Latest news with #DepartmentofComputerScience
Hans India
22-07-2025
- Science
- Hans India
Meet on latest innovations in computer science begins
Vijayawada: The Department of Computer Science at PB Siddhartha College of Arts & Science on Monday launched a two-day International Conference on Recent Innovations in Computer Science & Technology (ICRICT-2025). The conference aims at benefiting students, academicians, and researchers in the dynamic field of Computer Science. Eminent experts, professors, and researchers from various countries are set to present and discuss their latest innovations and contributions. Vice-president and Chief Data Centre Delivery Officer at Pi Data Centres Abhinav Kotagiri who was the chief guest, underscored the critical importance of both programming skills and research aptitude for securing employment opportunities in today's competitive tech landscape. The conference features a lineup of prominent speakers who will deliver keynote talks and present groundbreaking research, elaborating on the latest innovations in computer science and the significance of research papers in both academia and industry. Notable speakers include Shesha Raghunathan from IBM, Bengaluru, Venkat Pola from OneShot AI, USA, V Shiva Kishore from Infosys, Germany, Venu Nimmagadda from Velera, USA, Kiran Babu Machha from Maximus, USA, Dr Ganganagunta Srinivas from University of Technology and Applied Sciences, Oman, Suresh Suggula from SwankTek, USA, Dr Koothadi Venumadhav from International University of Science and Technology, South Africa. The conference was formally inaugurated with the release of the event poster by Principal Dr Meka Ramesh. He was joined by Vemuri Baburao (Director), Rajesh C Jampala (Dean), Dr TS Ravi Kiran (Conference Convener), G Samrat Krishna and K Sudheer (Co-conveners), and Kavuri Sridhar (Administrative Officer).
Gulf Today
27-06-2025
- Science
- Gulf Today
Farewell to the US as the world's top science nation
Llewellyn King, Tribune News Service When I asked John Savage, the retired co-founder of the Department of Computer Science at Brown University, what the essential ingredient in research is, he responded with one word: 'Passion.' It is passion that keeps scientists going, dead end after dead end, until there is a breakthrough. It is passion that keeps them at the bench or staring into a microscope or redesigning an experiment with slight modifications until that 'eureka moment.' I have been writing about science for half a century. I can tell you that passion is the bridge between daunting difficulty and triumphant discovery. Next comes money: steady, reliable funding, not start-and-stop dribbles. It is painful to watch the defunding of the nation's research arm by a third to a half, the wanton destruction of what, since the end of World War II, has kept the United States the premier inventor nation, the unequaled leader in discovery. It is dangerous to believe the status quo ante will return when another administration is voted in, maybe in 2028. You don't pick up the pieces of projects that are, as they were, ripped from the womb and put them back together again, even if the researchers are still available — if they haven't gone to the willing arms of research hubs overseas or other careers. The work isn't made whole again just because the money is back. The passion is gone. There are crude, massive reductions in funding for research and development across the government — with the most axing in the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. The Philistines, with their metaphorical chainsaws, have slashed wildly and deeply into every corner of science, every place where talented men and women probe, analyze and seek to know. This brutal, mindless slashing isn't just upending careers, causing projects to be abandoned in midstream and destroying the precious passion that drives discovery, but it is also a blow against the future. It is a turn from light to dark. The whiz kids of DOGE aren't cost-cutting; they are amputating the nation's future. The cutting of funds to NIH — until now the world's premier medical research center, a citadel of hope for the sick and the guarantor that the future will have less suffering than the past — may be the most egregious act of many. It is a terrible blow to those suffering from cancer to Parkinson's and the myriad diseases in between who hope that NIH will come up with a cure or a therapy before they die prematurely. It is a heartless betrayal. The full horror of the dismantling of what they call the nation's 'scientific pillar' has been laid out by two of America's most eminent scientists in an essay in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. They are John Holdren, who served as President Barack Obama's science adviser and as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Neal Lane, who was President Bill Clinton's science adviser and is a former NSF director. In their alarming and telling essay, they appeal to Congress to step in and save America's global leadership in science. They write, 'What is happening now exceeds our worst fears. Consider, first, the National Science Foundation, one of the brightest jewels in the crown of U.S. science and the public interest. ... It's the nation's largest single funder of university basic research in fields other than medicine. Basic research, of course, is the seed corn from which future advances in applied science and technology flow.' The NSF co-stars in the federal research ecosystem with NIH and DOE, the authors write. The NSF has funded research underpinning the internet, the Google search engine, magnetic resonance imaging, laser eye surgery, 3-D printing, CRISPR gene editing technology and much more. The NIH is the world's leading biomedical research facility. The writers say it spends 83% of its $48 billion annual budget on competitive grants, supporting 300,000 researchers at more than 2,500 institutions in all 50 states. An additional 11% of the agency's budget supports the 6,000 researchers in its laboratories. Holdren and Lane write, 'Of the Energy Department's $50 billion budget in fiscal 2024, about $15 billion went to non-defense research and development.' Some $8 billion of this funding went to the DOE Office of Science Research, the largest funder of basic research in the physical sciences, supporting 300 institutions nationwide, including the department's 17 laboratories. In all of the seminal moves made by the Trump administration, what The Economist calls the president's 'War on Science' may be the most damaging.
IOL News
26-06-2025
- Business
- IOL News
Ransomware threats: How AI can help combat cybercrime
The University of Pretoria is researching cyber threats. Image: File Ransomware has emerged as one of the most devastating cyber threats, wreaking havoc on businesses, governments, and essential services worldwide, and addressing this complex problem requires adopting artificial intelligence to create better detection mechanisms. This is according to Avinash Singh, a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Pretoria (UP), who is helping to find the solution. In 2024, a Fortune 50 company paid $75 million to ransomware attackers – the highest confirmed ransom payout in history. Ransomware attacks, once indiscriminate and opportunistic, have evolved into sophisticated, targeted campaigns. The advent of ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) has lowered barriers to entry for attackers, enabling even novice cybercriminals to access pre-built ransomware kits and technical support. Singh explained that this dark web ecosystem operates much like legitimate software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms like Gmail and Zoom, except its focus is on digital extortion rather than productivity. In South Africa, the Sophos State of Ransomware 2024 report revealed that the average ransom payment reached R17.9 million, with recovery costs, excluding ransom payments, averaging R19.44 million. Beyond financial costs, attacks like the breach of the National Health Laboratory Service in June 2024, where 1.2 terabytes of sensitive data were stolen, highlight the societal implications, disrupted healthcare services, loss of public trust, and potential harm to individuals whose data is compromised. This is one of many ransomware attacks targeting South African organisations. Addressing this complex problem requires adopting artificial intelligence to create better detection mechanisms. 'Artificial intelligence requires datasets that are often not available, resulting in researchers having to do exhaustive experimentation just to get the necessary data to perform detection tasks,' Singh explains. To solve this lack of data, he designed a tool called MalFE to advance malware research by facilitating the collection and analysis of ransomware samples. 'MalFE enables researchers to create machine-learning datasets more efficiently, compare malware reports, and share findings in an open, collaborative environment. By combining technical innovation with an ethos of transparency and accessibility, the platform embodies the collaborative spirit of this research.' Singh explained that the significance of this work extends beyond individual organisations to the broader societal and economic landscape. 'Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure threaten public services and economic stability, with ripple effects that disrupt entire communities.'
ITV News
19-06-2025
- Automotive
- ITV News
Dynamic pricing benefits Uber but customers and drivers are worse off, study says
Analysis from Oxford University shows dynamic pricing benefits Uber at the expense of drivers and customers, as ITV News Business and Economics Editor Joel Hills reports 'It doesn't cost them anything to run this vehicle. They don't pay the fuel. They don't pay the insurance. I'm the one paying. So why do they get 40%?' More than 100,000 people in the UK drive for Uber. Some of them, like Abdurzak Hadi, a veteran of 11 years, have spent their careers navigating London's streets. Others share their experiences, good and bad, on social media. '£300 a day, that's £10,000 a month… of course I'm rich,' said one driver on YouTube. For many others, the reality of driving for Uber is different. 'It's minimum wage, it's less than the minimum wage,' said another. In March 2023, Uber changed the way it calculates fares. Known as 'dynamic pricing,' the new system uses algorithms to adjust trip prices in real time based on demand, location, driver availability, and even the weather. The price you pay is no longer just about how far or how long you travel. It's shaped by where you are, what time it is, how many other people are requesting rides, and how many drivers are nearby. If there's a surge, like after a concert or during a deluge, prices can quickly jump. Uber says dynamic pricing helps ensure customers can always get a lift and that higher prices encourage more drivers to log on. But a new study from Oxford University suggests this change came at a cost to drivers and customers alike. Five academics at the University of Oxford's Department of Computer Science analysed 1.5 million trips by 258 Uber drivers in the UK between 2016 and 2024. Their findings are stark. After the introduction of dynamic pricing: The average customer fare per hour rose from £32.82 to £43.50 The average driver pay per hour, adjusted for inflation, fell from £22.20 to £19.06 Drivers are now spending an extra 23 minutes a day waiting for trips Uber's income per driver hour rose from £8.47 to £11.70 Perhaps most strikingly, the study found Uber's 'take rate' - the share of each fare it keeps - has risen significantly. While the company used to take around 25%, the average has increased to 29%, with some trips seeing more than 50% taken by Uber. 'The thing that most surprised me,' said Reuben Binns, Associate Professor at Oxford's Department of Computer Science, 'was that the higher the value of the trip, the more of a cut Uber takes. So the more the customer pays, the less the driver actually earns per minute.' I asked him if this could be considered exploitative. 'I think so,' he replied. Hadi remembers when the company took a flat 20% of every fare and shared that information clearly. Since dynamic pricing was introduced, Uber has stopped disclosing what fee it takes on individual trips. When we compared what Uber charged us for the ride with what it paid Hadi, we found Uber's cut was nearly 40%. After costs like fuel, insurance, and car rental, Hadi says he earns £10 an hour 'on a good day' - below the UK minimum wage. 'I feel cheated,' he told ITV News. 'My hard-earned money is being taken away from me.' The Worker Info Exchange helped drivers obtain their journey data from Uber using GDPR requests. The data was then passed to the team from Oxford University. James Farrarr formed the Worker Info Exchange after his experiences as an Uber driver. Several years ago, Hadi was one of the drivers who took Uber to court over employment rights and won. Today, he's a union member and says he's ready to fight again, this time over dynamic pricing. 'If you don't fight, you won't win. But if you do fight - there's a chance.' He says Uber's strategy of encouraging as many drivers as possible to log on, to keep rides readily available, inevitably creates winners and losers. Crucially, drivers aren't paid for the time they spend waiting between trips. 'We urgently need powers to cap the number of vehicles Uber is allowed to put on the road,' he told ITV News. 'And we need proper transparency from Uber about how drivers are paid.' He added: 'We [also] need to end this kind of algorithm trickery. In dynamic pay systems, everybody's entitled to understand on what basis they're being paid, on what basis they're being paid, on what basis the work is being allocated to them.' Uber declined an interview for this a statement, the company said it 'does not recognise the figures' in the Oxford report and insists that all UK drivers receive weekly earnings summaries, "which shows exactly how much Uber kept across the past seven days'. The company says its take rate 'does vary a bit from week to week and from one driver to another, depending on the trips they took,' but that 'the percentage kept by Uber has remained stable for several years.' However, Uber did not specify what that average is. Uber also says UK drivers collectively earned £1 billion in the first three months of this year and that the company's pricing model ensures a balance between rider demand and driver supply. Uber was once seen as the original disruptor, making travelling by taxi faster, cheaper, and easier. But its treatment of drivers attracted strong criticism. In recent years, the company's reputation has improved, especially after Uber agreed to give drivers more employment protections in the UK. But as dynamic pricing reshapes the experience for drivers and customers alike, new questions are being raised about fairness, transparency, and who's really benefiting. The original bad boy of the gig economy is in hot water again.
The Hindu
24-05-2025
- Science
- The Hindu
Internship programme at Cusat
The Department of Computer Science at Cochin University of Science and Technology (Cusat) is offering its short-term upskilling internship programme 2025–26 for undergraduate and postgraduate computer science students. The full-time internship (one to three months) offers flexible start dates and hands-on experience in advanced areas of computer science. The interns will get access to state-of-the-art labs, including Artificial Intelligence & Computer Vision, Bioinformatics, Cyber Physical Systems, Natural Language Processing, and Software Engineering, according to a release. The undergraduate/postgraduate students in computer science can apply for the programme. More details can be had from
