Dear colleagues

After 5 very successful years as PGR Director, Simon Harper will soon be passing the baton over to Oliver Rhodes. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Simon for all the great PGR developments he has introduced and to welcome Oliver to the role - I'm sure Oliver will be able to build on the solid PGR base we now have. Simon's efforts have directly led to increases in our PRES results, 4-year submission, and completion rates. Importantly, the improvements introduced by Simon have also seen our EDIA figures surpass the AdvanceHE average for both Computer Science and Engineering in general. Thank you, Simon - we all hugely value the time and energy that you have put into this role.

The recent rounds of interviews in AI, NLP, and Robotics have concluded and we've been able to make five offers. The standard of candidates for all posts was exceptional. A big thank you to everyone who was on the interview panels, and also to those who were available to meet the candidates informally.

Finally, many congratulations to Zahra Montazeri for her technical credit in series 3 of The Mandalorian stemming from her time working at Industrial Light & Magic.

Apologies for the short notice, but we now have the dates for the internal and external window cleaning  for Kilburn and IT Building as follows - 16^th, 17^th ,20^th,21^st and 22^nd March.

If there are any issues please contact csops@manchester.ac.uk 

The mentors be hosting the next PGR social on Friday, 17th March. As always, it will be at 5pm in the common room where we will be serving alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. PGRs and staff all welcome. We hope everyone can join us!

From Kiana Samadpour Motalebi and the other mentors

Does your work include a pastoral role with students?
Do you work with students on a regular basis?
Are you sometimes unsure about what to say or do, or what would be helpful?

The Counselling Service are offering the following training sessions for staff:

Title: Student Mental Health Matters: spotting the signs, knowing what to say and knowing what to do. To book your place please follow click on the link: https://app.manchester.ac.uk/LLCS0001

Overview:
This is an interactive training session with a focus on student mental health (both undergraduate and post-graduate). The training covers all aspects of mental health but there is a focus on what to do in difficult situations where the concern about a student may be very high. Please be aware that this training will cover suicide prevention and how to have a conversation with a student about their potential risk. Pathways to support and help will be explained and there will be opportunity to discuss anonymised cases (no role play). All the trainers delivering this session are experienced mental health practitioners who have worked in an NHS and HE setting. Throughout the session confidentiality will be respected and all discussions will ensure the anonymity of the people involved.

New session dates added:

Wednesday 22nd March 10.00 – 1.00pm – spaces available
Wednesday 3rd May 10.00 – 1.00pm – spaces available 

Event: 13-Jun-23 (Alliance Manchester Business School, Manchester)

ADSAI is Manchester’s annual data science and AI conference and brings together researchers from across the broad fields within data science and artificial intelligence to explore the latest advances and to discuss important topical questions being posed by society around the use of data science and AI.

This year, we are focussing the following topics:

• Digital Twins
• AI for games
• Human-Data Interaction
• Natural Language Processing

Confirmed speakers so far include:
Maria Aretoulaki – Global Logic
Matt Benetan – Sonos
Mark Girolami – The Alan Turing Institute and University of Cambridge
Ewa Luger – University of Edinburgh
Tim Pearce – Microsoft Research
Andreas Vlachos – University of Cambridge

Conference organisers:

• Richard Allmendinger
• Mauricio A Alvarez
• Sophia Ananiadou
• Magnus Rattray
• David Topping
• Zhonghua Zheng

Conference registration fee is £50. To join us and take part in these key discussions, please book your place now.

Event: 22-Mar-23

The Office for Open Research are facilitating a series of Open Research Webinars together with the Open Research Network, exploring open and transparent research practice. Sessions will be led by academic and library staff.​

The first session "Democratising the repository: Software and code under an Open Research paradigm", with Dr Lukas Hughes-Noehrer will be hosted on 22 March, 12-1pm. Register via Eventbrite

Welcome to the updated handbook!

 

Success again for FuSeBMC at the annual Test-Comp competition, this year in Paris.

Test-Comp provides the community with a snapshot of state-of-the-art software testing tools. For the second consecutive year, FuSeBMC, our white-box fuzzer for finding software vulnerabilities in programs, received three significant awards from Test-Comp 2023:

• Gold medal in the Cover-Error category (find a test to cover a bug).
• Gold medal in the Cover-Branches category (find tests to improve branch coverage).
• Gold medal in the Overall category (that combines Cover-Error and Cover-Branches).

 
FuSeBMC uses three engines to perform reachability analysis automatically: bounded model checking, grey-box fuzzing, and selective fuzzing engines. A tracer coordinates the cooperation of these engines to efficiently find execution paths that lead to software vulnerabilities or inject labels to produce test cases for code coverage incrementally.

This significant achievement is a joint effort with Lucas Cordeiro, Kaled Alshmrany, Mohannad Aldughaim, and Ahmed Bhayat. Also, we had a tight collaboration with the development team of ESBMC, including Rafael Menezes, Franz Brauße, Mikhail R. Gadelha, PhD, and Fedor Shmarov.

Full information is available here.

In response to the continued increase in volumes of No Cost Extension (NCE), UKRI has agreed a change of process for grants receiving a No Cost Extension.

As a result of the new change of process, we may need to reprofile remaining grant payments. If this is the case, you can expect to see a revised payment profile (where applicable). You should note that the NCE request should be submitted as soon as the need is identified and needed and not wait until the end of the grant.

Where a grant extension results in a revised end date that falls into a new Financial Year, a revised process for reprofiling will be triggered using the following parameters:
• If the grant cash limit is below £200k, no reprofile will be completed
• If the grant cash limit is between £200k-£3m the final held payment will move to the new final quarter and all remaining funding will be spread equally across all remaining payment quarters
• If the grant cash limit is above £3m the Research Organisation (RO) will be asked to submit an Interim Expenditure Statement (IES) that details all actual expenditure incurred to date, a reprofile will be based upon the information provided.

The updated Grant Terms and Conditions will be published on the 05 April 2023. In the meantime, if you'd like more details please contact sarah.chatwin@manchester.ac.uk

The Pankhurst Building on Dover Street is now finished after several years of planning, preparation and building. It will host researchers and PS staff from across all three Faculties who work in the broad area of health technology research and innovation. For instance, we will host researchers from Professor Sami Kaski's Centre for AI Fundamentals; the Translation Manchester team; the Digital Health Software team; the NERC Digital Solutions Programme; and the Research and Innovation Health Accelerator team.

[Following up from the mention in the last departmental newsletter and subsequent emails]
These fellowships are for Early Career Researchers (with PhD or equivalent experience). FLFs are funded for 4 years in the first phase, with the option to apply to renew for a further 3 years later on.

UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships – Round 8 call

This is now a one stage process, so no outline stage as we have seen in all previous rounds.

Applications will then be reviewed by a Faculty panel, before those deemed to be the most competitive will be passed on to a central University panel. As with round 7, the University of Manchester is restricted to a set number of bids – we have been allocated 10 (which is the highest quota they allow).

 

INTERNAL REVIEW PROCESS

-INTERNAL DEADLINE: email your application to sarah.chatwin@manchester.ac.uk by end-of-play 04-Apr-23

Departments are asked to rank applications if submitting more than one application.

There will be time to work on feedback for your final internal submission

- by noon 17-Apr-23 email sarah.chatwin@manchester.ac.uk your final proposal for faculty panel review

The RSM will the proposals to Daniel Twiddy on or before Monday 17th April 2023.

 

Proposals consist of:

CV in the format of the scheme template (attached to email) – max 3 pages (1 of the 3 being a page for outputs)
Outline proposal (attached to email) – (max 2 pages)
 

-Faculty panel will review the outline proposals/ CVs and rank the applications. The panel will provide feedback to Departments on which candidates will be supported for submission to UKRI and confirm the process for obtaining institutional support letters. We anticipate being in a position to inform the candidates that the University will be putting forward by Friday 12th May.

-FLF external deadline: 04-Jul-23 

Similar sifts are taking place in each of the three faculties: after feedback from previous rounds we are now taking into account research that may sit across two faculties. Applicants who are in this position should make one submission and request that their bid be considered by more than one panel, explaining in one or two sentences why this is appropriate.

Applicants whose proposals have been approved by the Central review should liaise with the Research Services hubs to organise costing and submission on Je-S.

The School of Engineering would particularly welcome applications from candidates working in the following areas, which are current priorities for the School:

Net Zero and Environmental Sustainability
Engineering for Health
Robotics, Autonomous Systems and AI
Engineering Materials

Deadline: 31-May-23

As you may be aware, last year, the Office for Open Research  co-ordinated the Open Research Accelerator Fund which provided £19k to nine separate projects designed to further the development of open research practice across The University of Manchester. There were a range of applications across the faculties highlighting the diversity of the open research movement at the University. Further details of the successful applications from last year’s fund can be found on the Office for Open Research website.​

This year, we are pleased to announce that £100k has been allocated over the next two financial years (2023/24 and 2024/25) to fund open research projects as part of the Accelerator Fund. ​

The Accelerator Fund is open to PGRs and staff at The University of Manchester. ​

There will be two distinct funding levels: ​

• awards up to £2,000 ​
• awards up to £20,000. ​

The successful projects must show how they align with the University’s open research principles and how they will contribute to a sustainable culture change. For further information about the application process and evaluation criteria, please refer to the Office for Open Research website and download the application form.​

If potential applicants would like their application to be reviewed prior to final submission, please contact the Office for Open Research with a completed application form no later than Friday, 26 May 2023.​

For all enquiries relating to the Accelerator Fund, email: openresearch@manchester.ac.uk.​