Department of CS newsletter

Welcome to Alex Frangi and Emily Collins

A very warm welcome to Alex Frangi and Emily Collins who both joined us this week.

Alex is Bicentennial Turing Chair in Computational Medicine and Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies with joint appointments in Computer Science and the School of Health Sciences. Previously, Alex was Scientific Director of the Leeds Centre for HealthTech Innovation and Director of Research and Innovation of the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics. He holds an Honorary Chair at KU Leuven in the Departments of Electrical Engineering (ESAT) and Cardiovascular Science. He also coordinates the InSilicoUK Innovation Network (www.insilicouk.org). Alex’s main research interests lie at the crossroads of medical image analysis and modelling, emphasising machine learning (phenomenological models) and computational physiology (mechanistic models). Alex’s office is room G21. He will be giving a seminar at 1100 on July 19th in Kilburn room 1.4 on his research vision focused on translational AI.

Emily has joined us as a Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Fellow. She is an interdisciplinary Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) Research Scientist and a British Psychological Society Chartered Psychologist. Emily has expertise in biomimetic, brain-based, therapeutic, and industrial nuclear robotics; HRI methodology development; and ethical and theoretical consideration of Robotics and AI (RAI). Her key research themes include trustworthiness and verification; responsibility and accountability; and the centrality of human psychology and socio-political factors to effective RAI deployment in the real world. Emily’s office is room 2.120A.

 

Michael Portillo meets the Manchester Baby, SpiNNaker, and Steve Furber

In case you missed it, you might be interested in watching the recent episode of the series Great British Railway Journeys. The segment on the Manchester Baby, SpiNNaker, and Steve Furber starts at around the 18 minute mark: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001n47c/great-british-railway-journeys-series-14-2-urmston-to-new-islington

 

 

 

 

As you may be aware, the School of Engineering is now maintaining an ongoing list of equipment requirements in an effort to be better prepared when funding is made available. This includes large and small requests, and can also include facilities comprising multiple pieces of smaller equipment. I am writing to highlight this, as we have recently been able to progress several purchases and would like to build on this success.

Any equipment requirement may be added to the list using this form – there is no upper or lower limit to the requests acceptable, although you may be directed to pre-existing funding routes (e.g. large capital projects, small fund pots etc) if they are more appropriate. If you think you may have a request but are not sure if it ‘should’ be on the list, please either contact me or go ahead and complete the form linked here – if we are aware of need then we can act on it, and I’d always rather know what is needed across the school than not.

When funding becomes available for which we think your request may be well suited we will contact you, either to check you still require the equipment or ask you to prepare a bid to an external body.

If you have any questions about the process or want to discuss your request in more detail please do feel free to contact me directly.

Joel Turner

Deputy Head of Research (Facilities)

School of Engineering

(He/Him)

 

Dear All

Just to let you know of some refurbs and upgrades taking takes this summer. 

The LF area is currently being refurbished - the repainting is taking place at the moment and new furniture has been ordered for delivery in late July.  This will include a selection of working areas including high table and stools (with power points), lower modular sofa seating and also meeting pods and canopied bench seating.  The final phase will be to look at displays for the walls - many thanks to those who recently sent through some ideas - we are considering some colourful fractal images, AI generated images and some images reflecting the history of the department and the building.  Its not too late to send through ideas so please email Ruth with information.  We hope the area will then be a much improved location for the students to work and socialise.

We are also having the AV equipment upgraded in our CS internal teaching rooms - 2.15, 2.19 & IT407.  This will include new projectors, visualisers, mics and monitors.  The work will be completed for the start of teaching in September.

We are also currently refurbishing a number of offices which were in need.  Many thanks to Nick Bell for coordinating this. 

You are invited to the Department Summer party on 19th July from 3.30pm, for food, music and refreshments. If you have not done so already please could you let us know if you can come as we need an idea of numbers for catering purposes. And we would also welcome offers to help support the event on the day - many hands make light work!

Please just complete the short form here to confirm attendance and offers of help.

Many thanks

The CSOps Team

Speaker: Professor Alejandro F Frangi

Title: Computational Medicine: AI-enabled Digital Twins and Pro-Innovation Regulatory Science

Time and Location: 11am, 19th July, Kilburn Lecture Theatre 1.4

Abstract:

Traditional medical device product development life cycle begins with pre-clinical development. In laboratories, bench/in-vitro experiments establish plausibility for treatment efficacy. Then in-vivo animal models with different species provide guidance on medical device efficacy/safety for humans. With success in both in-vitro/in-vivo studies, products are tested on clinical trials assessing use in humans. Testing on many people is costly, lengthy, and sometimes implausible (e.g., paediatric patients, rare diseases, and underrepresented ethnic groups). When medical devices fail at later stages, financial losses can be catastrophic. Predicting low-frequency side effects has been difficult because such side effects may not become apparent until many patients adopt the treatment. In recent years, medical devices also failed because of a lack of efficacy rather than safety. Success rates are declining, clinical trial costs are rising, innovation is stagnating, clinical trials in US/UK are moving abroad where costs are lower, and patient profiles may differ. One reason for failure is that traditional trials aim to establish efficacy/safety for *most* subjects rather than for *individual* subjects, so efficacy is determined by a statistic of central tendency for the trial. Traditional trials do not adapt treatment to covariates of subjects. Many reports have pointed to this broken/slow innovation system and its impact on societal costs and suboptimal healthcare. However, radical changes to this innovation process are still to be developed.

Computational Medicine uses methods from computer science, engineering and mathematics to advance healthcare by developing computational models of disease, personalizing these models using data from patients, and applying these models to improve the diagnosis and treatment of disease as well as using digital evidence to accelerate the development and performance of novel treatment options. Computational Regulatory Science is the science of developing new computational methods and digital representations to deliver tools, standards, and approaches to assess the safety, efficacy, quality, and performance of all medical regulated products. These two areas require considerable underpinning on solid computer science, machine learning and scientific computing foundations alongside with a commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration and mission-driven discovery science.

In this talk, I will overview our progress in the INSILEX Programme funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering. We envision a paradigm shift in medical device innovation where quantitative sciences are exploited to carefully engineer medical device designs, explicitly optimise clinical outcomes, and thoroughly test side effects before being marketed. In-silico trials (IST) are essentially computer-based medical device trials performed on populations of virtual patients. They use computer models/simulations to conceive, develop and assess devices with the intended clinical outcome explicitly optimised from the outset (a-priori) instead of tested on humans (a-posteriori). This will include testing for potential risks to patients (side effects) and exhaustively exploring in-silico for medical device failure modes and operational uncertainties before being tested in human clinical trials. Advanced computer modelling will prove useful to predict how a device behaves when deployed across the general population or when used in new scenarios outreaching the primary prescriptions (device repurposing), helping to help the widest possible target patient group without unintended consequences of side effects and device interactions.

Selected References

Frangi AF, Taylor ZA, Gooya A. Precision Imaging: more descriptive, predictive and integrative imaging. Med Image Anal. 2016 Oct;33:27-32.

Sarrami-Foroushani A, Lassila T, MacRaild M, Asquith J, Roes KCB, Byrne JV, Frangi AF. In-silico trial of intracranial flow diverters replicates and expands insights from conventional clinical trials. Nat Commun. 2021 Jun 23;12(1):3861.

Bio:

Professor Alejandro F Frangi, FIEEE FSPIE FMICCAI FAAIA

Bicentennial Turing Chair in Computational Medicine at the University of Manchester and KU Leuven

RAEng Chair in Emerging Technologies, University of Manchester

http://www.cistib.org/afrangi/

 

Professor Frangi is Bicentennial Turing Chair in Computational Medicine and Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies at the University of Manchester, UK, with joint appointments at the Schools of Computer Science and Health Sciences. He directs the CISTIB Center for Computational Imaging and Simulation Technologies in Biomedicine. He is a Turing Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute. Previously, Prof Frangi was Scientific Director of the Leeds Centre for HealthTech Innovation and Director of Research and Innovation of the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics. He holds an Honorary Chair at KU Leuven in the Departments of Electrical Engineering (ESAT) and Cardiovascular Science. He holds a BSc/MSc in Telecommunications Engineering from UPC Barcelona (1996) and a PhD in Imaging Science from Utrecht University (2001). He also coordinates the InSilicoUK Innovation Network (www.insilicouk.org).

Professor Frangi’s main research interests lie at the crossroads of medical image analysis and modelling, emphasising machine learning (phenomenological models) and computational physiology (mechanistic models). He is particularly interested in statistical methods applied to population imaging and in silico clinical trials. His highly interdisciplinary work has been translated into cardiovascular, musculoskeletal and neurosciences.

 

We are excited to share the funding announcement from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) of £34 million for the creation of BioFAIR - Carole Goble is the Joint Head of Node of ELIXIR-UK, the national node of the ELIXIR European Research Infrastructure for Life Science Data.

 

ELIXIR-UK represents 24 UK universities, institutes and community groups working in data driven bioscience. Manchester are founders of ELIXIR-UK, centred on the Department’s eScience Lab Group, and we lead in EU projects, numerous digital infrastructure services and innovations in ELIXIR that will be incorporated into BioFAIR. The eScience Lab members have been instrumental in the conceptualisation of BioFAIR and we expect to take on roles in its future development. More Infomation

 

For researchers planning on applying to funding calls in the near future

[as per email 20-Jun-23]

During the current cyber incident the Research Services team are operating as usual but given the ongoing  uncertainty around system and network availability we are advising PIs to submit all applications to funders prior to the call deadline to reduce the risk of missing a deadline due to system or network outage.  Given that this is an evolving situation we cannot guarantee Research Services will be able to action changes to proposals on deadline day and for this reason we strongly advise not relying on being able to make late adjustments to the budget. It currently remains the policy that requests for costings must be submitted 2 weeks prior to the funder deadline for bids under £1M and 4 weeks prior to the funder deadline for bids over £1M. Additional advanced notice in excess of this, where possible, will help the team balance workload and is best practice.

We would encourage you to speak to your Research Support Officer and Research Support Manager for any applications you are preparing about when you are likely to submit. We recommend that you comply with the Faculty advance notice policy as this will enable Research Services to plan and support as many applications as possible should it become necessary to prioritise applications due to system availability changes at short notice.  

We are planning for several scenarios should the situation evolve and are making every effort to ensure Research Services can continue to support you. We will keep you updated of any changes in service levels as they arise.

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There are a number of EPSRC calls currently open with deadlines for 28-Sep-23. For planning purposes please contact your RSO as soon as possible if you plan on applying so that we can plan workloads.

Are you an academic looking for insight into how the funding body works and how it makes its decisions?

You can apply to be part of the EPSRC Peer Review College, which provides training in reviewing of EPSRC proposals, and panel attendance providing you with in-depth knowledge of our peer review processes and principles, helping you to further increase your knowledge of reviewing and proposal writing. You will be a part of the decision-making process and get a broad view of the novel ideas coming through the funding pipeline in your area.

EPSRC encourage applications to become a college member using the application form. Applicants will be assessed on their relevant experience and our portfolio requirement for expertise.

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There are other ways you can work with EPSRC too. These positions on the boards/ networks/ forums etc. tend to be advertised when they become available: https://www.ukri.org/about-us/epsrc/relationships/work-with-us/

[as per email 29-Jun-23]

For more senior researchers interested in applying to RAEng Research Chairs and Senior Research Fellowship

Internal deadline: 20-Jul-23
RAEng deadline: 07-Sep-23

The Royal Academy Engineering call for Research Chairs and Senior Research Fellowships is now open.

We have agreed a light touch internal review process for submissions to this call, which consists of:

An outline (2 sides A4 max) detailing the following:

1. Goals and objectives

2. Methodology and key deliverables

3. Details of proposed industry support (please note it is not necessary to submit a finalised support letter from your industrial partner at this stage)

4. Beneficiaries and impact of research

5. Fit with University research and investment strategy

6. Plans for self-sustainability once RAEng funding has ended

The 2 page outlines should be sent to your RSM (Sarah Chatwin) by end of play Thursday 20th July 2023. Sarah will then collate outlines and forward onto Daniel Twiddy by noon 21^st Jul.

Outlines will be reviewed by a Faculty panel.

Potential candidates will receive feedback/approval to submit by the 1st August which then allows those interested to apply for mentoring support from RAEng, which has a deadline of 10th August.

Any queries regarding applications to this scheme should be referred to your Research Support Manager in the first instance.

To note:

Research Chair applicants should be a professor or equivalent, Senior Research Fellowships applicants should be a Reader or Lecturer level or equivalent.

Research Chairs/Senior Fellowships scheme requires at least £250k industry contribution over 5 years.

All awards made in this round must start on 1st March 2024

Internal deadline: 28-Jul-23
BBSRC deadline: 05-Oct-23

https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/2023-transformative-research-technologies-23trt/

BBSRC have updated their Tools and Resources Development Fund (TRDF) into a new scheme called 2023 Transformative Research Technologies (23TRT). It is specifically intended to help the early stage development of transformative new bioscience technologies where little to no preliminary data exists. Projects can therefore be pilot studies and do not necessarily need to produce a final, fully functional tool – responsive mode funding is available for more mature ideas.

Applications must be 6-18 months duration and cannot exceed £225k full economic cost (FEC), with a deadline of 5^th October.  

Internal review process

BBSRC have requested that organisations review proposals before submission to assist with demand management. Could any interested applicants therefore submit a one page summary of the team, proposed technology, experimental outline, and the expected impact to bruce.humphrey@manchester.ac.uk by Friday 28^th July. Potential applications will be reviewed by a cross-faculty panel of experienced BBSRC researchers and technology specialists, and advice returned to applicants.

Internal Deadline: 17-Jul-23
RAEng Deadline: 19-Sep-23

The Research Fellowships - Royal Academy of Engineering call is now open for application. The scheme is open ECRs (including postdocs), within 4 years of their PhD on the submission date.

Please note in previous rounds applicants must not hold a permanent academic position. This eligibility criterion is no longer applicable.

The University is restricted to an institutional cap of two submissions; however, applications are encouraged from candidates belonging to a persistently underrepresented group (see below), and if an application meets this criterion, we may submit two additional application (so 4 in total).

For this reason, we would particularly like to encourage applicants from the following persistently underrepresented groups:

• Women
• Black people, including those with any mixed ethnicity with Black ethnic background(s)
• Disabled people

Due to the restrictions on the numbers of submissions allowed, we have put an internal review process in place as outlined below.

UoM Timetable:             

‘Intention to submit’ emailed to Daniel Twiddy by noon on Monday 17th July 2023. Please contact sarah.chatwin@manchester.ac.uk asap if you plan on applying.

Internal review deadline – 12 noon on Monday 31st July 2023

Internal review decisions – no later than Friday 11th August 2023

Deadline to request mentoring from RAEng to help with application – Tuesday 15th August 2023

RAEng submission deadline – 4pm on Tuesday 19th September 2023

 

Any queries regarding applications to this scheme should be referred to your School Research Support Manager (sarah.chatwin@manchester.ac.uk) in the first instance.

For the internal review we are asking for a three-page CV, the name of an academic mentor, and a three-page outline case for support, to include the following (this will be a pared down version of the full case for support as described in the guidance doc)

·         Abstract
·         Goals and objectives
·         Timeliness and novelty
·         Methodology (largest section)
·         Images and Diagrams
·         How does proposal meet the aims of EDRF?  This section is optional if applying for Engineering for Development Research Fellowship
·         Project timeline/Gantt chart
·         Project Management
·         Risks
·         Collaborations
·         Beneficiaries and Impact
·         Academy’s Strategic Goals
·         Diversity and Inclusion
·         Exploitation
·         Dissemination and Public Engagement
·         Choice of host institution
·         Ambitions and future plans

Candidates will be reviewed using RAEng's assessment criteria 'Candidate', 'Research quality and vision' and 'Beneficiaries and impact', as well as their fit to the University's strategic priorities.

The selected candidates will be helped with the 'Research Environment' and 'Resource and management' aspects

The next DSE Awareness session will take place on Wednesday the 23^rd of August at 10:00, join here.