A Computing Science graduate from the University of Aberdeen has achieved a runner-up spot in a national competition that champions Scotland's most innovative and creative technology students.
William Brown, who graduated with a Computing Science degree earlier this year, was recognised in the 34th annual Young Software Engineer of the Year Awards.
Hosted by Scotland’s tech trade body ScotlandIS at its ScotSoft conference, the awards celebrate talent in Scotland’s technology industry and highlight innovation and ideas emerging from the country’s university students.
William came in third place with his final year project entitled ‘Automatic code reviewer recommendations in the open-source project MediaWiki’. In this project, William developed two AI-based methods for automatic code reviewer recommendation, which he applied to the open-source software MediaWiki that is used by Wikipedia and sister websites.
Commenting on his work, William said: “My project involved finding code reviewers for changes in MediaWiki, which my supervisor allowed me to link to my degree while helping to guide my progress.
“The project went well and it was an honour to be nominated by the University and then to receive the third-place award at the ceremony – it was a fantastic experience and was a great way to round off my project.
“I now work for the Wikimedia Foundation as a contractor and may take my project on further.”
Rafael C. Cardoso, a Lecturer in Computing Science at the University and William’s project supervisor said: “William came to me with his own idea for the project and from the beginning it was clear to me that he would perform very well.
“His involvement as a long-term contributor to MediaWiki made sure that he was always enthusiastic about the work, which can provide a real improvement to the operation of managing code reviewers for large-scale software such as MediaWiki.”
A video featuring William explaining his project is available here