Computer Science

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.

Defeating complex families of malware using evolutionary based adversarial learning

Supervisor: Dr Kehinde Oluwatoyin Babaagba

Adversarial Learning for Industrial Control Systems

Supervisor: Dr Kehinde Oluwatoyin Babaagba

Interactive Euler Diagrams

Supervisor: Dr Peter Chapman

Genetic Programming for Diagram Generation

Supervisor: Dr Peter Chapman

Applied Machine Learning And Cybersecurity

Supervisor: Dr Christos Chrysoulas

Sustainability and resilience through federated cloud services in the Internet of Things

Supervisor: Dr Brian Davison

Multi-objective optimisation of sensor network data collection with a mobile gateway

Supervisor: Dr Brian Davison

Generative navigation for autonomous robots using active inference

Supervisor: Dr Brian Davison

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

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

Supervisor: Dr Zakwan Jaroucheh

Capture and Contextualisation of Cultural Heritage Data

Supervisor: Dr Babis Koniaris

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

Supervisor: Dr Simon Powers

The evolution of institutions for large-scale cooperation

Supervisor: Dr Simon Powers

A Defeasible Ensemble Model of Argumentation Mining 

Supervisor: Dr Simon Wells 

Stereotypical Patterns of Human & Machine Reasoning for Explainable AI 

Supervisor: Dr Simon Wells 

Using Formal Dialogue Modules to Guide & Evaluate Conversational AI 

Supervisor: Dr Simon Wells

Machine Learning and Hyper-heuristic

Supervisor: Dr Kevin Sim

Semantic Model-Driven Explainable Machine Learning Approach for IoT Applications

Supervisor: Dr Oluwaseun Bamgboye

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

Supervisor: Dr Oluwaseun Bamgboye

Characterising Automatically Generated Text

Supervisor: Dr Peter J Barclay

Atmospheric Models for Real-time Immersive Rendering

Supervisor: Prof Kenny Mitchell

Real-time Rendering Shape and Appearance with Compact Representations

Supervisor: Prof Kenny Mitchell

Data Quality and Cleaning in Big Data

Supervisor: Dr Taoxin Peng

Exploring gender imbalance in the tech sector: the male perspective

Supervisor: Prof Sally Smith

Artificial Intelligence for Software Engineering (AI4SE)

Supervisor: Prof Ashkan Sami

Software Engineering for Artificial Intelligence (SE4AI)

Supervisor: Prof Ashkan Sami

Supporting Communities through Optimisation of Deliveries

Supervisor: Dr Neil Urquhart

Real-time fNIRS imaging 

Supervisor: Dr Shufan Yang 

AI enhanced perinatal stroke diagnosis

Supervisor: Dr Shufan Yang 

Query Performance Prediction for Sparse and Dense Retrieval Models 

Supervisor: Dr Md Zia Ullah