Computer Science 2024 PhDs

The Computer Science group at Edinburgh Napier delivers world-class research and enterprise in the areas of artificial intelligence, data science and visualisation, games development and software engineering. The latest UK national research assessment, REF 2021 in Computer Science and Informatics category places us as third best for research power in Scotland. In terms of research impact, we are a top U.K. university with 100% of assessed work from areas of computing achieved the highest rating (4* = rated as world-leading). A recognition achieved only by six other universities in the UK.  Based on Times Higher Education Ranking 2023, our computer science is ranked third among CS departments in Scotland.

Our artificial intelligence research focuses on intelligent agents, machine learning, natural language generation and evolutionary robotics. We develop fundamental theory in areas including argumentation and dialogue theory, computer vision, deep learning, evolutionary computation, multi-agent systems, and reinforcement learning.  We apply this to a wide range of application areas including conversational AI, industrial scheduling and timetabling problems, malware detection, policy making, robotics, energy, medicine, health, social simulation, and understanding trust between people and AI.

Our data science and visualisation research focuses on data analytics, effective visual representations, explainability, real-time visualisation in virtual reality, and topic modelling. Our key application areas include analysis of biological data, big sensor data, health and social care, real-time computer vision for facial and body tracking, and real-time 3d simulations using GPU programming. 

Our software engineering research focuses on empirical software engineering, mining software repositories, compiler design, cloud and edge computing, cyber physical systems, green computing, internet-of-things, micro-service oriented architectures, and secure software development. We are especially interested in the application of artificial intelligence to the above areas.

Our games development research focuses on computer graphics, computer vision, video games, visualisation, and immersive technology. We are especially interested in impact oriented research and have had spin offs acquired by large corporations.

Self Funded PhDs

Adversarial Learning for Industrial Control Systems

Supervisor – Dr Kehinde Babaagba

Defeating complex families of malware using evolutionary based adversarial learning

Supervisor – Dr Kehinde Babaagba

Enhanced Deep Learning and Semantic-based Predictive Analytics for Reactive IoT Applications and Streaming Data

Supervisor – Dr Oluwaseun Bamgboye

Trusted-Edge and Semantic-based Approach for Dependable IoT and Smart Systems

Supervisor – Dr Oluwaseun Bamgboye

Characterising Automatically Generated Text

Supervisor – Dr Peter Barclay

Using Generative AI to Draw Diagrams

Supervisor – Dr Peter Chapman

Visualisation of Computation

Supervisor – Dr Peter Chapman

Generative navigation for autonomous robots using active inference

Supervisor – Dr Brian Davison

Locomotion and navigation strategies for quadrupedal robots

Supervisor – Dr Brian Davison

Continual Learning in Black-Box Optimisation

Supervisor – Professor Emma Hart

Adaptive Robot Behaviours in dynamic and outdoor settings

Supervisor – Dr Leni Le Goff

Evolutionary Robotics: Generating diverse and functional robots by jointly optimising their body-plan and controllers

Supervisor – Dr Leni Le Goff

Capture and Contextualisation of Cultural Heritage Data

Supervisor – Dr Babis Koniaris

Understanding the Drivers and Challenges of DevOps Outsourcing in Context of Client and Vendor Relationship

Supervisor – Dr Saima Rafi

Query Performance Prediction for Neural Information Retrieval: Application to Conversational Search

Supervisor – Dr Md Zia Ullah

Building the next Generation of Smart Grid Infrastructures

Supervisor – Dr Christos Chrysoulas

Gendered perspectives of data science

Supervisor – Dr Khristin Fabian

Natural Language Generation in the Era of Large Language Models

Supervisor – Dr Dimitra Gkatzia

Blockchain Technology and Decentralised Finance (DeFi) : The Bridge to the Future of Finance

Supervisor – Dr Zakwan Jaroucheh

Blockchain-based Ecosystem to Combat Fake News

Supervisor – Dr Zakwan Jaroucheh

How Blockchain and NFT Technologies can Fight Counterfeiting and Forgery of Physical Goods and Digital Assets in the Metaverse

Supervisor – Dr Zakwan Jaroucheh

A unified approach based on semantic models and continuous deep learning to sensor data uncertainty and inconsistency in smart systems – Project ID OC0025

Supervisor – Professor Xiaodong Liu

Automating Software Development with Semantic-based Generative AI

Supervisor – Professor Xiaodong Liu

Data Quality and Cleaning in Big Data

Supervisor – Dr Taoxin Peng

Using multi-agent systems to help households reduce peak electricity consumption in ways they perceive as fair

Supervisor – Dr Simon Powers

Advancing Software Development and Maintenance through Foundation Models

Supervisor – Professor Ashkan Sami

Secure Code Generation with Foundation Model

Supervisor – Professor Ashkan Sami

Machine Learning and Hyper-heuristic

Supervisor – Dr Kevin Sim

Understanding the True Nature of Fitness Landscapes in Evolutionary Computation

Supervisor – Dr Sarah Thomson

AI-driven Cloud-to-Things application-level orchestration framework for next-generation Internet of Things systems

Supervisor – Dr Amjad Ullah

Architecture for decentralising intelligence in dynamic cloud-fog-edge compute continuum

Supervisor – Dr Amjad Ullah

Towards a unified AI-driven approach of context handling to support reconfiguration decisions in Cloud-to-Edge orchestration for next-generation IoT systems

Supervisor – Dr Amjad Ullah

AI enhanced city and mobility design

Supervisor – Dr Neil Urquhart

Advancing Explainable Artificial Intelligence

Supervisor – Dr Simon Wells

Advancing the state of the art in Argument Mining

Supervisor – Dr Simon Wells

Reliable Guided Conversational AI

Supervisor – Dr Simon Wells