“Digitally Empowering Young People: The Podcast” is a ground-breaking podcast series hosted by Dr. Roxanne BibizadehLink opens in a new window.

In this inaugural series, we delve into the pressing issue of technology-assisted child sexual abuse material, focusing particularly on the misleading term “self-generated”, which problematically places the blame on the victim. Through this series, we aim to raise awareness and spark vital conversations among educators, parents/carers, law enforcement agencies and professionals working with young people.

Each episode features a distinguished expert voice, offering invaluable insights and perspectives on this critical issue. Contributors include esteemed organisations such as the Internet Watch Foundation, Marie Collins Foundation, National Policing Vulnerable Knowledge and Practice Programme, Parent Zone, Kent County Council, and Voice Box.

Our final episode is created especially for young people, providing them with essential information and resources to navigate the digital landscape safely and responsibly.

To listen to our podcast series, visit us on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3OANje22oUK5X641ACmxZOLink opens in a new window

For more information about this project and to stay updated on our latest initiatives, please visit our website: www.deyp.orgLink opens in a new window

We’re proud to announce that this project is funded by the ESRC IAA.

We are happy to announce four promotions in the department:

• Dr Charilaos Efthymiou has been promoted to Associate Professor
• Dr Igor Carboni Oliveira has been promoted to Associate Professor
• Dr Hongkai Wen has been promoted to Professor
• Dr Weiren Yu has been promoted to Associate Professor

Many congratulations to our colleagues for all their achievements!

We are happy to announce that Dr Paris Giampouras has joined the Department of Computer Science as an Assistant Professor. Originally from Greece, he has relocated to Warwick from Baltimore, where he spent four years working as a Postdoctoral Fellow and later as a Research Faculty member at the Mathematical Institute for Data Science at Johns Hopkins University. His expertise lies in machine learning theory and its applications in image processing and computer vision. More specifically, his research has focused on exploring parsimonious representations to address various inverse problems and adversarial robustness.

Currently, he is focusing on two main areas: a) leveraging structured representation in Generative AI applications, and b) developing algorithms that enable continual learning of various tasks for deep learning systems. His goal is to contribute to the foundational understanding of AI algorithms, with a focus on robustness, applications of AI in medicine, and climate change.

We welcome him to the department!

We are seeking PhD candidates in the topic of Multiagent Systems and related areas, with particular emphasis on one or more of: computational social choice, algorithmic game theory, multiagent learning, and social and economic networks. The multiagent systems researchers at University of Warwick include Markus BrillLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window, Ramanujan SridharanLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window, Long Tran-ThanhLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window, Debmalya Mandal and Paolo TurriniLink opens in a new window

We are happy to announce that Dr Fanghui Liu and Dr Debmalya Mandal have joined the Department of Computer Science as Assistant Professors.

Fanghui finished his PhD degree at Institute of Image Processing and Pattern Recognition, Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2019. Then he gained the research experience in Europe as a postdoc researcher, at ESAT-STADIUS, KU Leuven from 2019 to 2021 and Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland from 2021 to 2023, respectively. His research interests include machine learning, statistical learning theory as well as applications in trustworthy machine learning systems.

Debmalya completed his Master’s degree in Computer Science and Automation from Indian Institute of Science, and his PhD in Computer Science from Harvard University, where he was also part of the EconCS group. He then gained experience as a postdoctoral researcher at the Data Science Institute of Columbia University, and at the Max Planck Institute of Software Systems. He is broadly interested in the theoretical foundations of AI/ML systems and often incorporate tools from computational social choice, game theory, and machine learning theory in his research. He is currently working on fairness in machine learning, reinforcement learning, and the exciting problem of AI alignment.

We welcome them both to the department!

Seven papers authored by Computer Science researchers from Warwick have been accepted for publication at the 37th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, the leading international venue for machine learning research, which will be held on 10-16 December 2023 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA:

• EV-Eye: Rethinking High-frequency Eye Tracking through the Lenses of Event Cameras, by Guangrong Zhao, Yurun Yang, Jingwei Liu, Ning Chen, Yiran Shen, Hongkai Wen, and Guohao Lan
• Fully Dynamic k-Clustering in Õ(k) Update Time, by Sayan Bhattacharya, Martin Costa, Silvio Lattanzi, and Nikos Parotsidis
• Initialization Matters: Privacy-Utility Analysis of Overparameterized Neural Networks, by Jiayuan Ye, Zhenyu Zhu, Fanghui Liu, Reza Shokri, and Volkan Cevher
• Learning a Neuron by a Shallow ReLU Network: Dynamics and Implicit Bias for Correlated Inputs, by Dmitry Chistikov, Matthias Englert, and Ranko Lazic
• On the Convergence of Shallow Transformers, by Yongtao Wu, Fanghui Liu, Grigorios Chrysos, and Volkan Cevher
• Towards Data-Agnostic Pruning At Initialization: What Makes a Good Sparse Mask? by Hoang Pham, The Anh Ta, Shiwei Liu, Lichuan Xiang, Dung Le, Hongkai Wen, and Long Tran-Thanh
• Towards Unbounded Machine Unlearning, by Meghdad Kurmanji, Peter Triantafillou, and Eleni Triantafillou

We are happy to announce that Dr Ayse Saliha Sunar has joined the Department of Computer Science as a Teaching Fellow. She completed her Master's degree on Intelligent Tutoring Systems at Nagoya University and her PhD on Big Educational Data Analysis and Recommender Systems at the University of Southampton.

She then gained experience in teaching in Turkey and in research collaboration, including European project proposals in Slovenia on integrating cutting-edge technologies into educational and other social contexts. Her current research interests include technology-enhanced learning to improve teachers' and faculties' pedagogical skills, as well as applications of natural language processing in classrooms and hybrid teaching models.

We welcome her to the department!