Latest news

Ohad Kammar, Sam Lindley and Nicolas Oury were awarded the Most Influential ICFP Paper Award, which is presented annually to the authors of a paper presented at the International Conference on Functional Programming held 10 years prior to the award year. Informatics researchers and a former Informatics PDRA Nicolas Oury, received the recognition for their 2013 paper ‘Handlers in action’.

Lecturer at the School of Informatics and Deputy Director of Learning & Teaching, David Sterratt has completed his Edinburgh Teaching Award (EdTA) Category 2, accredited through Advance HE’s Higher Education Academy.

Dr Elizabeth Polgreen a Lecturer in Programming Languages for Trustworthy Systems at the School of Informatics is among ten awardees of the Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowships programme it was announced on 24th August.

The Bayes Centre, the University of Edinburgh’s Innovation Hub for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence is delighted to announce that Professor Ruth King, an international leader within the field of statistics, will take up the position of Director in August 2023.

Professor Ram Ramamoorthy was included in the Asian Tech Pioneers 2023 created every year by equality charity Diversity UK.

Tickets are now on sale for Imagining Futures: AI on Film Festival, taking place 6-10 September 2023 in Adam House on 3 Chambers St, Edinburgh. The festival will showcase classic and contemporary films about AI and invite AI experts to lead the debate on whether they hit or miss the mark of AI fact. Panel discussions about the human tools we use to machinate AI like games, narrative and ethics will encourage the audience to reconsider what they know about AI. 

Professor Jane Hillston, Head of School of Informatics, was awarded a MBE in the King’s Birthday Honours List for services to computer science and to women in science.

Informatics researchers lead a breakthrough study that suggests that three drugs could help stave off the effects of ageing. The drugs have been discovered using artificial intelligence (AI).

Antonis Katsarakis, a former Informatics student, has received the EuroSys Roger Needham PhD Award - Honorable Mention. This is the first time that an Informatics student received this highly prestigious award.

Robert van Glabbeek, Royal Society Wolfson Fellow and Personal Chair in Computer Science at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh has been elected a member of the Academia Europaea in recognition of his scientific standing.

Professor Philip Wadler FRS Professor of Theoretical Computer Science at the School of Informatics, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He joins existing fellows from the School of Informatics: Jane Hillston, Alan Bundy, Peter Buneman, Wenfei Fan and Gordon Plotkin as well as notable past fellows: Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Charles Babbage, Dorothy Hodgkin and Stephen Hawking.

Jonathan MacBride and Mitchell Hunter from the School of Informatics are among the University staff recognised for going above and beyond to make the University more sustainable, or to inspire others to make change.

Professor Helen Hastie has been appointed as the new Head of School of Informatics. She will take over from Professor Jane Hillston in August.

Dr Tanya Shreedhar, a postdoctoral researcher in Mahesh Marina’s Networked Systems Group, was among the 2023 finalists for L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science UK and Ireland Rising Talents Awards.

Qiuye (Chloe) Zhang, a second year Artificial Intelligence and Computer science student won the second-year poster competition at this year’s Lovelace Colloquium that took place in Sheffield.

A group of outstanding early career researchers have been awarded one of the University of Edinburgh’s most prestigious fellowships. Amongst those new Chancellors Fellows are Craig Innes and Jeff Dalton who will be joining the School of Informatics this summer.

A consortium of researchers in Scotland has developed new artificial intelligence (AI) technology that will modernise the way shipping vessels are weighed and checked for stability, a process still based on principles formulated by Greek scientist Archimedes more than 2,000 years ago.

Gordon Plotkin, a Professor in the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh is among 270 new members elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2023. The Academy is both an honorary society that recognizes and celebrates the excellence of its members and an independent research centre convening leaders from across disciplines, professions, and perspectives to address significant challenges.

Yesterday in Edinburgh, the National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) and the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh signed a memorandum of understanding on developing a quantum software and applications centre that aims to overcome key challenges to accelerate the development of quantum computing and investigate new ways in which quantum computers can provide benefits, beyond the reach of traditional computers.

Computers and AI permeate our lives: recent artificial intelligence developments particularly hit the news with some experts sounding alarm bells. Can synthetic media help or hinder the future of news? Are sentient robots friends or monsters? Can robots care? How did AI end up here – and where is it going? As we celebrate 60 years of computer science and AI research in Edinburgh, join the Edinburgh Science events that explore the history and discuss the future of intelligent machines.

The School of Informatics is ranked 15th in the world in the QS ranking for Data Science, a new subject addition to QS annual subject rankings. The School has also improved its standing in Computer Science and Information Systems moving up by 3 ranks to 20th in the world.

Professors Alex Lascarides and Ross Anderson and Dr Fiona McNeill from the School of Informatics are joining the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, it has been announced on 21st March 2023.

The technology that was developed as part of Dr Mohamed Kassem’s PhD at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics, supervised by Professor Mahesh Marina, will be used to bring high speed broadband to hard-to-reach areas. 

The University has established a new software centre of excellence with technology giant Cisco.

Staff at the University of Edinburgh are entitled to one day of paid leave to volunteer and Professor Douglas Armstrong from the School of Informatics has been using his to volunteer at a Scouts camp. You might think that a mixture of survival camp and teenage party is not your cup of tea but there’s many ways in which you can get involved.

Phone makers like Xiamoi, OnePlus, and Oppo Realme, some of the most popular in China, are all collecting large amounts of sensitive user data via their respective operating systems, as are a variety of apps that come pre-installed on the phones. Paul Patras and his student Haoyu Liu, with their collaborator Doug Leith of Trinity College Dublin, have been researching privacy of the Android OS firmware, examining those versions available on the Chinese market. 

During 2023, the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh celebrates 60 years of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Computer Science research, highlighting the heritage of this extraordinary place as one of the leading centres for advanced technology research. A programme of events in 2023 will mark achievements over the past six decades, and look to the future of AI and computer science at Edinburgh.

Vidminas Vizgirda, Fiona McNeill and Brian Mitchell (course organisers for INF1B, Object-Oriented Programming) set out to give their course a modern revamp. They will improve the materials’ presentation and accessibility and enable access for the wider public by hosting them on a public-access website, available under a CC-BY-SA open license. 

The School of Informatics is looking for an outstanding candidate who will provide strategic leadership, with a key role in shaping the future of the School to increase its global impact and contribution to society.

Scientists are developing artificial intelligence and talking robots to help to detect urinary tract infections in vulnerable people early.

Smart AI tools could protect social media users’ privacy by tricking algorithms designed to predict their personal opinions, a study by the School of Informatics researchers suggests.