Research Groups

Doors Open @ CS, 11th April (10am-4pm)

On 11th April, the School of Computer Science at St Andrews will host our Doors Open event. We will be thrilled to welcome any and all visitors from outwith the School, whether you are locally based, from elsewhere in the UK, or from overseas.

As a rapidly growing school, we are looking to build relationships with new partners and are keen to find out how we can help you, your companies, and/or organisations to solve problems and improve processes.

Our Doors Open Day will have over 60 individual exhibits and activities. Our presenters will be our staff and students, with representation from 1st year undergrad through to PhD students, academic and technical members of staff.

Please register here if you would like to attend to enable us to order sufficient food!

 

Fully-funded PhD scholarship in Privacy and Trust on the Web

As part of their efforts to enhance privacy and trust on the Web, many applications need to be able to determine whether or not a relationship exists between different entities. For example, it is desirable for web browsers to be able to determine that two domain names are under the same administrative control, such that cookies and other data can be safely shared between them. While determining these relationships might be easy for humans, it is impossible to do so algorithmically.

This project will explore approaches to the defining and enforcing organisational boundaries on the Internet. These approaches will consider the technical challenges, balancing those with user behaviour and expectations, and regulatory considerations. This will include identifying use cases, evaluating and measuring existing and proposed approaches, and developing and implementing novel techniques. Where appropriate, this will involve engagement with standards development organisations, including the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Continue reading

AI Stay Day

The AI research theme members came together in an internal event on Tuesday 6 June. We discussed our latest projects, shared our insights and challenges, and brainstormed new ideas for future research. It was a great opportunity to connect with our colleagues and learn from each other.

We look forward to more opportunities to collaborate and grow as an AI group.

World-Leading PhD Scholarship in Health Informatics

A fully-funded PhD scholarship is available to support an exceptional student wishing to undertake doctoral research in health informatics, in particular looking at analysing and predicting disease trajectories of multimorbidity. This prestigious PhD scholarship is awarded by St Leonard’s Postgraduate College at the University of St Andrews and will be supervised by Dr Areti Manataki, Dr Katherine Keenan, Prof Colin McCowan and Dr Michail Papathomas. Applications must be received by 12 June 2023.

Further information, including how to apply, can be found at: https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/study/fees-and-funding/scholarships/scholarships-catalogue/postgraduate-scholarships/world-leading-scholarship-04-computer-science-medicine-geography/

Doors Open @ CS, TOMORROW (Tuesday 11 April,10am-4pm)

Tomorrow, the School of Computer Science will host our first ever Doors Open event. We will be thrilled to welcome any and all visitors from outwith the School, whether you are locally based, from elsewhere in the UK or from overseas.

As a rapidly growing school, we are looking to build relationships with new partners and are keen to find out how we can help you, your companies and/or organisations to solve problems and improve processes.

Our Doors Open day will have over 60 individual exhibits and activities. Our presenters will be our staff and students, with representation from 1st year undergrad through to PhD students, academic and technical members of staff.

 

World-Leading PhD Scholarship: Personalised, Adaptive, Language-based Planner for next generation Robotics

A fully-funded PhD scholarship in Computer Science is available for a strong and motivated student wishing to work at the intersection of vision, large-language models, and robotic planning. This prestigious PhD scholarship is awarded by St Leonard’s Postgraduate College at the University of St Andrews and will be supervised by Dr Juan Ye, Dr Alice Toniolo, and Dr Kasim Terzic.

For more information, including how to apply, please see the advert: https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/study/fees-and-funding/scholarships/scholarships-catalogue/postgraduate-scholarships/world-leading-scholarship-01-computer-science/?

Fully-funded PhD scholarship in Health Data Visualisation

The School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews has a fully-funded scholarship available working with Dr Areti Manataki. The PhD topic is “Shedding light on patient flow through advanced data visualisation”. Applications must be received by 1 March 2023.

Project Overview

In modern healthcare systems, millions of patients are admitted to hospital every day. Managing patient flow through hospital, to ensure that patients are at the right place at the right time, can improve quality of care and health outcomes, while saving money and time. However, managing patient flow in a way that is safe for patients and cost-efficient is a challenging task, and requires a deep understanding of the complexities associated with patient flow.

This project involves employing advanced data visualisation techniques to shed light on patient flow and its many important dimensions: temporal and spatial patterns, patient characteristics, clinical expertise, hospital capacity and associated cost. Drawing inspiration from visualisation approaches to astronomy and transportation, and working closely with healthcare professionals, we will develop interactive visualisations that allow for the exploration of large and rich patient flow data. Our aim is to build visualisations that are powerful enough to capture the complexity of patient flow, and, at the same time, simple enough for clinicians to easily use to draw conclusions towards improving care.

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 a related area (e.g., Data Science, Engineering, Mathematics, etc.). Experience in data visualisation, enthusiasm for research at the intersection of data science and health, an ability to think and work independently, excellent programming and analytical skills, and strong verbal and written communication skills are essential.

International applications are welcome. We especially encourage female applicants and underrepresented minorities to apply.

To apply

Informal inquiries can be directed to Dr Areti Manataki at A.Manataki@st-andrews.ac.uk. Formal applications can be made through the School’s postgraduate research portal.

The deadline for applications is 1 March 2023.

Funding Notes

We have one fully-funded scholarship available, which will be awarded competitively to the best applicant. This scholarship covers all tuition fees irrespective of country of origin and comes with a stipend (currently £17,668 per annum full-time equivalent). Additional scholarships may be available from other sources.

The School welcomes applications from under-represented groups, and is willing to consider part-time and flexible registrations. The successful applicant will however be expected to conduct their research in St Andrews and not fully remotely.

Open Virtual Worlds Impact Innovation Funding Success

Dr Alan Miller and Catherine Anne Cassidy of the Open Virtual Worlds research group have been successful in funding from the Impact Innovation Fund for their project “Evidencing and Amplifying Impact of Immersive Exhibits in Highlands and Islands Museums”. The project will evaluate the value of digital heritage engagement with virtual reality exhibitions and further develop opportunities to preserve and promote cultural heritage in the highlands and islands of Scotland. Collaborative activities and approaches trialled are intended to discover ways to maximise positive impact. Exhibits are part of the Northern Heritage Network, which provides an infrastructure for transnational collaboration of heritage organisations to preserve and promote heritage within and beyond the North Sea region. The geographical focus of the network is: Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Scotland, Island of Ireland, Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland and the Baltic countries.

Lockdown and COVID-19 meant that the focus of the heritage sector was how to connect with audiences remotely. Whether this be through live online events, social media, virtual tours or other means. In the coming year there is much emphasis on sustainability and on the return of visitors to museums.

Evidence prior to COVID-19 shows that such exhibits have a positive impact in: communicating heritage, improving the sustainability of museums, improving visitor numbers and contributing to the wider Scottish economy. This is recognised by museums who are setting aside valuable space, and time to host immersive exhibits in the coming year. Through developing, deploying and using immersive exhibits we will enhance the “within walls” museum experience with the following impacts:

  • Create digital heritage assets: including 3D models, historic scenes and records of intangible heritage.
  • Improve the way that heritage is communicated.
  • Connect communities with their museum and their heritage.
  • Make learning engaging, improve understanding and motivate learning
  • Contribute to social cohesion and inclusion.
  • Contribute to well being.
  • Contribute to the sustainability of museums.
  • Contribute to the tourist economy and prosperity.

Design of a Heritage Impact Toolkit for digital heritage engagement evaluation will facilitate relevant data collection for West Highland Museum, Timespan Museum, Tomintoul & Glenlivet Discovery Centre, North Isles Landscape Partnership Scheme, Finlaggan Trust, Museum of Islay Life, and Comann Eachdraidh Uibhist a Tuath.

Through surveys, interviews and observation we will collect evidence of impact. Identified profiles for evidence collection include end users (visitors), stakeholders (community), museum and visitor centres (heritage practitioners), and third party organisations (e.g., Creative Scotland, European Commission, ICOM), This will be combined with statistics including visitor numbers and feedback from visitors. Inquiry will cover:

  • Accessibility – whether the exhibition is easy to use and improves accessibility to heritage,
  • Learning – whether the exhibit is effective as a learning resource, helping to learn, reassess views on the topic and generating motivation to engage,
  • Social impact – whether the exhibit helps users engage in heritage and promotes community develop inclusion and cohesion,
  • Engagement – whether the exhibit is engaging and immersive.

Fully-funded PhD scholarship in complex systems and simulation

The School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews has a fully-funded scholarship available working within the Complex and Adaptive Systems Research Group with Prof Simon Dobson and Dr Peter Mann. Applications must be received by 1 March 2023.

Background

A “complex” system is one in which cause and effect can be hard to determine. In an epidemic, for example, it is easy to determine how someone was infected (by one of their social contacts), and we can also predict the overall size of an outbreak from the properties of the contact network — but we may not be able to predict in detail how the epidemic proceeds through the network, or what could be done to counter or steer it. Other examples include studying how rumours grow (and can be countered) on social networks, or to understand the effects of placement and error in sensor-driven systems such as those in climate science and ecology.

We understand relatively little about how things at “in-between” scales affect processes. These “meso-structures” include things like dense clusters of individuals, sparse chains of contacts, networks with core and periphery structures with different properties, and so on.

We are conducting a research programme investigating network meso-structures, with several goals. We want to understand these structures’ effects both analytically and numerically, meaning that we want to develop new frameworks for network process simulation and modelling based on our locally-developed simulation framework, epydemic, and to develop new analytic approaches to the study of these topics based on ideas from simplicial topology and sheaf theory.

Topics of interest

We are interested in a lot of different approaches, including but not limited to:

  • Applications of generating functions to the study of network processes
  • New applications of discrete combinatorial mathematics to complex systems
  • Understanding the effects of fine structure on processes
  • New simulation and numerical analysis techniques for complex systems
  • Epidemic spreading, especially the ways in which disease variants interact and develop through co-infection
  • Complex contagions such as rumour-spreading
  • Generating random networks with specific statistical properties

The scholarship

We have one fully-funded scholarship available, which will be awarded competitively to the best applicant. This scholarship covers all tuition fees and comes with a stipend (currently £17,668 full-time equivalent). Additional scholarships may be available from other sources.

The School welcomes applications from under-represented groups, and is willing to consider part-time and flexible registrations. The successful applicant will however be expected to conduct their research in St Andrews and not fully remotely.

To apply

Informal inquiries can be directed to Simon or Peter. Formal applications can be made through the School’s postgraduate research portal.

The deadline for applications is 1 March 2023.