Dr Lauritz Thamsen he/him
Lecturer in Computer Systems
Mission Priority Areas
(a) EDI is important to me,
(b) I am convinced that an EDI-focused CDT and providing a diverse range of role models can make a real difference, and
(c) I believe that my unique experiences, such as excelling in academia despite the challenges of a complicated medical condition, will allow me to make a meaningful contribution.
I am passionate about computing and sustainability, so the most important research question for me right now is how we can employ data analytics and AI/ML across domains and disciplines for the benefit of society and the planet without further increasing computing’s already massive carbon footprint. I am therefore working on new ways to make modern computing infrastructure for data-intensive applications more resource-efficient and carbon-aware.
With this focus, I am particularly interested in interdisciplinary collaborations involving local low-carbon energy generation, large-scale scientific computing, and widely distributed (smart) infrastructure systems. In line with this ambition, I have been involved in several interdisciplinary research projects before, investigating for example reliable and efficient sensor stream processing, effective machine learning applications for remote patient monitoring, and more efficient bioinformatics cluster computing workflows.
I know from personal experience that disabilities can present very unique, often complex, and not always obvious challenges. To support students facing such challenges, I co-organise and offer disability office hours for the College, and I am a member of my School’s EDI committee. I have also just completed a course on inclusive teaching and have been implementing accessibility improvements in a core undergraduate course that I teach (with the help of three students in a Student-Staff Partnership Scheme project).
Given the gender gap in many STEM disciplines, which is particularly pronounced in my area of work within Computing Science, promoting gender equality and family friendliness is very important to me. I strive to reflect this, for instance, in my language, in my recruitment efforts, in the planning of academic events, and in inviting speakers.
I want to create environments that work well for everyone and, recognising my own limited perspective, I am very motivated to learn from the DiveIn community to help make academia much more welcoming, inclusive, and diverse.
On a personal note, I am passionate about sustainability also outside of my research and teaching; my partner and I moved to Glasgow (from Berlin, Germany) two and a half years ago; and we just became parents to a wee boy here this summer.
