Best paper Award at NZCSRSC

Congratulations to Syed Saud Naqvi for his Best Paper Award at the New Zealand Computer Science Research Student Conference 2013. This conference brings together the best young researchers in ICT in New Zealand.

Saud's paper investigated models of human eye movement. Humans concentrate only on small parts of an image at a time, termed fixation. Saud developed an existing biologically inspired model of how humans attend to a scene by using artificial intelligence to weight important aspects of the image. His method was compared with alternative artificial approaches and actual recordings of human eye movements, where he showed positive results in being able to predict human eye movement.

The practical applications of Saud's work range from developing fast camera systems for autonomous robots to predicting the best places for road signs to be mounted so that drivers notice them quickly.

The award carries a prize of $1500, which will be spent on assisting Saud with conference travel, was kindly funded by a donation to the conference from Google. This will enable Saud to present his follow up work that has been accepted for publication in the International Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2013), which is a top rated A international conference, to be held in Cancun, Mexico.

This is an example of Victoria's national and internationally leading research as recognised by the first place ranking in the recent research evaluation exercise. Doctorate scholarships are currently being offered for bright, hard-working and enthusiastic researchers to join the Evolutionary Computation Research Group and other world-class researchers.


NZCSRSC 2013 was the 10th conference in the series which started in 1992 and has now become a regular event in New Zealand.

The aim of the New Zealand Computer Science Research Student Conference is to establish and reinforce a nationwide community of ICT graduate students. It provides an opportunity for students to establish contacts and share their research with graduates from across New Zealand, and members of the wider community. Students will gain experience in communicating their research and participating in an ICT community by:

• submitting, presenting and reviewing research papers in a supportive and enthusiastic environment,
• participating in workshops dedicated to providing practical information for completing a successful graduate programme, and pursuing future careers in academia or industry,
• participating in a range of special events that get students in touch with like-minded people working in related areas within ICT, and
• hearing from leading ICT experts in a series of exciting invited keynote presentations

Another goal of the conference is to help support and encourage other students such as minority students, women, and Māori and Pacific Nations students with ICT research.