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Department of CS newsletter
Published: Wednesday, 07 December 2022Weekly newsletter for the Department of CS
Department Newsletter - Contents
[ top ]News from Head of Department
Departmental Research Networking Event
Please register for our departmental research networking event.
On January 24th we will meet together as a department to discuss research opportunities, how we can achieve our research ambitions, the challenges we face when conducting our research, how we can best support research activity, potential new research collaborations we could develop and support within the department (which may involve other departments within our School), as well as discuss what Computer Science at Manchester should look like over the next 5 years. The DLT will use the discussions that take place on the day to inform our vision. Everyone (TR, TF etc.) who would like to contribute to this discussion is invited to do so – so please do register if you are interested.
Please arrive at 1015 for coffee/tea so the event can begin at 1030. Lunch will be provided. We will aim to finish by 1530.
To help in the design of the event, I would appreciate it if you could spend some time completing this form (https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=B8tSwU5hu0qBivA1z6kadyC_6DyNavpMtGu6Gm0xnqBUQktQNUI1SE5PSzBTQzVVWDU0V0pXVDJZSSQlQCN0PWcu). The information you provide will be used to structure the day in terms of the topics we’ll discuss, the composition of groups for small group discussion etc. The deadline for completing this is December 19th.Charlotte Hart
[ top ]News and announcements
Manchester Centre for Robotics and AI
The new Manchester Centre for Robotics and AI held its Inaugural Conference on Wednesday November 23. The Centre is a highly interdisciplinary Centre, building on the close collaboration between engineering approaches to robotics and control and computer science approaches to AI and cognitive and neural systems. It is further enhanced by robotics research in privacy and ethics in the social sciences and humanities.
The Conference had over 100 registered participants. The event was located in MECD, where our many robots were able to show off their AI capabilities!
It included keynote talks from external stakeholders (e.g. Kathryn Magnay, EPSRC Deputy Director, and Data and AI Lead), talks from CS staff (Chris Taylor, Caroline Jay, Clare Dixon, Michael Fisher) and other colleagues from Engineering and from Theology and Philosophy.
The Centre will hold an industry-focussed workshop in the Museum of Science and Industry early in 2023, with participation from the many industry partners such as BAE Systems, Honda, Jacobs, Dyson, and UKAEA.
Erika Buzink-Wallis
Clinical NLP Challenge n2c2
NaCTeM members (P. Georgiadis, N. Nguyen, J. Vasilakes, S. Ananiadou) participated in the clinical NLP challenge n2c2: contextualised medication event extraction, organised by IBM Watson and George Mason University. Our participation was with a member of AIRC, Japan, as part of our ongoing collaboration in fundamental NLP research.
The goal was to understand medication events from longitudinal and narrative clinical notes to obtain the full picture of a patient's medication history. Overall, 32 teams participated with 179 participants over 19 countries. NaCTeM was in the top 10 teams in all tasks but obtained 3rd position on the end-to-end event extraction task; 5th on the event extraction; 4th on the event + context task and 4th on the context extraction. The corpus was Contextualised Medication Event Dataset capturing contextual information, action, negation, temporality, certainty and actor from clinical notes.
[ top ]Events
Relaunch of ReproducibiliTea journal club
Join us for the relaunch of UoM's ReproducibiliTea Journal Club on Wednesday 12th December 15:30, Atlas Room. This will also include the presentation of topics for January 2023 - June 2023.
The journal club is open to all faculties and disciplines.
Please see attached flyer for more information.
Lucas Noehrer
Files:
- spiced_reprotea.pdf (366.83 KB)
[ top ]Research Funding Opportunities
FAPESP SPRINT call - work with São Paulo partners
Deadline: 30-Jan-23
In September 2013, the São Paulo Research Foundation known as “FAPESP” and the University of Manchester, signed a Cooperation Agreement for Research with the objective of implementing scientific and technological co-operation between researchers from the University of Manchester, and from the State of São Paulo, Brazil, through the funding of joint research projects.
The 8th call for proposals is now open: this call is open to all permanent academic staff or fixed term academic or research staff whose contract exceeds the duration of the project. FAPESP will provide funding of up to the equivalent of £10,000 per proposal per year to the São Paulo partner, and the University of Manchester will provide funding of up to £10,000 per proposal per year, for the duration of the grant (up to 2 yrs) to cover research-related mobility expenses.
IMPORTANT:
Funding provided by the University of Manchester must be sourced via internal funds. The Faculty of Science Engineering has made provision for up to five awards for FSE based applicants. Applicants from other faculties must confirm the availability of funding prior to submitting an application.
Please ensure that the São Paulo Principal Investigator is eligible under FAPESP rules to apply for SPRINT funding.
The University of Manchester researcher should apply using the provided templates and the Brazilian based researcher must submit a parallel application directly to FAPESP in accordance with their procedures.If, after reading the guidance papers, you have a query regarding the application process, please contact Alexander Gaskill, International Research and Partnerships Development Manager, Faculty of Science and Engineering, via Alexander.Gaskill@manchester.ac.uk
Sarah Chatwin
The Wohl Clean Growth Alliance (Travel) Fellowships
Deadline: 31-Dec-22
https://www.britishcouncil.org.il/en/programmes/science/wohl-clean-growth-alliance
The scheme will enable early career researchers in Israel and the UK to undertake medium-term visits to further their research and establish or strengthen links that develop and enhance scientific collaborations.
The Fellowships will support research visits by British and Israeli researchers to laboratories in the partner country. Applicants can apply for visits for 1-6 months in duration. The aim of these visits will be to enable the visiting fellows to:
· learn new techniques or research methods that are not available in their home country;
· access facilities, resources, tools or archives not available in their home country; or
· facilitate collaboration between the home and host research groups.
UKRI opportunities
There are lots of funding opportunities available at the moment for Comp Sci. Here's a quick overview:
- Artificial intelligence research to enable UK’s net zero target
https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/artificial-intelligence-research-to-enable-uks-net-zero-target/
- Responsible and trustworthy artificial intelligence
https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/responsible-and-trustworthy-artificial-intelligence/
- Pre-announcement: ageing research development awards
https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/ageing-research-development-awards/
- EPSRC circular economy critical mass programmes
https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/epsrc-circular-economy-critical-mass-programmes/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery
webinar: 12-Dec-22 (password: 487962)
AI Hubs funding calls: UoM Expression of interest process
Anticipated calls for funding for AI Hubs are now live, with an outline-stage deadline of 4pm on 9th February 2023. To help to ensure coherence, avoid duplication and maximise the strength of UoM applications, UoM are operating a process of panel review, with senior input from across all faculties.
If you propose to lead on either of these AI Hubs application or if you propose to play a substantive role in one please complete this form by 4pm on 20th December and send to digitalfutures@manchester.ac.uk. (If you are not lead please complete as much detail as possible; we recognise that you may not have all the required information at this stage.)
- EPSRC AI hubs for real data and for scientific and engineering research
Up to 6 hubs will be created across 2 distinct areas:
- AI for real data
- AI for scientific and engineering research
Hubs must involve co-creation between the AI community and problem-holders to advance AI and accelerate AI adoption, through its application to real world data and science problems.
• EPSRC Mathematical and computational foundations of artificial intelligence
https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/mathematical-and-computational-foundations-of-artificial-intelligence/
This investment seeks to support this aim through the creation of up to 3 cross-disciplinary hubs. The hubs will bring together researchers from across the mathematical and computational sciences to tackle the foundational problems that exist within AI.
EPSRC welcome and encourage researchers from across these disciplines to apply, including but not limited to:
• artificial intelligence
• computer science
• statistics and applied probability
• applied mathematics
• pure mathematics
• operational research
• data science
• research software engineers
[ top ]Health and Safety
