Dr Colin Miller has been appointed Acting Head of the newly-formed School of Computing and Engineering Systems.
Dr Miller takes over from Professor Lachlan MacKinnon, and in the wake of the division of the former School of Computing and Creative Technologies into the new School of Computing and Engineering Systems and the Institute of Arts, Media and Computer Games. Dr Miller will guide the School of Computing and Engineering Systems through its early stages while the University conducts the recruitment process for a permanent appointment.
Colin studied at Nottingham University and taught both there and at Leeds University before joining Abertay in 1979. He has been very active in the academic development of the University, having pioneered group working and cross-disciplinary programmes in the 1980s when such things were still quite rare. He has served extensively on all major university committees in the University, including Senate and Court, as well as chairing University working parties on the Dearing/Garrick Enquiries, the restructuring of the academic year and collaboration with Fife College.
Prior to his appointment as Acting Head, Colin was Senior Lecturer in software applications and School Curriculum Adviser. Among many academic achievements during his career at Abertay, he helped to introduce the BSc Microsystems and the PGDip in Software Engineering in the 1980s, the MSc Software Engineering and the BSc Computing with Internet Computing, Applications Development, Games Development and Networking variants in the 1990s, and the BSc Computing Studies in 2005-06.
He currently supervises a number of PhD students, and his own research interests are in software engineering and development. He has published extensively on subjects as varied as games technology, e-business and genetic algorithms, among others.