Saints Spotlight: Professor Lars Kotthoff
Professor Lars Kotthoff is the Johann and Gaynor Rupert Chair in Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the University of St Andrews; an endowed post funded by donors to the Making Waves Campaign. In this month’s Saints Spotlight, he discusses the potential for implementing AI to improve teaching and research across the University.
How did your St Andrews story start?
It started more than 20 years ago, when I did a year abroad at St Andrews as an undergraduate. I attended an education fair with several UK universities and spoke to their representatives, and the gentleman from St Andrews was the only one I couldn’t understand at all. So obviously, it’s where I chose to go.
What are your current priorities at the University?
I want to explore how AI can be used across the University to improve research and teaching. A lot of my research is interdisciplinary, and problems from other areas of science are often the most interesting to work on. I believe there’s a lot of potential for AI in research, both in generative AI and the good old-fashioned AI we’ve been working on since before it was cool.
What is the focus of your research at St Andrews?
My work focuses on making AI better and more reliable. This has many different aspects, but most of my research focuses on meta-algorithmics, where we don’t develop new algorithms or approaches, but find better ways of using existing ones. I believe that this is crucial for making AI more robust and, ultimately, better suited to solving real problems.
Tell us about your proudest achievement.
A few years ago, I wrote my own email client. I still develop it and use it every day. It’s a lot of fun to use software that does exactly what you want it to do; in exactly the way you prefer!
Where is your favourite spot in St Andrews?
I’ll never turn down an opportunity to have a good meal at Jahangir.