We are very pleased to welcome Alex Dixon, a new Teaching Fellow in our department.

Alex first joined the department in 2013, originally as an undergraduate student, and then as a postgraduate student studying automata theory. He has a keen interest in logic, automata, and functional programming.

We look forward to having him in the team!

We are delighted to report that Dr Ramanujan Sridharan (PI) from the Theory and Foundations (FoCS) research theme at the Department of Computer Science and Professor Graham Cormode (Co-I, affiliated with FoCS) have been awarded an EPSRC Standard Research Grant, "New Horizons in Multivariate Preprocessing (MULTIPROCESS)".

This 4-year £540K project aims to advance the theory of preprocessing by designing novel multivariate preprocessing algorithms and extending their scope to high-impact big data paradigms such as streaming algorithms.

We are delighted to report that Dr Long Tran-Thanh has received a AIJ Prominent Paper Award for his first-authored paper, Efficient crowdsourcing of unknown experts using bounded multi-armed bandits, published in 2014 at Artificial Intelligence (AIJ), a premier journal in the field of artificial intelligence. The AIJ Prominent Paper Award recognises outstanding papers published in the journal in the last seven years that are exceptional in their significance and impact.

The paper developed the first comprehensive framework for the rigorous and principled mathematical analysis of task allocation algorithms in crowdsourcing systems. In addition, the paper proposed bounded bandits, a new sequential decision making model to solve task allocation problems with resource constraints. The work has had a significant impact on subsequent work carried out in both industry and academia. The award will be presented at IJCAI 2021, a top tier international conference in artificial intelligence.