Department of CS newsletter

Summer Graduation

Our summer graduation ceremonies will take place on Monday July 17th at 9.30 and at 11.15. I do hope you'll be able to make it to celebrate our students' achievements alongside their families and friends. It would be great to have lots of CS colleagues in the academic procession for the two ceremonies.

Full details can be found here.

To order your gown and to sign up for the academic procession, click on this Ede and Ravenscroft link: https://www.enet.uk.net/

Two New Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Fellows

I’m pleased to let you know that we will have two Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Fellows joining us over the next couple of months. Hongpeng Zhou will be starting in May working on “AI for cancer research - Interpretable machine learning to uncover biological mechanisms”, while Emily Collins will join us in July working on “Building Trustworthy Robotics for Better, Safer Industry”. Details of their office locations etc. will be circulated soon.

Some Grant News

Congratulations to John Goodacre, Bernardo Magri, and Youcheng Sun on their recently awarded project, SECCOM: Securing composable hardware platforms funded by UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL).

Mel is Leaving Us

Finally, as you may have heard Mel has been promoted to the position of Project Officer at the Tyndall Centre - this is obviously great news for Mel, but sad news for us. Mel’s hard work, support for colleagues, and general fantastic-ness has been hugely important to our department for many years. Mel’s last day in Kilburn is May 12th. There is a card for you all to sign in the Ops office - and Erika has set up a collection which I hope you will contribute to: https://viing.com/v/mels-leaving-us

Please remember that as a staff member you have access to Key Travel as a booker. This means you can look at the options and get approvals quicker than going via the CS Operations Team, because it can take up to two days for the Operations Team to pick up your email. Especially during busy conference season. 

There have been some issues where Key Travel has booked flights and not used the csops@ or the traveller's email address. If you find you cannot access your boarding pass etc using your email address, try using csops@manchester.ac.uk, failing that, try confirmations@keytravel.com.

Key Travel can help in the case of an emergency, for example if a hotel says you don't have a room booked, or if an airline cancels or changes a flight at the last minute. The number to call in such an emergency is 020 7843 9602.

It's a good idea to download the Key Travel app: The new Key Travel Mobile App can be downloaded here: Google Play or App Store.

The other ways to contact Key Travel are:

• Phone: 0161 819 9797 (for help with reservations, available 24/7)
• Email: UoM@keytravel.com
• SMS message: +44 7860019411 (monitored 24/7)
• WhatsApp message: +44 207 843 9602 (monitored 24/7)

With the recent boiler issues in Kilburn we have extra radiators in CSOps - so if anyone needs one for the next few weeks then please contact CSOps

The next coffee/tea social will take place on 4th May in the staff & PGR common room at 3pm.  This follows the Star Wars Seminar.  Do pop along and have a brew and a chat!

New PGRs will be joining us this month, so the mentors are hosting a welcome party on Friday, 5^th May. Please join us in the Kilburn common room (and courtyard, if the weather is nice) at 5pm for pizza and alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. We hope to see everyone there!

Deadline for registration: 23-May-2023
Event: 14-16-Jun-2023 (Manchester)

In conjunction with the Advances in Data Science and AI (ADSAI) Conference, Mauricio Álvarez and Magnus Rattray are organising an ELLIS Summer School on Machine Learning for Healthcare and Biology

The school will bring participants up-to-speed on the latest methods and technologies in machine learning with a focus on healthcare and biology. The school includes a set of Lectures by renowned researchers at the intersection of ML and Healthcare and Biology, with an excellent track record of delivering educational content.

Confirmed speakers include:

• Prof. Mihaela van der Schaar (University of Cambridge)
• Dr ST John (Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence, Aalto University)
• Dr Theodore Papamarkou (University of Manchester)
• Prof. José Miguel Hernández-Lobato (University of Cambridge)
• Dr Danielle Belgrave (DeepMind)
• Dr Virginia Aglietti (DeepMind)
• Dr Matthew Sperrin (University of Manchester)
• Dr Javier González (Microsoft Research Cambridge)
• Dr Gabriele Schweikert (University of Dundee)
• Dr Luisa Cutillo (University of Leeds)
• Dr Mohammad Lotfollahi (Technical University of Munich)
• Prof. Dennis Wang (Imperial College London and A*STAR Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences)

For those publishing research from EU projects

In March 2021, Open Research Europe (ORE), the EC's open access publishing platform was launched. Whether you are a partner in a Horizon Europe or Horizon 2020 project, or a grantee of a European Research Council action or Marie Skłodowska-Curie action, ORE is a destination for publishing your research, making it immediately open access, and having it peer-reviewed and ultimately indexed.

The EC also created ORE so that you can easily comply with your open access requirements, even after your project or action has ended. Indeed, there is no administrative burden, and ORE comes at zero cost to you, because we cover the publishing costs. N.B. this has been checked with UoM library and is considered a feasible mode of achieving Open Access for publications.

ORE is a post-publication peer-review publishing platform that accepts original articles in all fields. It offers a variety of article types, ranging from research articles to methods and data notes. ORE has now reached more than 300 papers, which is a great performance for such a recently launched publishing venue. Besides, ORE has been indexed in a record time in Scopus, Google Scholar and many thematic indexers such as ERIH Plus or Inspec, with more to come, on account of its robust scientific and publishing policies. ORE is also fully aligned with the current collective effort for reforming research assessment.

You are invited to consult the platform website and in particular the sections on FAQs, policies, and how it works, which explain the publishing process in full detail. Do not hesitate to get back to your project officer in the Commission or Executive Agency should you need further information about ORE.

As you may be aware, the BBSRC Pioneer Awards funding opportunity is a pilot and as such will be subject to an evaluation by the programme team. As part of this evaluation, we are inviting both applicants and research support professionals to complete a short survey to provide their views on the scheme. The deadline for submitting your response is Friday 28 April 2023

The survey should take approximately 10 minutes to complete, depending on the depth of your response. All responses are treated in confidence.

The University have been limited to one application as lead in the NERC CDT call. As such we will need to undertake an internal sift and ask bidding teams to complete an internal submission ahead of the NERC submission dates. We are asking that any bid team complete the attached document and returns the document to patrick.hackett@manchester.ac.uk by 09.00, Tuesday 9^th May.

NB - Colleagues who are intending to be a “Host Partner” of consortium lead by another University (ie UoM will host CDT students, as detailed in the Outline Application doc), do not need to fill in the attached but are asked to make us aware of the intention to submit, detailing the lead University, a very brief description of the CDT subject and how many students they are considering hosting – again by emailing patrick.hackett@manchester.ac.uk by 09.00, Tuesday 9^th May.

The proposed timeline for this outline stage call is as follows;

• 03/05/23 – NERC online webinar (sign-up)
• 09/05/23 (09.00) – UoM internal sift deadline
• 10/05/23 – NERC outline application open
• 15/05/23 – UoM internal sift outcome
• 13/06/23 – NERC outline deadline

New deadline: 5pm 15-May-2023

Applications are lower than expected to date as such the deadline has been extended into May.

The Simon Industrial Fellowships fund external non-academic contacts to spend time working with our academic researchers, in the past Fellowships have contributed to various REF Impact Cases and can often be a precursor to longer-term collaborations such as KTP. This fund is administered by Humanities but the funding is open to all faculties. Contact sarah.chatwin@manchester.ac.uk for full details.

Simon Industrial Fund - Faculty of Humanities - The University of Manchester

Due to hybrid working arrangements there are fewer people in Kilburn and IT Buildings and therefore less coverage of Fire Marshals. In the event of a fire or drill it would be beneficial to all to have more designated Fire Marshals, so if you would like to volunteer to become a Fire Marshal then you can access the training courses which are available on SL&D.

Volunteers can just sign up and complete the course. TLCF101E Evacuation Training E-Learning

Once people have done this please email James.fields@manchester.ac.uk who will coordinate designated areas for each fire marshall and arrange for fire marshall vests to be distributed.