through which Internet users machines are compromised. In a drive-by-download a user navigates to a web site, which responds with a web page that includes code that attempts to compromise their computer. For example this may install a key logger program that captures your user names and passwords, or recruits your machine to a botnet that can be used to send spam or launch distributed denial of service attacks against other users on the Internet.

Growing out of Christian Seifert's PhD research, the team from Victoria, along with other volunteer developers, have created several open source systems (Capture-HPC, Capture-BAT and HoneyC) that are used worldwide by researchers and security professionals. The Google Summer of Code projects will develop this software further. The Honeynet proposed projects are available from the Honeynet project GSoC web site. Victoria University researchers also run a scan of the .nz domain to detect compromised web servers and attacks that are based on New Zealand web sites which is sponsored by InternetNZ. This work was recently reported in Computerworld.

Potential students who would like to be part of GSoC and work on the development of client honeypot technology should look at the GSoC FAQs for more information. Applications are made through Google SoC 2009 and opens on the 23rd March and closes on the 3rd April.

The Honeynet project is a largely volunteer run organisation that aims to “learn the tools, tactics and motives involved in computer and network attacks, and share the lessons learned”. The Honeynet Project is an international, non-profit research organization dedicated to improving the security of the Internet at no cost to the public. It was founded in 1999. The New Zealand chapter consists of researchers across New Zealand as well as some members based overseas.

The winner of the School of Engineering and Computer Science contest is 13 year old Tariq Kader. Tariq is in year 9 at Wellington College and one of his favourite subjects is mathematics. He also enjoys computers and as this photograph illustrates he is very happy at receiving his prize - an Aluminium MacBook supplied by Student IT based at the Victoria University, Kelburn Parade. Tariq won his prize after entering an on-line contest advertised at the recent Wellington Armageddon show. While on campus, Tariq also received a quick tour of the new School of Engineering and Computer Science, and was shown the Honeynet Project and the visualisation display OptIPortal.

Dr Ian Welch, who was on-hand to give Tariq some pointers on his new prize, states, "we hope that the new MacBook helps to further develop Tariq interest in computer science, and with his strong maths interest, Tariq is developing an educational foundation that will stand him in good stead for future university study in engineering and computer science."

And it sounds like the School may see Tariq in the near future. "I have always wanted a computer," said Tariq. "And more specifically, an Apple Macbook. I would avidly look at all the features it came with and imagine how it would be to have one. So when I heard that I had won a new Macbook, I could hardly believe it. I was also taken on a tour of the School of Engineering and Computer Science and learned about the amazing things people were doing with computers, getting information and even building robots. Even before this tour I was interested with computers and technology, and seeing those exciting things happening in there has given me confidence in my curiosity. I hope to continue my interest with computers and engineering, and hopefully take it to a university level in the future; and my new Macbook should help me get there."

During the mid-trimester break in April, seven students from ECS (Keith Cassell, Adam Clarke, Rashina Hoda, Ben Palmer, Kourosh Neshatian, Kok-Lim.Yau, and Craig Anslow) attended the New Zealand Computer Science Research Students Conference (NZCSRSC) at Auckland University. The Conference, which is in its 7th year, is organised and run by postgraduate students, and aims to promote and strengthen the nationwide community of ICT research students.

Key note speakers included former Victoria University masters student Alan Blackwell, who gave an insight into Interdisciplinary Design Research for Interactive Technology. As Alan, who is now at Cambridge University, states on his home page "I only have one big research question, but I attack it from a lot of different angles. The question is representation. How do people make, see and use things that carry meaning? The angles from which I attack my question include various ways in which representations are applied (including design processes, interacting with technology, computer programming, visualisation), various methods by which I collect research data (including controlled experiments, prototype construction, ethnographic observation), and the theoretical perspectives of various academic disciplines (including computer science, cognitive psychology, engineering, architecture, music, anthropology)" (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/research.html ).

Another key note speaker, J.P. Lewis from Weta Digital, used the movie King Kong to illustrate Why Academic Research Matters to Weta Digital. Specifically the presentation looked at the graphic techniques used to recreate the city of New York in 1920 and the realistic skin, fur, eyes and movement of Kong.

A core component of the annual Conference are the presentations and posters from students. This year 25 graduates studying at New Zealand universities (and 7 from ECS) gave presentations and as in previous years the standard of talks and posters were of high quality. A range of workshops also gave students the opportunity to build on their research skills and topics ranged from thesis writing, time management, presentation skills, the publication game, to discussions on careers in research and the industry in general.

The conference not only gave student researchers an understanding of what others are doing, but also gave them the opportunity to interact with others who are motivated and passionate about their work. But it wasn't all work, highlights of the conference included the Endace opening dinner and the Orion Health social night that involved a boat cruise on Auckland harbour.

Feedback from the students who attended was positive - "The organisers did a fantastic job in planning the conference which ran very smoothly. We are looking forward to next years conference".

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) is one of the world's leading professional societies for the engineering and technology community with more than 150,000 members in 127 countries. With offices in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific, IET provides a global knowledge network to facilitate the exchange of ideas and promote the positive role of science, engineering and technology in the world. It also provides a forum for specialist groups and makes available to members an extensive range of publications.

The IET Wellington Local Network Committee is an active participant of the IET worldwide community and has developed strong relationships with engineering education providers in the region.

To give recognition and support to students who are studying engineering and technology, IET gives out a number of yearly awards. Recently, Victoria University student Arya Reais-Parsi was presented with an IET Award for Best Second Year Engineering Student 2008. On hand to present the award, and to outline the role of IET, was Brian McGlinchy, who has been an active member of IET for 15 years. As Brian outlined in his presentation to third year engineering students, as well as sponsoring undergraduate students with engineering prizes, IET can provide:

• Events and technical visits.
• Networking at local level.
• International speakers as well as monthly seminars that cover a wide range of topical issues.
• 4th Year student presentations - a local competition called Present Around The World where the local winner could go to a final in Australia and possibly on to the UK.

If you are interested in knowing more about IET check out their web site: http://www.theiet.org

For Wellington's activities go to: http://www.theiet.org/local/australasia/nz/wellington/index.cfm

On Wednesday 10 June 2009 the Faculty of Engineering hosted approximately 70 people from the Wellington engineering and computer industry.

The aim of the event was to further develop relationships in the community by showcasing the new Faculty of Engineering. As well as tours of the new space on the second floor of Cotton, staff and students displayed a wide range of interesting research projects. The evening gave staff, students and industry the opportunity to interact and discuss developments in the engineering and computer science field.

In the first photograph, Master's student Vipul Delwadia is demonstrating his software for remote control of mobile applications.

Peter Andreae (Pondy) explains a learning agent: the agent watches what is happening in a world (a kitchen with a tap, sink etc) and constructs mental models of how the world works in order to predict and plan.

The Mechatronics Group, headed by Professor Dale Carnegie, has developed a fleet of mobile robots capable of autonomous operation over a wide variety of different terrains. Here Dale is explaining the importance of maneuverability for rescue robots in disaster environments. The goal is to provide these robots with the ability to learn and adapt, and eventually be able to operate autonomously (without human assistance).

Recently Andy Linton, a teaching fellow at the Faculty of Engineering, took part in the 5th conference and educational workshop of the Pacific Network Operators Group (PacNOG). Held in Tahiti, the 5 day conference provided an important forum for service providers in the Pacific Network community to meet and discuss current issues as well as receive technical training. The workshops at the conferences are deliberately designed to strengthen technical expertise by training people and organisations. In return the participants are expected to return home and teach others in their country what they have learnt at the PacNOG workshops.

As PacNOG aims to build relationships among individual and institutional contacts in the Pacific region, a key outcome of the organisation is the building of relationships with peers/colleagues in the region. Andy, who is an instructor and active member of PacNOG, has been involved in technical knowledge transfer in the Pacific Region for the pass 12 years and views PacNOG as an excellent opportunity for people in the Pacific region to share and develop technical expertise - "People in New Zealand understand the tyranny of distance, which is even more of a challenge in the South Pacific region. Geographically these island nations cover huge areas, which result in scattered and sparse populations. By bringing people together they are able to identify similar experiences and share innovative solutions."

This year's conference highlighted many of the challenges and issues facing internet development in the Pacific region. As John Crain, Chief Technical Officer ICANN, stated in his keynote address - "Everyday more than a Billion people rely on the Internet to conduct aspects of their daily life. Those who use the Internet and those of us who operate the networks need to be more aware of the risks". While the workshops addressed a range of challenges, this year the conference focused on current best practices in security and the importance of well engineered router and server infrastructure.

Relationship building is also an important aim of PacNOG and as Andy states," it was really good to see the sharing of knowledge and the building of relationships, which continues well after the conference finishes. The Fijian contingent stayed for a few days after the conference to work with their Tahitian counterparts and this working together is what the organisation is about". PacNOG also receives support from a number of institutions in the Pacific region. Victoria University provided Andy's time, while InternetNZ paid for his travel and accommodation. The next meeting this November in Fiji, will be supported by the Internet Society (http://www.isoc.org/ ) and InternetNZ (http://www.internetnz.net.nz/).

For further information check out: http://www.pacnog.org/

On Thursday 6th August Victoria University were the hosts for the New Zealand Computer Society Evening with Industry 2009. The McClaurin foyer and lecture theatre MCLT101 were packed with 200 students, NZCS members and employer representatives for the annual "Evening with Industry". Students from the Wellington region tertiary institutions came in by bus, mini bus, car and foot to hear from eight recent graduates about their experiences in the ICT industry and to mix and mingle with employers such as Deloittes, KPMG and Orion Health. The speakers came from a range of Wellington ICT employers, including BNZ, Catalyst IT, Code to Customer, Intergen, KPMG, ProjectX, Provoke and TradeMe and included John Clegg who spoke about Summer of Code 2009.

To hear more about the event, go to Twitter: http://twitter.com/search?q=%23ewi

With names like Praying Muntaz, Predator, Icarus and Optimal Prime, the stage was set for an exciting match at the Annual Lego Competition. Monday night gave students enrolled in ECSE430 Advanced Mechatronic Engineering II the opportunity to design, construct and programme autonomous robots that not only had to work but compete against each other. The aim of the competition was to score the most points by having the robots locate and physically pick up a puck then deliver it to a donut shaped goal. Pucks varied in value depending upon how hard they were to locate. Maximum points were scored if the robots deposited the puck in the donut centre as opposed to the raised outer surface. As the Robots were required to operate completely independently of humans, points were deducted if a competitor touched their robot.

Harry Jones and Ben Drayton with Predator proved from the very start that they were contenders to be reckoned with. Predator lived up to his (or her) name and preyed upon the pucks (and other contenders) scoring well in the first few rounds. The final round resulted in a play off between Predator and Praying Muntaz designed by Vincent Fletcher and Patrick Thomson. The photograph show the results, a victorious Vincent Fletcher and Patrick Thomson celebrating their win and the A+.

Harry Jones receiving his prize from Murray
Milner, Chair of the IEEE New Zealand Central
Section Committee

On the 4th September Massey and Victoria engineering and computer science students came together in the annual IEEE New Zealand Central Section (http://ewh.ieee.org/r10/nzc/) postgraduate presentation event, held at Victoria University in the Old Government Buildings. Fifteen students presented to an audience of their peers, staff from Massey and Victoria and members from the IEEE and IET. The presentations were of an excellent standard covering a range from electronics, communication systems and networking to Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering and it showed many synergies exist between the Massey and Victoria research groups.

It was difficult to pick the winners, but after an agonising discussion the overall winner was Harry Jones (Victoria) who talked about his honours project in channel sounding with software defined radio. In second place Ayesha Hakim (Massey) presented on a reliable hybrid technique for human face detection. As runners-up Adrian Jongenelen (Victoria) talked about compact real-time range imaging systems and Keith Cassell (Victoria) told us about clustering techniques to improve the maintainability of object oriented classes.

Many thanks to all who took part and we look forward to next years event!

Victoria University will offer a Master of Engineering next year, beginning in February.

The programme will enable students to undertake a research project in electronics, computer systems networking, software engineering or a combination of these. It will cater for students with an appropriate Honours degree. John Hine, Head of Victoria's School of Engineering and Computer Science and Faculty of Engineering, said that the Master's was a great option for new researchers.

“The Engineering programme at Victoria is unique in that it integrates electronics and software development.“

Victoria has the leading software engineering group in the country and a superb programme in mechatronics; essentially working with robots. We've got the largest fleet of mobile robots in New Zealand.

“Our researchers are also part of the international Honeynet project and are doing fascinating things to improve Internet security. “

The Master's is an opportunity to study a particular topic in greater depth. It will be of interest to both engineering and science graduates as well as students from related areas like industrial design.

“Companies involved in research and development could also work with students from the School on collaborative Master's projects.”

Potential Master's students should visit the Engineering website to find a supervisor they may wish to do research with: http://www.victoria.ac.nz/engineering For more information please view the Postgraduate prospectus page http://ecs.victoria.ac.nz/Main/ProspectivePostgraduates, or contact Professor John Hine (Dean, Faculty of Engineering) John.Hine@ecs.vuw.ac.nz.

The sixteenth Electronics New Zealand Conference (ENZCon 2009) was recently held at the University of Otago. The papers presented broadly covered the areas of electronics, signal and image processing, RF-design, FPGA processing and antennas.

Victoria University's Faculty of Engineering students made an impact, with Carl Benton winning the best presentation prize for his joint paper on: The Comparison of Analogue and Digital One-Cycle Control Feedback Methods around the Output Stage in a Digital Audio Power Amplifier (C.D. Benton, D.A. Carnegie and P. Gaynor). Ben Drayton (Victoria University Honours students starting a PhD next year) was awarded the best novice presenter prize for: Life Sign Detection on a Disposable Robotic Platform as Part of a Three-Tier System for Urban Search and Rescue Operations (B.M.M. Drayton, and D.A. Carnegie).

Professor Dale Carnegie said, "overall the conference was a good opportunity for staff and students in this field to share technological research that could future benefit New Zealand's economy. The Conference highlighted the depth and quality of the research coming out of the Faculty of Engineering at Victoria University".

At the start of the year Victoria joined the PlanetLab NZ project - part of the world wide PlanetLab. PlanetLab is a global experimental networking facility, designed for conducting cutting-edge research on current and future network technologies, such as Next Generation Networks (NGNs), Next Generation Internet (NGI), Future Internet, etc. Two planetlab nodes have been installed at Victoria.

Funding is provided by REANNZ and the local contact is Dr Qiang Fu.

There were a number of exciting keynote speakers. Nat Torkington a graduate from our school talked about "The Career-Spotter's Field Guide", which explained about life beyond the ivy-covered walls of academia. Nat drew upon his vast experience and anecdotal evidence from working in small startups to large corporations. Rob O'Callahan from Mozilla talked about how computer science can change the world. Rob encouraged people to think hard about what research problems one should solve in order to make a significant impact on society. Sebastian Castro from the .NZ Registry Services talked about "A Day in the Life of the Internet Project" which collects traffic data from key locations of the Internet for analysis to provide insight and questions about the future of the Internet. Miriam Lips from Victoria University of Wellington talked about the "Value of E-Government Research for Designing 21st Century Government".

A range of workshops gave students the opportunity to build on their research skills. Workshop topics ranged from critical thinking, thesis writing, time management, presentation and poster skills, Maori and Pacific Nations students engaging in computer science research, women in the New Zealand IT industry, preparing to succeed in the job market, how to get yourself the job you want, the publication game, commercialisation and intellectual property in the IT, to discussions on careers in research and the industry in general.

A core component of the annual conference are the presentations and posters from students. This year 33 graduates studying at New Zealand universities gave presentations and the standard of talks were of high quality. While 21 graduates had short papers presented as research posters. Siva Dorairaj, James Bebbington, and Craig Anslow from ECS presented papers. The Intergen best paper presentation was awarded to Michael Walmsley, "Automatic Adaption of Dynamic Second Language Reading Texts", and The IET best poster to Stefan Schliebs, "Heterogeneous Probabilistic Models for Optimization and Modelling of Evolving Spiking Neural Networks".

The conference was made possible with the tremendous effort by the organising committee, the local university contacts, and support from our key sponsors: Google, Intergen, Pingar, The IET, InternetNZ, VicLink, and Victoria University of Wellington.

We are also grateful for the valuable assistance provided by the following people and groups: Sue Hall, Ally Reid, Peter Andreae, David Pearce, John Hine, Ian Witten, Tim Bell, Doug Hauraki, Liz Richardson, Robert Amor, Rachel Blagojevic, panelists, workshop presenters, Andy Linton, Will Browne, Ian Welch, OLPC Project, Victoria Communications and Marketing, ITS Teaching Services, Campus Care, VicVenues, KPR Catering, and Eurest Catering.

Further information about the conference is located on the web site: http://ecs.victoria.ac.nz/Events/NZCSRSC2010/

Brendan Vercoelen says his $6000 university scholarship will help him towards his dream job in the robotics industry. Brendan is a honours year student in a Bachelor of Engineering degree majoring in Electronic and Computer Systems Engineering at Victoria University of Wellington.

Rendered drawing of final walker design

Brendan supplements the breadth and depth of his degree with additional activities. He is active in the student body and has served as president of the VUW Engineering Club and as a class representative. Get outside interests include involvement with Scouts New Zealand, including serving as a member of the Scouts National Council.

As part of the lifelong learning and transferable skills at VUW, Brendan has also completed management papers while at university . Future plans include completion of a Masters in Engineering or a separate diploma in business studies.

Brendan was one of 35 scholars who claimed their awards from the Duke of Gloucester at a ceremony in the Wellington Town Hall. The Freemasons Charity is the country's largest privately-funded scholarship programme. In its 32- year history is has given more than $3.5 million to 922 students.

For further details, Dominion Post and Stuff Article see http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/local/hutt-news/3709497/Hutt-GP-robotics-student-granted-Freemasons-scholarships

Brendan Vercoelen is a fourth year Bachelors of Engineering (BE) student studying Electronic and Computer Systems Engineering (ECEN) at Victoria University of Wellington who is shaping industry to student relations through IPENZ. Since the end of 2007 Brendan has worked as the student representative on the Wellington branch committee of IPENZ. IPENZ (The Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand) is the body which represents more than 9000 professional engineers, from a range of disciplines. The Wellington Branch has over 1400 Members in Wellington and Wairarapa.

Recently, Brendan was invited to be a member of the Young Professionals Task Force, which is a year-long project that seeks to smooth the transition between University and professional practice through IPENZ. This led to an invitation by the IPENZ governing board to feedback on its relationship with students. This prestigious task led to Brendan being included in a talk by the chief executive officer of Pertronic Industries Ltd (Advanced Automatic Fire Detection Systems) on how he took the start-up to international success.

The knowledge and experiences gained by Brendan will not only help his career progression, but are being fed back into the Engineering degrees to strengthen all students' interaction with IPENZ and industry.

We are looking for creative and bright ideas on how you would tell the world about the Engineering students and the School of Engineering and Computer Science at Victoria University Wellington.

1st Prize is an 32GB iPod touch (value $520), 2nd Prize 8GBiPod nano (value $240), 3rd Prize Sennheiser headphones ($120)

If you're interested, then contact: Senior Tutor Ambreen Khan-Evans Email: Ambreen.Khan-Evans@ecs.vuw.ac.nz Phone: 04 463 5936 Room CO340 Cotton Building, Kelburn Campus

The Rules https://ecs.victoria.ac.nz/Main/VideoCompetition

One player in particular had a fantastic tournament, including numerous critical saves against Italy. He is Mark Paston, who in 2001 graduated from VUW with a BSc in Computer Science (COMP) and Electronic and Computer Systems (ELCO). Mark was also critical in the qualifying game against Bahrain, playing in Wellington, where he saved a crucial penalty shot.

Staff recall that Mark was a good student during his time at VUW. One of his lecturers commented that "He was playing for Napier City Rovers at the time, and had to miss the odd lab for football training. But, he was definitely the most co-ordinated physics student I've seen!"

The School of Engineering and Computer Science would like to congratulate Mark, and the rest of the All Whites, for a great sporting achievement and to wish them all well in the future.

Five final year Power Electronics (ECEN405) students ended their trimester with a project loud enough to potentially cause auditory damage. The students, supervised by Robin Dykstra, designed, developed and produced fully working sub-woofer Class D amplifiers.

From left: Dr Robin Dykstra, Matthew Bourne, Abigail Arulandu, Arya Reais-Parsi, Brendan Vercoelen, Dayna Kivell

Each design was different; some allowing input directly from an MP3 player and others included multiple audio outputs. The project not only put the skills learned from the Power Electronic course into practice, but also allowed them to have full creative and design control, while still keeping to a tight budget. Given this was a difficult project, each of the students did well to achieve a working solution (even after dozens of blown components). So if you are walking through the Alan MacDairmid building on level 2, and hear a not-so-subtle doof-doof noise, it is likely to be originating from the Engineering Honours Lab, who can now claim to have the loudest lab on campus.

Kyle Chard and Kris Bubendorfer have recently featured in the IEEE Spectrum Magazine on the development of a "social cloud," which would facilitate the sharing of information, hardware, and services by using the computing resources of a person's online network "friends."

The full article can be accessed at: IEEE Spectrum

We are delighted that the professional nature of our Bachelor of Engineering degree has been recognised by the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand.

The accreditation process is thorough, lengthy and worthwhile as it assists in ensuring the quality of degrees for both students and industry. Provisionally accreditation has been granted for the degree of Bachelor of Engineering at Victoria University of Wellington, in all of our specialisations: Electronic and Computer Systems Engineering, Network Engineering, Software Engineering.

By necessity, full accreditation will occur when our first graduates have spent time in industry verifying the effectiveness of our courses. It is noted that leading industry, such as Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, are confident in the quality of our degrees by making job offers to our students even prior to graduation.

A major step in the accreditation process was the visit that took place 14-16 July 2010 with the visit of a panel appointed by IPENZ.

• Dr. Simon Lovatt, AgResearch (Chair). Simon is a Science Strategist at AgResearch with a software engineering background.
• Prof. Chris Cook, Dean of Engineering, Univ of Wollongong.
• Prof. Tanja Mitrovic, Head of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Univ of Canterbury.
• Mr. Ivo Tisch, Founder and Managing Director, Precision Technologies.
• Mr. Brett Williams, Director of Learning and Assessment, IPENZ

Highlights of the recommendation report are given below:

The development of an engineering programme at VUW had been considered at different times in the University's history so, when the decision was finally made to develop a Bachelor of Engineering in 2005, it was seen as an evolutionary rather than revolutionary step. The existing Bachelor of Information Technology, which was to be replaced by the BE, was considered to have a strongly applied focus. All the same, the decision was supported by a significant programme of staff recruitment and capital expenditure, consistent with the University's objective of developing an internationally recognised engineering programme.

The panel also wished to recognise the following strengths of the programme.

• Part III of the degree structure provides excellent potential for producing broader graduate skills. (Part III of the degree is designed to provide students with the opportunity to develop wider contextual understanding by allowing them to select three coherent courses that are outside the student's specialisation from across the University.)
• The strength of the team- and project-based experience gained by the students
• The collegiality and enthusiasm for engineering demonstrated by staff
• The strength of the staffs' research and industry interaction and the richness this brings to the teaching program
• The strength and commitment of the institutional support for engineering from VUW
• The quality and quantity of infrastructure, personnel, technical and other resources provided to engineering by VUW

The Accreditation Panel set the following requirements to be met by Victoria:

• Nil.

Coverage of the IPENZ graduate profile

The panel was satisfied that the VUW outcomes were substantially equivalent to the generic IPENZ Graduate Competence Profile for Professional Engineers; that by deriving them from VUW's overarching outcomes they were linked to VUW as a specific provider; and that they incorporated feedback from VUW's industry advisory panel and programme advisory panel.

We are continually listening to constructive comment from students, industry/business and professional bodies to adapt, improve and keep our courses/degrees at the forefront of professional engineering education in New Zealand and internationally.

At the same time, a special High School site was hosted in Wellington, Auckland, and Christchurch with the same problems as the University teams and additional 2 high school level problems. A team called Calcky (Luke March, Cain Edie, and Luke Bravenboer) proudly carried the Paraparaumu College flag at the Wellington Site and solved 3 problems - coming safely in the top half of NZ-based high school teams and beating some of the University teams while at it! At least two of Calcky's team members already chose Victoria to continue their University study at.

The site was organised and ran by Alex Potanin with a lot of help from Neil Ramsay and Stuart Marshall. We thank the contest's sponsor: IBM. IBM has provided us with prizes and catering during the contest and had 3 current IBM employes (two of which have recently graduated from Victoria) present throughout the event and award prizes at the end. If you have any questions about the ACM Programming Contest or a local Australia and New Zealand Algorithmics and Coding League that holds 6 contests leading up to the regionals throughout the year, please contact Alex Potanin.

Update: Official results are available here.

Associate Professor Thomas Kühne recently received a Distinguished Paper Award at the ACM SIGSOFT Conference. His paper “An Observer-Based Notion of Model Inheritance”, discusses specialisation relationships between models, languages and transformations respectively, and introduces the idea of an observer and a context for the purpose of defining and validating specialisation relationships.

“Return on investment” is an increasingly important consideration in model-based engineering, and it is more cost-effective to create a new model from an existing one rather than create it from scratch. It therefore makes sense to make maximum use of the relationships between models. Organising models in a network of relationships enhances model retrieval, investigation of model compatibility, and megamodeling of big systems.

First, the paper discusses model compatibility. It then examines various definitions of model inheritance, promoting model substitutability as a valuable property to strive for. Finally, the notion of a model observer and a model context is discussed as a way of investigating the scope for model compatibility.

It is intended that the ideas introduced in the paper will form the foundation of a systematic basis for organising models.

The full paper can be read at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/u3187t66l7275805/

Our Changing World, Radio New Zealand National (14 October 2010).

The threat of being buried in rubble in an earthquake is a real and horrifying prospect, and trying to rescue trapped people from collapsed buildings is a dangerous task.

To help in such situations, Dale Carnegie from the Mechatronics Research Group, is developing a hierarchy of small, autonomous `rubble robots'. He tells Alison Ballance how the `grandmother' will deploy all-terrain `mother' robots that enter such sites and in their turn deploy expendable mobile phone-sized `daughter' robots to search for signs of life.

Student Michael Rothbock is working on the currently out-of-commission grandmother robot, nicknamed the `tank' because of the tank tracks that make her mobile, updating all her sensors and computers.

Listen to the podcast and watch a video of the robots in action.

Read more about the Mechatronics Research Group.

Mansoor Shafi, adjunct professor at the School of Engineering and Computer Science, has been named co-recipient of the 2011 IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award.

The IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award was established by the IEEE Board of Directors in 1979. It is presented for the most outstanding survey, review, or tutorial paper published in the IEEE Transactions, Journals, Magazines, or in the Proceedings of the IEEE between 1 January and 31 December of the preceding year. The award is named in honor of Donald G. Fink, distinguished editor and author, who was a Past President of IRE, and the first General Manager and Executive Director of the IEEE.

This year, along with Andreas F. Molisch and Larry J. Greenstein, Mansoor Shafi has been presented the award for the paper entitled: "Propagation issues for Cognitive Radio," Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 97, No. 5, May 2009.

A team at Victoria University has been awarded the 2010 Prime Minister's Science Prize, worth half a million dollars.

Research from the Magnetic Resonance Innovation Team has been used in medical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and in climate change research in Antarctica, and the team is looking to apply its research in agriculture and industry.

The team, led by Professor Sir Paul Callaghan, consists of: Professor Callaghan; Dr Robin Dykstra, Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering and Computer Science at Victoria; Dr Mark Hunter, Research Fellow in the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences at Victoria; Dr Andrew Coy, a physicist and Chief Executive Officer of technology company Magritek; and Dr Craig Eccles, a physicist and Chief Technology Officer at Magritek.

The Prime Minister's Science Prize is awarded for a transformative science discovery or achievement which has had an impact in New Zealand or internationally. Of the $500,000 prize money, $400,000 is for furthering the team's research.

The prize was presented by the Prime Minister, Rt Hon John Key, on Friday 26 November, in Auckland.

Ben Haughey was recently awarded best student (novice) presentation prize at the Electronics New Zealand Conference (ENZCon) 2010 for his paper titled Simulation and Optimisation of a 2-DOF Parallel Planar.

The Electronics New Zealand Conference is an annual meeting to facilitate the exchange of ideas among researches, teachers, workers, students, suppliers and others with an interest in electronics and associated scientific and technical subjects. It is a student friendly conference, inviting paper submissions from students can present their research and meet other students and staff in an interactive relaxed environment.

Ben is presently a Master of Engineering student who is researching Robotic Manipulator Optimisation for his ME project.

The girls had a 1hour practice session prior to the 2.5 hour programming competition, which used "Alice," an educational software program for teaching students 3D animation. Dr Peter Andreae ran additional activities and games designed to introduce computer science concepts such as error detection and correction, public key cryptography, and algorithm complexity. A 2.5 hour workshop was run for teachers on teaching and assessing the new NCEA level 1 programming achievement standards.

Stu Sharpe and Julianne Lim from Sidhe Interactive helped to judge the competition. The company also provided the prizes, which included a "Shatter" computer game, the soundtrack for this game on CD, and T-shirts.

Gold medals were awarded to:

• Bonnie Liao and Poonam Patel, Wellington East Girls College
• Francina West and Claudia Devlin, Onslow College
• Sonja Bimler, Wellington East Girls College and Maia Holder-Monk, Wellington High School
• Geogina Kebbell and Rose McLellan, Paraparaumu College

Silver medals were awarded to:

• Emily Fiennes and Isabel Kelly, Samuel Marsden Collegiate School
• Ashilta Sharma and Jessica Suo, Wellington East Girls College
• Cassidy Cosgrove and Georgia Groen, Kapiti College

Bronze medals were awarded to:

• Morgan Archer and Hannah Sampson, Samuel Marsden Collegiate School
• Polly Pesheva and Megan Park, Naenae college
• Shagufa Mirzad and Joely Huang, Wellington East Girls College
• Briana Hunt, Paraparaumu College, and Evangeline Martin, Onslow College
• Georgia Borthwick and Maddison Batten, Kapiti College

Victoria University will host the 2011 Programing Challenge for Girls around the same time next year, and all year 10 girls are welcome to participate. Please contact Dr Alex Potanin for further information.

To find out more about about the Programming Challenge for Girls, go to: http://www.pc4g.org.nz

Many thanks to the following people for their help in making this event a success: Dr Alex Potanin, Dr Peter Andreae, Dr Stuart Marshall, Dr Hui Ma, Dr Petra Malik, Dr Xiaoying Gao, Dr Monique Cano-Damitio, Dr Marcus Frean, Dr Ian Welch, Huia Hopkirk, Stu Sharpe, Julianne Lim

PhD Student Ben Palmer received $AUD 500 as prize money for winning "Best Student Paper and Best Paper" at this year's Australasian Information Security Conference (AISC). The winning paper's title is "Development and Evaluation of a Secure, Privacy Preserving Combinatorial Auction" and was co-written with his supervisors Dr Kris Bubendorfer and Dr Ian Welch.

Australasian Information Security Conference (AISC) is part of the 2011 Australasian Computer Science Week (ACSW) and is a conference attracting both submissions from Australasia and wider afield. This year, ACSW was hosted by the Department of Computing at Curtin University from January 19-during January 2011 in Perth.

The paper introduces a new algorithm for constructing combinatorial auction circuits that can calculate the results of combinatorial auctions using any garbled circuit auction protocol. This is the first example of a combinatorial auction circuit that extends the privacy preserving protocols previously applied to single good electronic auctions to combinatorial auctions. That is, only the winning bid is revealed, while the value of losing bids is kept secret.

A combinatorial auction allows bidders to express interest in a collection of goods of their own choice, and to make bids conditional upon acquiring the complete set. For example, in a real estate auction, if three adjacent lots are for sale, a developer can make their bid conditional upon obtaining two adjacent lots. The advantage of combinatorial auctions over single good electronic auctions like those used on E-Bay and Trade Me, is that they enable bidders to express these dependencies between goods, and facilitate optimal allocation of goods to bidders. Furthermore, the use of privacy preserving protocols reduces the need to trust that your auction provider will not sell information about failed bids that could be used by competitors in future auctions to gain an unfair advantage.

At the recent APNIC conference, Victoria University Lecturer, Andy Linton, was elected Co-Chair of the APNIC Policy Special Interest Group (SIG). With the imminent exhaustion of IPv4 addresses and the adoption of the replacement IPv6, Andy will play an active role in ensuring sound policy is in place.

Whilst the Internet is renowned for being a worldwide network free from central coordination, there is a technical need for some key parts of the Internet to be globally coordinated - and this coordination role is undertaken by IANA (the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority). Specifically, IANA allocates and maintains unique codes and numbering systems that are used in the technical standards ("protocols") that drive the Internet.

APNIC, an open, membership-based, not-for-profit organization, is one of five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) charged with ensuring the fair distribution and responsible management of IP addresses and related resources. These resources are required for the stable and reliable operation of the global Internet. APNIC is also actively involved in the development of Internet infrastructure throughout the region. This includes providing training and education services, supporting technical activities such as root server deployments, and collaborating with other regional and international organizations.

IP addresses and AS numbers are shared resources, available for use by anyone who needs them. APNIC policies ensure that these resources are distributed fairly and consistently across the whole Asia Pacific region. The Policy SIG's role is to develop policies and procedures which relate to the management and use of Internet address resources by APNIC, NIRs, and ISPs within the Asia Pacific region.

See further information at: http://www.apnic.net/about-APNIC

The School of Engineering and Computer Science would like to thank Google for the donation of 50 Android mobile phones for student research.

The phones will be used for teaching networked applications courses at 200 and 300 level. Students will learn the basics of app development on the Android phones and then in the final project at 300 level they will create their own location aware geographic enabled Android applications - the choice of the application is up to the students themselves. The phones are Google Android Nexus 1 phones capable of 3G data, GPS and include inertial sensors - the possibilities for students projects are endless.

Henry Williams has won a $500 prize in Victoria University’s Summer Gold Scholars Poster Competition, for his poster titled “Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping: SLAM.”

Henry’s work over the summer involved researching the problems robots

have navigating unknown environments, and seeking ways to improve their performance, using a technique called SLAM.

SLAM enables autonomous robots to construct a map within an unknown environment while simultaneously tracking their current position. It uses an Extended Kalman Filter to reduce the inherent noise in the system, and combine the odometer and range data in order to determine the robot’s most likely location.

Henry’s research found that SLAM improved the performance of e-puck robots (palm-size autonomous robots) in the localisation and mapping of an unknown maze, enabling each robot to keep itself localised within 0.05cm of its true location.

This increased precision and accuracy in mapping and localisation has important potential benefits; for example, the development of robots that can successfully navigate unknown environments such as spaces in collapsed buildings.

The Faculty of Engineering congratulates the inaugural group of Bachelor of Engineering graduates. Of the graduating students, around half are currently working in the industry and the other half has gone on to further study.

Victoria began teaching the four-year Bachelor of Engineering degree in 2007, building on the University’s existing expertise from teaching the Bachelor of Information Technology and Bachelor of Science and Technology degrees.

The Engineering programme focuses on the digital technology that drives the modern world, from electronics to communications to software.

“The Bachelor of Engineering at Victoria has gone from strength to strength and last year received a very positive report from IPENZ (the Institution of Professional Engineers of New Zealand), which provided provisional accreditation for the degree.”

Computer scientists from the ELVIS Software Design Research Group at Victoria University are working in collaboration with experts from other New Zealand universities to develop more efficient, cost effective and flexible methods of software development.

This research is being conducted as part of a four year project funded by the ministry of Science and Innovation, with participation from industry partners.

Professor James Noble says that early methods of software development in the 1960s arose from cost overruns in the United States Defence Department as they sought to develop their own software in connection with the space race and weapons development.

However, these methods were hampered by the high proportion of time spent on planning, documentation and bureaucratic processes. The Agile approach to software development seeks to alleviate these problems through the use of self-organising teams that work collaboratively with customers to develop iterative and incremental work cycles.

Victoria Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Rashina Hoda has been researching the best ways for agile software development teams to organise themselves. She has identified the roles of "Mentor, Co-ordinatior, Champion, Promoter, and Terminator" as being crucial in the process of software development, along with support from senior management, and the active involvement of customers.

For more information about the ELVIS Software Design Group, click on the link below.

http://elvis.ac.nz/

SWEN302 is a second trimester third year group project course for software engineering students. In SWEN302, students work in teams of around 6 - 8 people to develop prototype software for real projects, working for project sponsors from outside the software engineering group. The project course runs from July 11th to October 14th, and students will each spend around 7 - 8 hours per week on the course.

The ideal project is small enough to be feasible within the three months of the trimester, but large enough to be challenging to the student teams. Teams follow a process called Agile Development, which means that teams work with the sponsor on a weekly basis to ensure that the project is going in the right direction. The process is flexible, allowing the sponsor to change the focus during the course of the project. The process always involves the team creating a prototype system each fortnight that continually expands on the functionality provided. A consequence of this is that sponsors will get some working software early, and can decide what they want added to the working software on a frequent basis.

So, if you have an idea that needs programming to support your research or teaching or other activities, and are interested in sponsoring a project, or would like more information, please contact me ( stuart@ecs.vuw.ac.nz) by July 4th.

Regards,

Stuart Marshall

Latest news. Unfortunately the contest has been cancelled. See http://www.ipredictapp.co.nz/ for details.

iPredict is an online political and economic trading market which allows traders to buy and sell “shares” in future events.

At present, all trading is done via the web site, but iPredict is looking for a “innovative, useful, accessible, and fun” application that will allow people to trade on iPredit using their mobile devices.

Win up to $3,500 cash by making an iPhone, iPad, Android Win7 Mobile smartphone trading app, or mobile web site for iPredict.

Applications close 17 July.

http://www.ipredictapp.co.nz/

On the 16^th of June, students enrolled in ECEN 405 visited Haywards Substation in Stokes Valley, in order to see power electronics at work on a large scale. They were accompanied by the course lecturer Dr Ramesh Rayudu, technicians Jason Edwards, Tim Exley and Sean Anderson, and two post-graduate students, Dayna-Maree Kivell and Matt Bourne.

Hosted by 5 staff from Transpower, the students were shown pole 1, which contains the ‘old-style’ mercury-arc valves that have been in operation since the 1960’s. The students also toured Pole 2 where they had a closer look at the thyristors used for power conversion. Transpower staff also toured the students through Pole 3 that is currently under construction, and explained the processes involved. More particularly the students got up-close look at capacitors, filters and synchronous condensors at work.

The students appreciated the enthusiasm of the Transpower staff for their field of expertise, and their willingness to provide detailed explanations of how things work. “The fact that what they said made sense after doing power electronics totally made the course worthwhile” said Henry Williams.

The trip also gave students an ideal opportunity to see how the things they had learned about in class were applied in real life. “The sheer size of the equipment used was astounding, but at the same time, the knowledge gained from the ECEN course allowed us to understand the theory behind it all.” said Luke Frogley.

The students thanked Dr Rayudu for organising the trip, and sharing the practical knowledge he has acquired from working in the industry. Dr Rayudu says Transpower staff enjoyed hosting the students, and hopes that a visit to Haywards substation will become a regular component of the course.

Victoria University Teaching Fellow Andy Linton co-presented a workshop, with instructors from NSRC (University of Oregon) and Google, on DNS operations at the 9th Meeting of the Pacific Network Operators Group (PacNOG). The meeting was held at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, from the 27th June to the 2nd July.

PacNOG was initially established in 2004 as a mailing list for ISP operations engineers working in the Pacific region, in order to facilitate the exchange of technical information and cooperation on implementation issues.

The educational workshops offered by PacNOG are part of a capacity development programme offered to IP-ISP providers in the Pacific Islands. Three workshops were offered on days 2-6 of the meeting.

The "Robust and Reliable Domain Name System (DNS) Operations" workshop offered participants the opportunity to learn about the principles of DNS design, DNS server software, best practice in deploying DNS servers, security mechanisms for DNS servers, and Internationalized Domain Names (IDN).

Due to the global success of the Internet, the range of numbers in the original address scheme, IPv4, has almost been used up. The replacement, IPv6, marks a radical change and training is vital. The "IPv4 / IPv6 BGP" workshop provided participants with the knowledge and skills needed to utilize BGP for multihoming, take part in an Internet Exchange Point, and utilize IPv6 across networks.

The "Internet and Network Security Fundamentals" workshop addressed the basics of network security, network analysis and forensics, the anatomy of network attacks, penetration testing, and DNS security.

A survey of participants from several Pacific Island countries confirmed that many found the workshops useful and informative, with one person commenting "It was a real pleasure to attend this workshop. The instructors are really interesting, they gave me a lot of information." Many participants plan to attend the next PacNOG meeting in in Noumea, New Caledonia in November.

A recent article in the Dominion Post features Craig Anslow, a PhD student who has developed a 48-inch multi-touch table. Craig is conducting research into applications that help software developers visually map their programs and identify potential bugs. He plans to test the touch table over the next year or so, and then make it available for free use.

The article, titled “Bright Sparks Dim Futures?” highlighted the difficulties New Zealand scientists face in finding the institutional support and financial backing to develop their inventions into a marketable product.

To read the full article, please go to:

http://homepages.ecs.vuw.ac.nz/~craig/Site/Media/bright-sparks-anslow.pdf

Victoria University has unveiled plans for a leading-edge study programme that will support innovation and growth in Wellington's internationally recognised entertainment and digital technologies industries. From 2012, Victoria will offer a Computer Graphics programme that is unique in Australasia in the way it blends computer science and design. Other courses available at tertiary level focus on one or other of the two disciplines. Victoria's Computer Graphics subject will be a course option for Masters level students in both the School of Design and the School of Engineering and Computer Science, with the computer science and design components weighted differently for the two degrees.

Professor John Hine, Dean of Victoria's School of Engineering, says the cross-disciplinary nature of the programme is one aspect of what makes it unique. "The other is the involvement of local industry. We have worked very closely with leading companies in the digital industries sectors, particularly Weta Digital, Sidhe Interactive and Unlimited Realities, to develop a course that is relevant and will produce graduates with the skills the sector needs." Professor Hine says the relationship with local industry will be continued through sponsored scholarships - with Weta already having confirmed one PhD scholarship - consultation, guest lectures and internship opportunities. "Weta in particular has a lot of experts visiting its research and development facility in Wellington and we hope to get some of them along to teach our students."

The long term goal is to build in-depth capability at Victoria to support New Zealand's digital industries. That will include specialist programmes at Master's level, supervision for PhD study and a research programme that can deliver new technologies and skills to industry. "The initiative will lead to a range of new career opportunities in the region's internationally acknowledged digital creative sector, making Wellington and Victoria University a logical location to study this exciting specialisation."

As part of its support for growing New Zealand's high tech creative sector, the Ministry of Science and Innovation (MSI) has contributed $500,000 towards the cost of establishing the programme. Murray Bain, Chief Executive of the MSI, says the Ministry is keen to support and encourage industry engagement with universities.

The School of Engineering and Computer Science's Annual Lego Robot Competition for 400 level ECEN students will be held at 7pm Monday 22 August in AM106.

The constructed robots must be autonomous – any human intervention occurs a penalty.

This competition forms a significant component of the assessment in the course ECEN430.

For further information, contact Dale Carnegie

On Saturday, 10th of September, 2011, ECS hosted the "Lower North Island" site for the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest's South Pacific Regionals. The top team from Australia and the top team from New Zealand get to represent the region at the World Finals to be held in Poland in May 2012. The winner of the Lower North Island (Wellington) site - DJ Tomato - came close second behind the New Zealand winning team from Christchurch: they both solved the same number of problems but the Christchurch team did it a little bit faster to take the honors. DJ Tomato consists of ECS PhD student, Roma Klapaukh, GradDipSci in Physics student Joshua Baker, and ECS 2nd year student Fergus Whyte.

The First Place Team

The other 5 teams competing at ECS were from Massey (Max Dietrich, Faharn Wali, and Fergus, coached by Professor Jens Dietrich) and Wellington: Samuel Hindmarsh, Gordon Chan, and David Wang (coming 2nd locally), Simon Welsh, Liam Cervante, and Ben Lawn (coming 3rd locally), as well as Dominik Schmid, Luke Bravenboer, and Luke March and our 1st year team of Peter Riley, Alex Salenko, and Andrew Davies.

All Contestants

The competition went smoothly and was held at the ECS Networking Lab (CO246). The other sites included: Perth, Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart, Melbourne, Auckland, and Christchurch and were running in parallel. The teams prepared for the regional event by participating in the 6 rounds of ANZAC League (http://ecs.victoria.ac.nz/Main/ProgrammingContests) which paid off significantly with DJ Tomato coming very close to grabbing the NZ title.

The event's main sponsor is IBM (http://www.ibm.com/nz/en/) and the contest was attended by Ralph Fox, Sundar Venkataraman, Mehrdad Fatemi, Marina Chibisova, Ryan Leighs and Jonathan Wierenga who presented the prizes at the end. Mehrdad, one of IBM NZ hiring managers, commented in particular on the value for the job applicants of having ACM programming contest experience on their CV.

Any students interested in taking part in the 2012 season need to contact Alex Potanin.

We congratulate the Faculty of Architecture and Design for their third place success in the Solar Decathlon competition and are glad that we could contribute to their triumph in the Engineering category.

"Compliments to Abby for her successful input to the VUW First Light team" Prof John Hine, Dean, Faculty of Engineering

Engineering from Victoria University of Wellington was judged top in the US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon competition.

The Solar Decathlon event is a showcase of the best practical sustainable living environments. 10 events ranging from Architecture to Engineering and even mod-con Appliances are used to measure the state-of-the-art from universities across the globe. In the Engineering category, the team from VUW was ranked first out of the 20 competitors! An impressive achievement considering VUW was the first team ever from the Southern Hemisphere.

"The New Zealand house was beautifully executed, with extreme attention to detail and craftsmanship and an intuitive tree-ring visualization system, which makes it easy to understand energy use throughout the house", said Engineering Contest juror Dr. Hunter Fanney, chief of the building energy and environment division of the engineering laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Abigail Arulandu graduated from our Bachelors of Engineering in Electronics and Computer Science (ECEN) last year and is now continuing her passion for human assistive technology with a Masters project at VUW Engineering. Over the summer, and beyond, she played an integral role in the engineering of the First Light house. "In this fast paced project the creative and problem solving skills learned in my engineering degree were vital. Also the ability to pick up new concepts quickly, such as programming in Ruby on Rails, and communicate with the diverse contributors to the house were transferable skills gained in the degree" says a very positive Abby regarding her time with the project.

Potential students interested in gaining the latest digital engineering skills that can be applied from leading sustainable technology to assistive robotics, then please see our information pages.

See Solar Decathlon, Tring and First Light House for more information

Three post-graduate students from the School of Engineering and Computer Science achieved success in the Wellington Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Present around the World Competition on the 9th October. The competition was held at Beca's premises on Molesworth Street.

Abigail Arulandu was placed first, Dayna-Maree Kivell third, while Juan Rada-Vilella was fourth. Abigail will go on to compete in the national competition later this year, in which the winner will then compete in the Asia-Pacific Regional Finals with a chance to win £1,000.

Abigail's topic was magneto-rheological compliant actuator for stroke rehabilitation, Dayna's topic was ZnO films for ultrasonic transducers, and Juan gave a presentation on swarm intelligence for swarm robotics.

The Present around the World Competitions give engineering and technology students and young professionals an opportunity to share knowledge, and practice their presentation and networking skills by giving a ten minute technical presentation on the engineering or technology subject of their choice, followed by a five minute question and answer session.

All of our cohort of graduating Bachelors of Engineering students have gone on to find graduate level employment. This illustrates both the need for digitally focused engineers from our specialisations (Software Engineering, Network Engineering, Electronics and Computer Systems Engineering) and their quality.

Big-name companies, such as Google (Australia), GNS, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare and Aviat Networks, have all employed our graduates. Small (agile) companies and start-ups, such as Code to Customer, have also recognised the talents and transferable skills gained through four years of dedicated study. The breadth of jobs available to our graduates is amazing, e.g. working for the Ministry of Justice for their software and networking needs. The high technology and state-of-the-art nature of the jobs is illustrated by one of our graduates who has joined FNZ who are interested in 'enterprise cloud computing and services company in the wealth management sector'.

It is also really pleasing to note that five of our students have stayed on to indulge their passion for learning in Masters degrees. This has included attracting lucrative scholarships from companies (Im-able Ltd), government (TechNZ scheme) and the University.

With greater emphasis being placed on Graduate employment levels by government it is excellent to see the continued contact that our graduates have with the School and the Careers service who are available to assist both students and graduates in finding their perfect job.

Finally, if you are a prospective student wanting an awesome job after an awesome time at University, feel free to explore our site.

Or if you are employer searching for top level graduates, then please contact our careers service who can also provide details of our in-demand careers fairs.

On the 23rd of November 2011, ECS and VUW hosted 51 Year 10 girls from around the Wellington Greater Region as part of the annual Programming Challenge 4 Girls competition. The girls worked in pairs to complete a series of challenges developed by AUT in Alice. At the same time, teachers attended a Professional Development workshop learning about electronics and programming.

ECS graduate students and staff helped run the challenge: Harsha Raja, Shahida Jabeen, Bing Xue, Sharon Gao and Monique Damitio assisted in the labs, while Luke Frogley, Roma Klapaukh, Ian Welch and Stuart Marshall ran the workshop for teachers.

Gold medals were awarded to the following two pairs:

• Nicole Rennie and Rachel Wong (Samuel Marsden Collegiate School)
• Nadja Jury and Piper Biswell (Wellington East Girls College)

Silver medals were awarded to the following girls:

• Isabella Strang and Chanelle Doole (Sacret Heart College)
• Janice Chin, Bettina Dela Paz, and Anna Lin (Onslow College)
• Jialin Sae-Jin and Anna Singleton (Samuel Marsden Collegiate School)
• Samantha James and Gemma Burns (Wellington East Girls College)

Finally, bronze medals were awarded to the following girls:

• Anneka Wijetunge and Zahra Zanahir (Newlands College)
• Bella Wallace and Tulsi Wallace (Wellington East Girls College)
• Danielle Bettany and Pippi Sargent (Wellington East Girls College)
• Jess Dellabarca and Shannon Denham (Wellington East Girls College)

The prizes were kindly provided by Google and ECS. The gold medalists were also invited to attend a Girls Summer Camp hosted by Victoria University from 24^th – 26^th January 2012 for the top teams around NZ in the Programming Challenge 4 Girls. This event is being organised by Stuart Marshall.

ECS will be hosting the Programming Challenge 4 Girls again in late November next year. We highly encourage you to get in touch with Alex Potanin, the organiser of the challenge, for more information.

Like many teenage boys, Pippin Barr spent time playing games in arcades, rented SEGA games, and bought a Playstation when it became available. However, it wasn’t until he embarked on a Phd at Victoria University that he realised he could build a serious career around gaming.

He majored in Philosophy and Computer Science, and encouraged by his academic mentor, he went on to do his PhD research on human values in gameplay, graduating in 2009.

He is now a lecturer at Copenhagen University, where he teaches video-game design and programming, a position he describes as his “dream job”, despite the amount of marking involved.

Dr Barr will be back in Wellington soon to promote his new book “How to Play a Video Game”, which investigates the passion some people have for gaming, and tries to communicate something of it to those are aren’t gaming enthusiasts.

Click on the link below to read a Dominion Post article on Pippin Barr, dated 6^th December.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/capital-life/6088997/Lecturers-dream-job-much-more-than-just-kids-stuff