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.

Masters student Abigail Arulandu has been named as a finalist in the youth category of the Wellingtonian of the Year Awards. For her Master of Engineering project, Abigail designed and built a device to assist with the rehabilitation of stroke patients by helping then re-gain control and strength in their hand and arm muscles. New Zealand company Im-Able obtained funding from the Ministry of Science and Innovation for Abigail develop a prototype, and is currently working to patent and sell the device.

“The Wellys” are an annual celebration of the extraordinary contribution some Wellingtonians have made to their community, across a number of different sectors. The nine categories in the awards are arts, business, community service, education, environment, government, science and technology, sport, and youth. There are four finalists in the youth category.

The Wellingtonian of the Year Awards Dinner will be held in The Ballroom, Amora Hotel, on Thursday the 22^nd of November. The winner of each category will be announced, and then from these winners, the Wellingtonian of the Year award winner will be named. Past winners of the award include Peter Jackson, Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, and Father Des Britten.

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.

School of ECS student Matthew Betts led the winning company in Startup Weekend Wellington on 29th July. Along with SOAD student Max O’ Brien, he successfully pitched Questo!, an educational gaming platform which encourages student participation in homework. The first prize includes $10,000 advertising on TradeMe, $1,000 MYOB business services start-up package, a 3 month part-time desk based at Bizdojo, $500 cash from Hyperstart, and a US $200 voucher for Amazon Web Services.

Another ECS student George Davie was part of the runner-up company Mia’s Ideas, whose business was based on buying and selling pre-loved party décor online. Other VUW students who participated in the event include Thomas Caskey, Pauline Kelly, Hans Lim, Ian Loh, Matt Rollitt, and Earl Stewart.

Startup weekend is an event that brings together entrepreneurs, developers and designers for an intense weekend of pitching business concepts to participants, forming teams, developing ideas, market research, receiving coaching, and developing mock-ups, culminating in a final presentation on Sunday night, followed by judging and awards. A number of successful New Zealand businesses have arisen from Startup Weekend Wellington, including previous winners TranscribeMe and Usnap.us.

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

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.

Victoria University, including our School of Engineering and Computer Science, has demonstrated international excellence in research and has been ranked top New Zealand University for research under government backed criteria.

Victoria University has been ranked first in the 2012 Performance-Based Research Fund Quality Evaluation, which was published by the Tertiary Education Commission yesterday. A total of 27 tertiary education organisations were evaluated.

Our School of Engineering and Computer Science is delighted to be part of the top ranked group in Computer Science, IT and IS. This shows the broad range of subjects, such as information, technology, digital systems, computing, programming language development, cyber-security, gaming, artificial intelligence, communications and so forth, where we are a leading provider. We have a unique mix of offerings.

Please contact us to see where we are the best (please see research groups and staff pages). 70% of Victoria’s individual researchers are internationally or nationally recognised as being of high quality. This includes staff in the Engineering specialisations of Networking, Software, and Electronics and Computer Systems Engineering

The Vice-Chancellor Research, Professor Charles Daugherty acknowledged the hours of hard work put in by staff in assembling their research portfolios in order to achieve this result, and said it was a “wonderful day” for the University.

The top ranking will continue to enable the University to attract high achieving researchers from within New Zealand and from overseas. Please see our postgraduate pages for more details on how to join our exciting and leading research.

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/

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.

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 student brainpower is helping the Firefox web browser go faster. Victoria's School of Engineering and Computer Science has partnered with Mozilla Firefox's Auckland office to carry out research projects, some of which will help improve the performance of the world's second-most popular browser.

The collaboration was forged by Dr Alex Potanin, Senior Lecturer in Software Engineering, and internationally acclaimed New Zealander Robert O'Callahan who set up and runs Mozilla Firefox's New Zealand arm. The Auckland Mozilla office concentrates on hardware acceleration or improvements that allow browsers to quickly load big, graphic-rich websites.

Recent graduate Jan Larres, who came to Victoria from Germany to Complete his Master's degree, has conducted the latest project with his year-long research effort focused on accurate testing of the Firefox browser's speed. "Speed," says Dr Potanin, "is becoming one of the fundamental things that defines a browser. Google Chrome, for example, has a team dedicated to making its browser go as fast as possible."

Firefox is free, open source software meaning anyone around the world with enough skills and knowledge can contribute to its development. Mozilla carries out automated, round-the-clock testing to gauge which innovations from its community of developers are helping the browser run faster.

However, Jan, says even when two identical computers with identical set-up run the same tests, there are variations in the speed at which the tasks are completed because of "noise" or electronic interference. "That makes it difficult to judge which developments are really beneficial to the speed of the browser and which aren't."

Jan's research investigated how the Firefox product handles web browsing and the make-up of the software itself. He says some issues were relatively easily identified, such as the browser taking longer to load data for the first time than subsequent occasions when it loads information from the same source. Other issues, such as the complex scheduling that prioritises different actions a browser is performing, also have an impact but are harder to do anything about, he says.

In addition to giving Mozilla valuable new information about its testing programme, Jan carried out a statistical analysis that estimates how much variation in speed can be attributed to interference, allowing Mozilla to more accurately identify changes that are accelerating the browser. Mozilla recently flew Jan to the United States to present his findings To the annual get-together of its global development community.

Mozilla Firefox is currently the world's second most popular web browser, used by around 21 percent of people worldwide. Internet Explorer heads the list at around 50 percent, although its market share has been declining steadily in recent years. Google Chrome has a 15 percent share.

Dr Potanin says Victoria's relationship with Mozilla Firefox is giving students valuable, real-world experience. "Victoria hosts the leading southern hemisphere team with expertise in object-oriented programming languages. Robert O'Callahan's background as a programming language researcher at IBM's TJ Watson Research Center before joining Mozilla meant an existing collaboration with Victoria flourished once he opened a Mozilla branch in New Zealand. "As well as carrying out cutting edge research, students who work on projects for Mozilla often end up being offered a job, as the company's policy is to hire people who make a strong contribution to the development of its software."

For more information, please contact:

Dr Alex Potanin on 04 463 5302 or alex.potanin@ecs.vuw.ac.nz

Jan Larres on jan@majutsushi.net

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.

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+.

Teaching Robots to Navigate

Dr Will Browne (Senior Lecturer) and Henry Williams (PhD candidate) are researching ways to teach autonomous robots to learn to navigate themselves without human interaction. The process of a robot constructing a map of its surroundings and at the same time locating where it is positioned within that map is called simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM).

This research has important applications in a search and rescue situation, such as sending robots in to search collapsed buildings. Cheaper disposable robots could be used to map the building, and this information could then be used by a larger robot that is better equipped, say with a heat-seeking device.

Henry Williams is also working with a system called Rat SLAM, which uses visual inputs for map construction and localisation, e. g. the visual inputs from a 360° degree camera are weighted according to their usefulness, so images from the front of the vehicle, which change frequently are retained, while images of the sky or verges are discarded.

To listen to the broadcast and read the full accompanying article, click on the link below:

www.radionz.co.nz/ourchangingworld

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.

Henry Williams is a 22-year old Victoria student pursuing his PhD and making some great headway in the field of robotics.

His current research involves allowing robots to navigate unfamiliar environments and then create an internal mapping system that can be relayed to other robots. This essentially means the robot learns the most efficient way to get from A to B.

He holds first-class honours in a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Computer Systems, and received a Summer Research Scholarship and a Victoria PhD scholarship to continue his research into robot mapping systems.

What does his research mean?

The implications of Henry's research are that it may enable robots to share mapping information with each other to help them explore unstructured environments, such as collapsed buildings and potentially assist in rescuing people more quickly in disaster situations. Henry’s love of robots and electronics started young. He was a fan of Transformers, electronics and the movie Short Circuit.

He says his studies at Victoria had been a lot of fun:

“The lecturers are really cool. Everyone’s willing to help. Cool projects always going on and a lot of people to hang out with.” He also enjoys his weekly research group, where students can bounce ideas off each other about their creations, even for home projects. Henry’s supervisor Will Browne said of Henry: “He is a first-class engineering student who is as happy building robots and implementing the latest AI techniques on them as he is playing StarCraft or hockey in a local team.”

Along with his team, Henry is building robots that will compete in the 2012 National Instruments Autonomous Robotics Competition. Teams will showcase their robots against teams from top universities across Australia and New Zealand. The focus for the competition is ‘obstacle avoidance, object handling and navigation.

A bright future is ahead for Henry.

While at Vic, Henry was paid to go with a group of other students to present his research at conference in Australia about evolutionary intelligence. He also worked on a joint programme with the Queensland University of Technology. “Collaborating with guys in the top of my field was really cool,” he said. He has already been seconded to a top university research group in Australia and will continue designing, building and generating intelligence for state-of-the-art robots.

Henry has some parting advice for students intending on studying electronics or robotics at University.

“If you are interested in robots, study Physics and Maths—it may be boring at times but they are really useful”, he said. “If you can pick up any Electronics, Computing or anything relating to that, just go for it.”

And does he think that we should be worried about robots taking over the world?

“With current techniques of programming, it won’t happen ... but then again, who knows where we will be in 10 years?”

PhD Student Masood Mansoori has been awarded best student paper at the Australasian Information Security Conference (AISC) on how to scan networks in order to allow the automation of this creation of a network of "honeypots". He wrote this paper in conjunction with Hamid Mohammadzadeh from the University of Malaya and Dr Ian Welch from Victoria University.

Honeypots are computers that only exist in order to attract the attention of hackers and observe their activities. Ideally an enterprise should create a network on honeypot computers to hackers. Doing this is manually is a hugely time consuming task and so automated approaches have been suggested ("dynamic honeypots"). What Masood and his colleagues did was to experimentally test which was the best approach was to automatically discover the details of the real computers so that the honeypots would appear the same.

Australasian Information Security Conference (AISC) is part of the 2013 Australasian Computer Science Week (ACSW) and attracts submissions from Australasia and wider afield. This year, ACSW was hosted by the University of South Australia in from January 29 to February 1st in Adelaide.

A wireless vibration sensor being developed by a Victoria University student could provide a low-cost solution for engineers to monitor the damage of buildings affected by earthquakes.

The wireless vibration sensor built by Victoria University engineering student Daniel Tomicek.

Daniel Tomicek, a fourth year Electronic and Computer Systems Engineering student, has been working on the innovative device, which harnesses the kinetic energy generated by earthquakes, as part of his final year research project. The wireless sensor Daniel has developed is designed to be placed in several locations of a building to monitor the stress sustained by different areas during an earthquake.

The sensor harnesses the energy of the building’s movement during an earthquake to power itself, measuring the acceleration of the movement, and transmitting information in the form of data packets to an off-site computer. The data can then be used by engineers to help assess the extent of damage to the building.

When earthquakes occur, the energy harvested from the vibrations activates the wireless transceiver to transmit the data packets which contain the sensor’s identifier. The greater the vibrations, the greater the energy harvested and the more packets that are sent. The device uses minimal energy—so when there is no movement, the sensor simply does not operate.

Daniel has been working with Professor Winston Seah and Dr Ramesh Rayudu from Victoria’s Faculty of Engineering to develop a prototype which is affordable, and can be easily fixed to different parts of a building. Currently, no sensor exists in the marketplace that doesn’t rely on batteries or electricity supply to run—meaning Daniel’s sensor is a major step forward. “The biggest challenge has been figuring out how to make the sensor work from a cold start—how to ensure the initial packet of information was sent, given that earthquake movements begin so suddenly,” says Daniel.

He has been testing the sensor’s capabilities recently at Te Papa’s Earthquake House in its Awesome Forces exhibit, where the device monitored ‘earthquakes’ at the house over the course of a week. “Testing at the Earthquake House was a real success. The device managed to sense each earthquake and send packets of information for each one.” “Being able to use the exhibit was a very handy way of testing the device, and the staff members at Te Papa were really supportive.”

Daniel says he was inspired to create a kinetic sensor after a friend worked on a similar project during a summer research scholarship at Victoria University. He had also heard about applications being developed in Europe, where special springs added to dance floors in nightclubs can harness an electrical current generated by the movement of dancers, which is then stored in batteries and used to run devices.

Daniel is looking forward to graduating next year and doing some overseas travel, before applying the skills he has learnt at university in the workplace.

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

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.

This branch committee includes industrial leaders from such companies as GHD (an international network of professional and technical consultants employing over 6000 people), Opus Internet (International consultancy for infrastructure, architecture, construction, water, environment, asset development and management solutions.), Beca (an international employee-owned engineering and related consultancy services group), Transpower (owns and maintains the national electricity grid for New Zealand), Fulton-Hogan (a major trans-Tasman civil contracting company) and governmental departments. Brendan cites the excellent networking opportunities as one of the biggest benefits in his role with IPENZ.

Since the beginning of 2010, Brendan has become the Victoria University of Wellington representative for SENZ (Student Engineers of New Zealand). This is a new initiative by IPENZ to formalise student engagement throughout New Zealand. Together with students from other national universities, such as Auckland and Canterbury, Brendan is helping to facilitate industry to student interactions. This includes being awarded a grant to organise and host the inaugural SENZ event in Wellington.

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.

Skills in software development springboard for success

Michael Mudge thought it could have been a hoax when a Google recruiter contacted him after seeing his profile on the professional networking site LinkedIn, but his suspicions were unfounded. The Victoria University of Wellington computing graduate has taken up a position with Google in San Francisco after being headhunted by the owners of the world’s biggest search engine.

Michael initially studied Engineering at Victoria but switched to Computer Science three years into the four year degree. “Although computing is part of the Bachelor of Science degree, there’s a very close relationship between the Science and Engineering faculties at Victoria, so making the swap was easy.”

He went on to complete an Honours degree in Computer Science and enjoyed being involved in cutting-edge research. His topic was in the area of artificial intelligence where he set out to develop algorithms that would make the process of optimisation to evaluate functions simpler and more efficient.Michael became one of a select group of scholars to achieve First Class Honours in Computer Science.

Regarded as a technical maestro, Michael worked as a web developer and a software engineer for several up-and-coming companies after graduating. When Google came calling, he wasn’t immediately available but the company kept in touch and a rigorous round of interviews began in July last year. It culminated in a visit to San Francisco for five-hour long sessions with Google staff.

“It was challenging—I had to write code in front of them and answer questions about my thought processes and problem-solving techniques.” He passed with flying colours and has joined other new recruits from around the world as a Google software engineer and developer.Michael, who is nearly 25, says working for Google is a dream come true. “They’re the best. For a recent graduate, it’s as good as you can get.”

Michael attributes his success to motivation and going the extra mile. “If you want to be good you have to push yourself to succeed, and not just in one area. When you see high achievers, they are well developed people, excelling across a number of fields.”

Congratulations to Professor Rod Downey FRSNZ from Victoria‘s School of Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research, who has been selected to join the inaugural class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, in honour of his distinguished contribution to mathematics. He will be officially inducted at the world‘s largest mathematics meeting, the 2013 Joint Mathematics Meetings, in San Diego in January.

School of ECS senior lecturer Dr Robin Dykstra and his VUW colleagues Dr Petrik Galvosas (SCPS) and Dr Paul Teal (ECS) were awarded a grant of $880,000 per annum for 4 years from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's 2012 science investment round, the High Value Manufacturing and Services Research Fund. The grant will be used to support research in the field of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). This research will also be a collaboration with Massey University, New Zealand high-tech export company Magritek Ltd, and RWTH Aachen University in Germany.

The aim of the research is to progress nuclear magnetic resonance measurement science, analysis methods, magnet design and NMR electronic engineering. It is expected to lead to new hybrid analysis tools that will enhance process efficiency and quality, and the development of new export products in the core analysis, industrial processing, medical diagnostics, and pharmaceutical industries. Growth in these sectors will have significant benefits for associated New Zealand businesses.

The research will have four main areas of focus. The first is chemical spectroscopy, with the aim of making NMR spectroscopy more accessible to general chemists for routine measurement, and also developing the capacity for online chemical processing. The second is rock-core analysis, improving measurement and analysis for the oil/gas and geothermal industries. The third area is cancerous tissue detection, through development of NMR based hardware and methods that utilise the different morphology of cancerous tissue. The fourth area is Rheo-NMR product enhancement and protein structure determination method, through applying Rheo-NMR hardware and protocols to the measurement of Residual Dipolar Couplings.

It was with great sadness that the School of Engineering and Computer Science learned that Professor Paul Austin died in Cambridge, England on Saturday the 13^th October, following a long battle with cancer.

Paul joined the Faculty of Engineering part time in 2009 as Professor of Control Systems Engineering, while also holding a part time research post at Cambridge University Engineering Department. Professor John Hine remembers that “Paul’s experience with IPENZ and the accreditation process was invaluable in establishing the BE at Victoria”. He was also a member of the Communications and Signal Processing Group.

Paul obtained his BE (Chem) degree from the University of Canterbury, and his PhD from Cambridge University, England. He held senior academic positions at Auckland and Massey Universities during the late 1970s and 1980s, and was a Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge University. His main area of research was systems modelling and optimal control systems design for multivariable systems.

Paul also held a number of consulting engineering positions in the UK and Europe, and was a Director of a small high-technology company in Cambridge. In New Zealand, he developed and managed a joint research project with Industrial Research Ltd in partnership with CHH Kinleith and the Whakatane Board Mill. His particular interest in industry was the development of control systems to enhance energy efficiency and production, and reduce the use of chemicals. He was well known in the New Zealand engineering community, and will be sadly missed.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Dr Pavle Mogin recently retired from Victoria University of Wellington having served the department and faculty for over a decade, from 2000-2012. To help celebrate Pavle's retirement a small party was held with some speeches and a document as well as a tribute video was put together: A Tribute to Dr. Pavle Mogin.

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/

OMV New Zealand Ltd. Scholarships 2013

Postgraduate Study in Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Engineering

OMV New Zealand Ltd. is offering a scholarship of up to $10,000 for one academic year.

Candidates must be New Zealand citizens or residents enrolled in a New Zealand University institution or an internationally recognised overseas university institution, and involved in a project that is relevant to OMV NZ Ltd activities and policies.

Applications close 20th December 2012

For regulations and application instructions, click on

http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/admission/scholarships-bursaries-awards/other-scholarships/search-results/search-results_home.cfm?page=award_display&scholarship_id=886.

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

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".

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.

During the mid-trimester break 12-15 April 2010, ECS hosted the 8th New Zealand Computer Science Research Student Conference (NZCSRSC) on the Kelburn campus. The conference was organised and run by postgraduate computer science students from ECS. The aim of the conference is to promote and strengthen the nationwide community of ICT research students.

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".

There was an entertaining panel on what are your options once you have completed your masters or PhD degrees. The panelists ranged from people working in academia, government organisations, industrial research labs, startups, and large corporations. They gave the audience interesting insight into their careers since completing their PhDs and offered some good advice to follow such as networking with other people and think carefully about the kind of job you want to do once you graduate.

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 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 a powhiri and a performance by a local kapahaka group at Pipitea Marae, Google opening dinner, Pingar social night that involved ten-pin bowling, and Careers Industry Night where a number of companies were present to recruit eager graduate students.

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/

Paving the way for female Māori graduates

13 May 2013

Miria Royal doesn’t see herself as a trail blazer for Māori women but, as the first Māori female to be accepted into Vodafone’s Graduate Technology Programme, it’s a concept the Victoria University graduate is getting used to.

Miria, who will be awarded a Bachelor of Engineering tonight, says she feels a responsibility to other Māori women in the engineering and telecommunications field.

“It’s a bit intimidating to be set up as an example, but if I can open the door for other Māori women to come into this career then that would be fantastic.”

Miria, who is one of 10 in the Vodafone Graduate Technology Programme, started working in Vodafone’s Auckland-based optimisation team in February. “I’m working to maintain, manage and optimise the network to improve the customer experience in terms of coverage, speed and reliability.”

However, she almost missed out on a place in the programme, which has been running since 2008.

“I attended a tech users event, where Vodafone’s Chief Technology Officer, Sandra Pickering, was speaking. I introduced myself and told her I was looking for a job and even though applications for the graduate programme had closed, she told me to send in my CV.”

Four days later, the job was hers. “I was surprised at getting in, because I always thought graduate placements were for A+ students.”

Amy Oding, Leader of the Technology Graduate Programme at Vodafone, says Miria is “a star in the Technology Group”.

“She has displayed a high standard of engagement and her team leaders are confident she will make a success of her career at Vodafone. We are very pleased to have a female Māori graduate of this calibre,” says Amy.

Miria, who was born and raised in Wellington and is of Ngāti Raukawa descent, is following in the footsteps of her engineer father. “I did a two-month internship at 2degrees in Wellington which really cemented my enjoyment of technical engineering and the telco industry. The industry is so fast-paced and varied, it’s exciting to know that there’s always something new around the corner.”

After finishing the two-year graduate programme, Miria hopes to gain overseas experience in her field before returning to New Zealand. “I want to give back and technical engineering is one way I can do that.”

Miria will graduate with a Bachelor of Engineering tonight, Monday 13 May at 6pm. She will also attend Hui Whakapūmau, a celebration for Māori graduands at Te Herenga Waka Marae at Victoria University on Tuesday 14 May at 9am.

The Mark Dunajtschik Scholarship in Engineering was established in 2012 through the Victoria University Foundation. One scholarship is available, with a value of $20,000 over a three-year period.

To be eligible for selection, the applicant must have successfully completed year 1 and be committed to completing an engineering degree at Victoria University. They must have New Zealand citizenship or permanent residence, be able to demonstrate academic excellence and financial need, and preferably, German heritage.

Applications should be made to the Scholarships office, Victoria University of Wellington. The deadline for submission of applications is 1st October 2012.

Click on the link below for further information.

http://www.fis.org.nz/BreakOut/vuw/schols.phtml?detail+500628

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.

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).

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/

* IPENZ Networking Evening September 2012:

On the 5^th September, The School of Engineering and Computer Science with IPENZ were pleased to host a public seminar by Marcus King on the development of technologies for the rehabilitation of people affected by stroke. Research work into assistive robotics and human machine interaction, coupled with industrial professionalism, was expounded by an internationally renowned guest speaker.

Marcus King is a leading research engineer in the field of assistive technologies focusing on the use of information technologies during rehabilitation following brain injury or disease. He has received New Zealand Innovator of the Year 2011 and engineering excellence awards for his work in this field. His work is commercialised by a locally based international rehabilitation company, Im-Able Ltd. This company has a joint project with the School to develop the next generation of active assistive devices.

http://ecs.victoria.ac.nz/Main/ECSPostgraduateStudentWinsVUW3MinuteThesisCompetition

This work influences both undergraduate and Masters level study for students interested in biomedical engineering. The seminar was received enthusiastically by approximately 60 students, staff, IPENZ members and members of the public. It underlined the professional nature of the Bachelor of Engineering Degree which enables students to progress on to professional careers, e.g. in companies such as Fisher and Paykel Healthcare.

http://ecs.victoria.ac.nz/Groups/Alumni/AlumniStoriesBrendanVercoelen

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.

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 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!

An interdisciplinary group of researchers including Ian Welch, Stuart Marshall and Susan Corbett (Commercial Law) from Victoria University have received an $AU 186,000 grant to by write histories of the early digital age, and preserving key artefacts.

‘Play It Again’ is the project of a Flinders-led consortium of researchers concerned with the history and preservation of early software, specifically, locally-written computer games from the 1980s. Digital games make up a significant but little known chapter in the history of the moving image in Australia and New Zealand. Early software houses had a remarkable record of content creation and games were important in acclimatising the public to the then new technology of computers.

Despite this, surprisingly little is known about the history of these local digital game industries, the predecessors of today’s industry which earns billions of dollars a year. To date, digital games have also not enjoyed the care accorded other historic screen based media by national institutions, such as the National Screen and Sound Archive. The turbulence of the games industry – where many companies are short lived and firmly future oriented – partly accounts for why it has not undertaken archiving activities. Enthusiasts play an important role as informal custodians, however, an institutional collection and preservation solution is urgently needed, as without adequate preservation procedures, these digital heritage entities will be lost.

The School of Engineering and Computer Science has been working on the technical aspects of preserving games since being part of the formation of the NZTronix group in 2004. The group was formed by Dr Melanie Swalwell who first started researching the local histories of digital games in 2004, when she was a Lecturer at Victoria University. Concerned about the future prospects of the unique digital game artifacts she discovered, Dr Swalwell involved Ian Welch and Stuart Marshall as well as Susan Corbett from the School of Accounting and Commerical Law in the formation of an interdisciplinary team to research the social, legal and technical aspects of games preservation.

The current project builds upon the successes of this earlier work and involves researchers from VUW, Flinders University, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, the New Zealand Film Archive, and the Berlin Computerspiele Museum. The Australian Research Council is supporting the project over three years and has provided $AU 186,000 of funding. The team is highly multi-disciplinary, comprising Humanities scholars (Dr Melanie Swalwell, Assoc, Prof Angela Ndalianis, Helen Stuckey), Computer Scientists (Dr Denise de Vries, Dr Ian Welch, Dr Stuart Marshall), an intellectual property lawyer (Susan Corbett), and cultural heritage specialists (Andreas Lange, Dr Winfried Bergmeyer, and staff at ACMI and NZFA). They will undertake a diverse yet integrated plan of work relating to: the history of the local games industries; the collection and preservation of its products and supporting materials; the very important role of fans in this history; and the collecting, policy and preservation challenges such ‘born digital’ items pose for cultural institutions.

Digital preservation is a pressing issue of relevance to a range of areas and disciplines concerned with a digital past and its products. The project directly addresses the challenges that obsolescence of computer software and hardware pose for historic artefacts. The technical team will develop a source code converter so that software written in early dialects of the computer language, Basic, can be translated to the contemporary Java platform. This will make it possible for early games to again be played by the community. Meanwhile, the cultural and historical team will investigate the production and reception histories of early game titles. Much of this work will happen online, with fans, collectors and the general public invited to contribute to a purpose-built Popular Memory Archive.

Apart from the delivery of knowledge about the origins and products of this industry, and making early software accessible once more, the project will help to build capacity in both the academic and cultural sectors in the area of cultural heritage and the ‘born digital’. An international conference will be held on this topic in Melbourne in the second half of 2013. Knowledge transfer workshops will be conducted in Melbourne and Wellington, to share learning from the project with industry professionals.

Contact: ian.welch@vuw.ac.nz or stuart.marshall@ecs.vuw.ac.nz

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.

OpenFlow (an open source networking technology) research is currently being conducted at Victoria University of Wellington, UC Berkeley, UC Stanford, and University of Waikato.

Google has explained how it is revamping its network, which is ranked highly amongst large Internet service providers, using an open source networking technology called OpenFlow.

The Open Networking Summit 2012 was held on the 16th -18th of April at Santa Clara, California. Participants included representatives from US universities (UC Berkeley, UC Stanford, Georgia Tech, Princeton, Cornell), major network equipment vendors (Juniper, Cisco, HP, NEC, IBM, Extreme), and tech companies (Google, Deutsche Telekom, Verizon).

Steven Levy from Wired outlined Google’s plans, and Urs Höelzle, Google’s head of infrastructure, explained the technology behind OpenFlow. OpenFlow is the linchpin of Google’s network overhaul. It is an open source technology that separates packet switching and management. Network control is moved to servers.

The swap to OpenFlow was carried out data centre by data centre. Networking equipment was pre-deployed to take over half the capacity. Höelzle said that Google will make its own networking equipment, and already makes its own servers. Google’s routers power the G-Scale network.

Software expertise is key to Google’s ability to schedule traffic and Off-load work to regions. Google also needs to predict the time to move backups and other key tasks.

Höelzle also discussed the returns the company expects on its investment. The returns aren’t quantified just yet, but Google has hundreds of engineers working on the project.

Victoria University of Wellington is also supporting OpenFlow Research in conjunction with REANNZ through a Bootcamp to be held on the 7th May. The Bootcamp is aimed at giving participants practical experience at implementing OpenFlow, and will involve building and trouble-shooting an OpenFlow-based L3 router.

For more information, contact the engagement team at REANNZ. engagement@reannz.co.nz

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.”

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.”

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 researchers say that existing friendships on social media sites like Facebook could provide a reliable framework for long-term, regulated resource sharing. However, social networking would have to be combined with certain market controls like financial payments, social ranking, or credit trading to encourage appropriate behavior in such a setup, they say. Sharing within a network of friends, according to the researchers, could cut down on privacy concerns and certain inefficiencies inherent to conventional cloud computing.

The full article can be accessed at: IEEE Spectrum

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

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

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.

His final year studies include advanced mechatronics, a combination of electronic design, mechanics and software development. From implementing microprocessor control of range finding systems to the design of passive dynamic walking systems to autonomous robot path planning and artificial intelligence techniques for driving racing car simulations the subject provides a core foundation for varied and interesting careers.

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

A video clip demonstrating the MechBass robotic bass guitar designed by Victoria engineering student James McVay has attracted nearly 500,000 views on YouTube in just two weeks. The fourth-year student designed and built the robotic bass guitar, which sounds like the traditional instrument but looks like a stack of aluminium extrusions, illuminated circuit boards and a web of cables.

The idea was one of a number offered to Honours students for their full-year research topic and, says James, “it looked like fun”. James’ supervisor Professor Dale Carnegie gave him plenty of room to get creative and the resulting instrument is about one metre wide, 60 centimetres tall and is a full four-string bass guitar.

Being computer-controlled, James says the instrument is not bound by the limitations of a human player. “It can play much faster—it does 60 picks per second—and does other things on the strings a human hand wouldn't be capable of. “But the great thing is that if you weren't looking at it, you would think you were listening to a normal bass guitar.”

It turned out to be a bigger undertaking than James had anticipated—he estimates he has spent at least 1,000 hours working on the project. “There are over 800 bolts in it, lots of cables, and I spent hours designing control boards and laser cutting different designs and 3D printing them to see what worked and what didn’t.” But he’s happy with the result. “It’s quite fascinating to watch all these different components working together and producing good music.”

James and Professor Carnegie will present the project at the Electronics New Zealand Conference in Dunedin later this month.Next year, James plans to continue his studies at Victoria by completing a Master’s degree in Engineering. He will work with Professor Carnegie developing search and rescue robots.

To see James’ invention in action, the link to the YouTube clip is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UYMnzXQEtw.

New study shows kiwi call in perfect harmony

A group of researchers at Victoria University studying the little spotted kiwi are uncovering surprising results about our national bird’s behaviour.

Dr Andrew Digby, Dr Ben Bell and Dr Paul Teal [SECS] have conducted the first ever acoustic study of little spotted kiwi, New Zealand’s second rarest kiwi. Over a period of three years, they measured hundreds of calls made by a population of the birds living at the Zealandia sanctuary, in Wellington.

Their research has found that the kiwi, which live in pairs and are thought to mate for life, call in harmony with each other using a previously unknown form of vocal ‘cooperation’.

Dr Digby says the analysis demonstrates that, in contrast to what has previously been thought, size differences between male and female kiwi are not the sole cause of the differences in the frequency, or pitch, of the calls the birds make.

“Instead, male and female kiwi appear to call for different reasons, with male kiwi using their calls for long-range purposes, such as defending their territory from other kiwi, and female birds using calls for close-range purposes, like staying in contact with their partners.”

The researchers also discovered that male and female little spotted kiwi can synchronise their calls and have complementary call frequencies, meaning that when they call together they are more effective at repelling intruders. This is the first time such cooperation in frequency and time has been reported in bird ‘duets’.

The research has made up the focus of Dr Digby’s PhD, which is using kiwi calls as the basis for revealing more about kiwi behaviour and to help provide new tools for their conservation, and has recently been featured in the world’s leading ornithological journal, Ibis.

He is also investigating whether little spotted kiwi have a call ‘signature’ which can be used for identifying individuals, and is studying kiwi in different locations to see if unique regional dialects are developing.

“Calls are an important part of kiwi conservation since they provide an inexpensive, efficient and non-invasive way to monitor these mysterious birds,” says Dr Digby.

“But, we actually understand very little about why kiwi call, and the calls of most kiwi species have never been studied, so this research is important for helping us gain a better understanding of one of our national icons.”

Research collaboration between Victoria University and Zealandia has taken place over many years, and the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the two organisations in 2011 has established closer links. Areas of research have included native birds such as the little spotted kiwi, the breeding of tuatara and the study of biodiversity restoration and management.

For more information, contact Dr Andrew Digby, phone 021 183 5852 or email andrew.digby@vuw.ac.nz; or Dr Ben Bell, phone (04) 463 5570 or email ben.bell@vuw.ac.nz.

Issued by Victoria University of Wellington Communications & Marketing. Elizabeth Bush-King, Communications Adviser, can be contacted by emailing elizabeth.bush-king@vuw.ac.nz or phoning (04) 463 7458 or 027 563 7458.

Victoria University of Wellington: New Zealand’s most research-intensive university.

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".

e-Science consultant Kevin Buckley has been awarded a 2012 General Staff Award for providing technical support to researchers using e-research. Seven researchers across five schools and research centres supported is nomination. Within this group, Kevin was a co-author of two papers, and two of the researchers were recently awarded Marsden grants.

Kevin’s proposed citation commends him for consistently demonstrating “…both technical and inter-personal skills to help researchers to achieve their research goals by supporting their use of high performance computing. This has included both Victoria resources such as the Science Faculty HPC cluster and the ECS grid, and the BlueFern at the University of Canterbury. Kevin has consistently provided the support required by researchers and has clearly demonstrated how e-Research can help to deliver better research faster.”

Three ECS students were recently awarded prestigious academic prizes For 2012. The School of ECS congratulates these students for their well deserved success.

Aneta Stevanovic, who graduated with a BSc majoring in computer science in 2012, was awarded the Addison Wesley Prize in Computer Science. Aneta is starting her Masters degree soon, and says the prize will be very useful for purchasing the books she needs.

Renee Kwang, a third year BSc student majoring in computer science and mathematics, was awarded the Addision Wesley prize in computer science (200 level). Renee says being awarded the prize affirms that she made the right choice in giving up her previous job as a tax accountant to study computer science.

Mitchell Lane, a 4th year BE (Hons) student majoring in software engineering, was awarded the IET prize 2012. Mitchell says the prize makes the long hours of hard work he has devoted to his studies all worth while, and encourages him to continue giving 100% to his studies during his final year.

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.

At the SPLASH 2012 conference in Tucson Arizona, it was announced that Professor James Noble and Adjunct Professor Robert Biddle has won the award for the Onward! most influential paper from 10 years ago.

The 2002 paper, titled Notes on Postmodern Programming, argues that computer science and software design developed within the framework of Modernism, and uses “a series of snapshots, parodies, and imagined conversations” to challenge many of the values resulting from this.

SPLASH (Systems Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity) is the ACM conference that encompasses all aspects of software design and delivery. It has been the umbrella for both OOPSLA and Onward! Since 2010.

For more information about SPLASH:

http://splashcon.org/2012/

To read the paper in full:

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1052883.1052890

Abigail Rajendran, a Masters student in Engineering has won the Victoria University 3 Minute Thesis Competition. Abigail gave a speech based on her research project, titled 'Magneto-Rheological Compliant Actuator for Stroke Rehabilitation'. Her project involves using magneto-rheological fluid to design and build a compliant actuator that could be used to rehabilitate the hand of a person who has had a stroke. The device first repetitively exercises a person's hand in order to help them re-learn the muscle sensation and therefore regain control of their hand movements, and then creates resistance against the user’s movements, allowing them to build up muscle strength.

The 3 minute thesis concept originates from the University of Queensland, where the first competition was hosted in 2008. From there, the idea spread to other Australian and New Zealand universities, and the inaugural Australasian-level competition was held in 2010. The purpose of the competition is to give postgraduate students the opportunity to develop their academic and research communication skills by delivering a speech on their thesis topic that is aimed at an educated but non-specialist audience. Speakers are judged according to audience comprehension, audience engagement, and communication style.

As the winner of the VUW final, Abigail won $3,000 and gained the opportunity to attend the Australasian final at the University of Queensland in October. We wish Abigail the best of luck at the final in Australia and congratulate her on such a deserving project!

The ECS Mechatronics group, head by Professor Dale Carnegie, has developed a system of robots, called "rubblebots" for use in search and rescue situations. The impetus for the research was the failure of robots to find survivors in the World Trade Centre disaster zone after September 11th 2001. Dale Carnegie explains that robots subsequently developed for search and rescue are just too big and expensive, and are designed to do too much. When searching for survivors after a disaster, the first 48 hours are crucial. The ECS mechatronics group has therefore developed a hierarchical system of robots which are designed to perform specialist tasks, and cover a lot of ground as quickly as possible.

To read the full article which was posted on www.stuff.co.nz on the 4th April, please click on the link below:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/unlimited/8223268/Cool-Kiwi-science-Rescue-b

Abigail Rajendran - Victoria University 3MT Winner 2012

On 11th October 2012 I was honoured to represent Victoria University at the Trans-Tasman Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition, which was held at the University of Queensland at the Brain Institute. I spoke on my Masters project titled ‘Magneto-rheological compliant actuator for stroke rehabilita- tion’. The day started early with all contestants and supporters arriving at 8am. Contestants were mainly from Australia and New Zealand with a few from Hong Kong and Fiji. We were greeted with a delicious breakfast (including danishes YUM!). A room was allocated to contestants where we were briefed on the rules and how the competition and day would run.

We were broken up into four heats each containing 11 contestants and the two highest scoring in each heat went on to the finals. At the end of each heat certificates were presented to the contestants. Between heats we had a ten minute drink and food break. The contestants not competing in the current heat were allowed to attend the talk, held in a neighbouring lecture theatre, wander around or watch the online stream which was available in our room. Nerves were a little high all round and the quality of the talks was amazing. The topics ranged from law, to science through to the arts.

The judges had it cut out for them as it was extremely hard to fault anyone and it was very evident that everyone had practiced their talk more times than they would want to admit. At the conclusion of the heats the judges commended the quality of the talks and the eight finalist were chosen (sadly I was not one L), before we broke for lunch. Stress levels were reduced among those not in the finals, and students were able to get pointers off each other to overcome similar problems that were faced in their research. After lunch the eight finalists competed again and a new set of judges selected first place - Tim Paris, second place - Lauren Hollier and the audience chose the people’s choice - Tristan Simons, all did an awesome job!

Following the competition a cocktail reception was held where the winners were awarded their trophies and everyone had a chance to socialise (and eat more food!). Overall I had an incredible time, learning how to better my communication skills as well as learning about the vast range of research out there in under three minutes (beats having to read a thesis)! I would highly recommend this competition to anyone even considering it. Give it a go! It is a great experience and you won’t regret it.

What I learnt and advice to future students: firstly I was surprised by how few masters students there were as most the other competitors were PhD students (but don’t let that hold you back if you are a masters student!). Keep it simple! Although your research is probably second nature to you explaining it to a non-specialised audience is a different story. The less work the judges need to do to think and understand your talk the easier their job is (remember they had to listen to over 40 talks in the space of a couple of hours). In saying that, don’t water it done too much, people want to have learned something. Maybe have one strong idea/ point and make it relatable. Practice your talk to friends and family. If they can understand it, then you are on the right track. Explain why your research is important, who and how it will benefit those around you. Make it interesting, jokes work really well. Your audience should be left enlightened but also curious to know more. Enthusiasm is contagious, when you are clearly enthused and excited the audience and judges will be too!

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 to learn 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

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.

Abigail Arulandu didn't plan to study engineering at Victoria University but the opportunities it has brought her confirm she made an excellent choice.

After being roped into a speech competition for young engineers at Victoria, Abigail went on to win the Asia-Pacific final of the prestigious Institution of Engineering Technology event and is gearing up for the world finals in London.

The Engineering Masters student will also soon be representing Victoria at the Australasian final of the Three Minute Thesis speech competition.

In addition, Abigail has accepted a job as a product development graduate for medical device company Fisher & Paykel Healthcare and will start work for them next year after completing her Masters degree.

At secondary school, Abigail was interested in Criminology and planned to study it - until she attended an open day at Victoria and saw student-designed search and rescue robots in action.

"Seeing some of the amazing things being designed by engineering students inspired me to change my mind," says Abby.

When she started at Victoria, Abby had limited experience of computers and no knowledge of programming or electronics. It made her first year of study quite challenging but also exciting, and by her second year she knew she had found her niche.

Abby's research has been in the area of stroke rehabilitation technology. She designed and built a tool for rehabilitating the hands of people who have had a stroke. The device repetitively exercises a person's hand in order to help them re-learn muscle sensation and regain control of their hand movements and then creates resistance against the user's movements, allowing them to build up muscle strength.

Abby says working in the medical field is important to her because she wants to make a difference and help improve people's quality of life.

Success for Abby has come through determination, hard work and motivation.

"If I can do it, anyone can. If you put in the hard yards you start reaping the benefits-nothing comes easy in life."

School of ECS senior lecturer David Pearce was interviewed (mp3) for VBC Radio recently. VBC is a student radio station run from Victoria University’s Kelburn campus. The interview features a 60 second research seminar followed by a discussion of David’s research.

In the interview, David talks about his 3-year research project on Whiley, a programming language he has developed, and the need to improve programming languages to make then more reliable and more resistant to hacking.

David also explains how he became interested in computer programming, and the advantages of doing a 4 year professional engineering degree through Victoria university of Wellington.

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."

The All-Whites recently returned from a very successful World-Cup campaign, drawing with Italy, Slovakia and Paraguay to go undefeated. New Zealand soccer was thrust into the limelight when a late equaliser against Slovakia gave them an unexpected draw. This was followed up with an outstanding draw against the reigning world champions, Italy.

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.

An article published in the Dominion Post on the 4^th April highlights Victoria University's initiatives to demonstrate the how much fun computer science is, and the great careers that are available.

The computer science taught at Victoria University of Wellington covers building 'hybrid engines' rather than 'driving a car' - everything from creating your own programming language to app & game creation, or even how to defeat denial of service attacks (Much more than spreadsheets and word processing!). Please contact us for more information regarding forthcoming events for students and teachers.

( marketing@ECS.VUW.ac.nz)

Dr Stuart Marshall, with collaborators from the University of Canterbury, has recently won a grant from Google for this year's Programming Challenge for Girls, (PC4G) a competition which encourages Year 10 girls to explore computer programming. The local round and national finals were hosted at Victoria in November and December 2012. Please see (http://www.pc4g.org.nz/) for further details.

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

A Victoria University researcher’s investigations into improving the diagnosis and treatment of hearing defects will take a leap forward as a result of winning funding from the European Commission.

Dr Paul Teal, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering and Computer Science, is part an international research team that has been awarded €2.9 million (NZ$4.5 million) by the 7th Framework Programme for Research, which funds research and development that creates high quality knowledge.

The team will build a finite element model of the cochlea, a spiral chamber located inside the ear that turns sound vibrations into electrical signals which travel along nerves to the brain and allow us to hear.

Victoria is the only university outside Europe to have a researcher as part of the successful bid. Dr Teal’s inclusion is also exceptional because the Commission, which represents the interests of the entire European Union, usually only pays for collaborators based outside Europe to travel there, but not for their time.

Dr Teal, who receives nearly $188,000 of the funding, was asked to join the team because of his world-leading research into better ways of measuring the cochlear microphonic, which is the electrical signal generated inside the cochlea. His work could lead to the development of new techniques to more accurately assess hearing loss.

The project, which will provide a realistic, three dimensional model of the physics of motion in a working cochlea, involves researchers from six European universities and two European companies, including a team at the world-leading Institute of Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton.

Dr Teal’s input allows electrical components to be added to the model which would otherwise be only mechanical and acoustic. The cochlea project comes under the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) framework which is developing open source digital data on the entire human body.

Sections of the cochlea have been modelled before but no one has yet developed a complete picture. If the team succeeds, Paul says it will answer a lot of questions. “There is still a lot of dispute about how the cochlea even works. It’s hard to study because of where it is in the body and the complex processes at work.

“The fact that the data will be open source is important. The VPH framework allows observations made in laboratories all over the world to be included and analysed. The models developed as a result of that will ultimately be able to be matched against data about an individual to find out exactly what is taking place with a patient.”

Dr Teal’s research takes advantage of recent advances in electronics to find ways of collecting an electrical signal directly from the cochlea. He says the tests most commonly used to measure hearing loss at the moment are non-invasive and record the sounds the ear produces. “However they don’t define the full spectrum of sounds people hear, and the prescriptions given as a result are based on population averages rather than an individual’s condition.

“My vision is that we will one day be able to hook people up to a device that plays them tones and sounds and gives an automatic read-out on the make-up of the hearing aid they need. “Developing the first, full model of a working cochlea will bring us closer to realising that vision.”

Dr Teal will be working on the project for the next three years.

Congratulations to Syed Saud Naqvi for his Best Paper Award at the New Zealand Computer Science Research Student Conference 2013. This conference brings together the best young researchers in ICT in New Zealand.

Saud's paper investigated models of human eye movement. Humans concentrate only on small parts of an image at a time, termed fixation. Saud developed an existing biologically inspired model of how humans attend to a scene by using artificial intelligence to weight important aspects of the image. His method was compared with alternative artificial approaches and actual recordings of human eye movements, where he showed positive results in being able to predict human eye movement.

The practical applications of Saud's work range from developing fast camera systems for autonomous robots to predicting the best places for road signs to be mounted so that drivers notice them quickly.

The award carries a prize of $1500, which will be spent on assisting Saud with conference travel, was kindly funded by a donation to the conference from Google. This will enable Saud to present his follow up work that has been accepted for publication in the International Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2013), which is a top rated A international conference, to be held in Cancun, Mexico.

This is an example of Victoria's national and internationally leading research as recognised by the first place ranking in the recent research evaluation exercise. Doctorate scholarships are currently being offered for bright, hard-working and enthusiastic researchers to join the Evolutionary Computation Research Group and other world-class researchers.


NZCSRSC 2013 was the 10th conference in the series which started in 1992 and has now become a regular event in New Zealand.

The aim of the New Zealand Computer Science Research Student Conference is to establish and reinforce a nationwide community of ICT graduate students. It provides an opportunity for students to establish contacts and share their research with graduates from across New Zealand, and members of the wider community. Students will gain experience in communicating their research and participating in an ICT community by:

• submitting, presenting and reviewing research papers in a supportive and enthusiastic environment,
• participating in workshops dedicated to providing practical information for completing a successful graduate programme, and pursuing future careers in academia or industry,
• participating in a range of special events that get students in touch with like-minded people working in related areas within ICT, and
• hearing from leading ICT experts in a series of exciting invited keynote presentations

Another goal of the conference is to help support and encourage other students such as minority students, women, and Māori and Pacific Nations students with ICT research.

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.

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.

As New Zealand looks increasingly towards science and engineering to drive business innovation, Victoria University‘s Faculty of Engineering has made an important step forward for students in the field.

Victoria University's four-year Bachelor of Engineering (BE) programme has achieved full accreditation from the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand (IPENZ). The promotion from provisional to full accreditation marks the next stage in the development of Victoria‘s engineering programme, which launched in 2007.

Professor John Hine, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering says that Victoria's BE programme intentionally focuses on modern forms of engineering, specialisations that can respond to today's and tomorrow's needs. "We teach courses on the digital technology that drives the modern world, from electronics to software, and where there is a high demand for graduates in New Zealand." "I am delighted that the quality of our BE programme has been recognised with full accreditation from IPENZ, and that the Faculty received such positive comments"

The Faculty of Engineering has close links with leading technology firms in the Wellington region, and full accreditation recognises that Victoria's engineering programme is producing quality graduates to enter the industry.

"Students can be confident that completing their engineering degree at Victoria will provide them with an internationally recognised qualification, and will stand them in excellent stead on their paths to exciting careers as professional engineers,"says Professor Hine.

IPENZ commended several aspects of Victoria's engineering programme including its facilities and laboratories, the accessibility of staff, the level of pastoral care provided to students, and the confidence and positivity of graduates with respect to the programme.

The accreditation process involved a visit by a panel of engineers who spent several days looking at all aspects of the programme, talking to staff, students, graduates and employers and inspecting facilities.

Staff members in Victoria‘s Faculty of Engineering are recognised as having strong research credentials and links to industry, as well as having an excellent rapport with their students. The programme is taught in an environment with around 100 research and academic staff, PhD and Masters students, with world-leading research driving teaching and providing opportunities for undergraduate students to advance their interests.

The Faculty of Engineering is equipped with state of the art equipment, and new undergraduate project laboratories, situated in both the recently-opened Alan MacDiarmid Building and the newly-renovated Cotton Building.

About IPENZ accreditation

IPENZ, the professional body which represents professional engineers from all disciplines in New Zealand, manages the accreditation of all New Zealand professional engineering programmes. Full accreditation means that Victoria University‘s BE programme is taught to the standards set out in the Washington Accord, and that Victoria now stands equal with other professional New Zealand engineering programmes in terms of international recognition.

IPENZ accreditation provides graduates with international recognition through the Washington Accord. Other jurisdictions currently covered by the Accord are Australia, Canada, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong China, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey, the USA and the UK.

To learn more about IPENZ accreditation visit http://www.ipenz.org.nz

The Australian Computer Society (ACS) released the annual Australian ICT Statistical Compendium, showing strong demand for ICT jobs.

The report is a comprehensive analysis of statistical data about ICT economic and social trends.

• Value of digital economy in 2011 was $100 billion ICT
• demand forecasts 14,000 extra jobs in 2012 and up to a total of 35,000 by 2013
• University ICT annual enrolments down in NSW, VIC, QLD, WA & TAS

Alan Patterson, ACS Chief Executive, said the report confirmed Australia's urgent need for coordinated policy focus on ICT given its value and the demands in the broader economy for skills: "The digital economy contributed a significant $100 billion to Australia in 2011", he said.

"Although ICT demand is increasing even in uncertain economic conditions, the number of domestic students choosing ICT as a career is insufficient to meet demand for skills."

"Australia's Higher ICT education enrolments are under half of what they were a decade ago and are continuing to decline as a percentage of all higher education enrolments. With ICT demand of 35,000 extra jobs by 2013, promoting ICT as a rewarding career needs to be a top priority to ensure our developing digital economy is fully funded, sustained and competitive.

"Given the importance of the digital economy to Australia's economic prosperity, and its added value to business, health, education and other sectors, we hope addressing falls in ICT enrolments will be a key focus of 2012 government agendas.

"The compendium also revealed a drop in skilled ICT migration, suggesting Australia's ICT employment requirements cannot be met easily. To accommodate predicted demand, additional emphasis on local uptake of ICT is required," said Mr Patterson.

Strong ICT job demand is also evident in New Zealand, with 100% graduate employment for our first cohort of Engineers.

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

A passion for problem-solving leads brothers to collaborate on study and work

Seeing the interesting assignments his brother was doing for his Engineering degree at Victoria University of Wellington confirmed Alex Quinlivan’s decision to follow the same path. John Quinlivan is a third-year student and Alex is in his first year. Both are majoring in Software Engineering.

“We spent a lot of our childhood mucking about with computers and played our fair share of video games,” says John. “Eventually the passion for ‘how does it work?’ extended into the tertiary education field.”

Alex always knew he’d study computer science or engineering because he was drawn to computing and problem-solving.

“When decision time came, I was swayed by the interesting courses that my brother was taking, as well as some of the assignments, which looked like something I’d be keen on doing. The other drawcard was the sheer number of courses you can choose from for a Software Engineering degree at Vic.”

The first-year Autonomous Vehicle Challenge is one of the assignments that hooks students into Engineering, says Lecturer Dr Will Browne. Students have to make a vehicle using a micro-processing board, a gear box and a motor driver. Sensors are added to improve performance in a competition to see whose invention takes top honours.

The hand-sized vehicles—which range from mini-tank lookalikes to sand buggies and go karts—have to look good, be recyclable and able to complete physical tasks such as weight pulling, a drag race, a slalom and navigating a maze. “The challenge happens at the end of the first trimester so students are thrown in at the deep end, but it’s really popular and a great way to get students engaged in many aspects of engineering,” says Will.

Although Victoria’s Engineering degree is relatively new, having siblings and cousins involved at the same time is increasingly common, says Will. “Once other family members get to see some of the hands-on and fascinating projects Engineering students do, they get inspired to follow in their footsteps. “To recommend a university course to your own whānau is a pretty high recommendation.”

Although the Quinlivan brothers are at different stages of their degree they get to take some classes together. That’s because John was Alex’s tutor in the first trimester. “It was a bit of fun having my younger brother in the tutorial,” says John, while Alex enjoyed a few perks from living in the same house as the teacher. “I could hitch a ride in to the early morning labs that started at a ludicrous time of 9am which meant I didn’t have to get up early and wait for public transport!”

Studying engineering together has also deliver benefits outside of the university. John and Alex have developed applications for Android and iOS systems, along with a corresponding website, and already have projects underway with several small start-up businesses.

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/

On Saturday, the 11th of September, 2010, School of Engineering and Computer Science hosted the Wellington Site for the regional qualification round of the world oldest and most prestigious programming competition: The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. Victoria was represented by 5 teams of three students each. Four hours into a five hour battle, a Victoria team called DJ Tomato (Roma Klapaukh, Joshua Baker, and Daniel Atkins) was leading New Zealand with 5 out of 9 problems but the shortest time taken to solve them. Unfortunately, in the last minutes of the competition, a Christchurch team and two Auckland teams solved an additional problem each to edge DJ Tomato into a 4th place in New Zealand and 11th place in the South Pacific region overall. The other Victoria teams: Bunny on a Turtle (Victoria Ozorio, Amy Chard, Michael Homer), WUV (Carlton Downey, Michael Mudge, Hugh Davenport), Last Minute Entry 1 (Jiaen Xie and Ben Russell), and Bobby Tables (Simon Welsh, Chris Hall, and Melby Ruarus) came 6th, 7th, 10th and 13th in New Zealand respectively. A total of 16 teams from New Zealand took part and a total of 59 teams took part in the South Pacific region this year.

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.

At Victoria University on the 24th of November, 52 year 10 girls from 9 Wellington high schools took part in the 2010 Programming Challenge for Girls. This is an annual event held in various locations throughout New Zealand and around the world, and is designed to introduce year10 girls to computer programming. Dr Alex Potanin coordinated the Victoria University event.

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