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.
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/
Congratulations to Abd Alsattar Ardati, supervised by Dr Alex Voss, Dr Uta Hinrichs, Prof Ian Gent & Dr Angie Miguel, who has passed his PhD viva subject to minor corrections.
Many thanks to Prof Sampsa Hyysalo (Aalto University) for serving as the external examiner and to Dr Jason Jacques for being the internal examiner.
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.
Congratulations to Ai Jiang who passed her viva in Jan and has been awarded the PhD degree today after minor corrections!
Thanks to Juan Ye as supervisor, the external Prof. Luke Chen from Ulster University and internal Dr. Areti Manataki.
Congratulations to Yunjia Wang who passed his PhD in February Supervised by Dr Ishbel Duncan.
Thanks are due to Alan Miller as the internal, and to Karen Renaud from Strathclyde as the external.
Yunjia was the last PhD student of Ishbel so we hope you can now enjoy your retirement!
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/?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
We had our first School seminar of the semester today. The speaker was André G. Pereira visiting Scotland on a SICSA DVF Fellowship. André is working on AI Planning problems, an area that is closely related to the work of our own Constraint Programming research group.
Title: Understanding Neuro-Symbolic Planning
Abstract: In this seminar, we present the area of neuro-symbolic planning, introducing fundamental concepts and applications. We focus on presenting recent research on the problem of learning heuristic functions with machine learning techniques. We discuss the distinctions and particularities between the “model-based” and “model-free” approaches, and the different methods to address the problem. Then, we focus on explaining the behavior of “model-free” approaches. We discuss the generation of the training set, and present sampling algorithms and techniques to improve the quality of the training set. We also discuss how the distribution of samples over the state space of a task, together with the quality of its estimators, are directly related to the quality of the learned heuristic function. Finally, we empirically detail which factors have the greatest impact on the quality of the learned heuristic function.
Biography: Dr. André G. Pereira is a professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. His research aims to develop and explain the behavior of intelligent systems for sequential decision-making problems. Dr. Pereira has authored several papers on top-tier venues such as IJCAI, AAAI, and ICAPS. These papers contribute towards explaining the behavior of heuristic search algorithms, how to use combinatorial optimization-based reasoning to solve planning tasks, and how to use machine learning techniques to produce heuristic functions. Dr. Pereira is a program committee member of IJCAI and AAAI. His doctoral dissertation was awarded second place in the national Doctoral Dissertation Contest on Computer Science (2017), and first place in the national Doctoral Dissertation Contest on Artificial Intelligence (2018). Dr. Pereira advised three awarded students on national events, including first place and finalist in the Scientific Initiation Work Contest (2018, 2022), and finalist in the Master Dissertation Contest on Artificial Intelligence (2020).
