Department of CS newsletter

Thanks for your contributions to Steve’s leaving event - plus Steve's upcoming Festschrift

Last week saw us bid farewell to Steve Furber after 33 years in our department. Many thanks to all who turned up, signed his card, and donated money to Steve’s nominated charity. Steve has sent through his thanks and appreciation for the event and to all those who organised it. In addition, on January 12th there will be a Festschrift for Steve (called "FurbyFest") celebrating Steve's research career - everyone is invited to that - the link for registration is: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/furbyfest-a-festschrift-for-professor-steve-furber-tickets-727418818267

Congratulations to John Goodacre, Lucas Cordeiro and Bernardo Magri

Congratulations to John Goodacre, Lucas Cordeiro and Bernardo Magri who have received research funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for their research project SECCOM: Securing Composable Hardware Platforms, a collaborative effort between the Advanced Processor Technology Research Group and the Systems and Software Security Research Group. SECCOM is dedicated to addressing critical security challenges when constructing hardware platforms through composable hardware systems. Our primary objective is to explore and mitigate security concerns within the diverse landscape of composable hardware platforms. Specifically, SECCOM aims to conceptualise and evaluate various design options to determine if key security properties and threat models can be extracted. This exploration will enable us to construct a robust security model to validate composable hardware platform security. Furthermore, recognizing the dynamic nature of composed hardware, our research will explore the feasibility of implementing dynamic verification mechanisms. These mechanisms will empower composed hardware to assert security policies in real time.

 

Any additional timetabling/Welcome Week issues?

Many thanks to those who have raised issues related to timetabling and with general logistics during Welcome Week. If you haven’t had a chance yet to highlight any of the challenges you encountered, please let me know by the end of this week. I’ll collate and forward to Sarah Mulholland.

Best wishes

Andrew

Congratulations to Professor Alejandro (Alex) Frangi, who is one of the 73 new Fellows in the field of engineering and technology elected by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

The group consists of 60 Fellows, eight International Fellows and five Honorary Fellows, each of whom has made exceptional contributions to their own sector, pioneering new innovations, leading progress in business or academia, providing high-level advice to government, or promoting wider understanding of engineering and technology.

Read the full Staffnet news article here.

One of the School of Engineering’s strategic priorities is to promote and support Open Research - making data, software and methods transparent and available for reuse. Lukas Hughes-Noehrer (Department of Computer Science) the University’s UKRN Local Network Lead, has also agreed to lead and co-ordinate Open Research activity within the School. He is especially keen to support grassroots Open Research activities, encourage broader participation in Open Research efforts and facilitate connections between those already engaged in Open Research and individuals who are new to it or have yet to discover its benefits. To contact Lukas, you can message him on Teams or send an email to lukas.noehrer@manchester.ac.uk

In partnership with the University’s Office for Open Research and Cancer Research UK, Lukas kindly invites you to attend UoM’s Open Research Kick Off 2023 on the 30^th of October from 10.30am to 1pm at the Whitworth Grand Hall. To register please follow this link.

The Kick-Off event will be followed by an event series on the following topics:

• 30^th of November, 10.00-13.00, University of Manchester campus. Open Research: Culture and Change with Ben Bleasdale.
• 25^th of January. Open Research: Justice, Equality, and Sustainability
• 29^th of February. Open Research: Sharing and Collaboration
• 21^st of March. Open Research: Excellence (REF’28) and Funding

Invitations will be circulated as soon as more information is available.

The Informatics Europe annual European Computer Science Summit (ECSS) will take place in Edinburgh, 23rd-25th October.

https://www.informatics-europe.org/ecss/program/schedule.html [informatics-europe.org]

The summit is particularly aimed at two audiences. Leaders and decision makers in Computer Science and Informatics across Europe, and early career researchers looking to develop their skills and better understand the issues facing the discipline today.

As the UK research community rejoins Horizon Europe it is now more important than ever to retain strong links with our colleagues across Europe. ECSS provides the perfect opportunity to exchange ideas and learn from leaders in the European community. Please consider registering yourself, and/or enabling ECRs from your institution to attend.

 

ECSS 2023: October 23-25 in Edinburgh
Register by Oct 16th, 2023:
https://www.efdelegates.ed.ac.uk/Registration/Welcome.aspx?e=452FA44CE25EBC71A898031550417CF9 [efdelegates.ed.ac.uk]

*IE Members enjoy special registration offer:
https://www.informatics-europe.org/join-us/why-how-join.html [informatics-europe.org]

At ECSS, we welcome informatics leaders and research enthusiasts, a
crucial event in the European informatics research and education
community. Our aim is to unite decision-makers from various levels and
diverse backgrounds, enabling them to broaden their international
connections, exchange ideas and collaborate on initiatives in
informatics and related fields, all for the betterment of society.

Our Conference Schedule
https://www.informatics-europe.org/ecss/program/schedule.html [informatics-europe.org]

Prestigious Speakers from across Europe
https://www.informatics-europe.org/ecss/speakers.html [informatics-europe.org]

Our new exciting updates:
++ Leaders Workshop ++
https://www.informatics-europe.org/ecss/program/leaders-workshop.html [informatics-europe.org]
A newly added 2-hour training session with Richard Boardman, a HR and
change management expert, where we dive into thought-provoking
discussions and activities to develop strategies to lead in a more
inclusive and engaging way.

++ Poster Session for Early Career Researchers ++
https://www.informatics-europe.org/ecss/program/career-development-workshop.html [informatics-europe.org]
A limited number of grants are still available for PhDs (non-UK
residents) who take part in the poster session. Come join us to showcase
your talent, broaden your network and earn invaluable insights from
leading informatics researchers, including our newly announced panellist
Ambrish Rawat, Senior Research Scientist of AI Security and Privacy from
IBM Research AI.

++ AI and the Future of Informatics Education ++
https://www.informatics-europe.org/ecss/program/national-informatics-associations-workshop.html [informatics-europe.org]
Pre-workshop reading materials and discussion points are newly added to
our webpage. Be part of a pan-European conversation, share your nation’s
unique challenges, and gain insights from experts shaping the future of
informatics education.

ECSS 2023 co-organiser:
School of Informatics of the University of Edinburgh:
https://www.ed.ac.uk/informatics/ [ed.ac.uk]

ECSS 2023 sponsors:
Huawei: https://www.huawei.com/en/ [huawei.com]
Edinburgh Innovations, the University of Edinburgh’s commercialisation
service: https://edinburgh-innovations.ed.ac.uk/ [edinburgh-innovations.ed.ac.uk]

We look forward to meeting you at ECSS 2023 in Edinburgh!

Informatics Europe

More about our open activities:
https://www.informatics-europe.org/join-us/open-activities.html [informatics-europe.org]

 

Online Ads Against Cybercrime

Seminar with Q&A and Networking

Date & Time: Wednesday 8th November 2023 | 14.30-16.00 (UK) | Registration will open at 14.15, the seminar will start at 14.30.

Venue: Manchester Tech Incubator, Circle Square, Oxford Rd, Manchester, M1 7ED

Summary: Dr Asier Moneva will discuss an applied line of research developed in collaboration with the Cyber Offender Prevention Squad (COPS) of the Netherlands police. Researchers and police jointly develop online ad campaigns targeting potential cybercriminals and then evaluate their performance.

Sign up for the event for free via Eventbrite.

Event:19-Oct-23

(as per today's email)

 

As you may be aware the EPSRC ICT and AI teams are visiting the Department of Computer Science on Thursday 19th October. A timetable of events is attached. This is primarily for academic staff and research support teams in the Department of Computer Science but we may have room for some interested PDRAs.

 

10.30-12.00 Simon Building Simon TH_C.        [Please book]

The EPSRC ICT and AI teams will giving a presentation to staff 

 

13-14 Lunch and Networking IT407                  [Please book]

 

14-15 Breakout sessions  (various rooms in Kilburn, see timetable, no booking necessary)

15-16 Portfolio meetings   (various rooms in Kilburn, see timetable, no booking necessary)

 

We encourage you to attend the events across the day. As we have limited space for the morning EPSRC presentation and lunch please register your attendance at these events as soon as possible via the following eventbrite link.

 

If you have posters about recent research you would like to display in IT407 please put them up in the hour before lunch.

Colleagues from the department have had a busy summer! Congratulations to everyone involved.

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Lucas Cordeiro et al. paper entitled "SMT-Based Bounded Model Checking for Embedded ANSI-C Software" of the 2009 edition will receive one the ASE Most Influential Paper awards (for papers published between 2009-2011). The paper has been selected for its breakthrough contribution on the verification for embedded ANSI C-C software. As a result, Lucas gave a talk in mid-September at IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE) in Luxembourg. https://conf.researchr.org/details/ase-2023/ase-2023-most-influential-papers--mip-/1/SMT-Based-Bounded-Model-Checking-for-Embedded-ANSI-C-Software

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New project: SECCOM: Securing Composable Hardware Platforms

John Goodacre, Bernardo Magri and Lucas Cordeiro are excited to announce the official launch of our research project, "SECCOM: Securing Composable Hardware Platforms," a collaborative effort between the Advanced Processor Technology Research Group and the Systems and Software Security Research Group.

SECCOM is dedicated to addressing critical security challenges when constructing hardware platforms through composable hardware systems. Our primary objective is to explore and mitigate security concerns within the diverse landscape of composable hardware platforms. Specifically, SECCOM aims to conceptualize and evaluate various design options to determine if key security properties and threat models can be extracted. This exploration will enable us to construct a robust security model to validate composable hardware platform security.

Furthermore, recognizing the dynamic nature of composed hardware, our research will explore the feasibility of implementing dynamic verification mechanisms. These mechanisms will empower composed hardware to assert security policies in real time.

SECCOM is funded by the MoD/Dstl and managed by UKRI/EPSRC.

You can find more information about the project at https://gow.epsrc.ukri.org/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/X037290/1.

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Emeritus Professor Allan Ramsay's new book

The book Machine Learning for Emotion Analysis: Understand the emotion behind every story is out now.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/allan-ramsay-10912b3_i-am-delighted-to-announce-that-our-book-activity-7103025069894819841-OXyY?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

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New Beehive paper out

The Virtual Machines and Language Implementations (VMIL) 2023 pre-print, Beehive SPIR-V Toolkit, is available from Juan Fumero, Athanasios Stratikopoulos, Nikos Foutris and Christos Kotselidis

In this paper, they show:
(A) A Domain-Specific Code Generator for building #SPIRV modules in Java using function composition
(B) Integration with #TornadoVM to generate SPIRV kernels from the #Graal IR
(C) Performance evaluation on Intel Integrated Graphics of the TornadoVM SPIR-V code generator vs. the #OpenCL C code generator

The Beehive SPIR-V Toolkit is also fully open source and available on GitHub:
https://lnkd.in/d6vwWxYU

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Inaugural keynote talk
In September, Lucas Cordeiro delivered the inaugural keynote talk of the CPAchecker workshop (https://lnkd.in/e6Fiv4mH). There were various interesting talks about tool development in automatic software verification, particularly software model checking and the CPAchecker tool (https://lnkd.in/esQnywBG).

Slides here.
 

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Human Brain Project interview with Steve Furber

Check out the recently published interview with Steve Furber, on the SpiNNaker million core machine, and the advantages of using computer models in research.
Read the interview: https://lnkd.in/eZkcxGDZ

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New papers

The paper, A Multifaceted Memory Analysis of Java Benchmarks has been accepted at #MPLR 2023 and the preprint is now available.
Manchester authors: Andreas Andronikakis, Nikos Foutris, Michalis Papadimitriou, Thanos Stratikopoulos, Christos Kotselidis.
 

Edge Learning for 6G-Enabled Internet of Things: A Comprehensive Survey of Vulnerabilities, Datasets, and Defenses has been published with Lucas Cordeiro as a co-author.

 

PhD student, John Kressel presented at  #ISPASS 2023 on the paper Evaluating the Impact of Optimizations for Dynamic Binary Modification on 64-bit RISC-V, coauthored with Guillermo Callaghan, Cosmin Gorgovan and Mikel Lujan.

 

PhD student, Ruiqi Ye, from the APT group has had the paper Exploring Sparse Visual Odometry Acceleration With High-Level Synthesis published in IEEE Access with co-authors Konstantinos Iordanou, Mikel Lujan and Graham Riley.

 

As part of ISPASS23, the paper A Novel Simulation Methodology for Silicon Photonic Switching Fabrics was published. Authors: 
Markos Kynigos, Javier Navaridas; Jose Pascual; Mikel Luján

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Upcoming keynote for Alex Frangi 

Alejandro Frangi will be a distinguished keynote speaker for Virtual Imaging Trials in Medicine (VITM24) conference next April.

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TornadoVM

This week, Thanos Stratikopoulos is presenting at #Devoxx Belgium https://devoxx.be/2023-schedule/speaker-details/?id=44014. For more information on TornadoVM please see here.

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Deadline: 29^th November 2023

The Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) is a combination of grants awarded to the University of Manchester by research councils. IAA funding supports the research and innovation ecosystem to develop wider impacts from research through fast and flexible funding for early-stage knowledge exchange activities.

 

IAA grants are available to The University of Manchester academics from AHRC, BBSRC, ESRC, EPSRC, MRC and STFC.

 

The UoM Knowledge Exchange Partnerships Team is pleased to announce the fourth Call for Proposals under the following mechanisms:

1. Relationship Development Scheme (up to £10,000) 

Fostering new relationships between external partners and academic researchers, creating opportunities for collaboration and exchange of knowledge and skills. 

• Deadline: Open Call 

• Download the Application form 
• Download the Quick guide 

1. Proof of Concept Scheme (up to £30,000) 

Support for the very early stage of transforming research outputs into commercial and translational opportunities. 

• Deadline: 29^th November 2023
• Download the Application form 
• Download the Quick guide 

1. Secondment Scheme (up to £60,000) 

Flexible support for secondments between the University of Manchester and partner organisations. 

• Deadline: 29^th November 2023
• Download the Application form 
• Download the Quick guide 

Eligibility 

IAA projects are no longer required to be directly related to previous funded research, but must fall within the remit and priorities of one or more of the relevant Research Councils: AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC, MRC, STFC 

Multidisciplinary projects may be jointly funded by more than one research council as appropriate. 

Eligible collaborators are UK-based businesses (including UK sites of international businesses), UK charities, and UK public sector organisations such as the NHS. Non-UK based businesses may be eligible where there is demonstrable evidence of the intention for inward investment during or beyond the lifetime of the project (e.g. establishing a UK site, job creation). If you have any queries regarding user organisation eligibility, please contact the Knowledge Exchange Partnerships Team. 

Do you have a potential project?  The Knowledge Exchange Partnerships Team provide active support for the development of IAA submissions. You are strongly advised to contact us via kepartnerships@manchester.ac.uk at least 1 month before the call closing date on the 29th November 2023. 

LINK: Download the IAA Handbook 

Deadline: 06-Oct-23

https://echoresearch.welcomesyourfeedback.net/STFC2023

STFC have commissioned independent research specialists, Echo Research, to undertake this study on our behalf. You can contribute your views by completing our short online survey, which should take no more than 10 minutes to complete.