Department of CS newsletter

A reminder about the “DSIT Cyber Security Policy Engagement Conference” conference that will be held at our University on Tuesday 29th October 2024 from 10:00 (arrival from 09:30) to 16:00. Cyber-related academic staff, PRDAs/ECRs etc. from our department are very much welcome. There will be keynotes from DSIT's Chief Scientific Advisor (Professor Chris Johnson) and a fireside chat between DSIT's Cyber Security Director (Rod Latham) and an officer of NCSC, as well as a session on research funding by UKRI (Dr. Romnik Thind). This follows on from a conference a DSIT/UCL-hosted event that occurred in July 2024, which gauged the gaps in academic policy engagement relating to cyber security, and convened academic expertise from across the UK to encourage collaboration and share insights. Please register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cyber-security-policy-engagement-conference-in-manchester-tickets-1044945579357

Winter Graduation
The graduation timetable has been released (https://www.graduation.manchester.ac.uk/scheduleofceremonies/) and we are scheduled to have our ceremony at 13:00 on December 10th. You can register (and book your gown) here: https://www.enet.uk.net/Login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2f

Update on The Furber Chair Recruitment
Interviews for The Furber Chair in Computer Systems Engineering are taking place this week. We have had a huge amount of interest in the post and have drawn up a very strong list of candidates for interview.

Our Seminar Series
It was great to see such a packed room for the first of our research seminars last week delivered by Ehud Reiter from the University of Aberdeen on Using Natural Language Generation (NLG) to Support Patients. Our next seminar is to be delivered by Jialie Shen from City University on Multimodal Learning in Multimedia Recommender Systems: Challenges and Future Directions on Wednesday, 6th November at 14:00 in Kilburn_TH 1.3. I look forward to seeing many of you there.

Congratulations to Postgraduate Researcher Aravindhan Rajasekar
Aravindhan Rajasekar has been nominated and selected for inclusion in this year's UK Government Transformation 100, an award recognising individuals who have made exceptional contributions to the transformation of public services. Over 1400 nominations were made, so to be named in the Top 100 is a significant achievement. Government Transformation 100 Awards are held annually by Government Transformation Magazine, with the support of an Advisory Board of senior central and local UK government executives.

Aravindhan has held several posts in the civil service, including the Cabinet Office, and currently works in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Aravindhan has recently started a part-time PhD with Carole Goble and Stian Soiland-Reyes, looking at digital transformation in the UK’s public health sector to enable federated analysis across multiple secure data environments in the NHS, clinics and research labs, and other public sector data custodians. This is funded as part of Health Data Research UK (HDR-UK Federated Analytics workstream). Manchester are partners and co-lead this programme.

New Government Guidance on Research Security
Finally, in case you missed the Staffnet article (https://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/news/display/?id=31874) the UK government has published new research security guidance, outlining scenarios that may be faced by academic and PS colleagues and – importantly – providing mitigation measures that we can take.

The National Protective Security Authority (NPSA) has created four Trusted Research scenario videos, each around 5 minutes long and providing easy to follow advice. The measures we can take to mitigate each scenario are summarised at the end of each video.

Researchers and research-related colleagues are asked to watch the first scenario-mitigation video at:

• Identifying export controls and sanctions (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDlfwaDmRus&list=PLlGCfGMQhvra9AlegSIg03XRi6xghmedM&index=1)

Andrew

Join us on 18 November to explore how Prof Rob Black strengthens and secures our cyber networks by manipulating and exploiting a cyber attacker's trust in their network, tools and even colleagues 

Register to learn how to weaponise trust, utilise deception techniques, and adopt tactics from other domains to build more challenging defences that help keep our networks safe from cyper attackers.

This lecture aims to be thought provoking, amusing and, most importantly it aims to be enlightening as to how best we can bring social sciences to the front line of our cyber fight!

Date and time: 11 November | 14:00 - 16:00

Location: Christabel Pankhurst Building

LIMITED TICKETS AVAILABLE: Register today to secure your seat and avoid disappointment! | https://tinyurl.com/mu7f8wwt

We are excited to invite you to an exclusive one-day conference on cyber security policy at The University of Manchester with the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).

Join us to gain valuable insights into DSIT's role within the cyber ecosystem, explore forward-looking research interests, strengthen key networks, and discuss key interests and ideas for future research & collaboration.

This event will include:

• Keynote Presentation 1 - Professor Chris Johnson, Chief Scientific Advisor, DSIT
• Research Funding Overview - Dr. Romnik Thind, UKRI
• Fireside Chat: Importance of Academic Engagement for Cyber Policymaking and Securing Tech Adoption with Rod Latham, Cyber Security Director, DSIT
• Workshop: Identifying Key Interests For Future Research & Collaborations

For more information, please click here: tinyurl.com/5txczu6n

Please note that the conference is for academics currently working in a UK university only.

Due to limited availability, we recommend securing your ticket today: https://tinyurl.com/5txczu6n

Event: 26-Nov-24, 9-5pm (Nancy Rothwell Building, UoM)

Register via: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cradle-robotics-annual-showcase-rai-early-career-researcher-workshop-tickets-1013676913937

The Centre for Robotic Autonomy in Demanding and Long-lasting Environments (CRADLE [cradlerobotics.co.uk]) is an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Prosperity Partnership between The University of Manchester and Amentum, aiming to empower UK and global industries with advanced robotics and autonomous systems.

We are delighted to invite you to the first CRADLE annual showcase. Join us to celebrate our successes and the progress made by our academic and industrial partners over the last 12 months, and to learn about our exciting future strategies and how you can get involved!

Note that the morning is an early career session, which can be booked independently. 

Manchester is a partner and founder of the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI), created in 2010 to help people build better software and more sustainable research software to enable world-class research.

The Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) has been awarded a record £10.2 million funding for a new project phase from 2024-2028 to continue its vital work as the first organisation in the world dedicated to improving software in research. 

This project has received funding through the UKRI Digital Research Infrastructure Programme. The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) leads the funding for the fourth phase of the SSI.

https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/record-ps102m-investment-continue-improving-research-software-practices

The SSI website (https://www.software.ac.uk/) contains a range of resources, training materials and info on upcoming events. The healthy SSI Fellowship Programme is now closed for applications but will reopen next August.

For more info about the Fellowship Programme, please have a look at https://www.software.ac.uk/programmes/fellowship-programme and https://www.software.ac.uk/programmes/fellowship-programme/apply-fellowship-programme

Training now available as self-paced online version.

The University’s popular ‘Introduction to Research Impact’ training is now available as a course on the Lifelong Learning portal for those who cannot attend the real-time training. The training can be accessed via https://lifelonglearning.manchester.ac.uk/ (search the Catalogue for ‘research impact’).

If you have not used the Lifelong Learning portal before, you will need to create an account (via the ‘Sign Up’ icon here, using Microsoft Edge as your web browser). In order to access this course, your Lifelong Learning account will need to be set up with a University of Manchester email address. 

This training has been adapted from, and runs alongside, the real-time ‘Introduction to Research Impact’ training delivered via Zoom once per term. There is no need to undertake both. The Zoom sessions are bookable via the University’s training catalogue (search 'RESIMP' – ‘Introduction to Research Impact’ is one of five research impact training modules on the catalogue; the others are not yet available as a Lifelong Learning course). Since launching in September 2023, over 300 staff have attended the training. Feedback showed that 99% of respondents learnt something new about impact and 97% would recommend the course to a colleague.

Why undertake the training?

Our research delivers economic, environmental, social, cultural, health and wellbeing benefits across the globe. We use our research expertise and pioneering spirit to discover, develop and create innovative solutions to the world’s biggest problems and transform lives. Research impact is an integral part of our research strategy and institutional values.

In addition to the satisfaction of seeing your work make a difference to people’s lives, learning how to develop and track your research impact can also support your career development – improving funding applications, raising the profile of your research or contributing to our REF submission.

The training is open to anyone from the University of Manchester, or Honorary University staff, with an interest in research impact.

[as email Mon 21-Oct]

Internal EoI deadline: 31-Oct-24

https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/novel-human-in-vitro-models-of-complex-disease/

For researchers interested in applying for funding to lead a cluster in a coordinated network for novel human in vitro models of complex disease.

A collection of funders, led by MRC, have announced a £15m call to fund up to 5 interdisciplinary clusters developing novel human in vitro models of complex disease.

Please could anybody thinking of submitting an expression of interest send a brief summary of the scope and expected partners to bruce.humphrey@manchester.ac.uk by Thursday 31^st October? There is no requirement for an internal triage, but we would like to ensure our bids are co-ordinated to reduce duplication and internal competition, and provide support to potential applicants.

Funding is being made available to support the purchase of small items of equipment/upgrades to facilities; approximately £91k (inc. VAT) per Partner - orders must be placed by 31^st March 2025.

Each Partner has flexibility into how they wish to invest the funds available for maximum effect - to either upgrade or augment the existing Royce portfolio of facilities, and could include for example:

• Add-ons or upgrades to existing equipment that will enable additional or enhanced capability, or which will update or expand equipment with a high level of external usage
• Standalone, smaller pieces of ancillary kit used to support Royce equipment, e.g. in preparation of samples

All items funded through this call will be integrated into existing Royce facilities and therefore will operate under the terms of the Royce collaboration agreement. i.e. they will be open access to the full UK research community, ranging from HEI (including student) users to industry customers, with a level of subsidised access made available through the Royce equipment access schemes.

Please remember that this is a small equipment fund and must not be used to procure large capital items, as defined by your home institution (typically £50k per item).  The total investment can exceed £91k with the Partner committing to meet any additional costs.

For full information contact sarah.chatwin@manchester.ac.uk

EoI deadline: 31-Oct-2024
Pre-sandpit virtual session: 17-Jan-2025
In-person sandpit: 20 to 23-Jan-2025

Apply to attend a five-day interactive interdisciplinary sandpit to develop projects on decision support using artificial intelligence (AI), for national security and defence applications. Participants selected to attend must do so for all online and in-person days.

You must complete an expression of interest to apply: https://engagementhub.ukri.org/epsrc-icase/28b57045/

Participants at the sandpit will be introduced to a number of defence and security scenarios by users of technology from across government and will be encouraged to approach problems in an interdisciplinary manner. For that reason, we encourage applications from a range of disciplines including but not limited to:

• AI technologies
• behavioural sciences
• mathematical sciences
• human factors
• natural language processing
• statistics
• linguistics
• computer sciences
• signal, wireless and network processing
• ethics
• audio visual analysis
• engineering
• high performance computing
• modelling and simulation
• digital twinning
• cybersecurity
• psychology
• digital forensics
• sociology
• legal studies
• responsible research and innovation

Funding available

It is expected that three projects will be funded, sharing up to £3 million of total funding at 80% full economic cost.

Accommodation will be provided during the residential component of the sandpit. However, participants must make their own travel arrangements. Travel and subsistence costs will be reimbursed. Since this sandpit is partially residential, and where employers cannot help, EPSRC, in line with UKRI policy, will cover the costs of any additional childcare or caring responsibilities, which is deemed necessary during this period.