Ada Lovelace Day, 2011: http://findingada.com/

So it is Ada Lovelace Day 2011. This has turned into my Ada Lovelace Day blog, but this year I have decided I am happy with that idea! It is great to have a space to save my recollections on some great women in computing.

This year I want to tell you about a new hero of mine: Dr Annalu Waller. I only met Annalu3 years ago when I moved to the University of Dundee. Since then she has been a friend I can turn to whenever there are any issues worrying me at work. She has made me realise that a problem shared really is a problem solved!

In Annalu's words: "Dr Annalu Waller is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing at the University of Dundee. She has worked in the field of Augmentative and Alternate Communication (AAC) since 1985, designing communication systems for and with nonspeaking individuals. She established the first AAC assessment and training centre in South Africa in 1987 before coming to Dundee in 1989. Her PhD developed narrative technology support for adults with acquired dysphasia following stroke. Her primary research areas are human computer interaction, natural language processing, personal narrative and assistive technology. In particular, she focuses on empowering end users, including disabled adults and children, by involving them in the design and use of technology. She manages a number of interdisciplinary research projects with industry and practitioners from rehabilitation engineering, special education, speech and language therapy, nursing and dentistry. She is on the editorial boards of several academic journals and sits on the boards of a number of national and international organisations representing disabled people.

Her research interests include:

- Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC)
- User-centred design approaches to assistive technology
- The use of narrative based communication systems with young non-speaking children
- The impact of natural language processing on the development of AAC systems for non-speaking people
- Computer based language development systems for children with disabilities
- The development of Blissymbolics based systems as a tool for literacy learning
- Medical informatics

Academically speaking she has reminded me that when I design computer programs I should think about people who are not as geeky as me!

Did I mention that she has Cerebral palsy?

Ada Lovelace Day, 2010

So it is Ada Lovelace Day again. This blog is fast turning into the place where I post my annual Ada Lovelace article, I really must do something about that.

Last year I wrote a rather long post about one person who had really inspired me Prof. Barbara Smith. This year I am going to cheat and blog about a lot of the Women in Tech, who have taught me important lessons in the last years and try to recount why they are all superstars of technology.

The people I would like to introduce you to are BCSWomen. BCSWomen is officially: 'the BCS Specialist Group that provides networking opportunities for all BCS professional women working in IT around the world. The Group's main objective is to provide support for female IT professionals, as well as mentoring and encouraging girls/women to enter IT as a career.' In reality it is this and so much more, it is the group of people who help each other with technical queries, congratulate each other when it goes well and help each other out when it is not going quite so well. Many of these people I have never met in real life, yet I still feel honoured to think of them as friends.

BCSWomen also organises networking sessions and training, so that no women in computing has to feel too isolated through being a minority. We also try to encourage more women in to IT by organising the Lovelace Colloquium. This one day, UK-wide event for women students of computing has talks from industry and academia, a poster contest for students original work, a careers advice panel session and an evening social. It is free to attend and travel money is available for poster contest entrants

I have to add a disclaimer here that I am the current chair of the group, so bias about it's success. However, I really do believe that this thriving community is vital to women in computing. So I would like publicly to say thank you to the committee who are all fantastic technologist, they all give up their time to help other female technologists. Thank you: Cornelia, Liz, Lucy, Sue, Hannah, Sarah, Louise, Jo, Fran, Tina, Anne, Margaret, Maggie, Miki, Rachel, Jill, Beth, Marie-Anne, Lilly, Julie-Ann, Edewede and Reena.

A Women in Computing I admire - Barbara M. Smith

As you may be aware today is Ada Lovelace day (http://findingada.com/) the idea is to blog about a female who we admire in computing. I spent a long time thinking about who I should blog about today many people went through my head including, Sue Black, Wendy Hall, Ellen Spertus, Ursula Martin, Hannah Dee, Rebecca George, Gillian Arnold and Reeena Pau. Then I decided I should blog about the women who had effected me most in Computing. I thought about this for a long time than it struck me that the answer was Barbara Smith.

Barbara was my PhD supervisor. She is an expert in modelling in constraint programming (CP, for details see my previous post). Modelling means to take a real world problem and then to choose the variables, values and constraints that will allow you to solve the problem as a CP. Barabara's papers often take the form of: 'I tried to model it in the obvious way and it really did not work. So I made a few adjustments and then it worked a bit better. So then I turned the whole thing on its head found a radically different model and managed to solve a problem that nobody had previously solved.' The thought process needed to find the radically difficult model is astounding and something that I believe one Barbara can do.

Along with Ian Gent, Barbara Smith invented the Symmetry Breaking During Search (SBDS) algorithm which heralded the start of a whole new branch of CP research. Symmetry in a CP is when variables and or values can be swapped to find other symmetrical solutions. It use to be thought of as something that prevented you from solving a problem as you might have to search through many symmetric dead ends before finding a solution. SBDS is an algorithm which stops this from being the case. It dynamically places constraints when you find a dead end which stop you from visiting any symmetrical equivalents to this point. This algorithm meant that symmetry became a good thing to have in a problem as it gives you a handle on how to solve the problem and can be used to cut down the amount of search taken.

Prof. Barbara Smith is one of the unsung heroes of computer science. She has managed to juggle a career and a family extremely well. I particularly admire the way she coped with her husbands cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment a few years ago. She is an example to all women that it is possible to have a very impressive research record in Computer Science, be a good teacher and have a family.

So I said at the start I wanted to blog about the person who had the most affect on me. Why did I choose Barbara Smith? She was my PhD supervisor and gave me a lot of time and energy I do not think I would ever have completed (almost to schedule) without her help. Her SBDS algorithm was an inspiration too my PhD which was also on Symmetry Breaking in CP an area I still dabble in occasionally. However, most importantly I am now lucky enough to accredit Barbara and her husband as close friends.

Happy New Year

So it is the start of a New Year this seems like a good time to start a Blog. My plan for this blog is that it will show exactly what an academic in computing fills there days with. I am often asked in meeting with people from the IT industry, especially those regarding the British Computer Society what being an academic is like, hopefully this will answer their questions.

At the moment it is outwith term time so I am concentrating on research so in this first post I will explain my research area which is call Constraint Programming. 

Problems often consist of choices. Making a choice that is compatible with all other choices made and optimal is difficult. Constraint Programming (CP) is the branch of Artificial Intelligence (AI), where computers help us to make these choices.

A constraint program consists of a set of variables, a set of values for each variable and a set of constraints. For example, the problem might be to to fit components (values) to circuit boards (variables), subject to the constraint that no two components can be overlapping. A solution to a CSP is an allocation of values to variables such that none of the constraints are violated. The goal of CP is to find one solution, all solutions or a good (optimal) solution to a problem. 

If you are interested in the technical details than there is a good tutorial at: http://4c.ucc.ie/web/outreach/tutorial.html which I helped to write.