Scottish Argumentation Day: SAD 2026
Registration is now open for Scottish Argumentation Day 2026, hosted at University of Dundee by Eimear Maguire, Kamila Górska and Ramon Ruiz-Dolz on 29 May 2026. About the event Scotland has a particularly high concentration of research groups working in the AI subfield of computational argumentation. Scottish Argumentation Day has previously been attended by researchers based both …
Teaching Programming in an LLM-Dominated Era: Maintaining Engagement, Skills, and Responsible AI
Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT are now embedded in how students learn programming. For computing educators, this raises a central question: How do we maintain meaningful student engagement with learning materials and conceptual understanding while preparing learners for an AI-rich computing landscape? My recent research [1] compared students’ perceptions of programming learning difficulties …
Pre-CHI 2026
The Pre-CHI Day is a chance for the Scottish HCI community to see some of the world-leading research going on across Scotland, and allow those not travelling to Spain to talk to authors first-hand and hear about their work.
The event will be hybrid, and virtual attendance and virtual presentation will both be supported. We expect a mixed audience, including researchers of the Scottish HCI community as well as interested students, designers, industry, practitioners etc., as well as newcomers to the field of HCI.
SICSA Seminar – From Large to Small: Building Affordable Language Models with Limited Resources
Join us on Wednesday, 25 February for an AI & Data Science Seminar.
Dr Burcu Can of University of Stirling presents
From Large to Small: Building Affordable Language Models with Limited Resources
This talk aims to question the limitations and harms of Large Language Models, followed by a review of Small Language Models, covering prominent examples, their key techniques, and their capabilities. It will also give an overview of even smaller ‘baby’ language models. Finally, the talk will conclude by presenting some recent studies in which we developed baby language models using very small amounts of data.
S3CIX 2026: Symposium and Summer School on Computational Interaction
Registration for the 10th Symposium and Summer School on Computational Interaction is open from 1 February and close 14 March 2026. This year S³CIX is expanding from a Summer School format to also include a 4 day long academic Symposium. We anticipate about 30 students and 40 academics and invited speakers to attend. There will also be two workshops. Computational interaction often involves elements from machine learning, signal processing, information theory, optimisation, inference, control theory and formal modelling.
SCONE Meeting: 19 January 2026
The next SCONE meeting will be hosted at University of Glasgow from 12-1pm on Monday, 19 January 2026. SCONE is the SCOttish Networking Event – an informal gathering of networking and systems researchers in and around Scotland. The goal of these meetings is to foster interaction between researchers from our various institutions. Each meeting will …
SICSA Writing Retreat 2026: Applications Open
The 2026 SICSA Writing Retreat will bring together researchers from across Scotland for a two-day intensive writing event 27-29 April 2026 at University of Glasgow’s SCENE campus on Loch Lomond. See the event page for event details, programme and application form.
Postdoctoral researchers from any SICSA institution are invited to apply to attend the writing retreat by completing the online form by 1 February 2026.
Co-Production – The Researcher’s Toolkit – Launch Event
CS students and researchers are encouraged to attend a launch event for Co-Production – The Researcher’s Toolkit, hosted by University of Aberdeen’s Dr Michelle Sader in collaboration with fellow Research Innovation Scotland member SINAPSE. This is a hybrid event 11am-12pm on Thursday, 15 January 2026.
Co-production is a collaborative approach to research, where people with both lived and learnt experience work together to conceptualise, conduct and disseminate research. Co-production not only benefits a variety of different communities, but is also increasingly sought after by academic funders and journals.
2025-26 Learning & Teaching Scholars
We are pleased to announce we have accepted 12 colleagues from across Scottish universities to join our 2025-26 cohort of Learning & Teaching Scholars. Welcome and congratulations to all! We look forward to getting to know everyone better throughout the course of the programme.
PhD Travel Fund Awards
SICSA SGA Directors are pleased to announce the following students have been awarded SICSA PhD Travel funding during the December 2025 call: The next call for applications for PhD Travel Funding is now open.