Information Engineering Research Unit blog

As part of the dissemination activities of the Organic.Edunet project, IE member Salvador Sanchez-Alonso was interviewed today for the Protagonistas (Main characters) program in Punto Radio Henares. His talk dealt with the benefits of semantic searches and the application of the technologies created by our group and used for the educational domain in the LUISA project and now to the organic agriculture domain.

The full interview can be heard by clicking [here]

Miguel-Angel is visiting KTH to act as the opponent in the PhD dissertation of Fredrik Paulsson.

Ambjörn Naeve with Miguel-Angel at the entrance of KTH.On top of them, the Kerberos. In Greek Mythology, the Kerberos is a nice animal (three-headed dog with a serpent’s tail, a mane of snakes, and lion’s claws) which guarded the gates of Hades. He was posted to prevent ghosts of the dead from leaving the underworld. Sounds like a job. Since at KTH there are no ghosts (or a least they are not apparent during the morning) it is said that the Kerberos is guarding the workpeace of the researchers inside.

It is really curious that are two Kerberos in the entrance, and the one in the right (not in the picture) has small pig-like mammaries. So there is one male and one female! The artist wanted to save the species, which is someting remarkable given the large amount of endangered species nowadays. Herakles was sent to fetch Kerberos forth from the underworld as one of his twelve labours. Sometimes it looks that we are wrestling the Kerberos in the field of Web technology research since when we have a head controlled, the others are bitting us.

The dissertation of Fredrik Paulsson Ph.D. was the second day at 10.00 am.

Miguel-Angel and Fredrik during the Ph.D. dissertation. Miguel-Angel plays the role of the opponent, so criticizing the Ph.D work and asking questions (row above, left). Fredrik replies and defends the validity of his positions (row above, right).After the opponent is satisfied with the discussion, the committee starts a question round (right). This procedure is not common in Spain, but it fosters a much deeper discussion than only having a round of questions from the committee.After the deliberation of the committee, Fredrik received the good news that he got his Ph.D. It was a really good dissertation. Now we wish Fredrik a productive and exciting academic career!

The week starting on 19th May, Daniel Rodríguez is going to cover “Algorithms for Data Mining and Information Retrieval” at Reading University. This module is done twice a year and in the past we have also taugh “Object-Oriented Analysis and Design” and “Introduction to Web Services”. We are also trying to expand our collaboration with research proposals and other academic collaborations.

Reading University has one of the nicest campus in England, including its Harris Garden. Below, a picture of the Computer Science Department.

Below, Daniel visiting the supercomputer with Ashish Thandavan. It is at the 85th position with 20051GFlops (http://www.top500.org) and a bit further down in the list of the top green computers (with 239.55kW).

Today Jesus Soto, a lecturer of the Pontifical University of Salamanca who regularly collaborates with our group, successfully completed his PhD dissertation. The ceremony was held in our base camp at the Polytechnic building (University of Alcala). His work was about the application of semantic technologies and mechanisms to learning object repositories, with the aim of providing flexibility and enhancing search capabilities.

It was also a perfect opportunity to meet old friends, who gathered around for the occasion. It was particularly emotive the reunion of the so-called “gangrena group” (see snapshot above), formed by previous co-workers at the Pontifical University of Salamanca. From left to right: Miguel A. Sicilia, Juan Manuel Dodero, Hector Castan and Salvador Sanchez-Alonso.

In the snap just above these lines, the new doctor with his supervisors and some members of the PhD committee after celebrating the good news in La Cupula, a nice restaurant in the old town of Alcala de Henares. From left to right, Ainoha Serna (committee), Elena García (supervisor), Ana Fermoso (committee), Jesus Soto (man of the day), Juan Manuel Dodero (committee) and Salvador Sanchez-Alonso (supervisor).

This morning I (Miguel-Angel) gave a talk on “evidence-based instructional design” at the Rectorate building of the University of Alcalá. The event consisted in a round table with several reports on classroom innovation experiences. There were several interesting reports of teachers highly commited to their students, and a thought-provoking discussion afterwards.

I talked about our latest pre-post study on teaching the Model View Controller pattern.

Below some of the participants having lunch after the event. In the right, Carlos Barriuso (Prof. of Law, Univ. of Alcalá, organizer of the event), Arturo de las Heras (Council member, Universidad a Distancia de Madrid) and me. In the left, Alberto Domingo (Prof. of Molecular Biology, Univ. of Alcalá), Asun Miró (Faculty of Medicine, Univ. Extremadura), and Conrado Miró (Prof. CEU University, Seville).

The UOC papers journal has just published an article on the Open Research Society (ORS):

http://www.uoc.edu/uocpapers/6/dt/eng/lytras_sicilia.pdf

The ORS is an international NGO devoted to opening research: its results, methods and social practices. Yet another “open access” initiative? Not at all, it was thought to be something different, complementary to open access in scholarly publishing. The paper tries to capture the foundational spirit of the ORS, but the society is still work in progress, since it will be its members that hopefully will give it its concrete short-term objectives!

Some of the members of the group are on board of the newly created Spanish chapter of ACM SIGCSE.

The Spanish University system is facing the renewal of its degrees to adapt to the “Bologna process“. This group aims at becoming a place to discuss on how the new curricula and ways of teaching and learning will impact computing studies in a broad sense (be them Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems or any other related discipline).

The Web site is here: http://www.sigcse.es/ and there will be a first meeting at Salamanca this year.

Members are sought!

I (Miguel-Angel) formed part of the committee evaluating the Ph.D. dissertation of Erla Morales (April 24th 2008), about pedagogy, quality and learning objects. You can get an idea of the work presented by reading this paper (coauthored with her two Ph.D. supervisors):

http://www.jucs.org/jucs_13_7/improving_lo_quality_through

It was a really good dissertation and I enjoyed discussing on issues as reusability, context and quality of leaning resources and metadata. After the dissertation we had a really nice dinner at restaurant La Hoja.

Since the dissertation was friday at 18. 30, I went with my wife and two kids to Salamanca. Saturday morning I was with Miguel-Angel (my son) visting the rests of the Church of San Cebrián, known as the “Cueva de Salamanca” which is surrounded by legends and mysteries. It is said that the devil was something like a “professor” of black arts at that cave, contrasting his with the teachings of the University. The place gives you an extrange feeling, if you have the opportunity go and visit it, especially in the night!