16 December 2009

Computing showcase for college students and school pupils

Photo opportunity: 1-2pm on Friday, December 18th. Senior school pupils and college students from across Tayside and Fife will be demoing games at the Queen Mother Building, University of Dundee.

Around 250 senior school pupils and college students will descend upon the University of Dundee on Friday to discover the wide range of exciting computing projects taking place at the institution - specifically research into computer gaming.

This year’s School of Computing Christmas Lecture event will allow pupils studying for their Higher or Advanced Higher in Computing at schools and colleges across Angus, Dundee, Fife and Perth to hear from a range of staff, students and external speakers.

The theme of the event is ‘Research in Games’, and will showcase the spectrum of work being carried out at the University relating to various kinds of gaming. The lecture takes place at the Dalhousie Building from 9.30am - 12.30pm on Friday, December 18th.

The lecture will be followed by a practical lab session at the state-of-the-art Queen Mother Building, where pupils will have the chance to demo the games they have just heard about. Dr Karen Petrie, lecturer and event organiser, said the lecture was a great opportunity to reach out to local school pupils and college students.

'We’re sure they will enjoy the day, and we hope it will encourage them to consider coming here to study,” she said. “We do a wide range of research in computing here, and a high number of our graduates have gone on to work in the games industry, either in Dundee or further afield.'

'We’ve got an exciting programme of events for the visitors, which will highlight to them the type of things available at the School of Computing. It’s also a chance to showcase the wonderful, cutting-edge facilities we have here at the Queen Mother Building.'

The day will begin with Dundee graduate and research assistant Kris Zutis explaining how his system for monitoring card-counting in Blackjack works. Dr Deb Fels, a visiting academic from the University of Ryerson in Toronto, will then discuss how games can be developed for users with disabilities to widen access to technology.

Dr Petrie will explain how Artificial Intelligence can be used to automatically create games before undergraduates Laurence Hole and Chris Brett round off the morning session by talking about 'Zandrok', the 'massively multiplayer, real time strategy game' that they developed.

Both the morning lecture and the afternoon demo sessions promise to provide the pupils with an exciting, informative and entertaining insight into the world of games and computing.

For media enquiries contact:
Grant Hill
Press Officer
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384768
E-MAIL: g.hill@dundee.ac.uk
MOBILE: 07854 953277