The FICT Postgraduate Colloquium (April and December 2014)

The FICT postgraduate colloquium is a bi-annual event for postgraduate students of the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology to exchange ideas and gather feedback on their research progress and findings. It also serves as an opportunity for students to refine their presentation skills.

Through this interaction, postgraduate students in FICT are expected to gain exposure on different fields of research undertaken by students in the faculty. Each year, the centre organizes two such colloquiums. The first colloquium was held in April 2014:

Date: 21th April 2014
Time: 9.00am - 1.05 pm
Venue: N109, UTAR-PK

A total of 9 postgraduate presented their work in the colloquium. There were 4 sessions in the colloquium, namely Algorithms & Artificial Intelligence, Image Processing & Computer Vision, Networks & Distributed Computing and Business Intelligence & others. During the colloquium, each presenter delivered a 15 minutes presentation before receiving questions from the floor.

The second colloquium was held in December 2014:

Date: 2nd December 2014
Time: 9.00am - 1.05 pm
Venue: N109, UTAR-PK

For the second colloquium, CISST invited Prof Ramachandra Achar from Carleton University to deliver a keynote speech on "Why do Postgraduate Study? Motivation and Aspiration in Pursuing Postgraduate Study" In the keynote speech, Prof. Ramachandra gave an inspirational talk on the challenges and the rewards of doing postgraduate studies.

These were followed by a tea break and 15 presentations delivered by the postgraduate students of FICT. The colloquium was divided into two tracks and 4 sections. The sessions were namely �"Artificial Intelligence", �"Algorithms", "Image Processing and Computer Vision", �"Business Intelligence and Others" and "Network and High Performance Computing".

Introduction to Data Mining Using RapidMiner

Date: 20th May 2014
Time: 9:00 am to 5 pm
Event Type: Joint Collaboration between CISST and (CBM) Centre for Business and Management Knowledge Sharing Seminar (Training/Workshop)
Venue: H213, UTAR
Speaker: Mr. Anbuselvan Sangodiah (FICT lecturer)

This was a joint collaboration between Centre for Business Management (CBM) and CISST. The training aimed to provide participants with some hands-on skill in data mining using Rapid Miner tool so that they were able to apply classification models in the business domain.

A lecturer from the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology (FICT), UTAR, Mr. Anbuselvan Sangodiah delivered the free training. A total of 19 academic staffs from FBF and FES attended this training. During the training, Rapid Miner was used to provide hands on experience for participants on classification models of data mining. Participants also received a free courseware which provided comprehensive guidance in a step by step manner to work on classification models using Rapid Miner.

Oracle Academy: Live Webinar Series

In July and August, CISST brought the Oracle Seminar series to FICT, UTAR. Altogether, three technical seminars were conducted by the instructors from Oracle Academy. The seminars were attended simultaneously with other Malaysian universities through web conferencing.

The first seminar was entitled �"New Features on JDK 8"

Title: New Features on JDK 8
Date: 24th July 2014
Time: 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm
Event Type: CISST
Venue: N109, UTAR

The purpose of this workshop was to introduce the new features in JDK8 to the attendees. During the seminar, participants were guided by three instructors from Oracle Academy on how to write many complex functionalities in a more optimal and smarter manner. The topics in the seminar included Lambda, the stream API, improvement to HashMap, concurrency, the new date and time API, etc.

The second seminar was entitled �"MySQL":

Title: MySQL
Date: 1st August 2014
Time: 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm
Event Type: CISST
Venue: N109, UTAR

This workshop was held on 1st August 2014 at Block-N N109. The purpose of this workshop was to introduce MySQL as well as its new advanced features to the attendees. Four instructors from Oracle Academy conducted the seminar.

The third seminar was entitled "Basics of Cloud Computing.

Title: Basics of Cloud Computing
Date: 21st August 2014
Time: 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm
Event Type: CISST
Venue: N109, UTAR
Speaker: Geet Singh

The purpose of this workshop introduced the fundamentals of Cloud Computing and Big Data to the attendees. The instructor, Mr. Geet Singh, has over 8 years of working experience with experience in technology consulting. Currently he is the marketing manager of Oracle Academy. He holds a bachelor of engineering degree holder in Computer Science and a MBA graduate.

How to publish in Information Systems Journals: Pitfalls and Tips

Date: 17th November 2014
Time: 11.30 am to 12.30 pm
Event Type: CISST
Venue: N002, UTAR
Speaker: Dr William Yeoh

In November, CISST invited Dr. William Yeoh from Deakin University, Australia to share his experience in Information System research. During the talk, he shared his insights on how to publish in top-ranked information systems (not computer science) journals.

This gave hints to IS researchers in the centre on how to present their papers to their best advantage, and increase the likelihood of getting their papers accepted by reputable IS/MIS journals.

Dr William Yeoh is currently a tenured faculty member at Deakin University. He received his PhD from the University of South Australia and he had taught in undergraduate and postgraduate programs within Australia, Malaysia and Hong Kong. His main research area includes information systems (IS) and business intelligence. His research works has appeared in high-tier IS journals (including A & A*) and top IS conferences (including ICIS, AMCIS, PACIS).

Recent Results For Online Bi--criteria Load Balancing

Date: 21st November 2014
Time: 10.45am to 12.30 pm
Event Type: CISST
Venue: N008, UTAR
Speaker: Dr Savio Tze

In November, CISST also invited Dr Savio Tze who shared his research work on the online load balancing problem. Load balancing is a common technique for achieving better coordination between different entities in distributed and parallel environments.

In his talk, he introduced his recent results for bi-criteria load balancing in these few years. Then, he shared his insight and potential for further research in this research domain with the audience.

Dr. Savio received his PhD degree in Computer Science from The University of Hong Kong in 1997. After graduation, he worked for the University of Hong Kong, and Polytechnic University for three years. In 2005, he moved to Turkey and worked as an Assistant Professor in Bilkent University, and Izmir University. He is currently an Assistant Professor in Istanbul University, and will join UTAR soon.

The Fundamentals of iOS Mobile Development

Date: 17th December 2014
Time: 10.00am to 11.00 am
Event Type: CISST
Venue: N008, UTAR
Speaker: Ms Saw Seow Hui

Apple is one of the leading company in the mobile world for years with its iPhone and iPad series. This talk aimed to provide the audience with a glimpse of the fundamental process of designing and developing iOS mobile application. At the end of the talk, Ms Saw gave a simple demonstration to show how to build a simple Hello World application in iOS.