Department of CS newsletter

First, I'd like to welcome to our department Ramon Pereira who has joined us as a lecturer in Symbolic AI and Autonomous Systems. Previously, Ramon was at Sapienza Università di Roma working with Giuseppe De Giacomo on the ERC project WhiteMech, and before that he was at the University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) where he completed his PhD. Ramon's office is Kilburn 2.109.

We're currently shortlisting for the recently advertised L/SL positions in Machine Learning, NLP, and Robotics (this last one is joint with MACE). All positions have attracted a very strong bunch of candidates and interviews will be taking place over the next month or so.

For those who missed it, it was great to hear Keir Starmer mentioning robotics at Manchester in his New Year's Speech .

Finally, we had an attempted forced entry last week to Kilburn 1.8 (which had been locked while exams were being set up). If you notice any suspicious activity around the building, please report it to Security.

Andrew

Stefan Schulz kindly agreed to have his Atlas Seminar presentation recorded, and it is now available as a podcast: 

Stefan Schulz, 'Interoperability standards for clinical text processing'

The School Operations Team have also been reviewing the expenditure request process for credit card use, and have identified some inefficiencies. The existing Expenditure Request form can be found on StaffNet, however you may want to use our improved SoE Expenditure Request form with added instructions and guidance – this form was sent round today and can be found on Sharepoint. We hope these improvements will help you to complete the form and reduce any delays caused by missing information.

Attached you can also find the SoE Expenditure Request guidance document. For further guidance on submitting an expenditure request and understanding the form, please see the Purchase Cards page on the SoE Sharepoint.

The Operations team needs a minimum of 5 working days to process credit card requests.

The next Atlas talk will take place on 1st February, in Kilburn 1.3. 2pm-4pm. There will be some light refreshments available in the PGR Common Room immediately after the talk. 

Abstract: We will consider modeling shapes and fields via topological and lifted-topological transforms. Specifically, we show how the Euler Characteristic Transform and the Lifted Euler Characteristic Transform can be used in practice for statistical analysis of shape and field data. We also state a moduli space of shapes for which we can provide a complexity metric for the shapes. We also provide a sheaf theoretic construction of shape space that does not require diffeomorphisms or correspondence. A direct result of this sheaf theoretic construction is that in three dimensions for meshes, 0-dimensional homology is enough to characterize the shape. We will also discuss Gaussian processes on fiber bundles and applications to evolutionary questions about shapes. Applications in biomedical imaging and evolutionary anthropology will be stated throughout the talk.

Bio: Sayan Mukherjee is an Alexander von Humboldt Professor in AI at UL and a Fellow of the Max Planck Society. He is also a Professor at Duke University of Statistical Science, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Biostatistics & Bioinformatics.

We hope to see you there!

(With immediate effect)

A Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-Investigator (Co-I) must have a contract of employment with an eligible Research Organisation for the duration of the grant prior to application for MRC grants (except for New Investigator Research Grants (NIRGs) and fellowships).

We are now also open to applications from PIs and Co-Is where assurance can be provided from the eligible organisation that, if the application is successful, a pre-existing contract of employment, will be extended beyond the end date of the grant.  This assurance should be provided from Departmental Heads as a letter of support (maximum of two pages) confirming:

*       That a pre-existing contract of employment will be extended beyond the end date of the grant, including where required to cover any grant extensions.
*       The employment contract covers the investigator for their full employment/contracted time and not just for the time spent on the grant over the course of the project.
*       The applicant will be provided with appropriate laboratory space and access to facilities to carry out the research.

The MRC Guidance for applicants https://www.ukri.org/councils/mrc/guidance-for-applicants/

(As emailed on 15-Dec-22)

For Early Career Researchers

This scheme is for applicants with a PhD (submitted for viva by latest 23-Feb-23) who do not yet hold a full-time permanent academic post in the UK. The Trust will consider applications from candidates whose permanent post does not include any research i.e. on a teaching-only contract. 
 

The Faculty invites expressions of interest from potential applicants for a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship.

Information on these fellowships, which are for 3 years, including the application procedure and eligibility, can be found on the Leverhulme website.

Important dates:

• Departmental deadline (send to sarah.chatwin@manchester.ac.uk: midday Wed 11-Jan-23
• Faculty deadline (Sarah to send to Daniel Twiddy i.e. not directly from the candidate): midday Fri 13-Jan-23
• Leverhulme deadline: 23-Feb-23

Expressions of interest should include:

•             a one page CV, including details of the candidate’s top 5 publications
•             The names and email addresses of two referees
•             A one page outline research proposal, which includes details on why your work is (a) an appropriate fit for this scheme and (b) a match to the research of the host department

This faculty level selection process supersedes any local departmental arrangements that have been in place previously. It would be helpful for departments to pre-sift candidates to ensure they are of a suitable calibre for this scheme, and that their proposed work is a suitable fit to the host department/institute.

As a faculty, our recent successes under this scheme (in the past decade) have been in the areas of Earth and Environmental Sciences and in Condensed Matter Physics. While this may suggest that the Leverhulme Trust is keen to fund research in these areas, we would like to welcome expressions of interest from other areas as well. The main criteria for selection will be the quality of the candidate.    

If you are selected as one of the Manchester-supported candidates we will work with you to prepare the full application to Leverhulme.

Expressions should be submitted to Daniel Twiddy via the department or institute (i.e. not directly from the candidate) by Friday 13th January 2023 at 12 noon.

Candidates who will be supported should be notified by the 27th January.

Intent to submit deadline: 28-Feb-2023
Deadline: 28-Mar-2023

https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/artificial-intelligence-innovation-to-accelerate-health-research/

Apply for funding to develop innovative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to be applied to health challenges.

Proposals from multidisciplinary teams are welcomed within priority areas in AI for health from across the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) remit.Submissions to this funding opportunity will not count towards the EPSRC repeatedly unsuccessful applicants policy.

N.B. You will not be able to submit a full application without an ‘intent to submit’ declaration.

The next DSE Awareness session will take place on Thursday the 19th of January at 10:00am, link below.

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_MzY3OGJhZTctYjRhNS00NDRmLWFjODQtMzllMTI2YjkxMzg5%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22c152cb07-614e-4abb-818a-f035cfa91a77%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%220c031bb6-ea60-481a-9d6c-b9ea1fa10467%22%7d