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Open Day Schedule

Events take place from 10.30 to 14.30 on Saturday 7th February 2015.

Here is the schedule of activities:

10:30 - 11:00   Arrival registration and coffee  
11:00 - 11:30
Introduction to the Programme,
Prof Jeremy Gibbons

The Software Engineering Programme delivers one-week graduate-level courses in almost 40 different subjects. The Programme is aimed primarily (although not exclusively) at professional software engineers: courses are taught with a view to current and emerging practice and technologies, and the Programme's structure reflects the fact that its students often have to deal with many and varied competing pressures. In this talk, we will introduce the Software Engineering Programme and discuss its potential for providing benefits to its students.

11:30 - 12:00
Gaining confidence in future secure systems: the peculiar case of distance-bounding protocols,
Dr Cas Cremers

It is notoriously difficult to develop secure systems. Even the smallest systems have historically turned out to be vulnerable to attacks. One of the reasons for this is that we lack good methods to determine whether a system really meets our security requirements, and we therefore often resort to manual inspection.

One of our research topics is the development of methods that can be used to analyse the security of systems. Ideally, these methods are applied as early in the design process as possible. In this talk we present some of the work we performed on analysing so-called "distance-bounding" protocols. Such protocols are, e.g., a possible solution to relay attacks on contactless keys used in cars. Prototype implementations of such protocols are just starting to appear. What do we mean by a "secure" distance-bounding protocol? How can we be sure that a given protocol actually satisfies this property?

12:00 - 12:30
Semantics on the web,
Dr Nadeschda Nikitina

Since their advent, computers have been going through a rapid evolution process and have become an indispensable part of our civilization. Over the past century, they proved to be exceptionally useful for the management, acquisition and transfer of information, largely replacing printed artefacts such as letters, paper-based files, but also newspapers and books. The amount of information publicly available in digital form is growing at a breath-taking rate. Internet has developed into the key platform for information exchange. It is increasingly common to rely on online sources in our every-day activities, varying from shopping and cooking to planning leisure activities. For most companies, the ability to attract customers online has a direct impact on the market share. Also scientific research is becoming increasingly difficult without the corresponding information infrastructure due to information overload. In this talk, we discuss the role of semantics in the evolution of intelligent information technology.

13:00 - 14:30 Lunch, chance to ask staff questions  

Please let us know if you intend to come (whether or not you are staying for lunch), so that we have an idea of numbers.

Interviews will be held in the afternoon by appointment (for those candidates who have already submitted online applications and have been called for interview).

In addition to formal interviews, there will be opportunities throughout the day for informal one-to-one discussions with programme lecturers about your personal interests and aspirations for part-time study.

Read about the Programme, see some testimonials from past and present students, find out how to apply, look up directions to the Department of Computer Science, or register or ask for more information.