Dr Sofiat Olaosebikan she/her
Lecturer in Algorithms and Complexity
Mission Priority Areas
My super power is algorithms design, coding, and software engineering. In fact, I am most passionate about using these skills to solve real-world problems. However, most of these problems require inter-disciplinary collaborations.
I have worked with colleagues from UofG Engineering and I have seen the potential of "combining super power" across discipline. I am hoping that the DiveIn CDT community will open up more opportunities for me to work with people outside my research across the University, ultimately tackling important problems and changing the world together.
My research goal is to develop efficient algorithms for finding optimal solution to real-world optimisation problems. Put simply, an optimisation problem arise when we need to find the best solution from all feasible solutions that a problem admits. For example, finding an assignment between sets of agents involving preferences such that the number of assigned agents is maximised, or assigning users to access points in a wireless network such that power consumption is minimised. Now, some optimisation problems are solvable in polynomial-time; however, most of the problems that we care about in practice are computationally hard. To tackle problems in both categories, my research leverages graph-theoretic approaches, studying patterns in the graph as well as its structure to construct an algorithm. This theoretical approach is usually accompanied by an implementation of the algorithm to evaluate its performance in real-world settings.
Potential PhD projects could involve the design of efficient algorithms for matching problems under preferences, or the interplay between game theory and wireless communications. At present, my research group is doing exploratory work on how machine learning, in particular reinforcement learning, can be adapted to find better sub-optimal solutions in computationally hard optimisation problems. Consequently, I am very keen to collaborate with researchers who have expertise in graph algorithms, matching theory, optimisation, wireless communication, or machine learning. I am also keen to work with algorithm engineers who are passionate about contributing their implementations as an open source software to the community.
My commitment to equality, diversion, inclusion, as well as widening participation is best pictured via Computer Science Academy Africa (CSA Africa, https://www.csaafrica.org/) – an initiative which I founded in 2018. The aim of CSA Africa is to empower young Africans with computing skills, and since it started, we have offered Python programming workshop to over 500 beneficiaries from 11 African countries.
For my overall health and fitness, I enjoy weightlifting and I also walk an average of 10,000 steps per day. Further, to enhance my creative side, I work as a professional makeup artist during my down time.
