About Me

I am currently a Lecturer in Computer Science within the Department of Computer Science at Brunel University of London. I completed my PhD at King's College London in 2019.

My current work lies in the creation of algorithms and data structures with applications in computational biology. Specifically, this involves creating tools that manipulate sequential data, which can aid biological research. I also work on the development of string algorithms with applications in pattern matching, indexing and sequence comparison.

Publications

📝 Ayad, L. A. K., Loukides, G., & Pissis, S. P. (2025). Text Indexing for Long Patterns using Locally Consistent Anchors. The VLDB Journal. 34(5): 58. DOI

📝 Ayad, L. A. K., Fici, G., Koerkamp, R. G., Loukides, G., Patro, R., Pibiri, G. E., Pissis, S. P. (2025) U-Index: A Universal Indexing Framework for Matching Long Patterns. SEA 2025: 4:1-4:18. DOI

📝 Verbeek, H., Ayad, L. A. K., Loukides, G., & Pissis, S. P. (2024). Minimizing the Minimizers via Alphabet Reordering. In S. Inenaga & S. J. Puglisi (Eds.), 35th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching, CPM 2024, June 25-27, 2024, Fukuoka, Japan (Vol. 296, p. 28:1-28:13). Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik. DOI

📝 Ayad, L. A. K., Loukides, G., & Pissis, S. P. (2024). Text Indexing for Long Patterns using Locally Consistent Anchors. URL

📝 Ayad, L. A. K., Loukides, G., Pissis, S. P., & Verbeek, H. (2024). Sparse Suffix and LCP Array: Simple, Direct, Small, and Fast. In J. A. Soto & A. Wiese (Eds.), LATIN 2024: Theoretical Informatics - 16th Latin American Symposium, Puerto Varas, Chile, March 18-22, 2024, Proceedings, Part I (Vol. 14578, pp. 162–177). Springer. DOI

A full list can be found on Google Scholar or DBLP.

Activities

Presentations

BITS 2023 (Bari) ▪️ EMBnet AGM 2022 (Athens) ▪️ GOBLET/EMBnet AGM 2021 (online) ▪️ String Bio 2018 (Orlando) ▪️ ECCB 2018 (Athens) ▪️ DSB 2017 (Amsterdam).

Conference Chairing

SPIRE 2020 ▪️ MatBio 2018 ▪️ LSD & LAW 2018

Programme Committees

WABI 2025 ▪️ WABI 2024 ▪️ SPIRE 2021 ▪️ SPIRE 2020

Organising Committees

BBW 2023 ▪️ BBW 2022 ▪️ MatBio 2018 ▪️ MatBio 2017 ▪️ SEA 2017 ▪️ LSD & LAW 2017 ▪️ MatBio 2016

Paper Reviews

Natural Computing ▪️ Journal of Supercomputing ▪️ BMC AMB ▪️ BMC Bioinformatics ▪️ SPIRE ▪️ WABI ▪️ ESWA ▪️ IWOCA ▪️ Oxford Bioinformatics ▪️ ECCB ▪️ JDA ▪️ CPM ▪️ SWAT ▪️ JDPC

Guest Editing

LSD & LAW 2019 special issue for the journal of Theoretical Computer Science.

Grants and Awards

🥇 2024: Brunel University Mid and Early Career Academic Research Support Scheme.

🥇 2023: The London Mathematical Society - Conference Grants.

🥇 2022: Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (Distinction).

🥇 2021: Brunel University Research Seminar Series Awards 2021-2022.

🥇 2019: The London Mathematical Society - Computer Science Small Grants.

🥇 2017: Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

🥇 2016-2017: Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award - King's College London (Undergraduate).

🥇 2015-2019: Doctoral Training Account studentship awarded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).