Programming Pilgrimages – My visit to Manchester (so far)

When I told people I had never flown before, they were pretty surprised. “Never? . . . Not once?”, they would ask. Nope, never.

So when I told them I was going alone to Manchester, UK, they were even more surprised.

I arrived after a 24-hour delay last Friday, having faced the loss of a bag in Chicago and a pretty inhospitable border security guard. Not too bad for my first trip out of the continent.

zm1small

Here I am on the steps on my place in Manchester.

I am Zach Scott, a senior studying Computer Science and English at UM-Flint. As a participant in the Honors Program, I have been allowed the opportunity to study abroad in Manchester, UK. For four weeks, I will be working with Dr. Eva Navarro Lopez in the Computer Science department of the University of Manchester.

Our project deals with “hybrid dynamical systems”–a term that, when pronounced in a proper British accent, sounds pretty smart indeed. In fact, it’s not too complex; a hybrid system is something like a thermostat, for example. This system has multiple components, namely temperature and a control mechanism. Temperature is modeled as a “continuous” variable–it is a real-world value that can be any number on the number line. The controls, though, are digital. The fancy computer science term we would use for the switches involved is “boolean”–they are either off or on. Hybrid dynamical systems attempt to model the relationships between these components in a given system.

My work, then, will deal with modeling some type of hybrid dynamical system using a program called Ptolemy. The overall goal of the project is to create some sort of “formal language,” like a programming language, that will be able to determine whether a system is behaving properly or not. Fellow comp sci students who have taken Dr. Panja’s CSC 381 class will know what I’m talking about!

You can read more about the actual project here.

Eva and the staff at the university have even been kind enough to set me up with my own office!

Manchester office

This space may seem innocuous enough, but in fact this same office was last used by the final student of Alan Turing! Turing is a sort of comp sci idol and martyr. His contributions to computer science culminated in the formalization of computation theory (the Turing machine being a great example familiar to us students!). In fact, the University of Manchester is able to boast the construction of the first stored-program computer back in 1948. Turing himself worked on a later computer, the Mark I, at the institution.

Turing’s life, though, was soon struck by the cruelty of England’s Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. Turing was persecuted as his homosexuality was considered a crime at this time. He was humiliated through hormone treatments that greatly affected his demeanor, and his conviction meant his work was halted. In an act that mirrored Snow White, his favorite fairy tale, he consumed an apple poisoned with cyanide and died at the age of 41.

While the British government has apologized for this treatment, and the law itself has been repealed, Turing still stands as a figure of brilliance despite what was then a highly oppressive atmosphere.

For me, then, this experience has become a sort of pilgrimage. Yesterday I took the bus to Oxford Road. This same road was where Turing began the relationship that was so heavily stigmatized. I have walked through the same buildings Turing walked through, and to be completing research in a place so charged with exciting history is very meaningful to me. You can read a bit more about the university’s computer science history here.

More updates to come as I begin my work and explore the surrounding area. I have heard rumors about a sort of “free jazz church” which I will have to visit while I’m here!