School of Computing Science

Intelligent Multimodal Sensing: From Electronic Skin to Digital Health

Group: Human Computer Interaction (GIST)
Speaker: Dr. Mayue Shi, City St George’s, University of London
Date: 12 November, 2026
Time: 13:00 - 14:00
Location: 423 SAWB

Abstract: What if machines could feel the way our skin does? Soft electronics are making this possible, enabling sensors that conform to the human body and to machines, and capture rich information about touch, motion and physiology. Combined with artificial intelligence, these sensors open new opportunities across home health monitoring, human–computer interaction and robotics. This talk starts from the source of the data: soft sensors and microsystems. It then discusses what becomes possible when soft wearables, multimodal sensing and AI are integrated, and what challenges remain in the real world.

Intelligent Multimodal Sensing: From Electronic Skin to Digital Health

Group: Human Computer Interaction (GIST)
Speaker: Dr. Mayue Shi, City St George’s, University of London
Date: 12 November, 2026
Time: 13:00 - 14:00
Location: 423 SAWB

Abstract: What if machines could feel the way our skin does? Soft electronics are making this possible, enabling sensors that conform to the human body and to machines, and capture rich information about touch, motion and physiology. Combined with artificial intelligence, these sensors open new opportunities across home health monitoring, human–computer interaction and robotics. This talk starts from the source of the data: soft sensors and microsystems. It then discusses what becomes possible when soft wearables, multimodal sensing and AI are integrated, and what challenges remain in the real world.

From Data-Driven Mechatronics to Edge-Enabled Digital Twins for Sustainable Systems

Group: Systems Seminars
Speaker: Masahiro Mae, The University of Tokyo
Date: 17 November, 2026
Time: 14:00 - 15:00
Location: Room 422, Sir Alwyn Williams Building and Teams

Abstract:
This seminar presents a research trajectory from data-driven mechatronics to edge-enabled digital twins for sustainable systems, with a focus on how data and computation can be used to enhance the performance and autonomy of complex cyber-physical-economic systems. The talk is organized around two complementary themes: automated controller design for high-precision mechatronic systems and system-level digital twin applications enabled by emerging edge computing resources.
In the first part, data-driven approaches for automating controller design in complex semiconductor manufacturing equipment are introduced, with a particular focus on high-precision motion systems used in lithography. These methods exploit experimental input-output data to reduce dependence on detailed first-principles modeling and enable systematic tuning of high-performance controllers.
In the second part, the development of digital twins for public transportation systems is discussed as an application domain for edge computing and advanced semiconductor technologies. By integrating sensing, computation, system models, and optimization, such digital twins can support data-driven operation and system design toward reduced energy consumption and carbon-neutral transit systems.
Finally, I will discuss how advances in edge semiconductors and distributed computing can bridge the gap between device-level innovation and system-level intelligence in future sustainable cyber-physical-economic systems.

Biography:
Masahiro Mae received the B.E. degree in electrical and electronic engineering, the M.S. degree in advanced energy, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering and information systems from The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, in 2018, 2020, and 2023, respectively.
In 2023, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Systems, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, as an Assistant Professor, and has been a Lecturer since 2026. His research interests include multivariable control and data-driven optimization for industrial mechatronics and energy systems.
Dr. Mae is a Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan, the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers, the Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan, and the Japan Society of Energy and Resources.

Theory-Insight-Guided Empirical Research for Understanding Applied Combinatorial Solving

Group: Formal Analysis, Theory and Algorithms (FATA)
Speaker: Jakob Nordström, University of Copenhagen
Date: 17 November, 2026
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: 422 Sir Alwyn Williams (SAWB), University of Glasgow

Combinatorial optimization solvers have improved dramatically since the turn of the millennium. Although the problems they solve are believed to be exponentially hard in the worst case, state-of-the-art solvers often perform remarkably well on practical instances. Explaining this gap between worst-case complexity and empirical performance remains a major challenge.

We propose that computational complexity theory can shed light on this problem by providing benchmarks formulas for which results of computational solver experiments can be compared against theoretical predictions. Another theory-inspired approach is to run solvers on real-world problem instances and study the solver-generated proofs to gain insights into the reasoning performed by the solver. We give examples of these approaches applied to Boolean satisfiability (SAT) solving.

Explainable Graph-Based Early Detection of Time Synchronisation Attacks on the O-RAN Open Fronthaul

Group: Networked Systems Research Laboratory (NETLAB)
Speaker: Muhammad Arif
Date: 19 November, 2026
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: Lilybank Gardens, F121 Conference Room

Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) disaggregates radio and baseband functions over standardised open interfaces, making the Open Fronthaul (O-FH) and its Synchronisation Plane (S-Plane) critical to coordinated operation, which depends on accurate time and phase alignment across distributed components. IEEE~1588 Precision Time Protocol (PTP) provides high-accuracy timing, but commonly deployed configurations offer limited protection against compromised timing sources and manipulated synchronisation messages. Previous work has shown that PTP spoofing can lead to gNB failure within approximately two seconds, highlighting the need for early detection. This study presents an early and explainable graph-based framework for detecting PTP synchronisation attacks in O-RAN. A Hybrid O-RAN testbed is implemented with User Equipment (UEs) generating service traffic, a logical Radio Unit (RU), an srsRAN Distributed Unit/Central Unit (DU/CU), and a simulated Ethernet-based Lower-Layer Split Category~3 (LLS-C3) S-Plane topology over the O-FH between the RU and DU. The evaluated attack compromises a legitimate backup Grandmaster, reconfigures it to win the Best Master Clock Algorithm (BMCA) election, and then manipulates PTP timestamps to introduce progressive time synchronisation disruption. From 100 experimental runs, comprising 30 benign and 70 attack runs, topology-aware graphs are constructed from PTP and O-FH/eCPRI measurements. A three-layer Graph Attention Network (GAT)-augmented GraphSAGE classifier attains 99.21\% accuracy and 99.54\% F1-score. In live DU-side evaluation, the framework achieves a mean live detection latency of 484~ms, below the approximately two-second failure timescale reported in previous work. Integrated Gradients (IG) shows that Time Error and O-FH traffic measurements provide the main feature-level evidence, while the Boundary Clocks directly connected to the RU and DU contribute most strongly at node level. Compared with existing S-Plane approaches based on transport or cryptographic protection, auxiliary positioning measurements, and PTP packet-sequence learning, the proposed framework explicitly models distributed synchronisation relationships while combining run-level generalisation, live sub-second detection, and feature- and node-level explanation.

"Sticking their heads out above the parapets": Lived experiences of legal risks in research

Group: Systems Seminars
Speaker: Daniel Thomas, University of Strathclyde
Date: 24 November, 2026
Time: 14:00 - 15:00
Location: Room 422, Sir Alwyn Williams Building and Teams

Overbroad computer crime, intellectual property, and other laws are well known to create legal risks that can discourage essential research. Notable examples include the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the UK Computer Misuse Act. Because such laws fail to distinguish malicious hacking from good-faith testing and research, researchers face serious legal risks for public-interest research activity like identifying software or hardware vulnerabilities or scraping data. Despite the research community’s broad awareness of these risks, our understanding of their practical impacts is limited, as most of the community’s knowledge comes from anecdotal evidence rather than systematic study. We conduct the first qualitative study focused on researchers’ lived experiences, to empirically document the impacts of legal risks and threats on research and researchers, and how researchers navigate legal risk situations. Our study engages two participant groups: researchers with legal-risk experiences in the UK or the US (NR = 36), who discuss 130 projects and incidents spanning over three decades, and professionals that offer support to researchers navigating legal risks (NS = 8), who have collectively supported thousands of researchers. We thus provide an unprecedented big-picture view of researchers’ experiences with legal risks. We synthesise actionable strategies for researchers, and our findings provide evidence to support policy reform.

Optimising Output Opportunities

Group: Formal Analysis, Theory and Algorithms (FATA)
Speaker: Steven Brewster, University of Glasgow
Date: 24 November, 2026
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: 422 Sir Alwyn Williams (SAWB), University of Glasgow

This talk will discuss how to write better abstracts, introductions and conclusions sections for papers that might be submitted for REF2029. It is important to make sure the originality, significance and rigour of your work are clear to a broad audience as two REF reviewers will be from outside your field. Making these sections clear is not only good for REF but probably makes for a better paper overall.  

Using the FATA clusters, or HPC in general

Group: Formal Analysis, Theory and Algorithms (FATA)
Speaker: Will Pettersson, University of Glasgow
Date: 01 December, 2026
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: 422 Sir Alwyn Williams (SAWB), University of Glasgow

Refining a Martingale Transport

Group: Formal Analysis, Theory and Algorithms (FATA)
Speaker: Constantine Sorokin
Date: 08 December, 2026
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: 422 Sir Alwyn Williams (SAWB), University of Glasgow

Strassen’s theorem guarantees a martingale coupling between distributions ordered in convex order. Suppose a coupling is already fixed: can we insert an intermediate step while preserving the joint law of the endpoints? The intermediate distribution must lie between the endpoint laws in convex order, but these bounds alone need not ensure compatibility with the original coupling.

We prove that every intermediate distribution satisfying the bounds can be inserted if and only if the original coupling is the unique martingale coupling between its marginals. We characterize uniqueness geometrically through conditional supports and show that failures of interpolation persist under small perturbations. Refinement can nevertheless remain possible within structured families: for Gaussian couplings, every intermediate Gaussian law is attainable, although some non-Gaussian laws satisfying the same bounds are not.

The problem arises in Bayesian persuasion when a sender provides additional information to an already informed receiver. Our results identify when the sender can optimize over distributions of posterior estimates using only convex-order bounds. Applications include optimal disclosure in second-price auctions where bidders initially know valuation intervals, and the choice of measurement precision in Gaussian learning.

FATA/GLASS Christmas Quiz

Group: Formal Analysis, Theory and Algorithms (FATA)
Speaker: Jake Trevor + Jeremy Singer, University of Glasgow
Date: 15 December, 2026
Time: 14:00 - 16:00
Location: 422 Sir Alwyn Williams (SAWB), University of Glasgow

Joint Christmas Quiz with FATA

Group: Systems Seminars
Speaker: FATA and GLASS members
Date: 15 December, 2026
Time: 14:00 - 16:00
Location: Room 422, SAWB

Christmas Lunch/Dinner

Group: Networked Systems Research Laboratory (NETLAB)
Speaker: Nah
Date: 17 December, 2026
Time: 12:00 - 20:00
Location: TBC