Third Annual Queen's School of Computing Awards

On the afternoon of April 13, 2011, a large crowd gathered in the Goodwin Hall Art Gallery on the occasion of the Third Annual Queen's School of Computing Awards ceremony.

Professor Selim Akl, Director of the School of Computer said “this event is an opportunity for us to recognize excellence in various forms of endeavor, an opportunity to celebrate the contributions of those of us who distinguished themselves through their exceptional work, and an opportunity to say thank you to those who made a difference in our lives. It is certainly the most enjoyable part of my job”. 

Eight awards were presented, with five going directly within the graduate community. Congratulations to you all.  The award winners were:

Excellence in Teaching Assistance Award: Eric Rapos (M.Sc candidate) -This award is presented by the undergraduates
School of Computing Ph.D. Research Achievement Award: Hossain Shahriar.
The purpose of this award is to recognize Ph.D. students who achieved significant research results: quantity and quality of publications, patents, and commercial products.

Hossain is rapidly emerging as an internationally renowned young researcher in the area of program security. In 2010, Hossain has published or received acceptance letters for 5 journal articles, he is the first author in each of the papers. One of the articles is in ACM Computing Surveys which has one of the highest impact factors in the area. Hossain has been invited to present tutorials on program security vulnerability mitigations in 2011 at  ACM SAC 2011 (a leading forum on applied computing ACM SIGAPP), and at ISSRE, the major conference of the IEEE Reliability Society.

School of Computing Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award: David Sears. 
This award is presented to the student who was judged by his or her examiners and by the graduate committee to have produced a thesis that is exemplary in its content and presentation.

David's thesis titled "The computational power of extended Watson-Crick L systems" investigates a biologically inspired formal language model, called Watson-Crick L systems,that was originally introduced in 1997. The model extends the power of developmental systems by a control mechanism inspired by DNA complementarity. David proves that these systems are computationally universal. David's MSc thesis contains original results in theoretical biocomputing that he presents at the 10th International Conference on Unconventional Computation in Finland in June. Currently David is a PhD candidate in the School of Computing.

School of Computing Graduate Student Distinguished Service Award: Andrew Dickinson.
The purpose of the award is to recognize graduate students who contributed to the School of Computing with outstanding service while maintaining excellent academic performance and research contributions.

Andrew is an enthusiastic and committed student who has constantly shown his pride for the School of Computing, and Queen's. While maintaining an excellent academic standing, he has acted as a leader in showcasing his group's research to an extensive group of visitors, including VP-Research, and the Associate Deans of Graduate Studies and of Arts and Science. Andrew has volunteered his time generously to recruit graduate and undergraduate students to the School of Computing (the events include the Fall Preview, Fall Open House and the Queen's Graduate Computing Society conference).

Andrew takes his role of providing service to the School enthusiastically and executes it with perfection.

Award for Distinguished Graduate Supervision: Ahmed Hassan
Runner Up (and former award recipient): Jim Cordy

COMPSA Howard Staveley Award for Teaching Excellence: Nick Graham
Runners Up (and former award recipients) Dorothea Blostein and Dave Dove

School of Computing Distinguished Service Award: Laurie Truman

Award for Outstanding Contribution to School Life: Melissa Trezise

http://www.cs.queensu.ca/aboutus/highlights/put_item.php?year=2011&highlight=schoolawards.php