My name is Tom Spink, and I’m a lecturer in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews. Previously, I was a Senior Researcher in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, where I worked on the McDoC project with Björn Franke, and the PAMELA project with Michael O’Boyle.

I lead the AVISI (Architecture Virtualisation and Simulation) research group, which (as per its name) is interested in how we can efficiently virtualise and simulate computer architectures.


If you’re interested in studying for a PhD with me - get in touch!

My research interests include:

  • Virtualisation
  • Dynamic Binary Translation (and JIT compilation!)
  • Operating Systems (see InfOS)
  • Compilers
  • Runtime Systems
  • Networking

I’m also interested in:

  • The Internet-of-Things
  • Railway signalling and control systems
  • Security and privacy

My PhD thesis is entitled, “Efficient Cross-architecture Hardware Virtualisation” and proposes methods for improving the performance of the virtualisation of hardware that is significantly different to the host machine’s architecture.