Current PhD students and postdocs
If you're interested in studying for a PhD, please check out the funding opportunities available in the School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences. If you're studying at Heriot-Watt, and want to get some experience of doing research, I'm usually on the look-out for students who want to do research-focused honours or masters projects, so please get in touch.Mahmoud Elsheikh is studying for a PhD in computer science in the Institute of Applied Information Security at our Dubai campus. His research focuses on code vulnerability detection using deep learning methods. His work is co-supervised with Hani Ragab.
Danny Fung is studying for a PhD in computer science in the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Robotics and Autonomous Systems. His research focuses on immune-inspired approaches to explainable and robust deep learning models. His work is co-supervised with Wei Pang.
Fraser Garrow is studying for a PhD in computer science in the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Robotics and Autonomous Systems. His research focuses on language and representation in genetic programming. His work is co-supervised with Rob Stewart.
Heba El-Shimy is studying for a PhD in computer science at our Dubai campus. Her research focuses on explainable computer-aided detection and diagnosis in colonoscopy. Her work is co-supervised with Hind Zantout and Neamat El Gayar.
Smitha Kumar is an Assistant Professor in Dubai, studying for a PhD in computer science. Her research focuses on using automatic program repair to create an active learning enviroment. Her work is co-supervised with Manuel Maarek and Hind Zantout.
Former PhD students and postdocs
Ali Muzaffar completed PhD in computer science in 2023 in the Institute of Applied Information Security. His research focused on machine learning applied to the detection of Android malware. His work was co-supervised with Hani Ragab and Hind Zantout. He is now an Assistant Professor at our Dubai campus.
Luc Frachon completed his PhD in 2023. His research focused on artificial immune systems for neural architecture search. His work was co-supervised with Wei Pang and George Coghill. He is now a Research Scientist at Synativ.
Daniel Kienitz completed his PhD in 2023 in the Lab for AI Verification. His research focused on robust representations in machine learning. His work was co-supervised with Katya Komendantskaya.
Filip Bartoszewski completed his PhD, entitled "Machine learning and anomaly detection for insider threat detection", in 2021. His work was co-supervised by Mike Just and funded by The Data Lab. He is now a Data Scientist at NatWest Group.
Nadia Taou completed her PhD, entitled "Towards the control of cell states in gene regulatory networks by evolving Boolean networks", in 2018. She then went on to work as an RA at the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight and the Edinburgh Business School.
Stuart Lacy completed his PhD, entitled "Modeling movement disorders in Parkinson’s disease using computational intelligence" at the University of York in 2015. He is now a Research Software Engineer at the Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories, University of York.
Luis Fuente did a PhD on the EPSRC-funded "Artificial biochemical networks: computational models and architectures" project at the University of York. He completed his thesis, entitled "A bio-inspired distributed control architecture: coupled artificial signalling networks" in 2014. He is now a research and development manager at Gentrack Ltd.
Alex Turner did a PhD on the EPSRC-funded "Artificial biochemical networks: computational models and architectures" project at the University of York. He completed his thesis, entitled "The Artificial Epigenetic Network", in 2013. He is now an Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham.