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Enhancing Privacy for Internet Communication Protocols: SICSA 2025 Best PhD Dissertation Award

On June 25th, recent PhD graduate, Dr. Gregor Haywood, took to the stage to receive the 2025 “Best PhD Dissertation” award from the Scottish Informatics & Computer Science Alliance (SICSA).

Gregor (Lecturer in the Department of Cybersecurity and Computing at Abertay University, and PhD Award Recipient) is standing next to Debbie Meharg, Head of Applied Informatics at Edinburgh Napier University, Director of Education for SICSA, and the Awards Chair for the SICSA PhD Conference 2025

Gregor (Lecturer in the Department of Cybersecurity and Computing at Abertay University, and PhD Award Recipient) standing next to Debbie Meharg, Head of Applied Informatics at Edinburgh Napier University, Director of Education for SICSA, and the Awards Chair for the SICSA PhD Conference 2025

Haywood’s thesis on “Enhancing Privacy for Secure Internet Communications Using ILNP” focuses on how underlying communication protocols for the Internet could avoid privacy leaks, while continuing to utilise existing and unmodified hardware, infrastructure, and Internet services. His study was driven by his academic interest in the unintended design consequences within large interconnected systems:

I was captivated by working on a project that was socially relevant, deeply technical, and – ultimately – solvable. During my undergraduate degree, I started looking at private communication mechanisms as a side project which turned into my fourth year dissertation, and continued onwards within my PhD. I like finding these unanticipated problems, such as privacy leaks, security vulnerabilities, and environmental impacts, then designing new solutions that fix the problems without disrupting the operation of the larger systems at play.

(Dr Gregor Haywood)

Professor Saleem Bhatti (School of Computer Science, Thesis Supervisor) adds how Haywood’s work demonstrates what he believes to be ‘the first deployable mechanisms for perturbing traffic flow correlation attacks at the network level, as well as perturbing privacy attacks by traffic analysis as might be performed by a machine-learning system.’ For this reason, he was enthusiastic to nominate Haywood’s thesis for SICSA stating it is ‘an excellent balance between science and engineering’ that explores ‘a radical new architecture in addressing using the Identifier Locator Network Protocol (ILNP) to provide new privacy features, and an open-source implementation in FreeBSD that is usable across the existing Internet.’

The SICSA PhD Conference is a flagship event that brings together various participants from fourteen Scottish Universities to network, seek graduate researcher training, and share current interdisciplinary projects.  Dr. Tristan Henderson (Senior Lecturer and Computer Science Director of Postgraduate Research) comments that submitting to awards like SICSA encompasses the primary aim of a PhD which is ‘learning how to become a researcher.’  For this reason, SICSA is a valuable opportunity that allows for ‘visibility’ and ‘recognition’ of one’s work both nationally and internationally adds Professor Bhatti.

In recalling his own researcher journey, Dr. Haywood expresses that whether it is learning a ‘can-do attitude’ from his supervisor or picking up fun new quirks such as ‘hoarding hand-me-down computer hardware,’ the School of Computer Science and his PhD research have given him the space to thrive for who he is:

I suspect I will always have a compulsive need to understand things deeply – but now I have the tools to harness that into computer systems research, and whether it is celebrating the wins at conference dinners with my peers, or consoling each other at the pub when it falls apart, it is hard to put words to the joy I have found in being part of a community that can match my passion, debate my technical points, and jump on board with my research tangent conversation starters.

 It’s also very exciting to celebrate a success in privacy research. Many headlines are about data breaches and privacy failures, and so much research is about finding new privacy vulnerabilities. Being able to say “we made things better” is a great opportunity to inject some hope into the research community.                                            

(Dr Gregor Haywood)

This elation also extends to the pride that both Dr. Henderson and Professor Bhatti feel towards having an alumnus from the School of Computer Science win this award. ‘It is a great honour’ they both expressed, and a fantastic example of the impact of research outside of the university. Dr. Henderson adds that within Computer Science, there are a number of dissertation awards, including SICSA and the BCS in the UK, as well as the ACM internationally. He encourages students to indulge in these opportunities, with Dr. Haywood noting that ‘participating in this and other inter-institutional networking events was a valuable way for me to broaden my research mindset throughout the PhD’ and if you are considering applying yourself or nominating a student for it, ‘do it! You have nothing to lose and plenty to gain. Remember it is the reviewers’ job to judge your work, not yours – you just need to judge whether you have time to submit.’

Dr. Haywood is now a Lecturer in the Department of Cybersecurity and Computing at Abertay University with key aspects of his work being available to read online until his thesis is published in June 2026.

ILNP web page: https://ilnp.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk

Blog written by Nina Globerson

Keeping Doors Open: Connection, Collaboration and Opportunities

By Nina Globerson

On 1 May, the School of Computer Science prepares to welcome visitors, staff, and students alike to its one-of-a-kind Doors Open day. As the only School to implement this initiative at St Andrews, co-founders Dr Ruth Hoffmann (Lecturer, Deputy Director of Postgraduate Research, and Head of the AI theme) and Dr Kirsty Ross (Industrial Liaison) are thrilled to welcome all to the third iteration of the event.

“Doors Open is an event where we’re trying to engage as many people as possible from the public, industry, and sectors that are not within the computer science department. The idea is to showcase what the School does and get people engaged, involved, or interested in computer science and see what we can foster from that.” Dr Ruth Hoffmann

The event emerged from conversations between Dr Ruth Hoffmann, Kenneth Boyd (Honorary Lecturer), and Dr Kirsty Ross on how they could better engage companies in the research within Computer Science. Inspired by art degree shows in Dundee and Glasgow:

“We started off with the idea to invite a bunch of industry people and give them various talks. However, we soon realised that we couldn’t simply talk at them. Therefore, we invited exhibits, and from there we decided to open the entire department up to the public because it needs to be everybody. There are many opportunities for industry people that perhaps they, staff, or the public are not aware of, especially on how we could integrate public engagement within the School for its teaching and research” Dr Ruth Hoffmann

Previous Doors Open events have led to productive and interdisciplinary projects such as the French Digital Library with Dr Pauline Souleau in the School of Modern Languages; involvement of Experian and Skyscanner in the third-year module CS3099: Software Engineering Team Project; Senior Honours projects with Wikimedia UK; as well ongoing projects with psychologists, marine biologists, and historians.

“The conversations are the real impact of Doors Open…Relationships don’t come out of nowhere. It sometimes takes time for these relationships to develop, and it might just be a random conversation at a Doors Open day that then turns into something else further down the line. It’s leaving space for serendipity, as well as creating a slightly more structured opportunity for all involved.” Dr Kirsty Ross

Besides forty projects being shown throughout the day, from climate action language models to generative machine learning for synthetic histopathology slides and video analytics for rugby skills training, this year’s Doors Open approach has evolved, with the addition of ‘Hot Tattie Talks’ to provoke meaningful conversations with the public. This includes fascinating topics such as the affordability of AI and Computing (Prof Simon Dobson), Co-designing Ethical Digital Futures (Dr Abd Alsattar Ardati), and a Brief History of Programming Languages (Dr Edwin Brady). There will also be closed sessions, similar to the collaborative nature of a sandpit event, that are driven by invited external partners who want to present a challenge and to consult with academics. This will not only spark fruitful discussions, but will also help create alliances between industry partners, academics, and the wider School.

The event is also about the students and enabling them to spotlight what they do. Dr Ruth Hoffmann commented that kudos should be given to the students as “they are extremely self-starting and they don’t need much help from us. However, I’m hoping that with these Open Days we can give them a little bit of a leg up to present their research and make new contacts.” This includes internship opportunities such as StARIS and the Vertically Integrated Projects, which often stem from conversations held between staff and various students at Doors Open. It also highlights the student societies within the School, such as St Andrews Computing Society (STACS) and Women in Computer Science (WICS) who showcase what they do, whilst accessing potential employers within a fun and interactive setting.

However, there is also something far more exciting taking place behind the scenes — the integration of external partners into academic modules, creating opportunities for students to gain industry experience. This is most notable in CS3099, where third year undergraduates work in groups to create a software product from start to finish. With the expertise provided by both academics and industry professionals, students have gone on to create Wikidata inspired web visualization, as well as creating novel social enterprise applications for specific audiences. Alongside the main theme of CS3099, accessibility has been built into the module in collaboration with Skyscanner.

“This means that every single graduate from 2024 and 2025 will have the experience of building accessibility into their software products, which is fantastic in creating a cohort of inclusive engineers coming out from the School.” Dr Kirsty Ross

It also means employers and potential employees are creating synergy to see if they are “a right fit for one another,” and having the opportunity to choose the best of the best adds Dr Ruth Hoffmann.

Doors Open is about representation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and connection. It is due to this that Dr Ruth Hoffmann  has been able to reconnect with colleagues from other Schools that she doesn’t typically get to see, as well as reigniting conversations held with visitors from previous years: “I think my favorite part is the buzz of the day where you’ve got people presenting and talking to each other and getting excited on various different levels.” It also is about highlighting that “the doors remain open permanently to anyone who wants to work with the School of Computer Science” says Dr Kirsty Ross, and creating the space to talk to people:

“I love spotting a need, joining the dots between individuals, as well as watching the relationships grow from there, and this only scratches the surface of what Doors Open could be like in the future.” Dr Kirsty Ross

This also raises the question of what’s next for Doors Open, which both Dr Kirsty Ross and Dr Ruth Hoffmann have agreed involves maintaining the enthusiasm amongst students and staff to present their work to the public, as well as encouraging other Schools within St Andrews take up the model.

Furthermore, there are ongoing discussions about setting up a rapid software prototyping centre where external partners can provide a source of paid, subject specific employment for the students of the School of Computer Science. Given St. Andrews location within a “sweet spot” to support local businesses in, around, and outside of Fife, the impact of initiatives like this could be significant. Furthermore, if more Schools were to run their own Open Doors events, the nature of academic research and student opportunity could change immensely, promoting increased interdisciplinarity and collaboration on a much larger scale.

Check out all the fantastic talks, sessions, and exhibits on show for Doors Open 2025 at https://doorsopen.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/our-show/ now, and see you on 1 May!

The Power of Tech in Sustainability, Inclusion, & Community: Mind and Matter 2024

Mind and matter public engagement posterThe North Haugh campus was brimming with bubbling experiments, interactive activities, and research displays as St Andrews welcomed in its Mind and Matter Festival 2024 on 27th October 2024.

As a festival dedicated to inspiring creativity and curiosity from the lens of various disciplines, we were thrilled to see three of our very own researchers from the School of Computer Science presenting their latest research and subject passions to the wider community.

Starting off, Dr Kirsty Ross (Industrial Liaison) was exhibiting ‘We Can Edit: St Andrews on WikiCommons’. This was badged as a Cloud Activity (one of the six groups or categories of activities participants could engage with) which was all about transforming the perspective of how we understand ourselves and how we use our knowledge:

Kirsty Ross sitting at the IDEA network desk“What we’re doing today is encouraging folks to sign up to Wiki and then go on a listed building hunt round St Andrews and add photos of those buildings to WikiCommons.”

The project is a part of the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) Network, and engages with “the increasing interest in Wiki and open knowledge.” Founded in April 2021 (alongside her colleague Dr Abd Alsattar Ardati who she had never actually met face-to-face due to the pandemic), Dr Ross recalls how it all started as a way of “getting people involved, whether that’s research, teaching, or knowledge exchange.” As the Wikimedia project is more than just Wikipedia, containing various sister projects such as Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, etc, Dr Ross remarked that this project is all about “increasing the impact of our research and making it accessible to everyone” through their active participation.

In line with this collective effort, Dr Ross noted that it’s presence at a festival such as Mind and Matter helps put a “human face” to research that could equally fascinate experts, as well as those who are new to the topic. Most importantly though, it reminds us that “our audience is not just an empty vessel that turn up and you fill them with knowledge, and that’s our job done. They come with their own interests, background, and passion, and it’s about finding the hook that works for each person that you talk to.”  A wonderful reminder that innovative research engagement begins from something as simple as the conversations being held around us.

Dr. Dharini Balasubramaniam standing beside their posterOn a similar note, Dr. Dharini Balasubramaniam (Senior Lecturer) displayed her Cloud Activity ‘Once upon a time there was the web’ poster which shared research insights into intergenerational approaches for making digital services more inclusive.

“When we started looking,” Dr. Balasubramaniam commented, “we very quickly realized, it’s not something that computer scientists can solve by themselves. We must work with all the stakeholders who are involved, including the older adults who are disadvantaged by the proliferation of the technologies, as well as the people who support them.” This includes collaborating with local groups and organisations here at St Andrews such as St Andrews Public Library, Haydays Fife, North East Fife Community Hub, and more. It also entails contributing time to festivals like Mind and Matter because co-creating solutions (participatory design) hugely revolves around talking to people as “not everyone will have the same attitude, abilities, or reactions to digital technology. Therefore, we cannot make any assumptions about how accessible something is to a particular person without actually talking to them.”

The project arose from Dr. Balasubramaniam’s interest in representing digital ethics within software architectures, which extends to broader thinking about the social and cultural effect of our technological systems. It then led to important conversations being had between herself, her family, and older people within the town of St Andrews about where they had felt left behind, demonstrating that “a lot of work needed to be done for it.” A crucial part of this work involves increasing software literacy. In other words, “making people aware of how digital technologies work and the impact of the choices they might make.”  It also includes “making service providers aware of the particular challenges that marginalized groups might face in access. What if you are an older person and you have physical or cognitive impairments? What if you are part of a minority group in some way? If you have a certain disability, or if you have moved here from another part of the world and the language used isn’t necessarily accessible to you?”

Dr. Balasubramaniam remarked that presenting this research to the public is both exciting and humbling: “It reminds me of the big picture and why we are doing this, and what’s been really inspiring is how keen people are to engage with researchers and to contribute. That’s the most amazing thing.”

Turning to a Tree Activity, panels dedicated to connecting us with the natural world and sustainable futures, Dr. Alan Miller (Lecturer) exhibited ‘Virtual Reality for Sustainable Development’ which allowed participants to interactively contemplate sustainability, cultural preservation, and the effects of climate change.

two people standing beside a poster

“At this festival we are showing work concerned with two things — representations of the past and future. One is making digital reconstructions of the world heritage site, St Kilda, as it was in 1819. Another is raising awareness about the effects of climate change through the representation of Paradise Bay in Antarctica by showing the situation today and how it’s likely to change as a result of climate change, as well as demonstrating the potential future of Glasgow based upon James Rae’s work that shows a ten meter rise in sea-level which is consistent with the levels of carbon that we have in the atmosphere at the moment.”

Dr. Miller explained that it was the efforts of many being shown at Mind and Matter, including PhD work being conducted by Maria Andrei (virtual reality and climate change) and Sharon Pisani (sustainable development through digital tourism and heritage), as well as his own interests in applying 3D technologies to experiences of the past and future in order to promote the United Nations 2023 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The project is based on the idea of experiential learning being a deep form of education that can help overcome “psychological distance, whereby people maybe don’t appreciate statistics and numbers of what the impact of climate change will be” and therefore if they can “experience what it might be like, it could make it easier to achieve the sort of behavioural changes we need in order to holt climate change.”

2 computer screens showing the work of the researchers

While climate crisis and sustainability are large scale issues that can often feel out of our reach, engaging with it within our local community can hugely enable researchers and participants alike to consider its significance. Dr. Miller best described it as applying “practice-led research, whereby we try to develop initiatives in the community and understand its impact,” which when presented to local and non-local audiences at a festival, open a feedback loop of communication on what works and what does not.

“I suppose the most exciting part is you put together your research but then it’s when people come along and interact with it, and maybe it changes the way they think about the world or the way in which they carry themselves within it. It’s nice to know that the research we do has some impact on people’s lives.” 

There are coherent themes of inclusivity, accessibility, and community being explored within the Department of Computer Science demonstrating how tech and data can be used for good. What is most appealing is that the research exhibited at the Mind and Matter Festival are actively increasing their scope throughout the university and St Andrews.

Dr. Kirsty Ross commented on the IDEA Network wanting to scale their work through a ESPRC (Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council) grant; Dr. Dharini Balasubramaniam mentioned the project being in the process of setting up a monthly digital support session in local community spaces, as well as volunteer opportunities readily available; and Dr. Alan Miller is a part of the Open Virtual Worlds Group which hosts various workshops, collaborations, and projects that allow those interested in immersive technology for the preservation and promotion of heritage to get involved.

It is thrilling to see where computer science is taking us! What remains now is to anticipate what innovative initiatives will be fore fronted at next year’s festival and throughout the school over the next academic year.

By Nina Globerson, Science Communicator for the School of Computer Science

Constraint Programming research group at the CP2024 conference

The 30th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP2024) was held in Girona, Catalonia during the first week of September. The CP conference series are the main event for researchers in constraint programming to get together, share latest developments and for networking. 

Our School contributed to the conference in large numbers this year. 

  • Ian Gent was the invited speaker on the conference’s first day, with his talk entitled “Solving Patience and Solitaire Games with Good Old Fashioned AI” (abstract) (video recording).  
  • Christopher Stone was invited to the discussion panel ‘Have Chatbots Reached the Holy Grail?’ at the same workshop and presented the paper: Ian Miguel, András Z. Salamon, Christopher Stone, Automating Reformulation of Essence Specifications via Graph Rewriting (paper) 
  • Özgür Akgün was the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion chair of the conference and presented the DEI initiatives to all the attendees (video recording).
  • We presented several papers at ModRef 2024, the 23rd workshop on Constraint Modelling and Reformulation: 
  • Csobán Balogh, Ruth Hoffmann and Joan Espasa, Towards Understanding Differences Between Modelling Pipelines: a Modelers Perspective (paper) (slides) 
  • Joan Espasa Arxer, Ian Gent, Ian Miguel, Peter Nightingale, András Z. Salamon and Mateu Villaret, Cross-Paradigm Modelling: A Case Study of Puzznic (paper) 
  • Carla Davesa Sureda, Joan Espasa Arxer, Ian Miguel and Mateu Villaret Auselle, Towards High-Level Modelling in Automated Planning (paper)
  • Nguyen Dang, Ian Gent, Peter Nightingale, Felix Ulrich-Oltean and Jack Waller, Constraint Models for Relaxed Klondike Variants (paper) (slides)
    • Jack Waller (who is an undergraduate student at St Andrews!) presented this work.
  • Alessio Pellegrino, Özgür Akgün, Nguyen Dang, Zeynep Kiziltan and Ian Miguel, Automatic Feature Learning for Essence: a Case Study on Car Sequencing (paper) (slides) 
    • Alessio Pellegrino (who is a visiting student from University of Bologna) presented this work.
  • Orhan Yigit Yazicilar, Özgür Akgün and Ian Miguel, Automated Nogood-Filtered Fine-Grained Streamlining: A Case Study on Covering Arrays (paper) 
  • Our PhD students Orhan Yigit Yazicilar, Erdem Kus, Carla Devesa Sureda, and Joseph Loughney attended the doctoral program. As part of the doctoral program they presented their work by giving a talk and presenting a poster. In addition, they were assigned a mentor during the conference. 
  • Visiting research student (from University of Bologna) Alessio Pellegrino gave his first talk at the ModRef 2024 workshop. 
  • PhD student Erdem Kus presented the following paper in the technical track of the main conference: 
  • Erdem Kuş, Özgür Akgün, Nguyen Dang, and Ian Miguel, Frugal Algorithm Selection (slides) (video recording)

Finally, here is a group photo of the St Andrews group, standing at the front steps of the beautiful conference venue in Girona. 

First Away Day between Constrained Programming group and Statistical Ecology group held over the summer

The first Away Day between Constrained Programming group from the Computer Science department and Statistical Ecology group from the Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental modeling (https://www.creem.st-andrews.ac.uk/) was organized over the summer on May 7th, 2024 from 9:30 to 3:00 p.m. It was organised by Ian Miguel and Özgür Akgün from the constraint programming group and by David Borchers and Chris Sutherland from the statistical ecology group. The event was attended by 20 people including faculty members and PhD students from both the departments. The title of the Away Day was “Exploring the connection between constraint programming and statistical ecology”.

This was the first event from the School of Computer Science to be held in the Boiler Room, House Education Centre in the Botanic Gardens in St Andrews. It makes a beautiful location for an Away Day. The room used to be a storage house but has recently been converted to a meeting room that can be booked for free by all students and staff.

The Away Day was opened by two talks from the constraint programming group. The first one was delivered by Özgür Akgün  with the title “A short survey of work on Statistics & Constraint programming”. The second talk was “A quick introduction on automated algorithm configuration and selection” by Nguyen Dang.

These were followed by two talks from the statistical ecology group. The first speaker was Prof. David Borchers who was recently awarded the RSS Barnett Award for 2024 by the Royal Statistics Society (RSS) for his work in developing new methodologies and spatial capture-recapture. He presented a talk on “Dealing with recapture uncertainty in spatial capture-recapture”. The second speaker was Chris Sutherland who talked about “Optimal sampling in ecological monitoring”.

The event concluded by open discussions on opportunities for collaboration between the two groups and funding opportunities. The Away Day was a success since it confirmed statistical ecology as a potential application area for constraint programming. On the other side, it identified the potential of constraint programming for providing computational efficiency in dealing with spatial capture-recapture problems for statistical ecology.

Blog post written by science communicator Qurat Ul Ain Shaheen

PhD Scholarships in Computer Science for 2022

Scholarship Description
The School of Computer Science is offering the following types of scholarships for 3.5 years of study in our PhD programme. All UK/EU and International students are eligible:

• Fully funded scholarships consisting of tuition + stipend
• Tuition-only scholarships

This award is part-funded through the University’s new ‘handsels’ scheme.

Value of Award
• Tuition scholarships cover PhD fees irrespective of country of origin.
• Stipends are valued £15,609 per annum.

Eligibility Criteria
We are looking for highly motivated research students willing to be part of a diverse and supportive research community. Applicants must hold a BSc or MSc in Computer Science or related area appropriate for their proposed topic of study.
International applications are welcome. We especially encourage female applicants and underrepresented minorities to apply.

Application Deadline
1st February 2022 for scholarship eligibility. Late applications will be considered as funding allows.

How to Apply
Every PhD application indicating interest, if accepted, will automatically be considered for these scholarships; there is no need for a separate application.
The best way to win one of our scholarships is to make a strong PhD application. You are also encouraged to approach supervisors before formal submission to discuss your project ideas with them.
The School’s main groups are Artificial Intelligence and Symbolic Computation, Computer Systems and Networks, Human-Computer Interaction, and Programming Languages. It is highly recommended that applicants identify potential supervisors in their applications. A list of existing faculty and areas of research can be found at https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/computer-science/prospective/pgr/supervisors/).
Full application instructions can be found at https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/study/apply/postgraduate/research/.
Inquiries and questions may be directed to pg-admin-cs@st-andrews.ac.uk.

A First – CodeFirst:Girls courses recognised on academic transcript at the University of St Andrews

CodeFirst:Girls is an organisation which runs free coding courses for young women, with partner universities and companies across the UK. The University of St Andrews, School of Computer Science has been a keen supporter of CodeFirst:Girls for the past 5 years. We run their community courses in our premises with our students and staff volunteering as instructors, course ambassadors and presentation judges. Since partnering with CodeFirst:Girls in 2014, we have taught over 700 young women to code within St Andrews alone, contributing to the organisation’s vision of training 20,000 young women across the UK by the year 2020. The coding courses are very popular among the female students of St Andrews and receive a staggering 140 applications on average per semester.

This year, we further strengthened this collaboration between St Andrews and CodeFirst:Girls by recognising the training programmes on the students’ academic transcripts. St Andrews students who successfully complete a CodeFirst:Girls training programme (either the beginners HTML course, or advanced Python course) by fulfilling the attendance and assessment requirements, can have this listed in their academic transcript under “Prizes and Achievements”, thereby obtaining official recognition for the invaluable coding skills they gained through this training.
This idea was innovated by St Andrews student and CodeFirst:Girls course ambassador Nicola Sobieraj (MSc Research Methods in Psychology 2019); Bonnie Hacking (Enterprise Adviser, Careers Centre); and Shyam Reyal (Associate Lecturer in Computer Science).

In her own words, Nicola mentioned that “It was a privilege being an ambassador and to propose this idea to acknowledge the courses on the academic transcript. I have truly enjoyed being involved in the process and collaborating with inspiring people from CF:G and St Andrews. I’d love to see this idea in universities across the country and would definitely support this process”. Bonnie added “I’m delighted we are now able to recognise our student’s achievements through CodeFirst:Girls officially. I’ve been judging the presentations of their projects for several years and am always impressed by what they achieve.”

Ewa Magiera, Head of Communities of CodeFirst:Girls, expressed her contentment with this collaboration as “a milestone in our cooperation with St Andrews, a great way for students to receive recognition for their efforts, and an important step forward in our cooperation with academic institutions which host our courses”.

This definitely marks an important milestone for both St Andrews and CodeFirst:Girls – for St Andrews students’ to have this skill development programme added to the degree transcripts – and for CodeFirst:Girls, to be validated by Scotland’s oldest and highest ranked university for Computer Science. We believe this will immensely boost the student’s CV and portfolio, as their achievements and skills are validated and recognized by the university, thus increasing their employability.

Further information and key milestones in the St Andrews and CodeFirst:Girls collaboration journey can be found here.