Cambridge Computer Science

Heatwaves impact European countries' ability to supply power and pose an increasing threat to vital infrastructure. So researchers have developed a new toolkit to help national grid operators understand, and identify, the vulnerabilities in their systems. shorturl.at/I3Jre @eeg.cl.cam.ac.uk

It is now just 1 week until Prof Alastair Beresford's @arberesford.bsky.social @cst.cam.ac.uk Strachey Lecture ‘Hiding in plain sight: the promises & pitfalls of secret communication’ Book: www.eventbrite.com/e/strachey-l... The Strachey Lectures are generously supported by OxFORD Asset Management.

We look forward to hearing Prof Margaret Martonosi (Princeton University) give the Wheeler Lecture on 4 November. She'll talk about "the captivating potential" of Quantum Computing and the role computer scientists must play for it to reach its full potential. wheelerlecture2026.eventbrite.co.uk

We're excited that our researchers @tomgur.bsky.social @martin.kleppmann.com & Amanda Prorok are receiving funding from the @aria-research.bsky.social 'Scaling Trust' programme to lead teams exploring ambitious new ways of improving #AI security. Read about their projects here: shorturl.at/8K1ck

Congratulations to Professor Alice Hutchings (@message4bob.bsky.social), Professor of Emerging Harms here and the Director of our Cambridge Cybercrime Centre. She was honoured at the National Cyber Awards last night with The Alan Turing Cyber Leadership Award. www.cst.cam.ac.uk/news/nationa...

Countries like Senegal could soon use #AI to help plan for food shortages. Former @cam.ac.uk PhD student Madeline Lisaius mapped smallholder crops with Tessera, beating other methods with far less computing power and labelled data. Read more: www.cam.ac.uk/research/new... #FoodSecurity 📷 @wfp.org

Even where pollution levels are below the World Health Organization's recommended limit, daytime pollution is strongly linked to higher levels of coughing at night, finds a team of researchers based in this Department, Tsinghua University and sleep technology company SleepCycle. shorturl.at/mDjx9

'The promises & pitfalls of secret communication'. Our Head of Department @arberesford.bsky.social – architect of the @theguardian.com secure messaging system – discusses this in his Strachey Lecture at Oxford University @compscioxford.bsky.social on 27 October. www.eventbrite.com/e/strachey-l...

Law enforcement agencies are closing down #cybercrime marketplaces, but bad actors aren't going away. Instead they're using other platforms like messaging app Telegram. In 1 year, researchers here collected 14m messages & 3.6m files from criminals trading stolen data on Telegram. shorturl.at/vZiAw

Small farms grow much of the world's food, but from space are nearly invisible. Now AI tool Tessera, trained on years of satellite imagery, shows it can map crops on small farms better & cheaper than standard methods, which could greatly aid food security planning. www.cst.cam.ac.uk/news/how-ai-...

Hedgehogs are under threat in the UK, particularly in rural areas where numbers have fallen by up to 75% since 2000, government figures suggest. 🦔 But now, thanks to researchers here, these much-loved animals are getting help from an unlikely-seeming ally: AI. www.cst.cam.ac.uk/news/tessera...

'A School for Scoundrels: How Newbies learn in the Cybercrime Ecosystem': this is just one of the talks on the agenda at our 2026 Cambridge Cybercrime Conference. 🗓️ Monday 22 June 📍the William Gates Building, Cambridge. ℹ️ For more details & to register, see: www.cst.cam.ac.uk/news/school-...

A new study led by ethical tech researcher Dr @elepetrovs.bsky.social shows that when gambling firms advertise on social media, they reach young men - the group most likely to exhibit problem gambling behaviour - at more than double the rate of women... www.cam.ac.uk/research/new...

Semiconductor company Rivos; the researchers turning earbuds into health sensors; an AI-assisted drug discovery advance; & a tool used by millions of software developers. All started by our current/former staff & students, they won Hall of Fame Awards last night: www.cst.cam.ac.uk/news/celebra...

Happy birthday to our #CHERI project, which has grown from an ambitious research idea into a transformative approach to computer security that is bringing academia and industry together. We're celebrating 15 years of CHERI with a conference today & party tonight! buff.ly/00XIsvx

"War in Iran risks triggering cyber insurgency: hackers are usually more interested in money than patriotism but this time might be different." A thought-provoking piece in yesterday's @financialtimes.com by Prof Alice Hutchings, Director of our Cambridge Cybercrime Centre www.ft.com/content/4e88...

We're not the only ones talking about #AI during #CamFest this year. We'll be showcasing some of our #AI research at our Open Day this Saturday, 21 March. And our colleagues from @ai.cam.ac.uk will be discussing the future role of #AI in improving public health next Wednesday, 25 March.

We're HIRING an organised & enthusiastic Outreach Coordinator to deliver our growing Outreach Programme. Do you want to share your passion for Computer Science? And encourage more people from all backgrounds to engage with this field of work and study? If so, see: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/outreac...

#AI makes our world more convenient, saves time & possibly lives. But it also adds risk to vital things like hospitals & food supplies. Hear researcher Hanna Foerster discuss this at our #CamFest Open Day on Sat 21 March. www.festival.cam.ac.uk/.../can-we-t.... @cambridgefestival.bsky.social

We're running a new 'escape room' at our @cambridgefestival.bsky.social Family Open Day on Sat 21 March - 'Help Us Find our Missing Computer Science Professor'. Find clues, make connections & see if you can solve the riddle! More details on this & other activities on the day at: shorturl.at/Jeu63

We're getting ready for our Computer Science Open Day as part of this year's Cambridge Festival! @cambridgefestival.bsky.social Visit us on Saturday 21 March to program mini robot cars, make music with code, Stop An Evil Hacker Deleting The Internet, and lots more. tinyurl.com/2zacmubb

The next @ellis.eu Distinguished Lecture will be in one week, on February 17. Hatice Gunes (@cst.cam.ac.uk) will present Fairness for Affective and Wellbeing Computing Systems and Agents, online and at @oulu.fi. Details here: www.ellisinstitute.fi/ellis-distin...

Prof @ceciliamascolo.bsky.social explores how AI can diagnose diseases as well from analysing body sounds like heartbeats and coughs as it does by analysing medical images like scans & x-rays. Today she receives an @erc.europa.eu Proof of Concept grant to take her work further. shorturl.at/qDHNF

Environmental AI business Ötzi, set up by two of our alumni, is in the final of the The Trinity Bradfield Prize on 28 Jan (one of Cambridge University's leading early stage tech & science awards). Ötzi's mission is to use AI to improve how we predict & manage climate risks. 👇 shorturl.at/Ju9PA

The AI Sciencepreneurship Bootcamp is an immersive two-day programme for entrepreneurial Cambridge researchers on how to turn their AI ideas into business. It's run by our colleagues at @ai.cam.ac.uk and applications are open until 28 January. See full details in their post, below.

Are you a Cambridge University researcher with ideas about using AI to address challenges in local government? Or a local authority interested in collaborating on an AI challenge? Then the @ai.cam.ac.uk Local Government AI Accelerator may be of interest. www.ai.cam.ac.uk/calls/local-...

200 MILLION. That's how many question attempts have been made on Isaac Science, a free and innovative science learning platform for schools co-developed by researchers in our Department. Want to know what the 200 millionth question was? Find out here: www.cst.cam.ac.uk/news/200-mil...

📢*FACULTY HIRING* There are just 2 weeks left to apply for the position here as Asst/Assoc Prof in Algorithms & Complexity. Exceptional applicants from all areas of Computer Science considered. ℹ️ See more details about the role & how to apply at shorturl.at/aN1ra 📅 Apply by 15 December 2025

🎉 We're delighted that a donation from Cadence means we can offer more fully-funded PhD studentships in computer architecture and design automation at our CASCADE Centre. tinyurl.com/565s49f3 Interested in doing a PhD in this area? There is still (just) time to apply for a start in October 2026...

'From research lab to newsroom: deploying secure whistleblower technology'. @arberesford.bsky.social & @lambda.bsky.social discuss their secure comms technology CoverDrop which now helps whistleblowers contact @theguardian.com journalists safely. 🗓️ Weds 12 Nov 🕒 15:05 (GMT) 👉🏼 shorturl.at/FbMWc

Our (virtual) Postgraduate Open Day takes place this Thursday, 6 November. We'll have an online admissions talk and Q&A session for prospective students at: 09:00 (GMT) for MPhils 16:00 (GMT) for PhDs. Want to attend? Book your place in advance here: www.postgraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/openday

AI researchers are fascinated by Large Language Models. But Large Tabular Models? Nope, they don't get anything like as much research love. Our PhD student Xiangjian Jiang hopes to change this. A 2025 Global Google PhD Fellow, he aims to highlight this unloved area of research. shorturl.at/8lBPn

We're so pleased to welcome the first PhD candidates - Luisa and Qianhui - to the CASCADE Centre, our new Computer Architecture and Semiconductor Design Centre. Their research has been made possible by the support the Centre receives from industry, including Arm & AMD. shorturl.at/OmJxt

Researchers should move away from the pursuit of a single all-knowing robot because the future of #robotics isn't a solitary genius, it's a collaborative community. So says Amanda Prorok, our Professor of Collective Intelligence & Robotics, in the journal '@science.org Robotics'. shorturl.at/FdVtO

@ceciliamascolo.bsky.social has been elected as a Fellow of the @raeng.org.uk! Prof of Mobile Systems here, she's a pioneer in devising frameworks to collect and analyse sensing data from devices like phones and earbuds, and use it to understand behaviour & health. shorturl.at/GnuZq #RAEngFellows

It's been a summer of accolades for our researchers. Work by several members of this Department has been honoured by leading conferences and organisations in fields ranging from #AI to #cybersecurity to #socialrobotics. Congratulations to our colleagues! www.cst.cam.ac.uk/news/summer-...

It's our annual Open Days tomorrow & Friday when hundreds of potential students come to find out what it's really like to study Computer Science 💻 here at Cambridge Uni. They can hear admissions talks & sample lectures - and try lock-picking with the Computer Security group! buff.ly/0j5OGJT

The rapid rise in AI-generated fraudulent academic papers is "poisoning" scientific literature, say Cambridge researchers in Nature magazine today. But though AI is the problem, it could also help in ensuring the integrity of scientific discovery... buff.ly/AuSNcGd @anil.recoil.org @sadiq.toao.com

🎨 Artists urgently need stronger defences 🛡️ to protect their work from being used to train #AI models without their consent. So say the researchers, led by a Security PhD student here, who uncovered critical weaknesses in two art safeguarding tools very widely used by artists... buff.ly/IiTrzLb

Congratulations to Prof Srinivasan Keshav on receiving the inuagural #ACM SIGEnergy Achievement Award for his "pioneering contributions to energy systems and informatics, including seminal research, capacity building, and helping to create SIGENERGY and eEnergy." energy.acm.org/sigenergy-ac...

From today, @theguardian.com's new Secure Messaging system will generate dummy messages as 'air cover' for real messages sent by whistleblowers. This is to stop adversaries seeing that they're contacting journalists. The new system builds on security research carried out here: shorturl.at/Et0Rf

"One of the next frontiers for AI lies in deciphering human-centred data captured by wearable devices," says Dr Dong Ma, who'll join us next year as Associate Professor in Wearable Computing. "This holds the promise of tackling some profound societal challenges..." www.cst.cam.ac.uk/news/new-ass...

Exploring the trust-building mechanisms that support #cybercrime markets on Telegram, and understanding the techniques #hackers use for exploiting human elements. Two of the topics to be discussed at the annual Cambridge Cybercrime Conference on 23 June. www.cambridgecybercrime.uk/conference20...

🎉 Congratulations @pietrolesci.bsky.social, Clara Meister, Thomas Hofmann, @andreasvlachos.bsky.social & Tiago Pimentel! They won Publication of the Year at our annual Hall of Fame awards last week for their paper on 'Causal Estimation of Memorisation Profiles'. www.cst.cam.ac.uk/announcing-w...