Dr Ornela Dardha she/her

My name is Ornela and I am a Senior Lecturer in Computing Science. My research interests are in programming languages foundations and formal verification, in particular by leveraging behavioural/session types. The Concurrency Lab (CoLab) that I lead researches novel formal verification techniques based on types for safe, resilient and adaptable distributed software systems. These systems are pervasively adopted in our society and include Internet of Things, videoconference and social platforms, or decentralised finance and cryptocurrency. Consequently, guaranteeing their safety is of paramount importance.

I am interested in interdisciplinary research with areas such as engineering, healthcare, finance and beyond to bring our verification techniques into practice. I collaborate with industry for my research and I would like to bring these collaborations into the DiveIn community.

I am a very committed supervisor and I like to meet with my students regularly. On the other hand, I like independence and critical thinking, and encourage my students to work on their own as much as possible. I often adopt mentoring and coaching skills in my supervision style, which I have learnt in various professional development courses. Moreover, within the School of Computing Science, I am the founder and lead of the Mentoring Scheme for PhD students.

I am keen to work within an inclusive and diverse community and I have done so regularly as a supervisor within CoLab. Furthermore, my commitment to EDI is reflected in the activities I have done in the past years. I was a member of Athena SWAN within the School; I co-led Glasgow Women in Computing Science (GWiCS) seminar series; I participated in several mentoring events for UG students, from BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium or student societies; I attended the Aurora event series aimed at empowering women in higher education.

Finally, some of my career highlights include the following three awards:

• Science, She Says! (2023), awarded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. The award recognises an outstanding young female scientist, who has remarkably contributed to the advancement of science and technology. I won the award for Europe.
• PPDP 10 Year Most Influential Paper Award (2022), awarded by the ACM and the PPDP conference steering committee.
• Best Italian PhD Thesis in Theoretical Computer Science (2015), awarded by the Italian Chapter of EATCS.