Department of CS newsletter

First, I want to take this opportunity to thank Robert for the amazing job he's done as HoD over the last 6 years. I know I have a lot to live up to.

Campus is feeling busier than it has in a long time and during welcome week I had the chance to meet each of the year groups. It's great to see so much energy and enthusiasm from our students. Over the last few weeks, I've also met/chatted with many of you. I appreciate the warm welcome you've given me and your openness with respect to the opportunities and challenges we face in CS - as well highlighting the many great things that work well and don't need to change. If you'd like to have a chat with me about anything, feel free to ping me and we'll set up a meeting. I'll be on campus 2 or 3 days every week (out of Tues/Wed/Thurs) - but am also happy to video call with you too if you'd prefer.

If you're around on the 13th, please do pop along to the re-scheduled coffee morning at 1130 - it would be great to see you then.

Andrew

The next coffee morning will be on Thursday 13th October at 1130 in the staff & PGR common room. Do pop down and meet our new Head of Department in person - coffee, tea and buns provided - bring a cup so we can reduce waste where possible.

Apologies - looks like the link was incorrect in the last newsletter - here is the correct one:

• Pull Printing

The printers in the 2nd floor print room (room 2.13) are now working on the pull print service

Multi-function devices (The University of Manchester)

At the Security Serious Awards (https://www.securityserious.com/unsung-heroes/ awards)

Seònaid Lafferty has been nominated in the Rising Star category

and Danny Dresner been nominated in two categories:

• Best Educator (This award will go to a professor, lecturer or teacher who leads by example to inspire and motivate the next generation of cyber security professionals.)
• Godfather/Godmother of Cyber Security (This award will go to someone who has been around the block and back and contributed greatly to the IT Security industry for more than 25 years.

Congratulations on both nominations!

Research Funding News

Congratulations to Profs Sophia Ananiadou (PI) and Junichi Tsujii (£310,822) who have been successful with a KTP award with https://10be5.com/. The project aims to automate a critical fact-checking and verification process using natural language processing (NLP) for companies listing, or looking to list, securities on public markets. This process helps safeguard investors' interests and is essential for regulatory compliance. 

Keynote Speaker

Prof Sophia Ananiadou provided the keynote talk at the 9th ACM Celebration of Women in Computing (womENcourage 2022), in Larnaka, Cyprus, 21-23 September 2022 on Emotion detection from social media for mental health applications.

Papers

Li, M. and Ananiadou, S., Neural Architectures for Aggregating Sequence Labels from Multiple Annotators. Neurocomputing

Xie, Q., Bishop, J., Tiwari, P. and Ananiadou, S. Pre-trained language models with domain knowledge for biomedical extractive summarization (2022), In: Knowledge-Based Systems, 252(109460)

Yang, K., T. Zhang and Ananiadou, S., A Mental State Knowledge-Aware and Contrastive Network for Early Stress and Depression Detection on Social Media (2022), Information Processing and Management, 59:4(102961)

Deadline for applications: 04-Nov-2022

Good opportunity! UKRI are advertising for new panel members who are senior and world leading experts in their field, ahead of Round 7 of the Future Leaders Fellowship scheme: https://www.ukri.org/about-us/work-for-us/join-an-advisory-committee-panel-or-network/ukri-talent-panel-college/

They are seeking expertise across all areas of UKRI activity, with an additional special request for experts in the following areas:

• artificial intelligence and image processing
• biomedical imaging
• cardiorespiratory medicine and haematology
• infectious disease
• medical microbiology
• musculoskeletal
• nanotechnology
• oncology and carcinogenesis
• psychology
• bioinformatics

Deadline: 09-Nov-2022

The FBMH Research Technology and Development Group (RTDG) are inviting applications from researchers that wish to develop and/or implement new cutting-edge techniques in collaboration with the FBMH core facilities. Cross-faculty collaboration is welcomed, but applications must identify a PI from FBMH.

Proposals may request up to £10k to access the core facilities; consumables and staff time must be covered by the applicant labs. Proposals will be assessed for:

• Novelty of technique and likelihood to generate quality publications/funding applications
• Potential userbase once integrated as a service within the core facilities
• Commitment from the host laboratory
• Relevance to core facility strategic priority areas (see Appendix of form)

For an application form please contact sarah.chatwin@manchester.ac.uk. Applications must be sent to lorna.tittle@manchester.ac.uk by 4pm on Wednesday 9 November. Contact bruce.humphrey@manchester.ac.uk with any enquiries.

 All spend must be completed by 31st July 2023

The UK is still seeking association to Horizon Europe.  The UK Government is continuing to try and salvage the UK’s Horizon Europe deal, agreed as part of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement back in 2020, however, the process has been hampered as association is caught up in the political battle over the Northern Ireland Protocol which the Commission has tied to association.

On 1 September, the UK government announced an extension of the financial support provided to successful UK Horizon Europe applicants, which will now be in place to cover all Horizon Europe calls that close by the end of this year.  This recent announcement reiterates that association to EU programmes remains the UK's preferred outcome and extends the scope of the Guarantee to cover additional Horizon Europe calls for proposals while the delay to association continues – until now, the Guarantee covered calls where the grant agreement was expected to be signed by the end of 2022.

The scope of the Guarantee is as follows:

"The guarantee will now be in place to cover all Horizon Europe calls that close on or before 31 December 2022, with the majority of grant signature dates expected before the end of August 2023. This extension will protect and support the UK sector during the ongoing delays while we continue to encourage the EU to formalise UK association, including through the recently launched consultation process."

Following the announcement, the relevant UKRI guidance documents have been updated, clarifying that the list of calls covered by the Guarantee has now been removed:

"Previous versions of this guidance included a list of calls in the annex, but this has been replaced by a comprehensive commitment to include all Horizon Europe calls with a final submission deadline date on or before 31 December 2022 (as shown on the EC Funding and Tenders Portal).  For calls with multiple separate deadlines, applications submitted to those deadlines that fall on or before 31 December 2022 will be eligible.  For two-stage calls, only a final submission deadline on or before 31 December is considered to be in scope.

The UK is also discussing possible alternatives and is preparing a £15 billion back-up – ‘Plan B’.   We don’t yet know the fine detail of this replacement funding programme, but we do know that the programme will have three pillars, much like Horizon Europe, will support ERC-like fellowships, industry and innovation (with a focus on getting private investors to match public money) and will fund global research projects. 

A new package of transitional measures to ensure the stability and continuity of funding was announced in July.  These schemes will only come into force if the UK is not able to associate to Horizon Europe. These measures will ensure there is no funding gap while longer term measures are established.

The measures will be delivered by trusted and experienced UK bodies, using existing UK funding and support mechanisms.

The new measures include:

•      Horizon Europe Guarantee -the Guarantee will be extended to cover those grants where grant signature dates fall beyond the end of 2022 - this would pick up where the current guarantee has left off, there will be no gap, and no eligible successful applications would go unfunded.

•      Funding for successful, in-flight UK-based applicants to Horizon - particularly aimed at in-flight ERC proposals. (In-flight: support for UK applicants to calls that that have closed or are open at the point of decision of non-association, where such applications are not being evaluated by the EC these will be evaluated domestically.)

•      Uplifts to existing UK talent schemes

•      Uplifts to innovation funding and support for businesses

•      Uplifts to international innovation schemes

•      Funding for research institutions most affected by the loss of Horizon Europe’s talent funding

•      Third Country Participation in Horizon Europe

Nevertheless, the sector continues to push for UK institutions to be supported in Horizon Europe projects going forward.  UK researchers want to be able to continue to participate in their long running networks and consortia and don’t want to have to leave proposals/projects due to a lack of funding, or have to compete with them by having to build new projects under a new scheme.   It is important to note that the current government guarantee has only committed to funding projects which are due to be signed off by the Commission before the end of December 2022 but the new extension will bridge any gaps.

Researchers are already feeling the impact of the persisting policy deadlock.  Fewer researchers based in the UK are applying to Horizon Europe calls amid fears they will be kicked off projects if the association bid falls through – this has not happened to Manchester projects so far but as we enter another phase of uncertainty we need to monitor our participation closely.  All Horizon Europe projects in Manchester, which are eligible for the guarantee have been (or are in the process of being) transferred to the guarantee, this includes ERC awards and MSCA fellowships. 

The University continues to see success in Horizon Europe, Manchester is participating in more than 45 Horizon Europe projects, including ERC and MSCA (with others still at the evaluation stage), all of which qualify for the guarantee.  Institutions are still being encouraged to apply to all calls, the UK position is still that of a Candidate Associated Country for proposals.  Although Plan B is being discussed, Plan A is still that the UK will associate.

Deadline: 07-Dec-2022

https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=60726

The Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) is a combination of grants awarded to the University of Manchester by five research councils.  IAA funding supports the research and innovation ecosystem to develop wider impacts from research through fast and flexible funding for early-stage knowledge exchange activities.

This year for the first time, UKRI has harmonised the IAA, with a single point of application across the participating research councils.  IAA grants are available to The University of Manchester academics from AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, MRC and STFC.  The UoM Knowledge Exchange Partnerships Team is pleased to announce the first Call for Proposals under the following mechanisms:

• Relationship Development Scheme (up to £10k, open call) Fostering new relationships between external partners and academic researchers, creating opportunities for collaboration and exchange of knowledge and skills
• Proof of Concept Scheme (up to £30k) Support for the very early stage of transforming research outputs into commercial and translational opportunities.
• Secondment Scheme (up to £60k) Flexible support for secondments between the University of Manchester and businesses and other organisations.

Further details regarding eligibility are on the attached call documents. Application guidance and application forms can also be found on the call document.

Do you have a potential project?  The Knowledge Exchange Partnerships Team provide active support for  the  development  of  IAA  submissions.  You  are  strongly  advised  to  contact  us  for  support  at  least  1 month   before   the   call   closing   date on   the   7th December 2022.   Initial   contact   should   be   made  via kepartnerships@manchester.ac.uk