The Women's Postgraduate College for Internet Technologies (WIT) at the Faculty of Informatics of the Vienna University of Technology and the Austrian Computer Society (OCG) invited to:

How to Get a PhD in Informatics?
The Need for Hypotheses in Informatics

Alan Bundy
University of Edinburgh

When: Where:

Tuesday, June 28th 2005 9:30 - 12:00 + Vienna University of Technology Informatikhörsaal 1040 Wien, Treitlstraße 3, Ground floor

After the event

About 80 guests came to listen to the author of the Researchers Bible.

Photos
Transparencies "How to Get a PhD in Informatics?" "The Need for Hypotheses in Informatics"

Video coming soon (needs Quick Time Player)

Abstract

"How to Get a PhD in Informatics?" This practical guide to the pitfalls and obstacles to getting a PhD in Informatics is based on the "Researchers Bible": a living document originating in the Department of Artificial Intelligence at Edinburgh and based on the accumulated and hard won experience of a wide range of researchers. Learn about "postgraduate diseases", their diagnosis and cure.

"The Need for Hypotheses in Informatics" All branches of science and engineering advance by the conjecturing of hypotheses and the accumulation of evidence to support (or refute) them. This is also true of Informatics, but explicit hypotheses are rarely stated in Informatics papers and evaluations of Informatics systems and techniques are rarely linked to such hypotheses. Our hypothesis is that this neglect of explicit hypotheses is the root cause of much of the poor methodology and rejected papers and grant proposals in Informatics. We will give examples of the kinds of hypotheses that arise in Informatics and the kind of evidence that is required to evaluate them.

Bio

Prof. Alan Bundy was educated as a Mathematician, obtaining a 1st class honours degree in Mathematics in 1968 from Leicester University and a PhD in Mathematical Logic in 1971, also from Leicester, under the supervision of Prof. R.L. Goodstein. Since 1971 he has been at the University of Edinburgh: initially in the Metamathematics Unit, which in 1972 became the Department of Computational Logic, in 1974 was absorbed into the new Department of Artificial Intelligence and in 1998 was absorbed into the new Division of Informatics. From 1971-73, he was a research fellow on Prof. B. Meltzer's SERC grant `Theorem Proving by Computer'; in 1973 he became a university lecturer; in 1984 he was promoted to reader; in 1987 he was promoted to professorial fellow; and in 1990 he was promoted to professor. From 1987-92 he held an SERC Senior Fellowship. From 1998-2001 he was Head of the newly formed of Division Informatics at Edinburgh.

Prof. Bundy's research has entailed the building of a number of problem solving programs for different branches of mathematics, namely number theory, algebra, mechanics, ecological modelling and logic/functional programming. He is the author of a book on the automation of mathematical reasoning, the editor of three books on artificial intelligence and joint author of one book on ecological modelling and one on the social impact of knowledge-based systems. He has been sole or joint holder of 39 EPSRC, SERC, Alvey, ESPRIT or ESRC grants and is the sole or joint author of over 140 published papers and books. Prof. Alan Bundy has co-authored the article The Researchers Bible.

His home page is available at http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/bundy/

Target Audience

Ph.D. students
Scientific advisors of Ph.D. students
Students who are doing their bachelor's or master's theses
All people who are interested

Contact person at Vienna University of Technology

Dr. Beate List, list@wit.tuwien.ac.at, Tel. 58801-18830

Funding

WIT is funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Science, and Culture (bmbwk) and the European Social Fund (ESF). This event is sponsored by Erste Bank.

Note

Attendance free!
After the talk there was the opportunity for an informal exchange of opinions at the buffet.