Neil Urquhart
Neil Urquhart

Dr Neil Urquhart FHEA

Lecturer

 0131 455 2655

  N.Urquhart@napier.ac.uk

  

Biography

Dr Neil Urquhart is a lecturer in School of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment. His research has brought in over £400K in funding and he has published over 60 peer reviewed papers. In 2022 he published "Nature Inspired Optimisation for Delivery Problems - From Theory to the Real World" (Springer), based on his research work.

He completed his PhD in 2002 which examined the use of nature inspired techniques and software agents to construct and optimise delivery networks. Since 2002 he has worked as a lecturer within the School of Engineering, Computing and the Built Environment at Edinburgh Napier University where he has taught primarily in the areas of Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence. He was responsible for developing and then leading the MEng Software Engineering and BSc Computer Science degree programmes.

Since 2022 he as been the Lead for Learning and Teaching within the Computer Science subject group. This leadership role overseas the delivery of 12 degree programmes (UG and PG) and over 90 module instances. In addition the role involves teaching workload management for over 35 academic staff. Within this role he has lead the subject group through an Education Review, delivering considerable resource savings in provision and is currently leading the subject group through the Institution Lead Review process.

School

Research Groups

Themes

Research Areas

News

Events

Esteem

Conference Organising Activity

  • Local Organiser, 24th UKCI Workshop on Computational Inteligence
  • Member of Steering Committee, Annual Conference of European Working Group on Transportation
  • Local Organiser, SICSA AI Workshop
  • Student Activities Coordinator: EvoStar
  • Local Chair, Parallel Problem Solving from Nature
  • Chair, Intelligent Transport workshop : Parallel Problem Solving From Nature
  • Chair, Meta-Heuristics stream : YOR19
  • Programme Committee Member, Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Coonference
  • Member of conference planning group, Edinburgh Napier Staff Conference
  • Chair, EvoIndustry track: EvoStar
  • Co-Chair EvoStim Track : EvoStar
  • Programme Committee member: BIONETICS
  • Chair, Meta-heuristics stream : YOR17
  • Programme Committee Member : ICARIS
  • Chair, EvoEnvironment track : EvoStar

 

Editorial Activity

  • Co-Editor of Automated Scheduling from Theory to Practice (Springer)

 

External Examining/Validations

  • External examiner, Keele University (MSc AI and Data Science)
  • External examiner, Birmingham Aston University (MSc Computer Science, MSc Artificial Intelligence)

 

Fellowships and Awards

  • Awarded the Principal's Research Excellence Award

 

Invited Speaker

  • Invited presentation, Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences (House of Logistics and Management)
  • University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh Research Group in Optimisation)
  • Invited speaker, University of Applied Sciences, Mittelhessen (KITE Group)
  • University of Nottingham (ASAP Scheduling Group)
  • University of Stirling (School of Computing)
  • Invited speaker, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, Amsterdam

 

Media Activity

  • Edinburgh Evening News (RouteSanta)
  • Optimisation@IIDI featured on LogisticsManager.Com

 

Membership of Professional Body

  • Elected to the SPECIES Board
  • Member of the Higher Education Academy (Ref PR058415)

 

Research Degree External Examining

  • University of Plymouth
  • Stirling University
  • Robert Gordon University
  • University of Nottingham

 

Reviewing

  • Adaptive Behavior (Sage)
  • Journal of Mathematics (Wiley)
  • Alexandria Engineering Journal (Elsivier)
  • Computers & Graphics (Science Direct)
  • Journal of Computational Science (Science Direct)
  • Qeios
  • ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Computation
  • ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimisation
  • Frontiers in Environmental Science
  • IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation

 

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Date


79 results

The British Rail Total Operations Processing System And the Birth of Telematics

Journal Article
Urquhart, N. (in press)
The British Rail Total Operations Processing System And the Birth of Telematics. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, https://doi.org/10.1109/mahc.2024.3393611
Contemporary mobility is almost universally supported by telecommunications networks and computing facilities known collectively as telematics. This has allowed closer integ...

Evolving Staff Training Schedules using an Extensible Fitness Function and a Domain Specific Language

Conference Proceeding
Urquhart, N., & Hunter, K. (2024)
Evolving Staff Training Schedules using an Extensible Fitness Function and a Domain Specific Language. In S. Smith, J. Correia, & C. Cintrano (Eds.), Applications of Evolutionary Computation (83–97). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56852-7_6
When using a meta-heuristic based optimiser in some industrial scenarios, there may be a need to amend the objective function as time progresses to encompass constraints that ...

The stuff we swim in: Regulation alone will not lead to justifiable trust in AI

Journal Article
Powers, S. T., Linnyk, O., Guckert, M., Hannig, J., Pitt, J., Urquhart, N., …Weber, T. (2023)
The stuff we swim in: Regulation alone will not lead to justifiable trust in AI. IEEE technology & society magazine, 42(4), 95-106. https://doi.org/10.1109/MTS.2023.3341463
Information technology is used ubiquitously and has become an integral part of everyday life. With the ever increasing pervasiveness and persuasiveness of Artificial Intellige...

Nature Inspired Optimisation for Delivery Problems: From Theory to the Real World

Book
Urquhart, N. (2022)
Nature Inspired Optimisation for Delivery Problems: From Theory to the Real World. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98108-2
This book explains classic routing and transportation problems and solutions, before offering insights based on successful real-world solutions. The chapters in Part I introdu...

An Empirical Evaluation of a Novel Domain-Specific Language -- Modelling Vehicle Routing Problems with Athos

Journal Article
Hoffmann, B., Urquhart, N., Chalmers, K., & Guckert, M. (2022)
An Empirical Evaluation of a Novel Domain-Specific Language -- Modelling Vehicle Routing Problems with Athos. Empirical Software Engineering, 27, Article 180. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-022-10210-w
Domain-specific languages (DSLs) are a popular approach among software engineers who demand for a tailored development interface. A DSL-based approach allows to encapsulate th...

Multi-Agent Modelling Notation (MAMN): A multi-layered graphical modelling notation for agent-based simulations

Conference Proceeding
Nguyen, J., Powers, S., Urquhart, N., Farrenkopf, T., & Guckert, M. (in press)
Multi-Agent Modelling Notation (MAMN): A multi-layered graphical modelling notation for agent-based simulations.
Cause-effect graphs have been applied in non agent-based simulations, where they are used to model chained causal relations between input parameters and system behaviour measu...

Modelling the Impact of Individual Preferences on Traffic Policies

Journal Article
Nguyen, J., Powers, S., Urquhart, N., Farrenkopf, T., & Guckert, M. (2022)
Modelling the Impact of Individual Preferences on Traffic Policies. SN Computer Science, 3(5), Article 365. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42979-022-01253-3
Urban traffic is a system always prone to overload, often approaching breakdown during rush hour times. Well adjusted modifications of traffic policies, with appropriate inter...

Using Semantic Technology to Model Persona for Adaptable Agents

Conference Proceeding
Nguyen, J., Farrenkopf, T., Guckert, M., Powers, S., & Urquhart, N. (2021)
Using Semantic Technology to Model Persona for Adaptable Agents. In ECMS 2021, 35th Proceedings (172-178). https://doi.org/10.7148/2021
In state of the art research a growing interest in the application of agent models for the simulation of road traffic can be observed. Software agents are particularly suitabl...

An overview of agent-based traffic simulators

Journal Article
Nguyen, J., Powers, S. T., Urquhart, N., Farrenkopf, T., & Guckert, M. (2021)
An overview of agent-based traffic simulators. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 12, Article 100486. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trip.2021.100486
Individual traffic significantly contributes to climate change and environmental degradation. Therefore, innovation in sustainable mobility is gaining importance as it helps t...

Using AGADE Traffic to Analyse Purpose-driven Travel Behaviour

Conference Proceeding
Nguyen, J., Powers, S. T., Urquhart, N., Farrenkopf, T., & Guckert, M. (2021)
Using AGADE Traffic to Analyse Purpose-driven Travel Behaviour. In Advances in Practical Applications of Agents, Multi-Agent Systems, and Social Good: The PAAMS Collection 19th International Conference, PAAMS 2021, Salamanca, Spain, October 6–8, 2021, Proceedings (363-366). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85739-4_33
AGADE Traffic is an agent-based traffic simulator that can be used to analyse purpose-driven travel behaviour of individuals that leads to the emergence of systemic patterns i...

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