School of CS newsletter

Title: Manchester at the Institute of Coding Congratulations to Suzanne Embury and Caroline Jay, who have led the UoM's participation in the successful bid to HEFCE to be part of the *link: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/skills/IoC/* Institute of Coding (IoC). The IoC is part of the government's push to improve Digital Skills across the country. The School's particular role in the IOC is in the development of tools that support lecturers in teaching industry-relevant software engineering skills, and in achieving deep learning of these skills by students in large classes, without requiring massive teaching/TA resources. The hope is to use the Institute as a means of getting the tools and expertise being developed in the School out into other Universities, while retaining some Manchester branding. This participation is on the back of the re-design of our second year software engineering courses which was led by Suzanne. The award of the IoC to this large consortium was announced by the Prime Minister at Davos last week. there is a *link: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/prime-minister-announces-establishment-of-20-million-institute-for-coding/ * UoM press release where you may find more details about Manchester's role in the IoC.

We are pleased to confirm that baby Harrison Francis arrived on Sunday 21^st January 2018, weighing 7.7lbs and that Michelle is doing well.’

 

The University was successful in becoming a supplier for the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory and can now tender for research contracts with this funder. Please see below details of two open-competitions under 3 separate capabilities of R-Cloud.

1) Test Coverage Metrics for Artificial Intelligence: Invitation to participate

In the case of traditional software, there are the notions of requirements-based testing and robustness testing. Both of these notions support different levels of test completeness, for example: statement coverage; branch coverage; modified condition / decision coverage. However, these levels are based on the structure of the source code. As such, they are not considered appropriate for AI software, where the same source code can be "trained" to give very different types of behaviour.

2) Safety Argument Structures for Autonomous Systems: Invitation to participate

This requirement involves understanding the types of argument that can and cannot be made about autonomous systems where non-deterministic and possibly adaptive behaviours are present. It includes consideration of the properties of relevant AI techniques, along with wider system-level attributes. The focus is deliberately on generic argument structures, rather than the development of an argument (or arguments) for a very specific system (or systems).

Those who wish to apply should confirm their interest to the Research Operations team no later than 16 February 2018, who will provide further information on the call and the application process.

Please also inform the Research Office if you intend to apply.