I'm an Associate Professor at Heriot-Watt University. I am the Deputy Associate Executive Dean for Research and Impact in the Mathematical and Computer Sciences school.

My research interests span hardware implementations of runtime systems for functional languages, Domain Specific Languages (my SPLV 2019 slides), parallel programming languages for HPC and System on Chip processors, dataflow programming languages, high level FPGA languages, and language/compiler/runtime system verification.

I am the principal investigator of the EPSRC project HAFLANG 2022-2025 -- FPGA based hardware implementations of functional languages. Our project page is: https://haflang.github.io.

I am a co-investigator on two EPSRC projects: Serious Coding 2020-2023 -- a game approach to security for the new code-citizens, and Border Patrol 2017-2022 -- improving smart device security through type-aware systems design.

My publications are listed here, as well as on Google Scholar and DBLP.

Currently PhD students supervised/co-supervised:

• George Howell, University of Edinburgh, accelerating Space-Time Adaptive Processing (STAPS) algorithms on heterogeneous architectures, 2025-present, On the SPADS CDT.
• Tess Watt, Heriot-Watt University, skin lesion classification on edge devices, 2024-present.
• Ada Grecner, Heriot-Watt University, AI for Medical Wearables and Upper Limbs Prosthetics, 2024-present.
• Yukang Xie, Heriot-Watt University, custom processor architectures specialised for functional programming languages, 2024-present. Works on the HAFLANG project.

Past PhD students supervised/co-supervised:

• Akilan Selvacoumar, Heriot-Watt University, Range-Based Memory Allocation without TLB Reliance on Capability Hardware, 2021-2026.
• Fraser Garrow, Heriot-Watt University, language and representation in genetic programming, 2020-2025, with Michael Lones.
• Cristian Sestito, visiting PhD student 2021-2022, compressed transposed convolutions for neural networks on FPGAs, University of Calabria, Italy.
• Blair Archibald, University of Glasgow, C++ algorithmic skeletons for scalable parallel tree search, 2015-2018, with Phil Trinder and Patrick Maier. thesis

If you are interested in a PhD in my research areas, please get in touch.

I'm a member of several research groups: Dependable Systems Group, Robotics Lab and Lab for AI Verification.

I am co-chair of the ACM Workshop on Real World Domain Specific Languages (RWDSL) and a PC member/review for JFP, TyDe, IEEE IPDPS, SBLP, IEEE Access, ICANN, IEEE TPDS, CPE, JSPS, MycroftFest23.

I teach or have taught:

• Programming Languages (F28PL)
• Distributed and Parallel Technologies (F20DP/F21DP)
• Introduction to Data Structures and Algorithms (F28SG)
• Hardware-Software Interface (F28HS)

Using GitLab to support Computer Science education:

Programming music with assembly code:

• 2022 - present: Associate Professor, School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences (MACS), Heriot-Watt University.
• 2018 - 2022: Assistant Professor, School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences (MACS), Heriot-Watt University.
• 2021: Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
• 2017 - 2018: Research Fellow (Border Patrol EPSRC project), Heriot-Watt University.
• 2016 - 2017: Research Fellow (The Integration and Interaction of Multiple Mathematical Reasoning Processes EPSRC Grant), Heriot-Watt University.
• 2016 - 2017: Research Fellow (Rathlin EPSRC project), Heriot-Watt University.
• 2016 - 2016: Visiting scholar, EPFL, Switzerland.
• 2013 - 2016: Research Associate (Rathlin EPSRC project), Heriot-Watt University.
• 2013 - 2013: Senior Haskell Software Engineer, Parallel Scientific, American startup.
• 2010 - 2013: Research Associate (SerenA EPSRC project), Heriot-Watt University.
• 2010 - 2013: PhD student, Computer Science (thesis and details), Heriot-Watt University.
• 2004 - 2010: MEng student, Software Engineering, Heriot-Watt University.

If you are a professional writer – i.e., if someone else is getting paid to worry about how your words are formatted and printed – emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish. – Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning was the Command Line.