Insights from a VeTSS Doctoral Dissertation Award Winner

This June, VeTSS hosted its annual event at the Royal Academy of Engineering in London. As always, this event was well attended and brought together an exciting range of perspectives across the themes of the VeTSS research institute, from government, industry, and of course academia. There were lots of great talks, but I’ll talk about a few of my highlights.

As well as the excellent academic talks, this year’s event saw the announcement of a renewed small grants scheme, funded by DSTL. I’m a great believer in these small grants which have historically excelled at promoting early career researchers and finding high-impact industrial collaborations between academics and industrial partners. This year’s call looks to continue that success.

The keynote speech by Alastair Donaldson was inspiring. Ally gave us a whistle-stop tour of some research projects old and new. His insights in testing at scale and embracing theoretical complexity with fuzzing were very useful, and the sneak peek at how AI technologies might enhance test case generation in the next few years is very exciting.

The Annual VeTSS Conference also included a talk from a perspective outside of theoretical computer science. Lizzie Coles-Kemp gave a talk about how socio-technical aspects of cybersecurity are very important in modern life, and how the design of online spaces and computer systems needs to be done with all users in mind and not built exclusively for users with a high degree of digital literacy. This talk made me consider how some of the research we do in the VeTSS can affect people of all walks of life, and how we might shape our research to impact folks outside our immediate community.

This year’s VeTSS conference also had the first VeTSS Doctoral Dissertation Awards, and I was honoured and humbled to receive the 2022 prize alongside Kayvan Memarian and Yann Herklotz for their incredible 2023 and 2024 theses respectively. The prize meshes so well with the aims of VeTSS in recognising early career researchers, and I hope it is an on-going tradition long into the future.

I felt buoyed by this year’s event. Not is it great to see our community meeting together, but I can think of no other venue where I could hear so many excellent research presentations from such a wide set of perspectives. I look forward to seeing the projects VeTSS funds in its 2025 research awards and hope to see you all again at next year’s annual event.

By Simon Cooksey