Quarterly Newsletter
Issue No 4
May - September 2026
Dear Colleagues,
I know it has been a busy start to term, and I want to acknowledge the huge effort that has been made across the school by all staff on the major amount of work that has been undertaken with the introduction of new lab arrangements across mostly undergraduate programmes. It is very important that students are encouraged to use these combined lab sessions and ramp up their practical hands-on learning. Please ensure you are following up to make sure the new approach is working for everyone. Please speak with the relevant year coordinator and programme director if issues arise, so we are made aware of problems with the arrangements. We need all stakeholders reinforcing the same messaging around UG labs consistently across the school, alongside flagging how essential this will ultimately be for our new must-pass examinations rules.
We have also had a very busy period with recruitment efforts across both PGT and UG activities, so I want to acknowledge all the staff who have been heavily impacted by this.
Wishing you all the best for the remainder of the semester, and also reminding you all that my door always remains open whenever a problem arises.
Regards
Enda
Dr Enda Howley, Head of School, School of Computer Science
New Roles
There has been a series of positional changes within our School in the lead up to the new academic year 26/27.
Congratulations to all staff on their new roles and wishing them the very best of luck.
Dr Michael Schukat has been appointed as interim Programme Director for PG Cert in AI for Pofessionals. Best of luck in your new position, Michael.
Dr Priyanka Verma has been appointed as Programme Director for the new Springboard+ programme, Professional Diploma in Applied Cybersecurity. Good luck in your new role, Priyanka.
Ms Karen Young has taken up the role as BCT 2nd Year Coordinator. Wishing you all the best for the academic year in your new position, Karen.
Congratulations to Umay Kulsoom who has taken up the role as DISC Manager after four years as a DISC Tutor. A warm welcome to Yu Zhang, who has joined the team as a DISC Tutor.
New Members
A Warm Welcome to our new School and School Board members:
- Muhammad Imran, Posdoctral Researcher. Supervisor: Prof Ed Curry.
- Numaan Naeem, Research Assistant. Supervisor: Dr Ihsan Ullah.
- Syed Shah, Research Assistant. Supervisor: Dr Ihsan Ullah.
- Jordan Mangan, Translational Researcher/Research Fellow. Supervisor: Dr Mamoona Asghar.
- Rana Zeeshan, Research Associate/Postdoctoral Researcher. Supervisor: Dr Mamoona Asghar.
- Vishal Balasubramanian, Postdoctoral Researcher. Supervisor: Dr Mamoona Asghar.
- Karen Guerrero Vazquez, Postdoctoral Researcher. Supervisor: Dr Enda Barrett & Dr Michael Schukat.
- Ili Ko, Postdoctoral Researcher. Supervisor: Dr Takfarinas Saber.
- Xue Yang, Postdoctoral Researcher. Supervisor: Dr Karl Mason.
- Nazia Perwaiz, Postdoctoral Fellow, Supervisor: Dr Waqar Qureshi.
Irish Times Higher Education Rankings
The latest Irish Times Higher Education Rankings show the University of Galway in Computer Science in a very strong position, ranked joint second in Ireland, in the same band as Trinity College Dublin.
News
May-September 2026
Congratulations to School of Computer Science PhD student, Jonaid Shanifar, who received the 1st Place Poster Award, at the University of Galway Research & Innovation Day 2026, which took place on May 7 at the Galmont Hotel, Galway.
Jonaid presented his work on MO-CoERL, recently published in Information Sciences, exploring hybrid multi-objective reinforcement learning through cooperative evolutionary learning and CAPQL.
Congratulations to School of Computer Science PhD student Eléa Thuilier, who was awarded 1st Prize as well as the Audience Prize at the Ma Thèse en 180 Secondes (MT180) competition at University College Cork on Wednesday May 13.
Eléa represented the University where she presented her PhD thesis subject in French in 3 minutes (180 seconds), for a general and non-specialist public.
Atlantec 2026 was held at the Bailey Allen Hall on May 14 where 500+ people came together with talks and panel discussions from both academic and industry leaders from the areas of Cybersecurity, Artificial intelligence and all things Information Technology.
The main theme of the event was "Intelligence Augmented: The Frontier of Human Judgement".
School of Computer Science Lecturer, Prof Mike Madden helped with the orginisation of the event as Chair of Itag's AI Forum.
Dr Takfarinas Saber, School of Computer Science, delivered a keynote talk at BalkanCom 2026 on June 18 as part of a session on "Intelligent Governance for Sustainable Communication Networks: Architectures, Incentives, and Trust in Decentralized Infrastructures."
Tak's presentation focused on his work on UAV-Assisted Traffic Rerouting in Disaster Scenarios.
Dr Elif Calik, School of Computer Science, chaired the sesssion.
Prof Jim Duggan presented a new workshop "Exploring Loop and Parameters Influence using Sensitivity Analysis with Explanatory Model Analysis" at the 2026 International System Dynamics Conference in Delft, Netherlands, on July 24, 2026.
The goal of the workshop was to provide an insight into how system dynamics models can be integrated with explainable machine learning methods such as SHAP, variable of interest, and partial-dependence profiles.
Huge congratulations to Dr Mamoona Asghar, School of Computer Science, University of Galway, who who was presented with the Curlew Award 2026 from former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson.
The ceremony took place on July 9, 2026 at the Mary Robinson Climate and Nature Conference in Ballina.
The award recognises the integration of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) into Cybersecurity teaching and assessment.
Dr Waqar Qureshi was invited to serve as a judge for the Innovate Together Competition (ITC) in July. The team of judges were evaluating innovative student projects addressing real-world engineering challenges.
Prof Mike Madden was interviewed by Teresa Mannion for RTE News (6pm and 9pm bulletins) in August relating to the recent realisation by Kennys Bookshop, Galway, that a recent anonymous order for 5000 books was probably placed by one of the large AI companies.
Find out more here: Galway bookseller suspects 'scattergun' order is for AI
The 9th Strathclyde International Perspectives on Cybercrime Summer School was held at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, from August 24-28. As part of the programme, Dr Elif Calik, School of Computer Science, delivered a talk entitled “Cybercrime Risks, Trust and Accountability in Digital Healthcare Systems”, examining cybercrime risks in increasingly digital and data-driven healthcare environments through the lens of trustworthiness and accountability. Event info can be found via Cybercrime Summer School | University of Strathclyde.
Congratulations to Usman Haider and Dr Karl Mason of the School of Computer Science who received the Outstanding Paper Award for their research paper, “Constraint Aware Aggregation for Federated Reinforcement Learning in Microgrid Energy Coordination,” at the International Workshop on Federated Learning in the Age of Foundation Models, held in conjunction with IJCAI 2026 in Bremen, Germany on August 16, 2026. The research presents a constraint aware federated reinforcement learning approach for coordinating distributed energy resources in microgrids. The proposed aggregation strategy considers both local performance and system constraint violations, improving energy coordination while reducing unsafe operating conditions. Official workshop and award page: FL@FM-IJCAI'26
We would like to wish Rameel Chaudhry all the best following his seven-week research internship with the School in collaboration with Digital Processing Systems Kuwait. Rameel was under the supervision of Dr. Waqar Qureshi.
Working with our Booster K1 humanoid robot, Rameel built two complete autonomous systems from the ground up.
Dr Waqar Qureshi and MSc Software Design and Development student, Enid (Yan) Lin, represented the School at this year's National Ploughing Championship 2026 at Screggan, Tullamore, Co Offaly this September 15-17.
The event - hailed as a major success for the University - was attended by a total of 243,000 people.
Congratulations to School Operations Officer, Thérèse McIntyre, who took part in the Clare Pride March in Ennis, Co Clare, on September 19 2026.
Thérèse can be seen in the link above drumming with her group, SambaWave, an Afro-Brazilian Percussion and Samba Reggae band Based in Galway.
Congratulations to our 3BCT student, Caoilfhionn Fitzpatrick, on successfully completing a 3-month summer internship with the School's Technical Team this September 2026.
This internship was introduced as part of our School EDI Objectives to encourage greater female participation in technical roles.
Research Spotlight
Dr Priyanka Verma
Big congratulations to Dr Priyanka Verma who announced the publication of her first book:
𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐂𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐐𝐮𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐦-𝐄𝐧𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐃𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠
𝐏𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐈𝐆𝐈 𝐆𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥
The book explores how quantum-enhanced deep learning can help build intelligent, resilient, and secure urban ecosystems capable of addressing the cybersecurity challenges of the future.
Find the link here:
Securing-smart-cities-with-quantam-enhanced-deep-learning
Research Seminar Series
The School of Computer Science Research Seminar Series has recommenced for the new academic year.
This year, Dr Joseph Lemley will take over as event curator from Dr Bharathi Chakravarthi.
- Sept 17: John McFarlane (TS Software Architect, Jaguar Land Rover): Continuous Integration in C++
- Sept 24: Dr Dara Molloy (Senior ML/AI Robotics Engineer, Analog Devices): From Pixels to Poses: The Algorithmic Pipeline of Visual Odometry
- Oct 1: Dr Mario Ruiz Noguera (AMD University Program, AMD): Accelerated Compute with the AMD ROCm Ecosystem
- Oct 8: Dr. Bilal Khan (Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Galway): Level 3 takeover requests in automatic driving
- Oct 15: Prof Jim Duggan (School of Computer Science, University of Galway): Exploring Mechanistic Models using Sensitivity Analysis and Explanatory Model Analysis
- Oct 22: Dr Maram A Mohamed (Doctoral Graduate, Dublin City University): Enhancing Microsleep Prediction Performance Through Temporal Modeling, Multimodal Fusion, and Label-Efficient Learning
This series commenced on September 17 2026 and will run weekly on Thursdays from 2pm-3pm in CSB-1005
Vivas
- Congratulations to Fitria Wulandari who successfully defended her PhD viva on 15 June, 2026. Supervisors: Dr James McDermott and Dr Colm O'Riordan.
- Congratulations to Kevlyn Stanly Kadamala who successfully defended his PhD viva on 6 July, 2026. Supervisor: Dr Enda Barrett.
- Congratulations to Jonaid Shianifar who successfully defended his PhD Viva on 25 August, 2026. Supervisors: Dr Karl Mason and Dr Michael Schukat.
- Congratulations to Rana Zeeshan who successfully defended his PhD viva on 1 September, 2026. Supervisors: Dr Mamoona Aghar and Dr John Bogue.
- Congratulations to Hossein Khaleghy who successfully defended his PhD viva on 29 September, 2026. Supervisors: Dr Karl Mason and Prof Eoghan Clifford.
Upcoming CS Events
|
Date and time |
Event |
|---|---|
|
September 29 |
Trusted Data Sharing across Public and Private Sectors in Ireland The event taking place at the Data Science Institute, Dangan, aligns public and private stakeholders on the policy, trust, and technical foundations required for cross-sectorial data sharing: Tickets |
|
October 2 |
AI4Debunk |
|
October 2-3 |
UG Open Day For more information: Open Days - University of Galway |
|
October 6 |
itag's AI Skills Week Event Women Shaping AI: Learn, Teach, Work, Embrace Dr Josephine Griffith, School of Computer Science, joins a panel of inspiring women from education, technology, engineering, and business as they explore AI through four different lenses: Learn, Teach, Work and Embrace: Register |
|
October 22 |
Women in STEM Awards 2026 A huge congratulations to Dr Mamoona Asghar, School of Computer Science, who has been named as a finalist for the 2026 STEM Woman of the Year Award. The event will take place at The Mansion House Dublin: Details |
|
Novermber 8 |
Galway Science & Technology Festival For more information: Galway Science & Technology Festival |
Thank you for reading
Quarterly Newsletter
Issue No 4