9.00-9.45
Coffee & Networking
9.45-10.00
10:00-11:30 Parallel Workshops
Aaron Hirtenstein is Co-operative Business Advisor at Co-operate Scotland and Community Lead at LocalGov Drupal. Aaron supports co-ops and open source projects to work better together, with a focus on governance, strategy, and community building. He works with organisations across tech, food, and the public sector.
Maria Young is the Accessibility Lead at Agile Collective, a worker co-op building websites and digital tools for positive social impact.
Jordan Autumn Brown is a member of Very Evil Demons, a worker-owned games studio reimagining how collaborative, ethical game development can work.
Chris Connelly is a founder and engineer at Digital Society, a not-for-profit co-operative building digital product for social good.
Dr Paul Harvey, Lecturer of low-carbon and sustainable computing, University of Glasgow
Dr Ryo Yanagida, Research Associate, University of Glasgow
Decoding Ethics in AI research
As AI technologies become increasingly embedded in the everyday systems that support and govern us, the work we do as Computer Science and Informatics researchers becomes increasingly more valuable to the companies and bodies building and promoting such systems. But in the rush to develop and deploy these technologies there is a risk that important ethical considerations such as data sources and real-world uses and implications of our work are overlooked or even obfuscated. In this workshop Dr Pip Thornton introduces some of the current key ethical debates in Informatics and AI. Participants will be invited to use creative and critical methods to help decipher some of the underlying narratives, incentives and logics of the work we do, helping us to make informed and ethical decisions about the research we chose to undertake.
Dr Pip Thornton is a BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) Research Fellow and Chancellor’s Fellow based in the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh. Her theory and practice explore the politics and ethics of existence in online spaces, critiquing and making visible structures of power within the digital economy with creative methods. In collaboration with the Edinburgh International Book Festival, she leads the ‘Writing The Wrongs of AI’ project, which explores the effects of GenAI tools such as ChatGPT on writers and the publishing industry.
Public Engagement: How to engage with different audiences during your PhD
This interactive workshop will give an overview of the value of public engagement as part of a PhD and early academic career. Participants will have the opportunity to reflect on their research and consider who might benefit from understanding it and even being involved in it. Research careers increasingly demand an element of public engagement and this session will provide some ideas for the next steps in this process.
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Dawn Smith leads public engagement with research at Edinburgh Napier University. She is a founding member of the Scottish Public Engagement Network and has successful led engagement projects funded by the European Commission, UKRI and the Scottish Government.
What can I do with my PhD? Exploring Career Horizons in the Age of the 4th Industrial Revolution
This workshop will provide an overview of options inside and outside academia, insights into weighing up career options and the importance of networking and reflecting on your skills in relation to what current industry needs.
Karolina Green is Career Development Consultant in Employability & Careers at Edinburgh Napier University
11.40-12.30
Michael Gardiner is the Digital Development Specialist and AI Innovation Lead for South of Scotland Enterprise.
Aaron Hirtenstein is Co-operative Business Advisor at Co-operate Scotland and Community Lead at LocalGov Drupal. Aaron supports co-ops and open source projects to work better together, with a focus on governance, strategy, and community building. He works with organisations across tech, food, and the public sector.
Scott Hurrell is a Senior Lecturer in HRM and Employment Relations at University of Glasgow’s Adam Smith Business School whose research includes social media in the workplace, labour market trends and skills devleopment.
Sally Johnston is a Glasgow-based creative producer with experience in project and events management, community engagement, and civic and environmental activism.
Milan Markovic is an Interdisciplinary Fellow at the University of Aberdeen whose research focuses on complex socio-technical systems underpinned by novel technologies such as IoT, AI, and Blockchains.
12.30-13.30
13.30-15.00
13.30-14.40
14.40-15.00
15.00-15.15
15.15-16.20
15.15-16.00
AI and Cybersecurity: A Threat, An Opportunity or the End of Human Kind?
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, defines that AI will be the greatest technology that humanity has yet developed. But the rise in the power and scale of AI will also bring great disruptions to our world. This presentation will outline some of the key aspects involved with the application of AI to cybersecurity, and especially in the new threats that it will bring.
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William (Bill) J Buchanan OBE FRSE is a Professor of Applied Cryptography in the School of Computing, Edinburgh and the Built Environment at Edinburgh Napier University. He is a Fellow of the BCS and a Principal Fellow of the HEA. Bill was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to cybersecurity, and, in 2024, he was appointed as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE). In 2023, he received the “Most Innovative Teacher of the Year” award at the Times Higher Education Awards 2023 (the “Oscars of Higher Education”), and was awarded “Cyber Evangelist of the Year” at the Scottish Cyber Awards in 2016 and 2025. Along with this, he has won the Best Lecturer/Tutor for Computing at the Student-voted Excellence Awards six times. Bill lives and works in Edinburgh and is a believer in fairness, justice, and freedom. His social media tagline reflects his strong belief in changing the world for the better: “A Serial Innovator. An Old World Breaker. A New World”.
Bill has a strong belief in the power of education and in supporting innovation from every angle and currently leads the Blockpass ID Lab and the Centre for Cybersecurity, IoT and Cyberphysical, and the Director of the Scottish Centre of Excellence in Digital Trust and DLT. Bill works in the areas of cryptography, blockchain, trust, digital identity and quantum processing. He has one of the most extensive cryptography sites in the World (asecuritysite.com), and is involved in many areas of novel research and teaching. He has published over 30 academic books and over 450 academic research papers. Along with this, Bill’s work has led to many areas of impact, including a number of highly successful spin-out companies (including Zonefox, Symphonic Software, Cyan Forensics and MemCrypt), along with awards for excellence in knowledge transfer and for teaching. He recently received an ”Outstanding Contribution to Knowledge Exchange” award and was included in the FutureScot “50 Scottish Tech People Who Are Changing The World”, along with being a regular keynote speaker at a range of conferences. Bill’s true academic passion is building, analysing and breaking cryptographic methods.
Website: https://asecuritysite.com