Congratulations are in order to Professor Jane Horgan of The School of Computing in DCU, whose book entitled "Probability with R: an Introduction with Computer Science Applications" has just been published. The book covers a course in probability which doubles as an introduction to the programming language R.

Professor Horgan presents a copy of her book to CA3 students, Phillip Fox and Michael Dever, who won the prizes for best student contribution at the book's development stage

Promoting a simulation- and experimentation-driven methodology, this book highlights the relationship between probability and computing. With its accessible and hands-on approach, Probability with R is an ideal book for students in computer science and engineering who require an introduction to probability, or who simply want to learn R. It also serves as a valuable reference for computing professionals who would like to further understand the relevance of probability to their disciplines.

Jane M. Horgan is Associate Professor in Statistics in the School of Computing at Dublin City University in Ireland. A Fellow of the Institute of Statisticians, Dr. Horgan has published extensively in the areas of statistical sampling and estimation. Her research interests include applications to financial auditing and to rare incidence skewed populations. "Probability with R: an Introduction with Computer Science Applications" is published by John Wiley & Sons.

For more information see: www.janehorgan.com

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Aodhan Cullen, founder of the free web-traffic measurement service, StatCounter, was chosen as 2008 Internet Hero by a panel of judges at the Eircom Golden Spiders internet awards. Cullen, chief executive of web analysis firm, is now 25 yet started the company when he was 16.

Aodhan went on to develop it as his final year project while completing his degree in Computer Applications (CA) in DCU. StatCounter now tracks over three million websites and 10 billion pageloads a month.

"DCU's Computer Applications degree gave me a great grounding in computers that allowed me to develop StatCounter to its full potential" Aodhan commented, "Studying Computer Applications was a great benefit to the business. Without that knowledge I wouldn't have been able to bring it to what it was."

For full story see here for an interview with Aodhan see here.

Visit StatCounter at: http://www.statcounter.com/

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The School of Computing will host the European Conference on Web Services 2008 (ECOWS'08) - http://www.computing.dcu.ie/ecows08/ - which will take place in Dublin, Ireland from November 12th to the 14th, 2008.

The European Conference on Web Services (ECOWS) is the premier conference in Europe for both researchers and practitioners to exchange the latest advances in the state of the art and practices of Web Services. The main objectives of this conference are to facilitate the exchange between researchers and practitioners and to foster future collaborations in Europe and beyond.

The ECOWS conference will be chaired by Dr. Claus Pahl (DCU) as General Chair and Dr. Siobhán Clarke (Trinity College Dublin) and Dr. Rik Eshuis (Eindhoven University of Technology) as Programme Committee Chairs.

Further details is available at: http://www.computing.dcu.ie/ecows08/

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DCU researchers Neil Costigan and Prof. Michael Scott, using resources at the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC), have successfully cracked a crypto system published thirty years ago by coding theorist Robert J McEliece. The crack was announced today (Sat 18th Oct.) at the Post-Quantum Cryptography conference in Cincinnati.

The DCU success was part of a coordinated attack by cryptographers in five countries. The attack was led by Prof Tanja Lange and Christiane Peters (Eindhoven Technical University, TU/e) and Prof Daniel J Bernstein (University of Illinois at Chicago), who recently published a paper claiming that a practical attack on McEliece's system was feasible with their new software.

Full details...

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DCU is hosting the 15th European Software Process Improvement Conference (EuroSPI 2008) from 3rd to 5th of September 2008. The EuroSPI conferences present and discuss results from software process improvement (SPI) projects in industry and research, focusing on the benefits gained and the criteria for success. Leading European universities, research canters, and industry are contributing to and participating in this event.

The 2008 conference will be jointly chaired by Dr. Rory O'Connor (DCU) and Dr Nathan Baddoo (University of Hertfordshire) and contains 4 keynote addresses, 6 research sessions, 10 industry experience sessions, 7 tutorials and a doctoral symposium, with a total of 60 presentations from 19 countries.

Full conference details are available at: http://2008.eurospi.net/

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