We are delighted to report that Dr Ramanujan Sridharan from the Theory and Foundations (FoCS) research theme at the Computer Science Department has received a prestigious EPSRC New Investigator Award. The approximately £264K project titled "New frontiers in Parameterizing Away From Triviality” aims to develop novel notions of graph edit distance and investigate their connections to efficient solvability of computationally hard problems.

the proposal identifies research questions that are novel, has the potential to have a broader impact both within and outside academia and it is an exciting project that will break new ground.

By the start of the Autumn Term, the department will boast seven new staff who have joined us in 2020: Associate Professor Dr Long Tran-Thanh, Assistant Professor Dr Weiren Yu, Senior Teaching Fellow Dr Andrew Hague, Teaching Fellows Dr Greg Watson, Dr Rossella Suma and Richard Kirk, and Research and Teaching Fellow Dr Matthew Bradbury.

Coming from Southampton, Aston and Warwick universities, our new colleagues bring a wealth of teaching and research excellence, with expertise in areas including artificial intelligence, agent-based systems, data mining, information retrieval, educational technologies, image processing, high-performance computing, and cyber security.

A further piece of excellent news: Dr Paolo Turrini has been promoted to Associate Professor, effective from 1 September 2020. Many congratulations to Paolo, whose recommendation says:

Dr Turrini has maintained an internationally recognised publication trajectory, with papers appearing in highly-ranked journals and conferences. He has also grown his research group to 4 PhD students currently, and developed fruitful research collaborations with several academics in the department. … Dr Turrini has contributed to designing two 4th-year/MSc modules. He has been attentive to his teaching to an exemplary degree, resulting in consistently positive feedback from students...