School of Computing Science

Netlab Drinks

Group: Networked Systems Research Laboratory (NETLAB)
Speaker: Everyone
Date: 06 November, 2026
Time: 18:00 - 21:00
Location: Curlers Rest

Enjoy the drinks and discussion with netlab graduates.

Netlab Drinks

Group: Networked Systems Research Laboratory (NETLAB)
Speaker: Everyone
Date: 06 November, 2026
Time: 18:00 - 21:00
Location: Curlers Rest

Enjoy the drinks and discussion with netlab graduates.

How to review a systems research paper

Group: Systems Seminars
Speaker: Jeremy Singer, Colin Perkins, University of Glasgow
Date: 10 November, 2026
Time: 14:00 - 15:00
Location: Room 422, Sir Alwyn Williams Building and Teams

Peer review is a vital part of academic work, although it often goes unnoticed. In this practical workshop, we will discuss how the peer review process works in general, then think about how to write a good review of paper for a Systems venue. After a short presentation, we will have some example papers to review as part of an interactive discussion. Please come along if (a) you are an experienced reviewer and can give advice, or (b) you haven’t done much/any reviewing but would like to find out how it works.

How I learned to stop worrying and love Claude

Group: Formal Analysis, Theory and Algorithms (FATA)
Speaker: Simon Gay, University of Glasgow
Date: 10 November, 2026
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: 422 Sir Alwyn Williams (SAWB), University of Glasgow

I recently started using Claude+Rocq for research on type systems, with good results. I will describe some of my experiences. I will also report on attending a Royal Society Discussion Meeting on "Mathematics in the Age of AI" and offer some thoughts on how we can bring AI tools into research and teaching.

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

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