Computer Science » Computer Science News

DCS Student Helps Uncover and Fix Mobile Network Security Flaw

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 14:30:00 GMT

��ɫ��Ƶ undergraduate Sasha Shaw has helped uncover and responsibly disclose a security flaw in a UK mobile network as part of his dissertation project, supervised by Professor Feng Hao. The vulnerability has now been patched, and Sasha has been recognised by BT on its responsible disclosure Hall of Fame. His project examined the security of the SIP stack over VoLTE and highlights the real-world impact that student cybersecurity research can have.

Paolo Turrini Highly Commended in WAPCE

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 14:00:00 GMT

Congratulations to Dr Paolo Turrini, who has been highly commended in the Community Impact category of the 2026 ��ɫ��Ƶ Awards for Public and Community Engagement (WAPCE).

The award recognises Paolo's work as founder and chair of the Temperance Philosophy Club in Leamington Spa, a free monthly forum that brings people together from across the local community to explore ethical, social and philosophical questions in an open, inclusive and non-polarising environment.

Since launching in September 2024, the club has welcomed around 500 participants, creating opportunities for dialogue, critical thinking and lifelong learning. Through these discussions, the initiative has helped strengthen connections between the University of ��ɫ��Ƶ and the wider community, while demonstrating how academic ideas can inspire meaningful public engagement beyond the campus.

The WAPCE awards celebrate the contributions ��ɫ��Ƶ staff and students make in engaging communities locally, nationally and internationally. Paolo's recognition highlights the impact that thoughtful, community-focused initiatives can have in bringing people together and fostering informed discussion on issues that matter.

Congratulations to Paolo on this well-deserved recognition.

WATE Shortlisting

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT

Two of our colleagues were recently shortlisted for the ��ɫ��Ƶ Award for Teaching Excellence.
Dr James Archbold was shortlisted for the Faculty Staff Award, and Faye Chung Underwood for the Faculty PGR Who Teaches Award - a fantastic and well-deserved recognition.

As our Director of Student Experience, James plays a pivotal role in shaping an inclusive and supportive learning environment across the department. Alongside this leadership, he also makes an excellent contribution to our teaching provision. His engaging approach, enthusiasm, and genuine care for students are consistently reflected in the positive feedback he receives.

Faye joined us in September 2025 as a Tutor and has already made an excellent contribution to the department. She has played a key role in supporting the delivery of a wide range of modules, bringing both professionalism and enthusiasm to her teaching. Her approachable manner and commitment to student learning have been greatly appreciated by both students and colleagues, and she has quickly become a valued member of the team.

Many congratulations, James and Faye, on these achievements.

Latest academic promotion

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 12:50:00 GMT

We are pleased to announce that Dr Sayan Bhattacharya has been promoted to Professor, effective 1st June 2026.

Many congratulations to Sayan on this well-earned success!

Cloning vs Learning in Quantum Computing

Thu, 07 May 2026 08:08:00 GMT

In a recent work, ��ɫ��Ƶ DCS researchers Nikhil Bansal and Matthias C. Caro, together with Gaurav Mahajan (Yale University), explored a fundamental question that lies at the intersection of foundations of quantum theory and computer science.

The No-Cloning theorem says that it is impossible to perfectly clone quantum states. Even if we allow for approximate errors, quantum cloning of unstructured states remains as expensive as fully characterising them, as shown by R.F. Werner in 1998. In contrast, for reasons akin to No Free Lunch Theorems in machine learning, modern quantum learning theory considers structured classes of states and exploits their structure to learn them efficiently. This naturally leads to the question of whether cloning can be easier than learning for these structured classes of states.

In the new work, this question is answered negatively for stabilizer states. The authors proved that imposing this structural restriction does not separate cloning and learning. The authors prove this via a novel connection to sample amplification, which was recently introduced to the learning theory literature by B. Axelrod, S. Garg, V. Sharan, and G. Valiant. The work constitutes concrete progress towards understanding whether cloning and learning are fundamentally equally hard.

This work was presented at QCTiP in April 2026, and it will be presented at COLT in June/July 2026 and at TQC in September 2026.

Academic Recognised for Professional Excellence

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 14:02:00 GMT

Our colleague Dr Claire Rocks achieved Senior Fellow (SFHEA) status through the dialogic route of ��ɫ��Ƶ’s Academic and Professional Pathway for Experienced Staff (APP EXP) programme. Her application was recognised by assessors as one of the strongest D3 submissions they had reviewed, demonstrating a sustained and significant record of educational leadership that extends well beyond her own teaching.

Claire’s work focuses on leading and influencing inclusive, evidence-informed approaches to assessment and curriculum design. She has played a central role in shaping teaching quality and learning culture across departmental, institutional, and sector contexts, including leading ��ɫ��Ƶ’s strand of the Inclusive Assessment in STEM project and contributing to institutional strategy through curriculum development and quality assurance processes.

Within the department, Claire has introduced collaborative structures such as module huddles and supported colleagues and students to work together to enhance clarity, consistency, and inclusivity in assessment practice. She has also strengthened pedagogic scholarship through establishing the Computer Science Education Research Group.

The panel particularly commended the scale, depth, and impact of Claire’s leadership, noting that elements of her work are already operating at a level associated with Principal Fellowship.

Many congratulations to Claire on this achievement and her continued commitment to advancing inclusive, high-quality teaching and learning!

Why chronic pain leads to depression for some but not others

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 23:23:40 GMT

New research from the University of ��ɫ��Ƶ and Fudan University identifies the hippocampus as a key brain system shaping emotional resilience to long-term pain.

Information Asymmetry and Cryptography

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 09:27:00 GMT

In a recent work, visiting undergraduate student Yahel Manor and ��ɫ��Ƶ DCS researchers Jinqiao Hu and Igor Oliveira addressed a fundamental question relevant to the security of cryptographic protocols.

The symmetry of information principle says that the amount of information that a sequence x of bits reveals about another sequence y is essentially the same in either direction. This is known to hold in an idealised world where computations can take an arbitrarily long time, as demonstrated by A. Kolmogorov and L. Levin in the 1970s. In contrast, modern cryptography is built around deliberate asymmetry—for example, functions of the form y = f(x) that are easy to compute but hard to invert (one-way functions).

The new work shows that, once one moves from the idealised setting of time-unbounded computations to the more realistic world of efficient, randomised computations (algorithms that must run quickly and may use randomness), this symmetry can fail in a strong and unconditional way. In other words, computational constraints can yield information asymmetry. In practical terms, this supports the intuition that information may not be extracted efficiently: knowing y = f(x) may not make x efficiently recoverable to the extent that an (ineffective) symmetry principle would suggest, even when x and y are closely related.

Earlier work formally tied an average-case form of this symmetry failure to the existence of one-way functions, the central primitive in cryptography. By proving new failures of symmetry of information, the authors provide concrete progress towards the computational asymmetry that underpins encryption, digital signatures, and many other cryptographic protocols.

This work will be presented at the 58th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC) in June 2026 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.

Failure of Symmetry of Information for Randomised Computations
Jinqiao Hu (University of ��ɫ��Ƶ); Yahel Manor (University of Haifa); Igor C. Oliveira (University of ��ɫ��Ƶ)

The paper describing this research is available here.

Jinqiao Hu, PhD student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of ��ɫ��Ƶ, and co-author of the new result.

��ɫ��Ƶ Computer Science Celebrates Athena Swan Silver Award

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT

The Department of Computer Science is delighted to announce that it has been awarded the Athena Swan Silver Award, recognising our commitment to advancing gender equality for staff and students.

Athena Swan is a UK-wide framework to improve gender equality in higher education. A Silver Award is given to departments that can demonstrate evidence of meaningful progress and impact over a 5-year period – and with a clear and ambitious plan for future action.

In their review, the assessment panel described our submission as "a strong Silver application which addresses all criteria very well."

Martin Costa successfully defends his PhD thesis

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 13:32:00 GMT

Many congratulations to Martin Costa for passing his PhD viva, with Prof Long Tran-Thanh (��ɫ��Ƶ) and Dr Christian Konrad (Bristol) as examiners. Martin has worked on two different fundamental topics in algorithms - clustering and edge coloring. His work on clustering led to a Google PhD fellowship, and his work on edge coloring (the topic of his thesis) led to a best paper award at STOC. During his PhD spanning 3 years, Martin published 7 papers in STOC/FOCS/SODA, 2 papers in ICML/NeurIPS, and 1 paper in ICALP. We wish him all the very best for the next stage of his career.