Department of CS newsletter

Our winter graduation ceremony will be held on December 14th at 930AM. Please do consider joining the academic procession to celebrate the success of our students. It’s always a positive and fun event. The deadline to register for attendance and gown hire is November 27th. Details can be found here: https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/protected/display.aspx?DocID=70926

Alex Frangi appointed Director of the Pankhurst Institute

Congratulations to Alex who has been appointed Director of the Pankhurst Institute. The Institute promotes needs-led health technology research and innovation, providing end-to-end support for translation into practice, and is the flagship for the University’s rapidly expanding health technology portfolio.

Michael Fisher seconded to the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT)

Michael has commenced a secondment to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. He will primarily provide input around AI regulation and safety, assisting both the Office for AI and the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation. Michael currently holds a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in our department and carries out research across the verification, trustworthiness, responsibility, and sustainability of AI, Autonomous Systems and Robotics.

Congratulations to both Alex and Michael.

Andrew

A course (Managing and sharing research data from human participants) has been developed to support University of Manchester researchers who work with personal data. Specific attention is paid to the requirements of data protection legislation for recruiting participants and gaining consent, managing the data securely, and anonymising data so that it might be shared for future use.

This is a blended learning course with approximately 80 minutes of pre-course online learning and a 200-minute interactive face-to-face session on campus, comprising:

1. Essential pre-course learning delivered via a collection of online resources (http://man.ac.uk/07tVYl) that introduces key principles and practices. Interactive quizzes are used to help check comprehension.
2. An interactive face-to-face session where you apply your pre-course learning to real-life research project case studies. Working together in groups, you will explore the issues and risks, and present back your mitigation strategies for wider discussion to formulate optimum solutions. Expert facilitators will be on hand to provide practical guidance and support. This face-to-face session is designed to be highly interactive, so you must be willing to actively participate in the group work and discussions. There will also be opportunity for attendees to seek specialist advice from the expert facilitators.

This course is delivered via the My Research Essentials researcher development programme and expert content creators and facilitators are drawn from the Information Governance Office; Research Governance, Ethics and Integrity; Centre for Epidemiology Versus Arthritis; Research IT; and The University of Manchester Library.

The next face-to-face session is scheduled for Tuesday 28 November 2023, 10:00 – 13:20. To book your place, please register at: https://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/training/my-research-essentials/workshops/details/?event=W8u0EPIv

Places on this popular course are limited and allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. If this session becomes over-subscribed, there will be an option to join a waiting list in case any spaces become available.

Please be invited to the PGR Coffee Break, Nov 21 13:30-14:30, in the staff common room. This will be an informal chance to take a break from your schedule, talk to PGRs and colleagues, and grab a coffee and some biscuits.

We’re also inviting staff from the Doctoral Academy (DA), the administrative hub supporting our PGR programme, to help introduce them to our Dept and allow us all to put names to faces when interacting to support PGRs.

At this first event we’ll be joined by colleagues from the DA Admissions Team (headed by Sandra Kershaw), and the Experience and Wellbeing Team (headed by Helen McManamon), who help coordinate induction events and work closely with the CS PGR mentors.

Please feel free to drop in for all or part of the hour, and depending on feedback we’ll look to make this a regular part of the calendar.

The following responsive grants are still applied to through UKRI's The Funding Service (TFS) but you can now apply for them at any time (no deadlines).

• standard research grant
• new investigator award
• overseas travel grant
• network grant
• discipline-hopping in ICT
• working with overseas scientists

In summary:

• EPSRC is committed to continuing support for responsive mode funding opportunities
• from November 2023 there are no deadlines for submissions to responsive mode opportunities
• applicants are encouraged to apply when their application is ready. The Funding Service system requires a closing date and this will appear on the funding opportunity; do not wait for this date to submit your application as we will be processing applications on an ongoing basis
• Research Support should also now have read and write access to proposals on TFS

From November 2023 our approach will change. We will not publish closing dates for individual rounds, instead we will batch applications internally. Applicants should apply when their application is ready for submission and not wait for the closing date.

Due to systems requirements, a closing date will appear on the Funding Service approximately a year from the publication of a funding opportunity. Do not wait for this date to submit your application. We will be processing proposals throughout 2024.

Applications will be batched for assessment and sent to the most appropriate responsive mode panel meeting when they reach this stage of the process. Applications submitted in late 2023 and early 2024 are likely to be considered at panels in September 2024. Our responsive mode panel meetings are: Engineering, Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Mathematical Sciences, and Physical Sciences. We expect these panels to run on a quarterly basis from September 2024.

More information is available through: www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/improving-your-funding-experience/council-transition-to-the-new-the-funding-service/council-transition-to-the-new-funding-service-epsrc/

We appreciate the irony of sending an email to ask if you are receiving the email. However, we are aware that a number of colleagues across FSE are not on the FSE mailing list who should be. Please do take the time to ask colleagues if they receive the email and if not please feel free to forward the message. Colleagues can then opt in to the email by completing this online form. Thanks for supporting your colleagues.

Changes to Sharing Options in Microsoft 365

IT Services have made a change to the way that files (such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint files stored on OneDrive or SharePoint) are shared. By default, the option “People you choose” or “People you specify can view” will be selected, which means that access will be restricted to the named individuals the document owner has chosen. If you’d like a file to be available to anyone with a University IT account, you can choose “People in The University of Manchester” when sharing your file. More information is available on Staffnet