Category: Teaching

Why you should study Software Engineering / Af hverju hugbúnaðarverkfræði

Helmut Neukirchen, 7. June 2021

Studying Software Engineering is important because Software is the future and future is starting right now. And someone needs to create all this software that is shaping our future.

Software Engineering is more than just programming, it rather looks at big picture, namely the whole life of the software: from the start where you need to talk to customers to find out what software they actually need over to the actual programming, user interface and user experience, quality assurance and this is all guided by project management where you need to make people work together.

Software Engineering covers so many different aspects that students need to come from all kinds of different backgrounds:
female and male, those who are good at math, those who are good at communicating with other people, those who are picky about details, those who are creative. Essentially everyone!

When you start studying Software Engineering, you do not need to be able to program: you will learn that in our courses. But you need to be able to talk to other people and at the same time do not fear thinking like an engineer, such as doing math and applying systematic processes!

The nice thing about developing software is that only your imagination is the limit: you can create everything just by turning your mind into code and then it runs and you can see it immediately working. This is so rewarding!

Studying Software Engineering at the University of Iceland is very practical: you do not only learn the theory, but also apply it in the courses. For example, in our Bachelors program, there is a Software Engineering project that spans a whole full year.

Those who graduate from here, will find easily a job at a good salary and can work in fact in all kinds of different fields: be it banking, insurance, health, industry, administration, tourism, gaming, even arts:
simply everywhere, Software is nowadays needed!

Further information

If you want more information on our Software Engineering programmes:

Bachelor (B.Sc.)

Software Engineering (Hugbúnaðarverkfræði)

Master (M.Sc.)

Software Engineering (Hugbúnaðarverkfræði) Update from 2024: -- we added recently the specialisation in Cybersecurity

Ph.D.

And of course, you can also do a PhD in any of these programmes. Before you apply, contact a professor: either by a personal visit or -- if you are located abroad -- by writing an old school paper letter (professors get hundreds of email with PhD applications where it is obvious that the same email was written to many professors and thus, these email are considered as spam -- but a paper mail makes an impress)!

If you rather want to study Computer Science or Computational Engineering

While the above text was intended to convince you studying Software Engineering, you might still be interested in our other programmes:

Bachelor (B.Sc.)

Computer Science (Tölvunarfræði) -- we have a specialisation in Data Science (i.e. AI) and added 2023 the specialisation in Cybersecurity.

Master (M.Sc.)

Computer Science (Tölvunarfræði)

Computational Engineering (Reikniverkfræði)

Salary

For a salary (typically distinguished: base salary and overall salary with the typical amount of paid overtime – overtime is not always paid, though) outlook, you can find surveys on Icelandic salaries at unions (stéttarfélag), e.g.:

  • VR (starfsheiti “Tölvunuarfræðingur”)

and at professional associations, e.g.:

In addition there is also on interesting blog post on the different companies and their salaries (Netherlands -- Iceland might be different).

But be aware that salary alone is not everything, but work-life balance counts or that big and old companies are typically less chaotic (i.e. have well defined procedures) which may give you as a beginner more guidance, but you might at the same time fell more restricted.

HÍ eða HR, tölvunarfræði eða hugbúnaðarverkfræði / University of Iceland vs. Reykjavik University, Computer Science vs. Software Engineering

Helmut Neukirchen, 5. March 2021

HÍ eða HR / University of Iceland vs. Reykjavik University

Often, the question arises whether University of Iceland (Háskóli Ísland (HÍ)) or Reykjavik University (Háskólinn í Reykjavík (HR)) is better for studying Computer Science (tölvunarfræði) or Software Engineering (hugbúnaðarverkfræði).

In my experience both universities do not differ that much -- on the surface things might look different, but when you look closer, they are not that different. As an example: HR advertises 3 week intense courses to apply the theoretical foundations learned in earlier courses, whereas at HÍ, the application of the learned theory is built into the courses themselves: either as a project at the end of each course or a project running even throughout the whole course semester.

However, there is one difference (in addition to paying high tuition fees at HR): the diversity choice of courses from other disciplines. At HÍ, you can take non-CS or non-SE courses as part of your studies -- and these can not only be other STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) courses, but also, e.g., foreign languages. As HR is quite limited in the number of course due to their limited number of study programmes, HÍ has a big advantage there.

Tölvunarfræði eða Hugbúnaðarverkfræði / Computer Science (CS) vs. Software Engineering (SE)

Another question is about the difference between Computer Science (Tölvunarfræði) and Software Engineering (Hugbúnaðarverkfræði): while both are in essence about programming, Software Engineering goes beyond as it has the "big picture" in mind -- not only, e.g., the big picture of a software architecture, but also related to management, e.g. project management and quality management. For example, SE students take courses from Industrial Engineering on project management and quality management (in addition to software quality management offered by me). When it comes to stakeholder relations (one of the biggest problems in software project are unclear requirements where the developed software does not meet the needs of users) and to user experience, SE requires many soft skills -- including psychology (e.g. work psychology and human-computer interaction and usability).

One might be tempted to say that CS is maybe for the nerds and SE for those who can talk to people and lead projects. But in fact, SE is not solely about soft skills, but you need both: soft and hard skills. Being an Engineer is an officially licensed professional title and as such, the regulations that apply to the contents of any Engineering programme in Iceland apply as well to Software Engineering, e.g. taking a certain amount of Math and Science courses which is the exact opposite of soft skills. So, to be a good Software Engineer you need to have both talents: people and tech.

Note that even if you enroll in our Computer Science programme, it allows so much freedom in selection of courses that you could take the same courses that a Software Engineering student has to take. (However, in this case, you will not be entitled to apply for a license as professional Engineer as you did not study any Engineering, but a Science, namely Computer Science.)

Further information

If you want more information on our programmes:

Bachelor (B.Sc.)

Computer Science (Tölvunarfræði) -- we added recently the specialisation in Data Science

Software Engineering (Hugbúnaðarverkfræði)

Master (M.Sc.)

Computer Science (Tölvunarfræði)

Software Engineering (Hugbúnaðarverkfræði)

Computational Engineering (Reikniverkfræði)

Ph.D.

And of course, you can also do a PhD in any of these programmes. Before you apply, contact a professor: either by a personal visit or -- if you are located abroad -- by writing an old school paper letter (professors get hundreds of email with PhD applications where it is obvious that the same email was written to many professors and thus, these email are considered as spam -- but a paper mail makes an impress)!

Erasmus+ Exchange Computer Science University of Iceland / skiptinám tölvunarfræði Háskóli Íslands

Helmut Neukirchen, 10. February 2021

The Computer Science department of the University of Iceland is part of Erasmus+ and as such it is possible to have exchange of students (and also teachers) with other universities abroad (incoming and outgoing).

For an exchange, a bilateral contract between the two universities needs to be set up. Currently, we have the following contracts, but new contracts can be set up on demand:

Johannes Kepler University Linz
University of Antwerp
ETH Zürich
Universität Duisburg Essen
Georg August Universität Göttingen
Technical University of Munich
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Université du Luxembourg
University of Groningen
Lodz University of Technology
Glasgow Caledonian University

In particular for German speaking universities, I can serve as a contact point.

Master in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or Computational Engineering

Helmut Neukirchen, 24. April 2020

We have some overview videos for students who are in interested to enroll in our Master (M.Sc,) programmes in Computer Science (Tölvunarfræði), Software Engineering (Hugbúnaðarverkfræði), or Computational Engineering (Reikniverkfræði):

Master in Computer Science (Meistaranám Tölvunarfræði)

Master in Software Engineering (Meistaranám Hugbúnaðarverkfræði)

Master in Computational Engineering (Meistaranám Reikniverkfræði)

Other means of remote communication with students

Helmut Neukirchen, 15. March 2020

Discussion forum: Piazza

Most Computer Science teachers uses since years the discussion forum Piazza.com that is tailored for university courses. Students can ask there, e.g. anonymously to lower the bar, questions concerning lectures, assignments, organisational issues, etc..

Instant messenger: Riot

For your PhD students, you may want to have a means of remote communication between email and phone: a chat/instant messenger.

  • If you are fine with awkward to use software and have money (or your institution used tax money to pay), you can use Microsoft teams,
    • Caveat: Microsoft, one of the biggest cloud computing providers on Earth, cannot deal with increased load due to COVID: check status
    • If you just need the chat and all your team members have anyway access, it is fastest to use Microsoft Team for this.
  • if you sold your soul (and data) to, e.g. Facebook, you can of course use their messengers.
  • if you like easy to use software and have money, you can use Slack,
  • if you like easy to use software and are convinced that free and open-source software is better, you use Riot: https://riot.im. Riot runs in the browser and has mobile apps.

As with all instant messengers: disable instant notifications -- they distract too much. Instead look only after messages when you do a break/switch between tasks. If your PhD students have something really urgent (the lab is on fire), they can still call you.

Using video conferencing tools for remote teaching

Helmut Neukirchen, 15. March 2020

Note: re-visit this page from time to time as experience from teaching in the Computer Science department is added.

Students seem to be satisfied with our Zoom approach (feedback, paraphrased for legal reasons):

The teachers in the department of Computer Science handled the shift
to remote teaching very well. Every teacher did her/his best and the
Zoom lectures are going well. Teachers have a positive attitude concerning
the new teaching style which is very encouraging that we will be able to tackle the coming weeks.

I attended different classes: both Teams and Zoom were tried and Zoom is
better. In some classes it is even better than showing up.

Note concerning Microsoft Teams

It is irresponsible that university teachers are told (by people who never delivered remote lectures for university courses in practise) to use Microsoft Teams for remote lecturing: Teams was never intended for remote lecturing (Microsoft Word is called Word, because it is a word processor -- does Microsoft Teams sound like a synonym for remote teaching?) and is therefore simply the wrong tool (and in addition awkward to use: you need a 3 h course to learn it) -- rather use Zoom! Teams is as well also the wrong tool for ad-hoc meetings with people who are not part of your team! There are better tools for small, but easy to use ad-hoc video meetings.

Whatever tool you choose, remember to make it accessible to everyone. If it does not use standards such as HTML (=runs in browser on whatever system which typically even makes it usable by visually impared), take care that your tool can be used via Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and also mobile platforms, i.e. Android and iOS. (The advantage of the mobile platform is that audio always works there, whereas Linux, Mac OS X, or Microsoft Windows sometimes cause trouble with audio devices, e.g. students do not have a microphone for their desktop computer to ask questions, but their mobile phone has for sure a microphone.)

Zoom

Our premier tool for giving whole interactive remote lectures is via Zoom. Request a full license from our UTS IT department to get rid of the 40 minute limit of the free version (and e.g. be able to record to automatically upload to Panopto).

  • Highly recommended reading: detailed slides on using Zoom for lecturing (check for updated from time to time) by my colleague Matthias Book.
    • The setup is as follows: you do screen sharing to share your computer screen that shows, e.g. slides, and you use your webcam to record you, e.g. in front of a whiteboard (use a good, thick black pen). If you have a separate webcam you can also let it point to a sheet of paper on which you write. Instead of a separate webcam, there is also software to connect your mobile phone to your computer and is it as webcam.
      If you record to the Zoom cloud (non-free license only), you get these as two separate videos that you can then combine via Panopto (Create, then Build a session).
    • If you record only one stream (e.g. recording not the cloud but via the Zoom client itself), then take care to disable screen sharing while you want to show something with the camera, e.g. the whiteboard. (Otherwise, the single created video will contain only the screensharing.)
    • An example, where only one stream is recorded can be found here. Note that this has been recorded as a single stream only -- while watching life via Zoom, studentw can choose whether to see the webcam or the screenshare in full form. But in the recording, when recording localy, the webcam view will only be a small thumbnail in the recorded video while screen sharing is active. So deactive screensharing for those parts where you want to have the webcam view recorded in full size.
    • Matthias is currently working on a tutorial video (check this page later again).
  • Some practises of using Zoom for lecturing (time will tell whether these are best practises)

Jitsi Meet and Whereby running completely in the browser for easy-to-use smaller meetings

While Zoom is great for many attendants, you need to download, install, and start a client (Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows) or app (Android, iOS). While you can enable to run in the browser (e.g. set a checkmark when scheduling), it crashed in my browser after a view minutes.

For smaller meetings, e.g. meet ad-hoc with a single student, consultation times, or a teaching assistant meeting with only a handful of student, you may want to avoid the hassle of Zoom to create/schedule a videoconference session and downloading a client or app.

In this case, you can use video conferencing tools that simply run in a browser and do not need any pre-scheduling of videoconference sessions. There are mainly two alternatives that each have there strengths and weaknesses: Whereby and Jitsi Meet.

Please recommend these tools also to students in order to still talk to each other daily in learning groups or just to have fun.

Jitsi Meet for easiest and somewhat bigger meetings that run in Chrome browser or special mobile apps

  • Pro: no account needed, no artifical limit to 4 users, open-source (=possible to install your own server), has some extra features (recording, blurring background, etc.)
  • Con: other browsers than Chrome not well supported (they work, but sometimes video freezes), mobile browsers not supported at all, but apps are available, open-source (=if you use the free server provided by the open-source project, it may not handle a lot of load and might be limited to 1.5 h sessions)

Jitsi Meet meet runs in the desktop browser (apps on mobile platforms) and you need no account, i.e. you can immediately start by just agreeing on a URL and typing it in!

To give it a try, the base URL is https://meet.jit.si/
just agree on a room name, append the room name to the base URL and enter it into your browser, e.g https://meet.jit.si/MySuperDuperMeetingRoom

There is no easier way to do a videoconference then with Jitsi Meet! (At least if all use Chrome as browser/have the mobile app installed.)

ensemble.scaleway.com French Jitsi meet installation

Should the above Jitsi meet server be overloaded (and you are OK with a French as default for the changeable language user interface), you can use https://ensemble.scaleway.com/.

There, click on Lancer une réunion to get a random server and room name. If you like, you can change that room name and even use always the same randomly assigned server name to end up with a fixed URL, e.g.: https://v-4110.ensemble.scaleway.com/MySuperDuperMeetingRoom

Once running, you can switch the language: click on the three vertical dots (bottom right corner), then on the gear wheel for the settings, then on the Plus tab, at Langue, choose Anglais.

Whereby for easy small meetings that run in any browser

  • Pro: works with almost all browsers, possible to lock a room and require students to knock to make you let them enter the room or put them on hold if you are still busy with other students (e.g. consultation time queue)
  • no account needed, no artifical limit to 4 users, open-source (=possible to install your own server)

  • Con: account needed for host, free version artificially limited to 4 users.

If you do not have more than 4 participants (including you), whereby.com runs completely in the browser (all common desktop browsers, on mobile platforms the standard browsers)

The one who hosts the conference room needs an account, everyone who joins using the URL does not need an account.

Panopto / Recording for Panopto with a (Linux) screen recorder

  • HÍ has info on Panopto
  • While Panopto allows a live webcast, it has a delay which prevents interaction with students. So we do not use this feature, but use Zoom for live interaction and record that with Zoom and upload the Zoom video to Panopto.
  • Linux users can use a screen recorder and upload the created file to Panopto (Note: Panopto even does optical character recognition of every pixel that is recorded, so you video becomes searchable). If you anyway use Zoom (the client works nicely on Linux), you can also let Zoom record to a file and upload that to Panopto.
  • Research has shown that screen recordings where you still see a video of the presenter are viewed more than without presenter. One way to achieve this is to record via Zoom which then embeds the presenter video into the recorded shared screen (or enable in settings on the Zoom web page "Record active speaker, gallery view and shared screen separately" to get separate files). Another would be to use https://studio.opencast.org/ that is a purely web-based recording software and allows to record camera and screen into separate videos that you can then upload to Panopto by creating a single session that combined the two videos.
  • If you recorded already in the past and want to re-use recordings now:
    • be aware that Panapto orders by default by recording date. But you can re-order them and asks students not to order by recording date, but by "order". (Unfortunately, UGLA shows videos always ordered by recordings date -- so make students aware of that.)
    • Note that Panopto sometimes forgets the encoding of old videos (black screen, only audio), but by re-processing it you can get it back: see this video for problem and solution description (audio is distorted: audio recording level was set too high).

Some Best Practises

We have a daily short videoconference to exchange experience in remote teaching (these videoconferences are via Zoom, so at the same time it is a practise in using Zoom; furthermore, instead of being home alone with family, it is good to see colleagues) and after one week of remote teaching we had a separate videoconference with students to get feedback from them and to let them know that our department is with them.

Using Gradescope for transforming easily your paper-based homework into online assignments

Helmut Neukirchen, 15. March 2020

Update: now that everyone has Canvas, you can easily sync Canvas and Gradescope with respect to student roster and assignments:
when creating an assignment in Canvas, select as assignment type/tegund skill the type external/ytra and then type in "Gradescope" and let Canvas search for Gradescope and select then "Gradescope" from the results list.

See how to sync Canvas and Gradescope.
(And ignore those parts below that only apply when you do not sync with Canvas...)

The Computer Science department of the Iðnaðarverkfræði-, vélaverkfræði- og tölvunarfræðideild (IVT) of Verkfræði- og náttúruvísindasvið (VON) uses already since 2015 Gradescope for an easy online assignment submission by students and for extremely convenient and time-saving online grading and feedback by teachers.

Both students and teachers love it (e.g. in the 2019 IVT self-evaluation, the students explicitly requested more usage of Gradescope and independent from that the teachers requested IVT deild to spend money to get a full license). IVT deild has paid for a full-feature institutional license that everyone who registers with hi.is email can use for free in 2020. (Update: due to COVID-2019, Gradescape just made all features anyway available for free.)

The approach of Gradescope is that you can keep your traditional approach (so changing to Gradescope is really easy):

  • For assignments/homework during the semester, students upload on their own their solutions: either taking a photo of their paper solution or (as anyway most students typeset their solution electronically) upload a PDF of their solution, and mark on their own where on the uploaded pages the solution can be found.
  • Final exams are done as usual on paper, but the teacher defines boxes where to fill in the answers so that Gradescope knows where to look for the answers and the teacher scans later in and uploads the exam solutions to be able to use the convenient online grading features.
  • In addition, pure online assignments/exams are supported, i.e. instead of uploading a solution, students answer some web form.

Image copied from https://www.gradescope.com/

If you have any questions, you are welcome to contact Helmut Neukirchen. But first have a look at the info below:

Demo videos (each 2-3 minutes):

Teacher creating assignment

Student submitting assignment

Teacher grading submission

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based image recognition to group solutions that look similar and should thus all get the same grading

E.g, in a course with 40 students, grade the 20 completely correct assignments with one click, the 10 assignments that make all the same mistake with one click, and the 5 empty assignments with one click, so that only the remaining 5 assignments need your attention.

Gradescope is easy

As you see, this is all very easy and a natural (but faster) extension of your paper-based assignment workflow.

(Note that my experience is based on Computer Science assignments and exams, where answers typically fit on one page, but grading is even fun for programming assignments where source code submissions are long. But if you scroll one page down on https://www.gradescope.com, you see also Gradescope being applied to other disciplines than Computer Science.)

As long as not every course uses Canvas, students need to be manually added to their Gradescope course.

  • Either let students enroll themselves, by letting the students know about an entry code (Gradescope generates it: everyone can register with this code for your course)
  • or you as teacher manually upload the list of students as comma-separated values (CSV) format: just export in UGLA your student list in Microsoft Excel format, open in a spreadshet, export there as CSV and upload to Gradescope (double check that names containing special Icelandic characters are correct, i.e. try different CSV exports such as Unicode characterset).

Teacher adds students to course roster

Entry code for students to self-enroll (no video, screenshot only)

You can also add dæmakennarar/teaching assistants (TAs) to a course to let them grade using Gradescope: you just need to clarify who grades what or create separate courses for each TA. (While Gradescope supports the notion of sections=dæmatími groups, sections can currently only be set when populating the roster via CSV, but not web-based using entry code or a teacher later adding single students.)

Getting started

If you want give Gradescope a try, just go to https://www.gradescope.com, sign up (select University of Iceland and use your hi.is email address), create a dummy course and assignment. If you like, you can also add a dummy student using your private email address and play around.

The above features are only the most basic features of Gradescope, for more check:

For your info: IVT deild has paid for the Institution license, i.e. you have all features. (Except for the integration with Canvas that we can only do next semester when all course use Canvas.)

While we paid for 1500 students only, we are allowed to have as many students as we need in 2020 (in 2021, we might then have to pay for the number of students of 2020, so either HÍ as a whole adopts Gradescope or IVT deild convinces Gradescope that 2020 was exceptional -- they anyway started to give out free licenses because of COVID-19).

Computer Science department and DEEP-EST project at UTmessan 2020, Icelands biggest IT fair

Helmut Neukirchen, 10. February 2020

Our new colleague Morris Riedel gave on 7. February 2020 a presentation on Quantum Computing (slides / video) at UTmessan 2020, Icelands biggest IT fair. In addition, the Computer Science Department ran on the public visitor day (8. February 2020) a booth: beside student projects, we showcased research projects, e.g. DEEP-EST.

The DEEP-EST project

For showcasing the machine learning that we do in the DEEP-EST project, we offer a web page that allows you to use the camera of your smartphone (or laptop) to detect objects in real-time. While neural networks are still best trained on a supercomputer, such as DEEP-EST with its Data Analysis Module, the trained neural network even runs in the browser of a smartphone.

https://nvndr.csb.app/

Just open the following web page and allow your browser to use the camera: https://nvndr.csb.app/.

(Allow a few seconds for loading the trained model and initialisation.)

The used approach is Single Shot Detector (SSD) (the percentage shows how sure the neural network is about the classification) using the MobileNet neural network architecture. The dataset used for training is COCO (Common Objects in Context), i.e. only objects of the labeled object classes contained in COCO will get detected. The Javascript code that is running in your browser uses Tensorflow Lite and its Object Detection API and model zoo.

If you want learn more about DEEP-EST, have a look at the poster below (click on the picture below for PDF version):

PDF of DEEP-EST poster

Experiment on Google search results for Tölvunarfræði, Hugbúnaðarverkfræði, Reikniverkfræði, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computational Engineering

Helmut Neukirchen, 11. November 2019

As the Department of Computer Science is hidden within the Faculty of Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science, the visibility of the Department of Computer Science is somewhat hindered, in particular when navigating from the University of Iceland's home page.

The University of Iceland has some Icelandic and English web pages specific to our study programmes. The question to be investigated is whether at least a Google search for the Icelandic terms Tölvunarfræði, Hugbúnaðarverkfræði, Reikniverkfræði, and English terms Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computational Engineering yield the study programmes of the Department of Computer Science at University of Iceland.

Therefore, you find below the Google search results for these search words, using Google search (from an Icelandic client IP address which heavily influences the search results) on 11.11.2019. According to Google's page cache, https://uni.hi.is/helmut was last visited 8 Nov 2019 16:33:03 GMT, so the search results documented by screenshots below are most likely based on the that date, i.e. before this blog post was created.

If you read this page later, you are welcome to compare (assuming you browse with an Icelandic IP address as this influences Google's search results) whether the search results changed (to some extent this might then be due the links contained in this blog post and you might call this search engine optimisation).

Update 13.11.2019: According to Google's page cache, Google has visited on 12.11.2019 this blog entry and on 13.11.2019, the order of search results did not really change (except that for the search term Computer Science, the first hit that used to be a Wikipedia page disappeared and instead, a Feature Snippet appeared and thus, all other hits got one place better; for Software Engineering, the first two hits pointing to Wikipedia's entries for Software Engineer and Software Engineering swapped places). As the search results did not change significantly, I added therefore on 13.11.2019 a few more links pointing to University of Iceland study programme web pages.

Update 14.11.2019: According to Google's page cache, Google has visited this page again on 13.11.2019 (Google's crawling adapted to the frequency of updates of my page) and on 14.11.2019, however this seems to have been before the 13.11.2019 update. Still, the ordering for some search results has changed: For the search term Hugbúnaðarverkfræði, the University of Iceland's page on Hugbúnaðarverkfræði climbed up from 2nd to 1st place. Also for the search term Software Engineering, the University of Iceland PhD programme page got a push (even though it is not linked at all in this blog post).
One explanation might be that this blog seems to have a small influence Google's search results (the order for search term Hugbúnaðarverkfræði changed, but not for search term Computer Science). A single page having such an influence could be explained by the small number of web pages referring to the University of Icelandic web pages for the study programmes Tölvunarfræði/Computer Science, Hugbúnaðarverkfræði/Software Engineering, Reikniverkfræði/Computational Engineering.
Another explanation would be that the Google page ranking algorithm was changed at the same time. Future work would be to repeat this experiment with links to the respective PhD programme pages that are currently not linked at all in this blog post.

Search result for Tölvunarfræði

On 11.11.2019, the Google search for Tölvunarfræði gives as first hit the University of Iceland page for Tölvunarfræði that is linked in this blog post:


Search result for Hugbúnaðarverkfræði

On 11.11.2019, the Google search for Hugbúnaðarverkfræði gives as second hit the University of Iceland page for Hugbúnaðarverkfræði that is linked in this blog post:


Search result for Reikniverkfræði

On 11.11.2019, the Google search for Reikniverkfræði gives as second hit the University of Iceland page for Reikniverkfræði that is linked in this blog post:


Search result for Computer Science

(Note: scrolled beyond a Featured Snippet box.)

On 11.11.2019, the Google search for Computer Science gives as fourth hit (after scrolling) the University of Iceland page for Computer Science that is linked in this blog post:


Search result for Software Engineering

(Note: scrolled beyond a Featured Snippet, People also ask, and a Video box.)

On 11.11.2019, the Google search for Software Engineering gives as fourth hit (after scrolling) the University of Iceland page for Software Engineering that is linked in this blog post:


Search result for Computational Engineering

(Note: scrolled beyond a Featured Snippet and a Video box.)

On 11.11.2019, the Google search for Computational Engineering gives as second hit (after scrolling) the University of Iceland page for Computational Engineering that is linked in this blog post:

PhD Defense Standards-based Models and Architectures to Automate Scalable and Distributed Data Processing and Analysis

Helmut Neukirchen, 7. October 2019

Shahbaz Memon successfully defended his PhD thesis in Computer Science on Standards-based Models and Architectures to Automate Scalable and Distributed Data Processing and Analysis. The thesis covers Scientific Workflows and middlewares for High-Performance Computing and High-Throughput Computing.

PhD defense announcement

This PhD is an example of the collaboration between the Faculty of Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science and Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC).

PhD candidate, opponents, dean, and PhD committee

Members of the PhD commitee were Morris Riedel, Helmut Neukirchen, and Matthias Book, opponents were Ramin Yahyapour and Robert Lovas. The head of faculty, Rúnar Unnþórsson, was steering the defense. While we have some on cultural diversity involved, we need to improve on gender diversity! More photos can be found on flickr.