Graduate Kyle's future looks Orange
Since graduating with a BSc in Information Systems from Newcastle in 2008, Kyle Mayne has gained his MSc in Human Computer Interaction from Lancaster and has now returned to the North East as an Interaction Design specialist with digital media agency Orange Bus. Recent news reports in the Newcastle Chronicle and Northern Echo have charted Kyle's progress.

Northern Echo story

My Great North Run interactive launched...
Great North Run interactive at the Great North Museum HCI group members Tom Bartindale, Rachel Clarke and John Shearer (with help from Jack Weeden, Dan Jackson and others) have produced the Great North Museum's summer exhibition interactive My Great North Run -- a collection of stories, pictures and memories celebrating thirty years of the Run. It is a unique collection of people's experiences and is growing all the time. The exhibit is a whopping nine metres long. Thirteen interactive screens make up the route of the run. Each screen represents a mile and maps people's experiences of different places and years. Stories, pictures and memories have been developed by visitors, both online and in the Museum. As part of a visit, people can access their stories, pictures and memories already created, or can make their own using Anoto digital pens. The exhibit will run until 17th October 2010.
Rock 'n' Roll 'n' Computing Science
Twins Graeme and Daniel Ross, who were both awarded BSc Honours Degrees in Computing Science, couldn't attend the July 2010 graduation ceremony since they were in the USA trying to get a record contract.

Journal Live, 7 July p21

Best paper award for Dr Andrey Mokhov
Dr Andrey Mokhov, together with the collegues from the School of EECE, Arseniy Alekseyev and Prof Alex Yakovlev, have been awarded the best paper award at International Conference Application of Concurrency to System Design (ACSD 2010) conference, for the paper entitled "Automated Synthesis of Instruction Codes in the Context of Micro-architecture Design".

ACSD conference serves as a forum for disseminating theoretical results with application potential and advanced methods and tools for the design of complex concurrent systems. ACSD 2010 was 10th conference in the series, and was held in Braga, Portugal, June 21-25, 2010, see the web-site of the conference.

Outstanding paper on Tabletop Learning
School of Computing Science PhD student Ahmed Kharrufa's paper ``Learning Through Reflection at the Tabletop: A Case Study with Digital Mysteries'' received the outstanding paper award at Ed-MEDIA 2010 in Toronto (World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications). Although Ahmed's is near completion of his studies his work with Professor David Leat in the School of Education. Communications and Language Sciences (ECLS) and Patrick Olivier has been the inspiration for a number new PhD projects. With 5 academics and 8 PhD students exploring learning at digital tabletops within the new CS/ECLS collaboration iLAB:Learn, Newcastle has established itself as the largest research cluster exploring this new learning technology that is set to revolutionise classrooms worldwide.
Prestigious appointment for Prof Koutny
Professor Maciej Koutny has been elected to the prestigious position of Chair of the Steering Group of the Petri Net Conference from July 2011.

This annual international conference, which has been running for thirty years, is one of the top conferences in the world. The steering committee is responsible for the International Conferences on Application and Theory of Petri Nets, including selection of organisers, PC members, invited speakers, tutorials and workshops, etc. The committee also supervises other activities of the Petri net community, such as the Advanced Courses on Petri Nets, the Petri Nets Newsletter, and the Petri Nets Mailing list and Web-pages.

This is a central leadership role for the international Petri Net community and its activities, and reflects the long-standing and international reputation that Professor Koutny has established in this research area.