Biography
Owen graduated with first-class honours from his undergraduate master's degree in Computer Science from Loughborough University in 2022, and won the MSci Finalist Prize for the highest overall mark.
He is now studying for a PhD in theoretical computer science, with a particular focus on database theory, combinatorics on words, and language-theoretic cyber security.
Owen also holds a teaching assistant position for several undergraduate modules: Logic for Computer Science, Mathematics for Computer Science, Formal Languages and Theory of Computation, Formal Methods, and Cloud Computing.
Research
Owen is a researcher in database theory, the field of study concerned with the theoretical foundations of data management. His research topic is information extraction, extracting structured information from unstructured textual data.
In modern life, such textual data is ubiquitous, from books and reports to social media and log files. Owen's research has practical applications in the extraction of relevant information from this data.
Primarily, Owen researches the algorithmic and combinatorial properties of the string-based logic FC, and how efficiency can be maintained when extending the logic with powerful features such recursion.
Furthermore, his research has applications outside of data management; FC and its extensions also represent a declarative framework for input-handling in the context of language-theoretic security, a proposed solution to widespread parsing vulnerabilities.
Owen has published at ICDT 2025, and at the IEEE S&P LangSec Workshop 2025.