Dr Catherine Higham

  • Research Fellow (School of Computing Science)

telephone: 01413304463
email: Catherine.Higham@glasgow.ac.uk

Room 309, Sir Alwyn Williams Building, Glasgow, G12 8QQ

Import to contacts

ORCID iDhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115

Biography

My current position as a senior member of Prof. Rod Murray-Smith’s Inference, Dynamics and Interaction group involves applying state-of-the-art machine learning and statistical methods to inverse problems in image processing arising from recent advances in Quantum Optics. The research associate position is supported by the EPSRC UK Quantum Technology Programme under grant P/M01326X/1. 

My previous position was Research Associate on the FP7 funded TiMet project 2012-2015, which brought together leading centres for the emerging discipline of systems biology. My role focused on developing, testing and analysing new methods for parameter estimation and model selection using state of the art Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling within a non-parametric Bayesian statistical framework. Overall, this work is motivated by the challenge of handling novel experimental data and developing quantitative answers to questions raised by experimentalist colleagues.

After a graduating with a mathematics degree from Oxford, I worked for Novaction, a brand/marketing consultancy based in Paris, France, who sponsored me through an business MBA at City University, London.  After moving to Scotland, I worked as a strategic analyst at Scottish Hydro-Electric.

Following a career break, I independently prepared and submitted a research proposal to the Daphne Jackson Trust, and obtained a two-year Fellowship 2006-2008. This was followed by a Lord Kelvin/Adam Smith PhD scholarship from the University of Glasgow, 2008-2012.

My PhD work took place in Professor Darren Monckton’s lab, which has accumulated one of the most comprehensive datasets concerned with unstable human DNA mutations. The remit for my PhD was to add value to this unique data resource by developing, calibrating and comparing new mathematical models describing the biological processes underlying the DNA dynamics of diseased individuals.

 

 

Research interests

My research interests are concerned with the development of machine learning algorithms that harness recent technological advances for data sensing and processing for scientific understanding and industrial/commercial application.

I have built up a range of skills in machine learning, deep learning, statistical inference, high performance computing mathematical modelling, and large-scale scientific computation. I have also gained a wide range of experience in interdisciplinary research alongside experimental scientists.

Publications

List by: Type | Date

Jump to: 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2015 | 2013 | 2012 | 2009
Number of items: 20.

2025

Beerens, Lucas, Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115 and Higham, Desmond J. (2025) Deceptive Diffusion: Generating Synthetic Adversarial Examples. In: Bubba, Tatiana A., Gaburro, Romina, Gazzola, Silvia, Papafitsoros, Kostas, Pereyra, Marcelo and Schönlieb, Carola-Bibiane (eds.) Scale Space and Variational Methods in Computer Vision: 10th International Conference, SSVM 2025, Dartington, UK, May 18–22, 2025, Proceedings, Part I. Series: Lecture notes in computer science (15667). Springer: Cham, pp. 322-333. ISBN 9783031923654 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-92366-1_25)

2024

Gafvert, Oliver, Grindrod, Peter, Harrington, Heather A., Higham, Catherine ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115, Higham, Desmond J. and Man Yim, Ka (2024) On the hidden layer-to-layer topology of the representations of reality realised within neural networks. Engineering Computations, (Accepted for Publication)

Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115, Higham, Desmond J. and Grindrod, Peter (2024) Diffusion models for generative artificial intelligence: an introduction for applied mathematicians. SIAM Review, (Accepted for Publication)

Johnstone, G.E. et al. (2024) High speed single pixel imaging using a microLED-on-CMOS light projector. Optics Express, 32(14), pp. 24615-24628. (doi: 10.1364/OE.525753)

2023

Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115, Johnson, Steven ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6181-8303, Radwell, Neal, Padgett, Miles J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6643-0618 and Murray-Smith, Roderick ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4228-7962 (2023) Efficient Bayesian deep inversion. Journal of Computational Dynamics, (doi: 10.3934/jcd.2023014) (Early Online Publication)

Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115 and Bedford, Adrian (2023) Quantum deep learning by sampling neural nets with a quantum annealer. Scientific Reports, 13, 3939. (doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-30910-7)

2022

Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115, Higham, Desmond J. and Tudisco, Francesco (2022) Core-periphery Partitioning and Quantum Annealing. In: KDD '22: Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Washington, D.C., USA, 14-18 Aug 2022, pp. 565-573. ISBN 9781450393850 (doi: 10.1145/3534678.3539261)

2021

Cohen, Clara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7308-671X, Nabi, Syed Waqar ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3835-4851, Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115, Putnam, Michael, Kootstra, Gerrit Jan and van Hell, Janet (2021) Individual variation in the structure of bilingual grammars. Language, 97(4), pp. 752-792. (doi: 10.1353/lan.2021.0064)

2020

Cohen, Clara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7308-671X, Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115 and Nabi, Syed W. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3835-4851 (2020) Deep learnability: using neural networks to quantify language similarity and learnability. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 3, 43. (doi: 10.3389/frai.2020.00043)

2019

Radwell, Neal, Johnson, Steven D. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6181-8303, Edgar, Matthew P., Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115, Murray-Smith, Roderick ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4228-7962 and Padgett, Miles J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6643-0618 (2019) Deep learning optimized single-pixel LiDAR. Applied Physics Letters, 115(23), 231101. (doi: 10.1063/1.5128621)

2018

Caramazza, Piergiorgio, Boccolini, Alessandro, Buschek, Daniel, Hullin, Matthias, Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115, Henderson, Robert, Murray-Smith, Roderick ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4228-7962 and Faccio, Daniele ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8397-334X (2018) Neural network identification of people hidden from view with a single-pixel, single-photon detector. Scientific Reports, 8, 11945. (doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-30390-0) (PMID:30093701) (PMCID:PMC6085360)

Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115, Murray-Smith, Roderick ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4228-7962, Padgett, Miles J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6643-0618 and Edgar, Matthew P. (2018) Deep learning for real-time single-pixel video. Scientific Reports, 8, 2369. (doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-20521-y) (PMID:29403059) (PMCID:PMC5799195)

2015

Macdonald, Benn, Higham, Catherine ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115 and Husmeier, Dirk ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1673-7413 (2015) Controversy in mechanistic modelling with Gaussian processes. Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, 37, pp. 1539-1547.

Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115 and Husmeier, Dirk ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1673-7413 (2015) Inference of circadian regulatory pathways based on delay differential equations. In: Ortuno, Francisco and Ignacio, Rojas (eds.) Bioinformatics and Biomedical Engineering. Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 9044 (9044). Springer, pp. 468-478. ISBN 9783319164793 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-16480-9_46)

2013

Higham, C. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115 and Monckton, D. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8298-8264 (2013) Modelling and inference reveal nonlinear length-dependent suppression of somatic instability for small disease associated alleles in myotonic dystrophy type 1 and Huntington disease. Journal of the Royal Society: Interface, 10(88), p. 20130605. (doi: 10.1098/​rsif.2013.0605)

Higham, C. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115 and Husmeier, D. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1673-7413 (2013) A Bayesian approach for parameter estimation in the extended clock gene circuit of Arabidopsis thaliana. BMC Bioinformatics, 14(Sup 10), S3. (doi: 10.1186/1471-2105-14-S10-S3)

2012

Morales Montero, F. et al. (2012) Somatic instability of the expanded CTG triplet repeat in myotonic dystrophy type 1 is a heritable quantitative trait and modifier of disease severity. Human Molecular Genetics, 21(16), pp. 3558-3567. (doi: 10.1093/hmg/dds185)

Higham, C.F., Morales, F., Cobbold, C.A. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8814-7688, Haydon, D.T. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1240-1886 and Monckton, D.G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8298-8264 (2012) High levels of somatic DNA diversity at the myotonic dystrophy type 1 locus are driven by ultra-frequent expansion and contraction mutations. Human Molecular Genetics, 21(11), pp. 2450-2463. (doi: 10.1093/hmg/dds059)

2009

Higham, C., Wilcox, D., Haydon, D. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1240-1886, Cobbold, C. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8814-7688 and Monckton, D. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8298-8264 (2009) Modelling dynamic DNA in mytonic dystrophy. In: Sixth International Workshop on Computational Systems Biology, WCSB 2009, Aarhus, Denmark, 10-12 Jun 2009, pp. 63-66.

Higham, C.F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115 (2009) Bifurcation analysis informs Bayesian inference in the Hes1 feedback loop. BMC Systems Biology, 3(12), (doi: 10.1186/1752-0509-3-12)

This list was generated on Sat Jun 14 11:20:20 2025 BST.
Jump to: Articles | Book Sections | Conference Proceedings
Number of items: 20.

Articles

Gafvert, Oliver, Grindrod, Peter, Harrington, Heather A., Higham, Catherine ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115, Higham, Desmond J. and Man Yim, Ka (2024) On the hidden layer-to-layer topology of the representations of reality realised within neural networks. Engineering Computations, (Accepted for Publication)

Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115, Higham, Desmond J. and Grindrod, Peter (2024) Diffusion models for generative artificial intelligence: an introduction for applied mathematicians. SIAM Review, (Accepted for Publication)

Johnstone, G.E. et al. (2024) High speed single pixel imaging using a microLED-on-CMOS light projector. Optics Express, 32(14), pp. 24615-24628. (doi: 10.1364/OE.525753)

Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115, Johnson, Steven ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6181-8303, Radwell, Neal, Padgett, Miles J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6643-0618 and Murray-Smith, Roderick ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4228-7962 (2023) Efficient Bayesian deep inversion. Journal of Computational Dynamics, (doi: 10.3934/jcd.2023014) (Early Online Publication)

Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115 and Bedford, Adrian (2023) Quantum deep learning by sampling neural nets with a quantum annealer. Scientific Reports, 13, 3939. (doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-30910-7)

Cohen, Clara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7308-671X, Nabi, Syed Waqar ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3835-4851, Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115, Putnam, Michael, Kootstra, Gerrit Jan and van Hell, Janet (2021) Individual variation in the structure of bilingual grammars. Language, 97(4), pp. 752-792. (doi: 10.1353/lan.2021.0064)

Cohen, Clara ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7308-671X, Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115 and Nabi, Syed W. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3835-4851 (2020) Deep learnability: using neural networks to quantify language similarity and learnability. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 3, 43. (doi: 10.3389/frai.2020.00043)

Radwell, Neal, Johnson, Steven D. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6181-8303, Edgar, Matthew P., Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115, Murray-Smith, Roderick ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4228-7962 and Padgett, Miles J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6643-0618 (2019) Deep learning optimized single-pixel LiDAR. Applied Physics Letters, 115(23), 231101. (doi: 10.1063/1.5128621)

Caramazza, Piergiorgio, Boccolini, Alessandro, Buschek, Daniel, Hullin, Matthias, Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115, Henderson, Robert, Murray-Smith, Roderick ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4228-7962 and Faccio, Daniele ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8397-334X (2018) Neural network identification of people hidden from view with a single-pixel, single-photon detector. Scientific Reports, 8, 11945. (doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-30390-0) (PMID:30093701) (PMCID:PMC6085360)

Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115, Murray-Smith, Roderick ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4228-7962, Padgett, Miles J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6643-0618 and Edgar, Matthew P. (2018) Deep learning for real-time single-pixel video. Scientific Reports, 8, 2369. (doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-20521-y) (PMID:29403059) (PMCID:PMC5799195)

Macdonald, Benn, Higham, Catherine ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115 and Husmeier, Dirk ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1673-7413 (2015) Controversy in mechanistic modelling with Gaussian processes. Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, 37, pp. 1539-1547.

Higham, C. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115 and Monckton, D. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8298-8264 (2013) Modelling and inference reveal nonlinear length-dependent suppression of somatic instability for small disease associated alleles in myotonic dystrophy type 1 and Huntington disease. Journal of the Royal Society: Interface, 10(88), p. 20130605. (doi: 10.1098/​rsif.2013.0605)

Higham, C. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115 and Husmeier, D. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1673-7413 (2013) A Bayesian approach for parameter estimation in the extended clock gene circuit of Arabidopsis thaliana. BMC Bioinformatics, 14(Sup 10), S3. (doi: 10.1186/1471-2105-14-S10-S3)

Morales Montero, F. et al. (2012) Somatic instability of the expanded CTG triplet repeat in myotonic dystrophy type 1 is a heritable quantitative trait and modifier of disease severity. Human Molecular Genetics, 21(16), pp. 3558-3567. (doi: 10.1093/hmg/dds185)

Higham, C.F., Morales, F., Cobbold, C.A. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8814-7688, Haydon, D.T. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1240-1886 and Monckton, D.G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8298-8264 (2012) High levels of somatic DNA diversity at the myotonic dystrophy type 1 locus are driven by ultra-frequent expansion and contraction mutations. Human Molecular Genetics, 21(11), pp. 2450-2463. (doi: 10.1093/hmg/dds059)

Higham, C.F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115 (2009) Bifurcation analysis informs Bayesian inference in the Hes1 feedback loop. BMC Systems Biology, 3(12), (doi: 10.1186/1752-0509-3-12)

Book Sections

Beerens, Lucas, Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115 and Higham, Desmond J. (2025) Deceptive Diffusion: Generating Synthetic Adversarial Examples. In: Bubba, Tatiana A., Gaburro, Romina, Gazzola, Silvia, Papafitsoros, Kostas, Pereyra, Marcelo and Schönlieb, Carola-Bibiane (eds.) Scale Space and Variational Methods in Computer Vision: 10th International Conference, SSVM 2025, Dartington, UK, May 18–22, 2025, Proceedings, Part I. Series: Lecture notes in computer science (15667). Springer: Cham, pp. 322-333. ISBN 9783031923654 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-92366-1_25)

Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115 and Husmeier, Dirk ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1673-7413 (2015) Inference of circadian regulatory pathways based on delay differential equations. In: Ortuno, Francisco and Ignacio, Rojas (eds.) Bioinformatics and Biomedical Engineering. Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 9044 (9044). Springer, pp. 468-478. ISBN 9783319164793 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-16480-9_46)

Conference Proceedings

Higham, Catherine F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2580-4115, Higham, Desmond J. and Tudisco, Francesco (2022) Core-periphery Partitioning and Quantum Annealing. In: KDD '22: Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Washington, D.C., USA, 14-18 Aug 2022, pp. 565-573. ISBN 9781450393850 (doi: 10.1145/3534678.3539261)

Higham, C., Wilcox, D., Haydon, D. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1240-1886, Cobbold, C. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8814-7688 and Monckton, D. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8298-8264 (2009) Modelling dynamic DNA in mytonic dystrophy. In: Sixth International Workshop on Computational Systems Biology, WCSB 2009, Aarhus, Denmark, 10-12 Jun 2009, pp. 63-66.

This list was generated on Sun Jun 15 14:54:02 2025 BST.

Research datasets

Jump to: 2023 | 2016
Number of items: 3.

2023

Higham, C. and Johnson, S. (2023) Efficient Bayesian Deep Inversion for Depth Prediction. [Data Collection]

Higham, C. (2023) Quantum deep learning by sampling neural nets with a quantum annealer. [Data Collection]

2016

Macdonald, B., Higham, C. and Husmeier, D. (2016) Controversy in mechanistic modelling with Gaussian processes. [Data Collection]

This list was generated on Sun Jun 15 04:29:14 2025 BST.

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