Masters News 2024-2025

A newsletter for PGT

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Masters News - Contents
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Christmas closure

The Kilburn building is now closed until 8 am on Thursday 2nd January 2025. There will be no access to the Kilburn Building during this time.

Between 2nd January and Monday 13th January 2025, the building will be open only during working hours: 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday.

Extended opening hours access will resume on Monday 13th January 2025.

Enjoy your break and good luck with your exams.

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Sarah Clinch

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

A newsletter for PGT

img: https://newsagent.cs.manchester.ac.uk/images/large/13/28/1328/Kilburn090114.jpg


Masters News - Contents
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* Masters News


[ top ]Masters News
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Survey for current MSc students

Win £50 – Your Opinion Matters!

Here at the Faculty of Science and Engineering, we understand that choosing a master’s degree is a major decision, and we’re dedicated to supporting you with the information you need to make an informed choice. By answering the questions in this survey, you’ll help shape the resources and information we provide to prospective students like you. Your insights will guide the development of our online postgraduate brochure and other resources designed to support student’s journey from inquiry to enrolment.

Survey for current MSc students

Takes 8-10 minutes to complete.

Complete by midday Friday, 20 December for a chance to win a £50 Amazon voucher. The winner will be drawn at random and notified by email in the new year.

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Sarah Clinch

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

A newsletter for PGT

img: https://newsagent.cs.manchester.ac.uk/images/large/13/28/1328/Kilburn090114.jpg


Masters News - Contents
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* Masters News


[ top ]Masters News
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Week 12

It's the final week of the semester. We hope you have a restful break, find a revision schedule that works for you, and are able to come back with fresh energy for the exam period in 2025.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Support Over the Christmas Break

Student support will remain available over the Christmas break and during the University closure period. Help will still be available via the usual services:

* Mental Health Services

* Safety Support

* Wellbeing Services

* Halls of Residence

* IT Support 

* … and others

See this page for further information. You can also find general information about support services on the University Student Support webpages. Remember you’re not alone and that we're here for you throughout the closure period, whenever you need it and whatever your concerns.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

A newsletter for PGT

img: https://newsagent.cs.manchester.ac.uk/images/large/13/28/1328/Kilburn090114.jpg


Masters News - Contents
–––––––––––-

* Masters News


[ top ]Masters News
–––––––––-


Week 11

Week 11 is the penultimate week of the semester. Please ensure you have all the information you need about exams and student support before the end of the semester (dig out last week's Masters News for lots of support information).

 

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Course Unit Evaluation Questionnaires

Every semester the University runs surveys where we ask students to provide feedback on the course units they have taken;  this is your opportunity to provide feedback on our teaching. The surveys are open until 23:59, Friday 13th December and we ask you to complete surveys for each course unit you are taking, with all responses treated anonymously.

We find feedback, particularly written comments, extremely useful to understand what you feel about our teaching, what works and what doesn’t. We do take note of your suggestions and make changes to our teaching as a result, as we are always looking for ways in which to improve what we do, but it can be difficult to judge what that should be. Your feedback helps us make those decisions. You will receive links to the surveys by email. Thank you for completing them.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Semester 1 Exams

The semester 1 exams take place between Thursday 9th and Friday 24th January 2025 (see the University’s key dates webpage). Examinations take place under invigilated conditions and on-campus, so you must be in Manchester during the examination period. The timetabling of exams takes place centrally, the Department is not responsible for this.

It is hoped that the exam timetable will be published in the week commencing the 2nd December and should appear in your personal timetable a week later. Please note that exams for different course units could be timetabled close together, possibly on the same day, and that changes cannot be made to the timetable once it is published. You may find that you are timetabled for an exam in a different location to your friend, or others on the course unit. It’s very important you attend the location stated in your exam timetable.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


CS Student Meeting with Prof. Duncan Ivison

On Friday 22nd November, Professor Duncan Ivison – the University’s new President and Vice-Chancellor – met with a panel of Computer Science students to discuss how student experience could be improved at Manchester. The panel included student reps, members of the UniCS committee, undergraduate teaching volunteers, former employees of Imago, recent graduates, and PASS leaders. A wide variety of topics were discussed during the meeting – including student engagement with PASS, accessibility, problems that UniCS face with organising hackathons, some of Imago’s recent projects, and the undergraduate teaching volunteer programme. Duncan also discussed the Manchester 2035 strategy, which invites university staff and students to contribute their ideas for how the university can be improved in the next decade. If you would like to contribute your own ideas as part of this strategy, you can do so on the Manchester 2035 website.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


PhD Opportunities in AI and Machine Learning

We have some new PhD opportunities available in AI and machine learning at the University of Manchester

• AI for material science: Al-Driven Materials Design for Next-Generation Capacitors

• AI for quantum physics: Designing Optimal Strategies for Controlling Complex Quantum Systems

* Multimodal Credal Learning Theory 

* Human-AI Collaborative Representation Learning for Scientific Data Visualisation 

• Learning theory and methods for novel types of distributional shifts. 

* Multi-objective Bayesian optimisation for networks of vector-valued functions 

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


UniCS Christmas Dinner

Join UniCS for a 3-course dinner at our annual Christmas Dinner at Revolution on 8th December, 2024 from 7pm onwards. Tickets can be bought here. Buy early to get a discounted rate of 16.99 pounds with our early bird tickets. General tickets will be worth 20 pounds. Hope to see you all there!

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Sarah Clinch


Manchester AI Club

Manchester AI Club has started! We recently held our first reading group where we discussed and shared insights into a paper about ImageNet Classification with Deep CNN's. Future meetings will allow our members to find and share their own fascinating AI research papers, so stay tuned. We've included a survey for you to share your preferences.

Follow us on socials to find out more about our meetings, including in-person project meetings where our members will get practical experience with building AI. We hope to see you soon.

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Sarah Clinch


Google Developer Groups: Pathways to Internships

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Thinking about applying for internships? Join GDG on the 5th of December at the Nancy Rothwell Lecture Theatre A at our "Pathways to Internships" Event designed to help you with your applications just in time for internship season. 

Hear directly from our panel of guest speakers representing companies such as Amazon, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Natwest, Barclays, Arm, Citi and more. They'll share their application journeys, insights into their roles and other insider advice as well as a Q&A and opportunity to network at the end! 

Join our Discord and follow us on Instagram to be the first to know about our upcoming events. We hope to see you there!

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Sarah Clinch


Digital Trust and Security Seminar: Revolutionizing Crime Prevention: Influence Policing in the UK

On 29th January 2025, 13:00 - 18:00, Dr Ben Collier will present the Digital Trust and Security Seminar on “Revolutionizing Crime Prevention: Influence Policing in the UK”. In a world full of crises and after more than a decade of austerity, UK police forces are stepping up their game with a new strategy called influence policing. Using digital campaigns, it “nudges” behaviour and shapes the culture of particular groups, targeting people based on their internet activities. Due to its success, this method has now been incorporated into various areas of policing, including online child abuse, domestic violence, knife crime, and cybercrime. Find out more, including the ethical and theoretical implications of this innovative strategy, with Dr. Ben Collier, Lecturer in Digital Methods, the University of Edinburgh. Register here.

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Sarah Clinch


Podcast Recommendations

Two podcast recommendations about CS @ UoM:

• The BBC World Service Witness History series has produced a short podcast covering “The invention of the ‘Baby’ computer”. You can find the podcast on BBC Sounds. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past, looking at events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. The podcast discusses the birth of the ‘Baby’ hearing from some of the people involved in developing and building the Baby who made it are now recognised as the pioneers of modern computing. The groundbreaking work at Manchester at that time paved the way for the Department of Computer Science as we know it today.

• Prof. Alex Frangi's InSilicoUK Pro Innovation Regulations Network has a series of podcasts being released every week entitled, In Silico Trials, Real Impacts. InSilicoUK is a pro-innovation regulatory science and innovation network funded by InnovateUK, which aims to make the UK the best milieu for delivering medical innovations using in silico evidence and regulatory science.

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Sarah Clinch


Watch Streamed Theatre

All university members can stream acclaimed performances from major UK theatre companies online at no cost. Explore all titles via Library search, including additional productions offered through the Royal Shakespeare Company’s RSC Live Collection and Shakespeare’s Globe On Screen. More details can be found on the Drama subject guide. No expensive tickets, travel costs, or audience distractions – just enjoy the show!

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Sarah Clinch

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

A newsletter for PGT

img: https://newsagent.cs.manchester.ac.uk/images/large/13/28/1328/Kilburn090114.jpg


Masters News - Contents
–––––––––––-

* Masters News


[ top ]Masters News
–––––––––-


Week 10

Week 10's Masters News is a well-being special. There are lots of suggestions for ways to get support and help with your studies, and with preparation for the upcoming exam period. Have a great week!

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Reminder: Student Support and Wellbeing team

Just a reminder that we have a dedicated Student Support and Wellbeing team in the Department, Maria Sloan and Ben Herbert, who are available to support you throughout your studies. If you are affected by any issues impacting your learning, struggling with your work, considering interruption, DASS registered and feel that your condition is starting to affect you more than usual, or you just need somebody to speak to, then you should speak to a member of the Student Support and Wellbeing team. You can contact Maria and Ben by email soe.wellbeing@manchester.ac.uk, or you can drop into the student hub in the Nancy Rothwell Building and ask to speak to someone, in confidence.

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Sarah Clinch


Mitigating circumstances and extension requests

If personal circumstances affect your exams or assessments, or your attendance at teaching activities, you can make a request for mitigating circumstances. This includes extension requests on assessment deadlines. A panel will assess each request, and where necessary take action to mitigate for any impact on your performance. As well as applying for mitigating circumstances, be sure to seek additional support if you need it. 

Mitigating circumstances might include a significant short-term illness or injury, a long-term or recurring medical or mental health condition, the death or illness of a close family member, acute stress from personal or financial issues, absence for public service (e.g. jury service), or technical issues during an online exam or assessment. If you are going through any of these circumstances,

If the issue affects you for seven days or less, and does not affect an exam or assessment, you do not need to request mitigating circumstances. You should instead complete the student self-certification of absence form and send this to your School support team.

If the issue continues for more than seven days, or affects an exam or assessment, you can request mitigating circumstances. You can do this either before or shortly after an assessment deadline or exam.

You can find out more about mitigating circumstance and extension requests here.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Reminder of Contact Information for The Student Support Hubs

The Student Support Hubs provide you with help and guidance; whether you need visa support, career advice, wellbeing support or help with course information, the Student Hub team will be able to point you in the right direction. For CS students the Student Support Hub can be found on the 1st floor of the Nancy Rothwell Building (building 24 on the University interactive map). You can also contact a member of the Student Support Team via the email addresses below depending on the nature of your enquiry:

• soe.hub@manchester.ac.uk: general queries; advice on University policies and services.

• soe.programmes@manchester.ac.uk: student record queries; registration advice and guidance; timetable queries/clashes; ATAS/Visa advice; extension to study period; project topics, allocation and supervisors; change of programme; return to study; professional accreditation

• soe.studentexperience@manchester.ac.uk: student societies support; SSLC/student rep support; employability; graduation; PASS; academic advising; communications; summer internship programme; surveys (course unit and NSS).

• soe.wellbeing@manchester.ac.uk: mitigating circumstances; interruptions; disability coordinator support; general wellbeing support (appointments and helping you access the support you need).

• soe.attendance@manchester.ac.uk: attendance and engagement monitoring.

• soe.courseunits@manchester.ac.uk: course unit selection.

• soe.placements@manchester.ac.uk: placement support and coordination.

• soe.assessment@manchester.ac.uk: publication of results, exam queries, assessment queries (including DASS), progression and award queries.

• soe.appealsandconduct@manchester.ac.uk: academic appeals; malpractice and student complaints.

If you are unsure which email to use then use soe.hub@manchester.ac.uk for general queries. 

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Sarah Clinch


Exam Support from the Library

The Library is offering exam and assessment support for students including workshops, online resources and drop-in support, throughout the exam and assessment period. Many workshops are running this week and next, so check the list to see what might help you. You can find links to a full list of workshops, and drop-in sessions as well as extended opening hours and online resources on the library's exam support page.

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Sarah Clinch


Support Service Spotlight: The Student Union Advice Centre

The Student Union offers advice and support with life at the University. They offer a wide range of services and support.  

• Academic Advice: Help you through any academic problems you might face during your time at Manchester, including appeals, complaints, mitigating circumstances, disciplinary issues and course/university transfers. Academic guidance and support is free, confidential, and completely independent from the University. 

• Financial Advice: Offer advice and support on a range of money matters, including Student Finance, access to funding, financial worries and hardship, banking issues and government benefits. If you’re struggling with debt, we can also support you to access specialist advice.

• Student Life Advice: Help you take care of your health and wellbeing and support you when things may be difficult. Our advisors are here to help you with anything personal that is going on for you. We’ll provide a confidential space where you can talk to us about anything that’s on your mind. We can help you to access additional support through the University and relevant external support organisations.

• Housing Advice: Offer help with any worries you might have whether you're living at home, in halls or a private house. We offer advice and guidance on a range of housing issues including signing a contract, deposits, council tax, issues with your landlord, disrepair, tenant disputes and ending your tenancy early.

You can find more information on their website, including a contact form if you want to make an inquiry. 

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Sarah Clinch


Support Service Spotlight: Report and Support

The University’s Report and Support Service is available to students. If you or someone you know has experienced or witnessed any form of bullying, harassment, discrimination, gender-based violence, hate or micro-aggressions, or have a safeguarding concern, you can report it anonymously or get support from a trained advisor through Report and Support. To report an incident and speak to a caseworker, you can either fill out the online form or someone can do it on your behalf. You, or the person reporting can make special requests for a certain type of advisor. The last page of the form will ask for details of who they should speak to about this report. The team will seek to understand your situation and aim to give you information, advice and support tailored to your individual circumstances. You can access this service here. Please be mindful that whilst you can send anonymous reports, the team are unable to contact you to offer support unless you provide your name and contact details.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Student Voice Committee

The Student Staff Liaison Committee (SSLC) is now called the Student Voice Committee (SVC). This makes the purpose of the committee much clearer, which is to affect positive change from student views on their experience at University - to empower Student Voice.

On 12th November, we held the first SVC of this academic year.  Minutes of this meeting will be made available on the Student Voice space of the PGT BB Community.

Your opinion matters! There are several ways in which you can give your opinions or suggestions to the SVC:

* Contact a rep directly (you can find a list of reps on the SVC page of the PGT BB Community)

Please note: if you have an issue with a particular course unit, then in the first instance you should always contact the lecturer or course unit leader, who will endeavour to resolve your issue. 

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Sarah Clinch


Library Survey Closes Today

Have your say about the Library for a chance to win £100 in Amazon vouchers! The Library’s online Student Sentiment Survey is live until Monday, 25 November 2024. Your feedback is important as it helps us improve our facilities and services.

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Sarah Clinch


Hackafuture Event

AtkinsRéalis are organising a hackathon event over the 8th - 9th February 2025. Our #HackaFuture event fuses a dynamic and exciting hackathon with recruiting the next generation of changemakers. The best part - the winning team of five will be offered full-time jobs with AtkinsRéalis including a competitive salary and benefits package, plus a £3,000 joining bonus. If you are a forward-thinking technological enthusiast, hacker, maker, coder, engineer or problem solver who is bold, inventive, creative, and deeply passionate about the role technology and digitalization has to play in creating a better world – read on.

Over one weekend and in a central Manchester hotel, you’ll collaborate with your team (we’ll help you build one if necessary) to develop a digital solution to a challenge based on real issues facing our planet and its people. You’ll have access to cutting-edge technologies and experts in the field.

• What do I need? Proven interest or skill in: Software engineering; Data science; AI/ML; UX / UI design; Business analysis; Agile, SCRUM, lean delivery; Cloud platforms, particularly Microsoft Azure; Game development using Unreal Engine, Unity; Robotic technology. 

• Why #HackaFuture? Immediate job offers with AtkinsRéalis for the winning team of five. No formal interviews – showcase your skills in action. Short application form focusing on your passions, experiences and achievements. Mentorship from digital leaders and support from our Global Technology Centre and technology partners.

Application deadline: 30th November 2024. Shortlisted candidates will be notified 20th December 2024. To find out more, scan the QR code or follow this link.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


How to Have A Career in Cyber-Security

Raj Samani will present a talk titled “How to Have A Career in Cyber-Security” on Thursday 28th November, 1pm - 2pm, Simon Lecture Theatre C. Raj Samani is a renowned cyber security expert. He's visiting Manchester and will be here to advise you on cyber security careers. He has an extensive background in cybersecurity, having previously worked with and assisted law enforcement on criminal cases, and served as a special advisor to the European Cybercrime Centre in The Hague. Drawing on his experience in cybersecurity strategy, risk management, and the impact of emerging technologies, Raj is an advocate for improving education on the subject while helping organisations enhance their security and protect themselves from threats. He is also an author and a much sought after keynote speaker on topics within cybersecurity. Please register via career connect. If anyone has any issues signing up to this event, please email careers.events@manchester.ac.uk.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Inaugral Seminar: National Security challenges in Emerging Technology

There will be an inaugural seminar from Alex van Someran titled “National Security challenges in Emerging Technology” on Wednesday, 27th November, 14:00 to 15:00, in Kilburn LT 1.3.

Abstract: Computer Science continues to deliver ever-advancing capabilities in data analysis, and our adversaries can adopt these developments without reference to the ethics, governance, and legislation which we hold dear. Artificial Intelligence has moved forward significantly and captured much public attention in the past year, but continuing challenges around explainability bring in to question the suitability of this technology for many kinds of high-reliability application. Quantum Computing seems to be coming closer to a reality at scale, and this could radically alter the capacity of machines to solve previously intractable problems, including some critical problems in cryptography, which would have a significant impact on how data is protected at rest and in transit. This talk will explore some of these topical issues in the evolution of Computer Science in National Security.

Alex van Someren is currently Chief Scientific Adviser for National Security. He was previously a venture capital investor and entrepreneur, focusing on investing in early stage ‘deep technology’ startups. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, an Honorary Professor of Computer Science at the University of Manchester, and a current member of the Royal Society’s Science, Industry and Translation Committee. Alex participated in the development of the BBC Microcomputer & Acorn Electron at Acorn Computer in the 1980s. He subsequently co-founded several technology companies, including ANT Software plc and nCipher plc which achieved listings on AIM and the London Stock Exchange, respectively.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch

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A newsletter for PGT


Masters News - Contents
–––––––––––-

* Masters News


[ top ]Masters News
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Week 9

It's Monday 18th November, Week 9. That means we're now 2/3rds of the way through Semester 1 teaching, and just four weeks until the end of semester.

 Sarah Clinch


Share Your Ideas with the Vice-Chancellor

Exciting news! Professor Duncan Ivison, the University’s new President & Vice-Chancellor, is coming to the Kilburn Building to meet with a small group of Computer Science students. We’re looking to assemble a small panel of students to attend this meeting and bring their ideas for reimagining the University, in line with the Manchester 2035 strategy.

The meeting will be held on Friday 22nd November 2024 between 15:00 and 16:00, with a venue to be confirmed nearer the time. If you are available and have some ideas to share, please complete this short form.

To ensure that there is enough time to discuss everyone’s ideas in detail, there will be a limit on the number of students on the panel. Unfortunately, that means that we will not be able to bring along everyone who wants to pitch their ideas. However, we will do our best to select a diverse panel that sufficiently reflects everyone’s backgrounds, experiences and ideas.

 Sarah Clinch


UK Cyber Leaders Challenge

Danny Dresner Writes... Make your mark in intelligence by applying to join the University of Manchester Team for the UK Cyber Leaders Challenge ((https://cyberleaderschallenge.com/). Critical thinking and communications skills essential; technical knowledge unnecessary and the selected team gets access to careers advice, cool prize opportunities, and the chance of an expenses-paid, 2-day trip to London, two days in the iconic BT Tower.

The successful 4 (or 8 if we get enough qualified for 2 teams) will make a play for a place at the finals to be held in person at the BT Tower in London (19 - 20 March 2025) and the deadline for teams to register will run out sooner than you think (see the team selection deadline below). Our objective is to build a team as diverse as possible in terms of EDI, background and academic discipline (you must not be experienced working in cyber, politics or warfare or have held positions that would give you an advantage).

The competition is an ideal experience in decision-making during the time of a cyber crisis. You'll meet cyber security experts and representatives from across government and industry. Networking opportunities are unsurpassed for future career opportunities. Current and previous partners have included BT, UK Civil Service, Sage, NATO, Beazley, Standard Chartered bank and the Global Cyber Alliance.

You'll pit your wits other team as you all respond to a complex and escalating cyber-attack with national and international ramifications. Over two days, comprising three rounds, competing teams receive intelligence packs consisting of reports gathered from multiple sources. You''ll work together to analyse the report, analysis the national and international implications of the content and they present your analysis and recommendations to a panel of judges from government and industry.

Apply now by e-mailing Prof Danny Dresner (daniel.dresner@manchester.ac.uk) no later than midnight 29 November '24 with answers to the following questions:

*

Introduce yourself and why you will be an asset to our University's team for the Cyber Leaders Challenge. (500 words)

*

How would you describe the relationship between Cyber and Politics in the UK? How do you feel this relationship has changed in recent years? (500 words)

*

In your opinion, how does the sharing of threat intelligence and knowledge between nation states both help and hinder the UK in reaching its goals laid out in the Cyber Security Strategy 2022? (500 words)

Let's make the world a safer place to live and work online!

 Sarah Clinch


Research Participation Opportunity

I’m currently looking for participants for an experiment about how current understanding of Psychology applies to contemporary content such as that seen on the World Wide Web. In this experiment, we focus on the kinds of content seen on video sharing and video playback websites such as YouTube and Vimeo. You must have lived in the UK for 12 months prior to participation.

This research is conducted by the Department of Computer Science of the University of Manchester and will take place in the Kilburn Building of the Oxford Road Campus. The experiment takes approximately 50 minutes to complete and participants will be compensated for their time. 

If you’re interested or have any further questions, please contact me via email: sarah.clinch@manchester.ac.uk

 Sarah Clinch


Insight Into Industry Event: Wednesday 20th November

You've attended many workshops about getting a graduate role or applying to one, but what happens once you actually get the role? Join GDG at our Insight Into Industry Event on Wednesday 20th November to find out what working in technology is actually like, from a former Microsoft Technical Officer. We will cover our speaker's real-world experiences, lessons learned, practical advice he wished he had at the start of his career and more!

Timing and location will be confirmed, so make sure to follow all our socials to stay tuned!

 Sarah Clinch

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

A newsletter for PGT

img: https://newsagent.cs.manchester.ac.uk/images/large/13/28/1328/Kilburn090114.jpg


Masters News - Contents
–––––––––––-

* Masters News


[ top ]Masters News
–––––––––-


Week 8

Good morning, it’s Monday 11th November 2024 and it’s week 8 of teaching. We hope you're enjoying the units in your second block of the semester.

This week is the first Women in Kilburn event of the semester (more information below) – come along and meet other students and staff.

Have a good week!

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Share Your Ideas with the Vice-Chancellor

Exciting news! Professor Duncan Ivison, the University’s new President & Vice-Chancellor, is coming to the Kilburn Building to meet with a small group of Computer Science students. We’re looking to assemble a small panel of students to attend this meeting and bring their ideas for reimagining the University, in line with the Manchester 2035 strategy.

The meeting will be held on Friday 22nd November 2024 between 15:00 and 16:00, with a venue to be confirmed nearer the time. If you are available and have some ideas to share, please complete this short form.

To ensure that there is enough time to discuss everyone’s ideas in detail, there will be a limit on the number of students on the panel. Unfortunately, that means that we will not be able to bring along everyone who wants to pitch their ideas. However, we will do our best to select a diverse panel that sufficiently reflects everyone’s backgrounds, experiences and ideas.

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Sarah Clinch


Cost of Living Support Fund

The University is committed to supporting students facing unexpected financial difficulties through the Cost of Living Support Fund. Funded by generous donations from alumni and friends, this non-repayable support is designed to ensure that no student is left struggling. The Cost of Living Support Fund offers financial assistance to students who find themselves unexpectedly struggling with essential living expenses such as food, utility bills, or other financial challenges. Importantly, the fund is available year-round and aims to provide timely support to those in need. For new students starting in September 2024, please note that the fund cannot be used as a means to finance your studies. Be sure to explore other potential funding options via the University’s resources before applying.

• What Can We Support? We can assist with essential living costs like rent, utility bills, food, and travel expenses related to your studies. However, we cannot provide funding for laptops, desktops, or tablets. The fund is meant to help those experiencing unforeseen circumstances, so it’s important that you start your studies with adequate funding for your tuition fees and living costs.

• How to Apply? The application process typically takes around 30 minutes. You’ll need to submit supporting documents to help us assess your situation. Be sure to review the document checklist and have everything ready before starting the application.

• You can download the application form here, and we recommend using your student ID to password-protect any documents you submit. Please note that the current assessment time is around three weeks after receiving all necessary documents.

If you’re facing financial hardship, don’t hesitate to apply and get the support you need to focus on your studies. Find more information about who can apply and how applications are assessed.

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Sarah Clinch


SSLC: Offer your Feedback

Your student reps have created a feedback form to help you share your views. You can find the form here

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Meet The Reps: Asu Kaur

Each year, students nominate academic representatives (reps) to make sure the student voice is heard. These students can raise strengths, weaknesses and other issues with academic staff at the Staff Student Liason meeting (the first one of this semester is next week). I'm hoping to use Masters News to introduce Reps to you, just in case you've not yet spoken to them in person. Here's the first introduction...

I hope this email finds you well. My name is Asu Kaur, and I’m excited to introduce myself as one of your academic representatives for the MSc Advanced Computer Science department. I completed my BTech in Computer Science and Engineering in 2021 and am originally from India. Since my final year of undergrad, I’ve worked at a start-up, progressing from Frontend Developer to Full Stack Lead, managing the tech department. This has provided me with valuable experience in team management and project coordination. I’d love for you to check out my portfolio website to get to know me a little better: https://asukaur.com/

I look forward to representing you all as your academic rep and working together to make this year a success. As your academic representative, I am here to ensure that all of your concerns are heard and communicated to the appropriate stakeholders so they can be resolved effectively. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions regarding any aspect of university life—whether academic or otherwise. I will do my best to assist you as soon as possible. You can contact me at asu.kaur@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk. If you’ve not already joined our MSc ACS WhatsApp group, then feel free to ask me about that.

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Sarah Clinch


Google Developer Student Clubs Manchester is now Google Developer Groups on campus

GDG On Campus Manchester writes... We’re excited to announce that Google Developer Student Clubs Manchester is now Google Developer Groups (GDG) on campus! This new chapter brings a sharper focus on industry-insights, coding, and skill-building in tech.

Stay tuned for upcoming workshops, events, and resources designed to help you build, learn, and grow with Google!

Make sure to follow us on Instagram and join the Discord from the Linktree!

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Sarah Clinch

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Week 7

It's Monday Week 7 and the first full week of November.

"Even if something is left undone, everyone must take time to sit still and watch the leaves turn" – Elizabeth Lawrence

Don't leave too much undone, but do take a moment or two to enjoy the autumn leaves.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


DASS Support Deadline

The deadline for exam support through the University's Disability Advice Support Service (DASS) is 4pm Tuesday (5th November). DASS offers support to all students who have a condition which has an adverse and long-term effect on their ability to carry-out normal day-to-day activities. This includes Cognitive Developmental Delay, Physical Health and Mental Health issues. A DASS advisor is always happy to talk with you if you are unsure if you can register with them. You can find out more information about DASS and how to contact them here: who-do-we-support. The University has a deadline for putting exam support in place for each of the main exam periods. You’ll need to register and have met with an adviser to agree your exam support by the deadline. For more details, see the exam support page.

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Sarah Clinch


Phishing Awareness Training

Phishing emails are designed to trick you into sharing personal information or visiting fake websites. While the University has strong email protection, fraudsters are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their tactics – often posing as trusted contacts or asking you to verify your IT account details. Phishing can affect any email account, so it’s important to stay alert both at university and in your personal life. You can boost your awareness by completing our Phishing Awareness Training, provided by our cyber security partner Khipu. The course includes a short video, practical tips, and a quiz to test your knowledge. Even if you’ve done the training before, it’s worth a quick refresh. Staying informed helps protect you and the University from cyber threats. Key tip: JDLR – Just Doesn’t Look Right? If something feels off, report it! Report phishing emails to IT Services.

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Sarah Clinch


Women in Kilburn Event

Join us at our first-of-the-year networking event dedicated to empowering and raising the visibility of women, non-binary individuals, and under-represented  groups within Computer Science. Come grab a bite and network with academics, senior students,and fellow classmates within Computer Science.

• When: Wednesday, 13th November, 2024

• Time: 11 am - 12 noon

• Where: Turing Lounge, Kilburn Building, 1st floor, directly opposite the first-floor entrance, close to the disabled access lift.

Drinks and snacks will be provided! We really look forward to seeing you there.

 

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Sarah Clinch


Event: Why We Need More Women in Science.

We are excited to invite you to an inspiring and important event titled "Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science," featuring the pioneering physicist Professor Dame Athene Donald, who is just retiring as the Master of Churchill College, Cambridge. This event will take place on Thursday 14 November 2024 at 7:00 p.m. at the Friends’ Meeting House, located just behind the Central Library in the middle of Manchester (Mount Street, Manchester M2 5NS).

Professor Dame Athene Donald will discuss the critical need for more women in science and share insights from her book, "Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science." Despite the removal of formal barriers to women pursuing STEM subjects, there are still fewer women working in these areas as they move up the career ladder. This talk will explore the subtle and not-so-subtle reasons behind this dearth and highlight the importance of welcoming women into the scientific world for a stronger and more diverse society. Don't miss this opportunity to hear from a multi-award-winning female scientist who has made significant contributions to the field of physics and gender equality in science. For more details and to book your place, please visit the event page. 

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Sarah Clinch


Research Study: Robot's Perception of Human Trust

Joseph Bolarinwa writes: Hi, I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate (Robotics) in the department. You are invited to participate in a research study entitled “Robot perception of human trust: Investigating relevant nonverbal behaviours”. The aim of the research study is to investigate the nonverbal behaviours that a human may present to show that they have trust in a robot’s capabilities. In the study, you will be working together with a robot to solve maze tasks at the cognitive robotics laboratory in the Department. To complete the task, you will make decisions on paths to take to get to the exit of mazes. You will also be able to ask a robot for recommendations on paths to take. With your consent, we shall make video and audio recordings of your interaction with the robot as you complete the task. Analysis of the recordings will be carried out after the study to confirm or reject our research hypothesis.

The research does not pose professional or emotional risks and care will be taken to ensure that data captured during the study will be used solely for the purpose of the research. Information gathered from your interaction in the study, as well as your questionnaire responses will be anonymised.  This means that you will not be identifiable from the published results. You will have the right to end your participation in the study at any time. This research has been cleared by the University of Manchester Research Ethics Board.

To participate, you need to be aged 18 or above and be of the typical adult population. This means that you would not have been diagnosed with conditions affecting physical, social, emotional, and cognitive functioning or development (i.e. autistic spectrum disorder, deaf and hard of hearing, colour-blindness, speech disorder or impairments). English is either your first language or you learnt it, and you can read, understand, and communicate with the English language.

If you would like to participate in this research study, or have any questions about the research, please contact me at joseph.bolarinwa@manchester.ac.uk.

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Sarah Clinch


Science & Engineering Postgraduate Research Open Day

The Faculty of Science and Engineering is hosting its postgraduate research Open Day on Wednesday, 13th November from 12pm to 4:30pm in the Nancy Rothwell Building. If you are thinking of undertaking research after you graduate then here’s five reasons you should attend the upcoming Open Day:

• Discover research projects – Explore a variety of research opportunities available to you and find a project that matches your passion.

• Learn about funding – The Open Day will provide detailed information on scholarships, grants, and other funding options, ensuring you’re equipped to fund your research journey.

• Meet current researchers – Get the inside scoop from current postgraduate researchers about life in the research community at Manchester and how to make the most of your postgraduate experience.

• Receive application advice – From application processes to entry requirements, expert advice will help you confidently navigate the admissions process.

• Explore your research area – Speak to academics and researchers in your specific area of interest to get a glimpse of what your future as a researcher at Manchester could look like.

Say hello to your tomorrow as a postgraduate researcher and join our Open Day on Wednesday 13th November 2024. Register your place now.

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Sarah Clinch

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Masters News - Contents
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Week 6

Good morning! It’s Monday 28th October 2024 and it’s week 6 - halfway through the semester! It’s been great to see the Kilburn building, particularly the lower first area, so busy so far this semester. We hope you feel that Kilburn is your home!

Thursday is Halloween, and this coming weekend will likely see some bonfire and firework events ahead of Guy Fawkes Night next week. I hope you get chance to enjoy some seasonal fun.

 

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Considering a PhD?

The University is running a "PhD Café" event for undergraduate and Master's students to learn about postgraduate research at Manchester. There will be PhD student ambassadors present at the event to answer questions about what it's like to do a PhD at Manchester, the application process etc.

The PhD Café is scheduled to be held on Wednesday, 30 October, from 12-2 pm in the Nancy Rothwell Building, Room 3A.069 (Core 3, Floor 3), with free tea, coffee, and pizza.

If you're contemplating postgraduate research, you can register for the event here.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Hardware Library and 3D printing

Did you know that we have a hardware library in the Department that contains a wide range of hardware components that are completely free to borrow? You can use these to support your Masters project, just to have a play with, or support a Hackathon. There are all sorts of items available, from Raspberry Pi components to drones, a wide range of microcontroller boards to gesture devices, basic electronic components to robots … even VR headsets. We also have computer items, such as keyboards, mice, and tablets - there’s a wide range of items available. To see what is available for you to borrow (for free!) have a look at the library catalogue. If you want to borrow an item then all you have to do is reserve it online. You will then be contacted by Steve Rhodes who will tell you when you can pick the item up from Tootill 0 on the lower first floor of Kilburn. Please note that items should not be taken away from Manchester and it is your responsibility to replace any damaged/lost items you borrow. You can also propose new items for the library, which we will consider. However, please note, we do have a limited budget to purchase new items, so we can’t fund all requests.

The Department also has three 3D printers that are free for you to use. We have a five colour Prusa XL, and two Prusa MK4s you can use. The 3D printers can be found in the right hand corner of Tootill 0 as you walk in the main door. If you’d like to use one of the 3D printers, then please speak to Steve Rhodes (corner off Tootill 0) first.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


LinkedIn Learning

All students now have free access to LinkedIn Learning. These on-demand online courses will complement your academic studies, helping you to develop skills that are highly valued by employers. Whether it’s mastering software tools or improving communication skills, you can tailor learning to your career aspirations and interests. Courses on CV writing, interview techniques, and job search strategies can help prepare you for the job market, and LinkedIn Learning integrates with LinkedIn profiles, allowing you to showcase newly acquired skills to potential employers. For more information, see the libraries new page: Getting Started with LinkedIn Learning.

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Sarah Clinch


Furniture4Reuse

Are you looking to furnish your new place or add some extra pieces without spending too much? The University of Manchester’s Furniture4Reuse scheme has been helping students get quality furniture for free for over 2 years now. With items like desks, chairs, bookshelves, and more, the scheme collects pre-loved furniture from across campus, refurbishes it, and offers it to students for free! The Furniture4Reuse store is open on Wednesdays and Thursdays 12-3pm and is located in the Simon Building basement. Whether you’re moving in for the first time or just looking to add a few items, it’s a great way to furnish your space for less. To check out what’s available, head to the Furniture Store or find more details on the Furniture4Reuse page. 

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Sarah Clinch


Careers Events for Women

TargetJobs are running events for women students to connect with women in industry, network with recruiters and attend skills sessions. Note that these are London-based events. The first event is on 30th October, and then it's repeated on 19th November. 

They're also holding a Skyscanner careers and technologies day for Women in Glasgow on 28th November. There is support for travel costs available from the organisers of this event (see linked page for info).

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Sarah Clinch

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A newsletter for PGT

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Masters News - Contents
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* Masters News


[ top ]Masters News
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Week 5!

It's Week 5! In case you weren't aware, the clocks change on Sunday 27th October (at 02:00 am), going back by one hour (so 02:00 becomes 01:00) and moving us back to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Make the most of the extra hour in your weekend with a bit of extra rest, or something that brings you joy.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


New online resource: Academic Integrity for Students

The Library has launched a new online resource:  Academic Integrity for Students, part of the My Learning Essentials support. This interactive guide helps you understand academic integrity, offering advice on presenting your own ideas, avoiding academic malpractice, and using tools like Generative AI responsibly. Remember if you use Generative AI tools in your work you must cite them. If you are unsure how, click on the link to view this useful Library Generative AI tools referencing guide.

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Sarah Clinch


GitLab and Academic Malpractice

It's important to adhere to academic integrity and ethical standards when using platforms like GitLab or any other tools for coursework. Sharing or distributing materials related to your assessments or assignments, such as your answers, can be considered a form of academic malpractice, and it can lead to serious consequences, including disciplinary action.

To prevent the risk of inadvertently sharing files stored in git repositories (within the Department or on an external account) make sure you set those repositories immediately to Private. This will restrict access to only authorised individuals and will prevent other students from seeing your solutions and then being able to copy your work. Be assured that when we create git repositories for you that are required for your courses, we automatically set them to private for this very reason. Even if you didn’t mean to share your work, you could still be found guilty of academic malpractice.

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Sarah Clinch


Support Service Spotlight: Health Assured

Health Assured is a 24 hour mental health helpline and wellbeing app which offers access to mental health support from trained counsellors and advisors who are ready to listen and provide help whenever you need it. It is anonymous, non-judgmental and available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You can call the helpline for advice and support on a whole range of issues you might be facing, big or small. Things you could call for include mental and emotional health, managing relationships, feeling worried about yourself or someone else, dealing with stress and anxiety, money advice, and everything in between. You can find out more here.

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Sarah Clinch


Data Science Society

The Data Science Society (MUDS) is back for its first event of the academic year! This is the university society that engages with Data Science, teaching Data  Science concepts through workshops, networking events with Data Science companies in Manchester and many more activities. Their first workshop of the semester is this Wednesday (24th October), 2-4 pm, in the Mansfield Cooper Building and is an Introduction to Machine Learning. You'll also have the chance to meet the MUDS committee, connect with fellow students passionate about data science, and enjoy snacks at the end of the workshop! Register for the event through this link or contact them through Instagram: @uomdss.

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Sarah Clinch


Visa and Immigration Drop-Ins

The Student Immigration Team offers face-to-face student drop-in sessions from 11 am - 1 pm on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at the Main Library (Ground Floor), Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PP. If you have any questions related to visas then this is a good time to ask for help or advice. No appointment is necessary.

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Sarah Clinch


Research Participation Opportunity

I’m currently looking for participants for an experiment about how current understanding of Psychology applies to contemporary content such as that seen on the World Wide Web. In this experiment, we focus on the kinds of content seen on video sharing and video playback websites such as YouTube and Vimeo. You must have lived in the UK for 12 months prior to participation.

This research is conducted by the Department of Computer Science of the University of Manchester and will take place in the Kilburn Building of the Oxford Road Campus. The experiment takes approximately 50 minutes to complete and participants will be compensated for their time. 

If you’re interested or have any further questions, please contact me via email: sarah.clinch@manchester.ac.uk
 

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Sarah Clinch

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Masters News - Contents
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Week 4

It's Monday Week 4, meaning that already a quarter of the semester has passed. I really hope you're enjoying your time here, especially if you're new to Manchester.

Here are a few ideas of things to do this week (when you're not studying):

• Attend some events as part of the Manchester Science Festival. The festival starts this Friday and you can find a programme of events here. In particular, this Friday sees a discussion between STEM champion, social entrepreneur and computer scientist, Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon MBE, and the UK Space Agency's Head of Space Exploration, Libby Jackson OBE: "Does AI Have a Place in Space?"

• Visit the Whitworth Gallery. Situated on Oxford Road. The gallery is free and has collections of art, textiles and wallpapers. There's a newly opened exhibition from British artist Barbara Walker, and this week there are events to mark World Menopause Day.

• Discover one of Manchester's "secret" green spaces. For some hints on where to go, take a look at the Manchester Green Spaces Trail.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Support Service Spotlight: My Learning Essentials.

My Learning Essentials is the Library’s award winning programme of skills support, including both online resources and face-to-face workshops which will aid you in your personal and professional development. The workshops offer a relaxed group environment where you can try out new strategies for yourself while learning from and with peers whilst the online resources help you develop skills and interests which are relevant to you, at times and using the methods that suit you best. My Learning Essentials is a great way to get the most out of your time at Manchester; helping you to make the best use of all of the specialist resources and support the University has to offer.

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Sarah Clinch


Need A Place to Work?

You are free to use any of our teaching rooms/labs when they are not being used for scheduled teaching. If you are interested in knowing when a lab is not booked for a timetabled activity, then follow this link to open the University Timetable pages (on campus only). To look for a room in Kilburn, select “Location”, then in the form that opens select “Kilburn Building” for the building, select the lab/room you would like to use under “Select Location”, the default view is this week, or you can select a particular week. Selecting “View Timetable” will show what activities are taking place in the selected room for the week. Please note that for the labs 1.8 and 1.10 look at the 1.8+1.10 timetable. You must be on campus to access the timetable. If a room is booked for teaching, then you should avoid using it.

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Sarah Clinch


Research Workshop: Open Science and Getting Your Paper Published

If you're thinking about a research degree or career after your master's programme, you may be interested in an online workshop this week. The workshop is organised by My Research Essentials at the University of Manchester:

Open Science and getting your paper published

Tuesday, 15th October 2024, 11:00-12:30

This online workshop will focus on how the principles of Open Science can support a strong manuscript submission. During this workshop, you will:

• Discover how to embed Open Science in your research to maximize publication opportunities.

• Understand the key stages a manuscript takes from submission to decision.

• Learn about the responsible use of Generative Artificial intelligence (GenAI) in your research.

• Participate in an interactive discussion on Open Science and paper publishing.

This workshop is aimed at Early Career Researchers and those with an interest in Open Science. No experience of peer review or publication is necessary. Register for the session: https://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/training/my-research-essentials/workshops/details/?event=k8aCbfsy

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Makerspace Society Committee Elections

The Makerspace Society is excited to announce that applications are now open for several committee positions for the current academic year, including Website Manager. This is a fantastic opportunity for you to gain hands-on experience, contribute to the society, and enhance your skills!

Open Positions:

1. CAD Chief Engineer

2. Mechanical Chief Engineer

3. Website Manager

4. General Technician

Makerspace welcome applications from all departments and programmes of study.

• Deadline to apply: Friday, 18th October.

• Application form: Apply Here.

• Role Descriptions: Committee Roles Description.

If you have a passion for engineering, design, web development, or technical work, please apply.

You can find out more about the Makerspace Society on their website.

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Sarah Clinch


Hackchester

Have an interest in hacking or just computers and technology in general? 

Come along to Hackchester to meet like-minded people, learn hacks that will make your life easier and share hacks that you know with others! 

Hackchester meets every Wednesday, 17:00-18:00 in Kilburn G41.

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Sarah Clinch

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Late breaking News: AI for Protein Design Hackathon

Apologies for the extra newsletter, but this came in just after the last Masters News was released:

There's an AI for Protein design hackathon (connected to the AIDrug-X workshop at NeurIPS this year) being hosted in London this weekend that may be of interest to students interested in geometric deep learning / AI for drug discovery / etc.

The top 200 protein designs will be experimentally validated and the top 3 teams will be offered a speaking slot at the AIDrugX workshop at NeurIPS.

You can sign up here: https://lu.ma/dogi2uq6?_hsenc=p2ANqtz–BytWM5cm7xgXZEgWqn45Hgo3IM4ZvHqT0FVauWg0SVJi64wRcfeoa4o-jO-sTxWM1JieHFXP-zjevSWPmuO2BbI5pBg&_hsmi=2&utm_content=2&utm_medium=email&utm_source=hs_email

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Sarah Clinch

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A newsletter for PGT

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Masters News - Contents
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Week 3

It's Monday Week 3. I'm away this week, so you won't find me in my office and I'll be responding to emails from a different timezone – replies will not come instantly.

Quote for the week: “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” – Anaïs Nin

May your week get off to a courageous start!

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Sarah Clinch


Avoid Academic Malpractice (AMP)

Computer Science is a very practical subject and, as such, it is natural to work with your friends when trying to solve a problem. In fact, when working in the real world you will invariably be part of a team, whether developing software or hardware. This is why a number of our course units offer you the opportunity to work as a member of a team, to give you some experience of pros and cons that come with working in a team environment. However, when it comes to individual assessments, such as coursework, this changes. What you submit for your assessments will reflect on your learning and are a key part of measuring your academic progress and how well you understand the learning material. To ensure that the work you submit is your own, we often look out for signs of similarities between different submissions from different students. We are looking for academic malpractice (AMP), where someone is looking to gain an unfair advantage by submitting work that is not (entirely) their own.

There are generally two forms of AMP: plagiarism, which is the copying of someone else’s work as your own work, including output from AI tools such as ChatGPR, without acknowledgement; and collusion, which is working too closely with someone else to produce the same, or very similar, piece of work. In Computer Science, we find that collusion is the most common form of AMP due to the way students often work together. To help identify such cases, we use powerful software tools to identify similarities in code, even when changes such as renaming variables, changing comments, or restructuring code have been made in an attempt to make the code look different.

If you are found guilty of AMP then this can have a dramatic impact on your progression/marks. Penalties range from the zeroing of marks for the assessment where AMP has been identified as taking place, zeroing of a course unit (but the credits are passed) through to failing and having to resit a course unit. In the past, we have had students being excluded from their studies as a result of engaging with AMP. It’s natural for you to work with fellow students to understand problems and the taught material. However, make sure the work you submit is your own; it’s just not worth the risk. Everyone when joining the Department is required to complete a short module on AMP in Blackboard, so that you are aware of what it is and what the consequences are if you (even inadvertently) engage in it. For more information on AMP, see the University student guidance on plagiarism and other forms of AMP, you can view the full AMP procedure here. 

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Sarah Clinch


Support Service Spotlight: Qwell

Qwell offers a range of anonymous support options for students, including an online messaging service with qualified mental health professionals, providing safe and anonymous online mental health support whenever you need it. There are no waiting lists for support and no referral needed and access is available instantly 24/7. You can find out more here, and you can access the service at quell.io.

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Sarah Clinch


Register for a GP

It’s vital that you register with a GP (General Practitioner) - what we call local, or family doctors in the UK. GPs provide a range of non-emergency services by appointment – including examinations, medication prescriptions, vaccinations and referrals to other medical specialists. It is especially important if you want to provide evidence to support a mitigating circumstances application related to illness. The University GP Service is on-campus, located in Crawford House near south campus (shown on the Campus map here as Building 31). You can register as a patient using their online portal  by filling in a quick form. If you want to register with a GP closer to where you live then use the NHS Find a GP website to find a list of practices near your address. This will direct you to the GPs’ websites to find out how to register as a patient. You can find further information on accessing healthcare on the University Student Support webpages.

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Sarah Clinch


Kilburn Building Linux Cluster Login

All PCs in the Kilburn Building computer clusters are "dual-boot" Ubuntu Linux (default) and Microsoft Windows. To switch from one operating system (OS) to the other, reboot the machine and upon restart a Computer Science welcome screen will appear where you can select the OS to load using the arrow keys on the keyboard. It is important to use your university username and NOT your email address to login to Linux. Your username is of the format of one lowercase letter, followed by five digits and ending in two lowercase letters, for example v12345ab.

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Sarah Clinch


Lost in Kilburn?

Have you found yourself wandering aimlessly around Kilburn? Do you find that Kilburn is a maze and you get lost when wandering about? Have you struggled to find the office of a member of staff or the location of one of our teaching rooms? Well, help is at hand. We provide floor plans for all the floors in Kilburn and the IT buildings, which you can find here.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


User Studies

Do you want to get involved in user studies, or recruit participants? There is a mailing list to send announcements about user studies and experiments run by students and academics of the Department of Computer Science. If you want to recruit participants for studies and experiments you can send your announcements to COMPSCI-USER-STUDIES. If you want to get involved as a participant, opportunities to do so will be published in COMPSCI-USER-STUDIES. Either way you have to register here. This is a moderated list so if you are recruiting participants we will make sure that the studies follow the guidelines for ethical approval as defined here and our department wiki.

 

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Sarah Clinch


GreatUniHack 2024 Applications Close 8th October

UniCS is happy to announce that participant applications are open for GUH '24!! If you don't know what a hackathon is or have never been to one, don't worry! It's all about working together over the course of 24 hours to turn awesome ideas into reality. Along the way, you get to participate in fun challenges, take home free goodies, and network with the best! Join their discord and follow on Instagram to keep up with important updates about the hackathon. Applications close on 8th  October so make sure to apply before then.

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Sarah Clinch


GDG Academy Mentorship

Online live-stream event tomorrow to kick off GDG Academy (Google Developer Student Clubs)'s Mentorship program. This program is in collaboration with GDSC chapters from UCL, Imperial, Kings College London, University of Bristol and University of Manchester. This semester we have 27 mentors from companies like: The Times, HSBC, Sky, Skyscanner, Okta, Booking.com, and may more....

Tuesday 8th October 2024, 6 / 6:30 pm - 8 pm

Unfortunately this semester the event will be online on a live stream from London. This link for this virtual event will be shared by GDG Academy Ambassador(@Sambbhav Khare) today or tomorrow. Please follow GDSC on social media: instagram | discord. No RSVP is needed for UoM students joining the event.

Some FAQs:

What is GDG - Academy? Extensive Mentoring through 1-1 weekly sessions, group sessions and workshops and more...

How do I enrol for 1-1 Mentoring? Attend the Kickstart session mark the attendance then the attendees will be shared an application form over email exclusively to apply.

Are there any internships? Yes, students who get selected for GDG Academy 1-1 mentoring session will get the opportunity to apply for exclusive summer internships.

What topics are covered? AI, ML, Computing, Engineering, Entrepreneurship and more....

Has anyone from Manchester secured an internship? Yes, this summer two students were selected to do a summer internship in The Times of News UK in London. One of the selected interns was from the University of Manchester.

Applications to join the GDG Academy will open to attendees shortly after the kick-off event.

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Sarah Clinch


Support Service Spotlight - DASS

The Disability Advisory and Support Service (DASS) is a specialist service supporting students with any condition that has a significant, adverse and long term effect on normal day to day activities. DASS helps students with a range of conditions which includes but is not limited to dyslexia and other learning difficulties, autism spectrum condition, mental health difficulties such as anxiety and depression, mobility and sensory impairments, unseen disabilities like epilepsy, HIV, AIDS, chronic fatigue, IBS and Crohn's. DASS can help students access exams, study and specialist support but only if you register with them. You can make an appointment with DASS at any time. Make an appointment and register. For help and advice you can always talk to Maria or Ben in the School wellbeing team.

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Sarah Clinch

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

A newsletter for PGT

img: https://newsagent.cs.manchester.ac.uk/images/large/13/28/1328/Kilburn090114.jpg


Masters News - Contents
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* Masters News


[ top ]Masters News
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Week 2

It's Week 2. Happy Monday!

Hopefully, you're starting to feel settled in Manchester and are finding your course units interesting and just the right amount of challenging.  I hope you have a productive and fulfilling week.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Have You Checked the PG Handbook?

The Postgraduate Programmes Handbook (PG Handbook) is your one-stop resource for all information related to your studies. It contains information about your degree programmes, details on progression, how to change programmes or interrupt your studies, information on student support etc. The handbook also has information related to how to apply for mitigating circumstances if your learning has been affected by issues out of your control, such as an illness. The handbook can be found in the CS PGT-Community on Blackboard.

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Sarah Clinch


Mandatory Training

There are three mandatory units that you must complete. You are automatically enrolled on these course units in Blackboard:  

• COMP6HS: A short Health and Safety test to help ensure that you will stay safe and healthy while you're in the Department; and

• COMP6AMP: A Plagiarism and Malpractice test that you must complete to help ensure that you avoid doing these things during your time here.

• COMP6RDMC: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion training.

 If you have any issues with completing these modules then please contact the Student Support Hub. Failure to complete these training modules will result in restrictions being put in place, for example, results not being released.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Keeping Safe on Campus

Manchester, like any other large city, can have issues with crime, hence it’s important you keep safe when on campus and travelling to/from the campus. Keep in mind the following:

• Stay alert: Keep your belongings safe and out of view when travelling to or from campus and whilst you’re on it. Avoid wearing noise cancelling headphones so you know what’s going on around you, and stick to well-lit roads and pavements as you travel around the city, avoiding underpasses where possible. Keep your phone out of sight!

• Download SafeZone: Our mobile app SafeZone can be used to quickly connect you with Campus Support and Security team if you feel unsafe, need immediate help or require first aid or wellbeing assistance. The app is free to download, easy to use, and operates across the Manchester campuses. You can find out more about SafeZone here.

• Report unacceptable behaviour: Manchester has a zero-tolerance approach to bullying, harassment, discrimination, gender-based violence, hate or micro-aggressions. If you have witnessed any forms of this behaviour, or have a safeguarding concern, you can report it anonymously or get support from a trained advisor.  Find out more about Report + Support.

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Sarah Clinch


Computers in Kilburn

Just a reminder that the computers in the teaching clusters in Kilburn need to be left switched on after use so that any software updates can be applied overnight. Please remember to just log out when you have finished using them, there’s no need to shut the computer down. Please do not just switch them off from the power button or socket! Don’t worry, the machines do go into standby mode to save the planet.

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Sarah Clinch


Frequently Asked Questions: Deadlines, Submissions and Extensions

We often get asked by students how to check that they have submitted work successfully, and it’s quite easy to do. Most submissions will use Blackboard, in which you can check under the “My Grades” link on the left on each course unit Blackboard page (under “Submitted” or “Marked”). information.

If you find you are falling behind due to circumstances beyond your control with an assessment then you can apply for a short extension to allow you to complete your work. You must apply for an extension BEFORE the deadline through the department Mitigating Circumstances page. You should only apply for an extension if you need one, and applications are monitored to ensure the system is not being abused.

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Sarah Clinch


Volunteering Outreach in Science and Engineering Society - VOISE

Fancy using your skills to help the local community? Or gaining some volunteering hours towards your Stellify award? The Volunteering Outreach in Science and Engineering Society (VOISE) is the university’s leading outreach society for all things STEM-related, and they are looking for new members to help them in their mission to “Inspire Tomorrow’s Innovators”. You can take part in as many (or as few) fun, interactive workshops across the year as you like. Sign up on the SU Website and/or follow our Instagram @uom_voise.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Computer Science FC

Computer Science FC is back again for another fantastic season of 11-a-side football in the Campus League. Upcoming trials are your chance to display your skills so dust those boots and get ready!! Lots of socials to follow throughout the year. Join the groupchat for upcoming info about the season and trials. Up the CSFC!!!

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

A newsletter for PGT

img: https://newsagent.cs.manchester.ac.uk/images/large/13/28/1328/Kilburn090114.jpg


Masters News - Contents
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* Masters News


[ top ]Masters News
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Welcome!

Masters News provides regular items of potential interest to MSc students in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester.

Welcome to the first Masters News of the academic year. Henceforth, this will be produced on a regular basis with an issue on most Mondays. It will include both masters-specific items when we have them, and other items that relate to the department or discipline. We will try not to overlap much with the content of the School Newsletter.

If there are things that you would like to have included in Masters News, please let me know.

Sarah Clinch, PGT Director

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Student Welfare Support

There's a wealth of support services available to help you look after your mind and body whilst at University. If you are affected by any issues, and if they start to impact your studies, then it’s vitally important that you speak to someone and get the help and support you need. You can speak to your Academic Advisor, contact the Student Wellbeing Team, or drop into the SoE Hub (school of engineering student hub) in the Nancy Rothwell Buildin and ask to speak to someone, in confidence, about anything that might be affecting you and your studies.

Maria Sloan and Ben Herbert from the Student Wellbeing Team are also the Disability Coordinators for CS, so you can speak to them if you have any ongoing physical or mental health problems, or conditions such as ASD or ADHD, that affect your studies, even if you are not already registered with the DASS Team at the University. If you are registered with DASS and there are problems with your DASS plan you can speak with them about this too. You can contact Maria and Ben at soe.wellbeing@manchester.ac.uk.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Student Support Hub

The Student Support Hubs provide you with help and guidance; whether you need visa support, career advice, wellbeing support or help with course information, the Student Hub team will be able to point you in the right direction. For CS students, the "SoE Hub" (School of Engineering Student Support Hub) can be found on the 1st floor of the Nancy Rothwell Building (building 24 on the University interactive map). You can also contact a member of the Student Support Team via the email addresses below depending on the nature of your enquiry:

• soe.hub@manchester.ac.uk: general queries; advice on University policies and services.

• soe.programmes@manchester.ac.uk: student record queries; registration advice and guidance; timetable queries/clashes; ATAS/Visa advice; extension to study period; project topics, allocation and supervisors; change of programme; return to study; professional accreditation

• soe.studentexperience@manchester.ac.uk: student societies support; SSLC/student rep support; employability; graduation; academic advising; communications; course unit surveys.

• soe.wellbeing@manchester.ac.uk: mitigating circumstances; interruptions; disability coordinator support; general wellbeing support (appointments and helping you access the support you need).

• soe.attendance@manchester.ac.uk: attendance and engagement monitoring.

• soe.courseunits@manchester.ac.uk: course unit selection.

• soe.placements@manchester.ac.uk: placement support and coordination.

• soe.assessment@manchester.ac.uk: publication of results, exam queries, assessment queries (including DASS), progression and award queries.

• soe.appealsandconduct@manchester.ac.uk: academic appeals; malpractice and student complaints.

If you are unsure which email to use then use soe.hub@manchester.ac.uk for general queries. 

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Sarah Clinch


Become an Academic Representative

img: https://newsagent.cs.manchester.ac.uk/images/large/26/60/2660/mm-Academic_Rep_Recruitment_24.jpg

Want to change something about your course? Want to represent your peers? Recruitment is now open to become an Academic Representative (or rep) for the 2024-25 academic year! Academic Reps are student leaders who work with the Students’ Union and the University to gather feedback & work with staff and collaborate with other reps to make positive change in their programme.

Why get involved? You’ll develop skills in leadership, negotiation, and professionalism and build great relationships across your programme. In the past reps have been key in improving assessment deadlines, changing communication methods between staff & students and improving the way students are supported. You’ll receive training from the Students’ Union and your programme, so you don’t need any prior experience – just an interest in helping improve the student experience for yourself and your peers! Interested? To sign up, head to this form and input your details by Monday 30th September, 12 noon. After this, we’ll get back in touch with the next steps!

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Sarah Clinch


SEAtS Student Attendance System

img: https://newsagent.cs.manchester.ac.uk/images/large/26/59/2659/mm-SEAtS_160924.jpg

The University has introduced a student attendance system called SEAtS to help actively support student engagement. Attendance information will be used to help identify students who may be struggling academically or personally, so we’re able to quickly and effectively offer any support you may need. As a student, logging in to SEAtS for the first time is a straightforward process that involves a few simple steps. For more information, visit the SEAtS information page on the Student Support site.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


UniCS, the Computer Science society at the University of Manchester

UniCS is the student Computer Science Society at the University of Manchester. They run socials, workshops, career advice, competitions, and much more! Details of their events can be found on their social media pages, and check out their student union webpage to register for a free membership and for contact information.

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Sarah Clinch


UK and Ireland Programming Contest 2024

The UK and Ireland Programming Contest (UKIEPC) will take place this year on Saturday, October 19th, 2024, 11:00 - 16:00, in the labs on the Lower First Floor of the Kilburn Building. UKIEPC is an annual event in which teams of three participants try to crack a series of programming challenges. Participation at Manchester is available ONLY to teams consisting entirely of undergraduate or taught postgraduate students in the Department of Computer Science at Manchester (this, however, includes students on joint honours programmes such as Computing and Mathematics). Details can be found on the UKIEPC website. 

Registration is now open, but you are advised to assemble your team first and then sort out all the registrations. We will limit participation to the first twenty completely registered teams of three.

The best teams from Manchester will be able to compete in the North West Europe Regional Programming Competition (NWERC), which will be held at the Delft University of Technology from 22nd to 24th November 2024. Realistically, we can expect to be able to enter two or three teams from Manchester. Note that we will enter a team to NWERC only if all of its members have competed in UKIEPC 2024. The detailed rules on eligibility are explained on the ICPC website. However, in practice, any UG or Master's student at Manchester is eligible. Have fun and good luck!

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch


Arup Manchester Office - Graduate Careers Event

Arup welcomes undergraduates and Master’s students to visit their Manchester office for a Graduate careers evening on the 2nd October, 5pm. You will have the opportunity to discuss your career with Discipline Leads, Directors, and current Graduates (refreshments will be offered). This careers event is suited to students completing degrees in relevant subjects, who are looking to work in Manchester or who are interested in wider opportunities to work for us in one of Arup's many UK offices. You must register for this event ahead of time.

Arup is a collective of designers, consultants and experts working globally to provide a range of professional services to clients around the world. Arup's people have one core focus: to work together to shape a better world. Arup recruits up to 300 graduates in the UK every year. For the 2025 intake, Arup will have vacancies across the UK for engineers and technical specialists in the natural and built environment, planners, project managers, and sustainability and digital specialists. They cover many of these disciplines in their Manchester office.

Manchester Office Events Registration page

https://careers.arup.com/earlycareers/event/arup-manchester-office–-graduate-careers-evening/425/detail/0/

Arup Graduate Careers Opportunities – Register to Receive Job Alerts

https://careers.arup.com/earlycareers/alertregister/

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Sarah Clinch


Technical Support in CS

IT Services provide support for centrally provided systems: if you have problems with Office 365 including email, Blackboard, Duo, Wifi, printing, or using your University of Manchester account to log into Windows or Linux you will need to contact the IT Services helpdesk either via the in-person desk on the ground floor of Kilburn building, the support portal, or by calling 0161 306 5544.

FSE Technical Services provide support for the Department of Computer Science GitLab service and can help with issues related to software used as part of your courses and submitting work with git. This can include general git problems, issues with access to git projects, submissions not appearing in SPOT, and problems with software on the cluster machines. They can be contacted by emailing support@cs.manchester.ac.uk. Please note that in general FSE Technical Services can not provide technical support for installing software on personal devices.

img: https://gravatar.com/avatar/d87762dd6fb93edca6547f91d2fa8577?s=16&d=mm&r=g
Sarah Clinch

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

I hope that your project is going smoothly, and is on course to be completed by the deadline.  Software Updates in 2.25B Please note that the operating system on machines in 2.25B will start to be updated on 1st August 2024, in prep...

I hope that your project is going smoothly, and is on course to be completed by the deadline. 



Software Updates in 2.25B
=========================

Please note that the operating system on machines in 2.25B will start to be updated on 1st August 2024, in preparation for the new academic year.  Thus if you want to use university lab machines, please use those in 2.25A, which will not be updated until after the project submission deadline.  If you are using these machines for your project and have an extended deadline, please let me know by 1st August.

Norman Paton, PGT Director

We are entering the last week of the Semester 2 exam period; I hope the exams are going smoothly.As soon as the exams are out of the way, please get stuck back into your project.

We are entering the last week of the Semester 2 exam period; I hope the exams are going smoothly. As soon as the exams are out of the way, please get stuck back into your project.  From the end of the exams to project submission is just 13 weeks, which can seem to fly by!  Semester 2 assessment results are expected to be released during the week commencing 15th July 2024.

This is the last of the regular issues of Masters News, as there tends to be less regular news in the summer.  However, I will periodically produce an edition when there seems to be worthwhile news to pass on. 

Norman Paton, PGT Director

STUDENT WELLBEING SUPPORT IN CS.

It is important that you let the Department know of any issues that have an impact on your exams. You can speak to your Advisor or a member of the Student Support and Wellbeing team, Maria Sloan and Ben Herbert, who can offer support if you need to submit a mitigating circumstances application. You can contact Maria and Ben by email.

MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCE DEADLINE - THIS FRIDAY.

If you are intending to apply for mitigating circumstances then it is recommended that you apply as soon as possible. Applying well before the deadline allows the wellbeing team time to review your application and get in touch with you if they have any questions that may help your application be accepted. The mitigating circumstances form closes at 4pm THIS FRIDAY (7th June). This is the deadline for both application forms and for submission of evidence. If you have any questions about mitigation then please contact soe.wellbeing@mancehster.ac.uk.

PILOT MEETING OF OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE CLUB.

Interested in contributing to open source code bases, to boost your CV and showcase your software development skills to employers?  With the Innovation Factory, staff in the Department of Computer Science are piloting a new Open Source Software Club that aims to partner students at the University with academics with research-based open source code bases, to help kick start a thriving contributor community.  In the session, we'll guide you through the process of becoming an open source contributor, starting with the basics and giving you the chance to ask questions and correct mistakes as you go.  The code base owner will be present to answer queries and to give reassurance about the kinds of contributions that are needed.

The pilot session will take place on Tuesday, 25th June 2024 from 11.00am-1.00pm.  All university staff and students are welcome to attend, though places are limited.  More information can be found here, along with a form to register for a place at the pilot session.

DATA SCIENCE SOCIETY.

Our partner Peak AI is hosting their Annual Peak Hackathon. Join us on 07/06/2024 from 12pm to 6pm at the Peak office for a hands-on data science experience! Tackle a real-world data science project in Python, guided by industry experts. You'll complete a project to showcase on GitHub and your CV. The hackathon will cover data analysis/preprocessing, modelling, and Git best practices. You can sign up individually or as a team of 3 to 5 members. Fill out the form to sign up and know more about the event. Contact the MUDS committee with any questions on Discord. Don't miss this chance to level up your data science skills!

WOMEN IN KILBURN EVENT.

Join us at our next monthly networking event dedicated to empowering and raising the visibility of women, non-binary individuals, and underrepresented groups within Computer Science. Come grab a bite and network with academics, senior students, and fellow classmates within Computer Science.

• When: Wednesday, 5th June, 2024

• Time: 11AM- 12PM

• Where: Turing Lounge, Kilburn Building, 1st floor, directly opposite the first-floor entrance, close to the disabled access lift.

 

 

It?s the 2nd week of the semester 2 exam period.I hope your revision and exams are going well. Please note that next Monday (27th May) is a bank holiday (national holiday in the UK), so the Kilburn building will be closed.

It’s the 2nd week of the semester 2 exam period. I hope your revision and exams are going well. Please note that next Monday (27th May) is a bank holiday (national holiday in the UK), so the Kilburn building will be closed.

Norman Paton, PGT Director

STUDENT WELLBEING SUPPORT IN CS.

It is important that you let the Department know of any issues that have an impact on your exams. You can speak to your Advisor or a member of the Student Support and Wellbeing team, Maria Sloan and Ben Herbert, who can offer support if you need to submit a mitigating circumstances application. You can contact Maria and Ben by email.

MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCE DEADLINE - FRIDAY 7TH JUNE.

If you are intending to apply for mitigating circumstances then it is recommended that you apply as soon as possible. Applying well before the deadline allows the wellbeing team time to review your application and get in touch with you if they have any questions that may help your application be accepted. The mitigating circumstances form closes at 4pm on Friday the 7th June. This is the deadline for both application forms and for submission of evidence. Applications received after the deadline will be automatically rejected. Applications with no evidence received before the deadline will also be rejected. Unfortunately the wellbeing team are unable to facilitate requests to submit mitigation applications or evidence at a later date. If you have any questions about mitigation then please contact soe.wellbeing@mancehster.ac.uk.

STAFF APPRECIATION AWARDS.

Voting for the Department of Computer Science Teaching Awards closes TODAY! You can now vote here for a chance to have a say in which teaching staff you think deserves an award the most. There are 8 categories and 8 possible winners, so please vote in all categories. Voting will close TODAY (Monday 20th May) at 4pm, so get your votes in now!

FREE EXAM BREAKFASTS.

Free exam breakfasts will be available to all School of Engineering students over the exam period, from May 13th until June 5th. Swing by the Engineering A event space every weekday morning from 8:30-10 am. Courtesy of the Information, Advice and Guidance team, we've got your breakfast covered. Make sure you bring your student card along! 

INAUGURAL SEMINAR. 

Prof. Alex Creswell will present an inaugural seminar, “The reality versus the theory – how AI will impact cyber security in the next 12 months”, on Wednesday 22nd May, 14:00-15:00, in Kilburn Lecture Theatre 1.3. Abstract: The theory of expanding attack surface suggests that agentic AI will reshape the cyber threat landscape over the next 12 months, opening up new attack vectors for threat actors to exploit. AI personal assistants will become targets due to their access to sensitive data. Accelerated corporate adoption of AI is already overwhelming security teams and could lead to malicious exploitation. In reality, cyber criminals (as opposed to state actors) are struggling to leverage AI for automating attacks. AI is enhancing phishing campaigns but there is no evidence that criminals have used AI to generate effective intrusion sets. AI advantage is currently favouring defenders. In future, AI will enable a new generation of unsophisticated criminals to launch attacks, lowering the barrier to entry into this area of crime. Private sector organisations should adopt active defence tools and monitor criminal adoption of smaller, specialised LLMs which require less compute.

 

As you are likely aware, it?s the 1st week of the Semester 2 exam period.

As you are likely aware, it’s the 1st week of the Semester 2 exam period. Please make sure you are familiar with your exam timetable, and that you know when and where your exams are taking place. If you are slightly late for an exam, then you may be allowed to sit it, but you will not get any additional time. However, if you are too late, then you will not be able to sit the exam, in this case you should contact the student hub immediately. If you are unable to attend your exam due to mitigating circumstances (such as an illness), please make sure you complete a mitigating circumstances application before the deadline (see below) and speak to a member of the Student Support and Wellbeing team.

I hope your exams go smoothly.

Norman Paton, PGT Director

FREE EXAM BREAKFASTS.

Free exam breakfasts will be available to all School of Engineering students over the exam period, from May 13th until June 5th. Swing by the Engineering A event space every weekday morning from 8:30-10 am. Courtesy of the Information, Advice and Guidance team, we've got your breakfast covered. Make sure you bring your student card along!

ENGINEERING BUILDING A EXTENDED OPENING HOURS.

Engineering Building A opening hours will be extended during the exam period, between Tuesday 7 May – Wednesday 5 June. The building will be open from 8am to 10pm each day, with FSE students given the swipe card access required to enter after 8pm Mon-Fri and all day Saturday and Sunday. The Kilburn Building opening hours will remain unchanged during this period, at 8am - 6pm, Monday and Friday, with access from 6 - 9pm (weekday) being available when holding a valid extended working hours pass.

COMPUTER CLUSTERS DURING THE EXAM PERIOD.

Please be aware that some computer clusters across the campus will be unavailable for students to use during the exam period. In the Kilburn Building, the large cluster on the first floor (1.8/1.10) will not be available to students throughout the exam period. All other labs and teaching spaces in the Kilburn building will be available for use.

 

 

Already it is the last week of the semester 2 teaching period; hopefully you are feeling under control with the coursework for this period, and you have at least a draft of your Project Overview and Plan which is due on Friday.

Already it is the last week of the semester 2 teaching period; hopefully you are feeling under control with the coursework for this period, and you have at least a draft of your Project Overview and Plan which is due on Friday.

There will be some work on student spaces in the Kilburn Building over the next 18 months. It would be much appreciated if you could let me know: (i) What labs / teaching / social spaces you have liked in Kilburn or other university buildings, and why; (ii) What you would like to see changed about the student spaces in Kilburn; and (iii) What would help to make Kilburn seem like a good base for Masters students.

Norman Paton, PGT Director

COMPUTER CLUSTERS DURING THE EXAM PERIOD.

Please be aware that some computer clusters across the campus will be unavailable for students to use during the exam period. In the Kilburn Building, the large cluster on the first floor (1.8/1.10) will not be available to students throughout the exam period. All other labs and teaching spaces in the Kilburn building will be available for students to use.  

INAUGURAL LECTURE. 

Professor Chenghua Lin will present an inaugural lecture: “The “BERT moment” for Music - MERT: Large-Scale Self-supervised Training for Acoustic Music Understanding”, on Wednesday 15th May, 14:00-15:00 in Kilburn Lecture Theatre 1.3.

Abstract: Whilst NLP has been my main research focus, I also love music, a universal language that we all understand. In this talk, I will share my work on computational music processing as part of my research agenda of developing large language models (LLMs) for Multimodal Generative AI. I will first introduce MERT, an acoustic music understanding model based on large-scale self-supervised training and is akin to the “BERT moment” in NLP, but for Music. We have successfully trained a family of MERT models (with model sizes including 95M, 330M, and 1B parameters), which demonstrated excellent performance on 14 Music Information Retrieval (MIR) tasks. Since releasing on HuggingFace in March 2023,  MERT has received over 500K downloads. To address the significant absence of a universal and community-driven benchmark for music understanding, we further developed MARBLE,  a universal MIR benchmark. MARBLE facilitates the benchmarking of pre-trained music models for 18 tasks (with more being added) on 12 publicly available datasets, offering an easy-to-use, extendable, and reproducible evaluation suite for this burgeoning community. 

For those who are unable to join us in person, please join by Zoom, Meeting ID: 989 2292 8099, Passcode: 043842.  

MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES DEADLINE.

The deadline for reporting any mitigating circumstances that have impacted you in semester 2 (coursework or exams) is Friday 7th June 2024 at 4:00pm. This is a strict deadline and no applications will be considered after this date. You can find information on the mitigating circumstances process in the postgraduate handbook (in CS-PGT-COMMUNITY on Blackboard). If you are experiencing any problems then you can speak to your advisor, or you can speak to a member of the Student Support and Wellbeing Team, Maria Sloan and Ben Herbert. 

REPORT AND SUPPORT.

The University’s Report and Support Service is available to students. If you or someone you know has experienced or witnessed any form of bullying, harassment, discrimination, gender-based violence, hate or micro-aggressions, or have a safeguarding concern, you can report it anonymously or get support from a trained advisor through Report and Support. To report an incident and speak to a caseworker, you can either fill out the online form or someone can do it on your behalf. You, or the person reporting can make special requests for a certain type of advisor. The last page of the form will ask for details of who they should speak to about this report. The team will seek to understand your situation and aim to give you information, advice and support tailored to your individual circumstances. You can access this service here. Please be mindful that whilst you can send anonymous reports, the team are unable to contact you to offer support unless you provide your name and contact details.

 

It is week 11, and thus the penultimate week of the semester 2 teaching period.

It is week 11, and thus the penultimate week of the semester 2 teaching period. Timetabled activities will stop at the end of this week for most course units, but please check your personal timetable to see if any activities are taking place in week 12 (for example to support lab submission). Next Monday (6th May) is May Bank Holiday, which is a public holiday in the UK, so there will be no scheduled teaching activities. 

Norman Paton, PGT Director

EXAM NERVES SURVIVAL GUIDE.

This from Ben Herbert, Student Support and Wellbeing: I have found a very good resource, Student Space from Student Minds, which provides some excellent advice on student wellbeing - I highly recommend you have a look. I’ve taken some of the advice from the website to help produce this piece. Anxiety is a natural response and vital for our survival. In the context of exams, we should not be looking to “cure” anxiety but to overcome it, and also understand that motivational nerves are normal, and even a good thing. Overcoming anxiety is possible with simple steps to reduce stress and enhance performance.

It’s Science, Stupid.

Fear and anxiety are innate defence mechanisms, triggered by the part of your brain called the amygdala. Its job is to identify potential threats and automatically initiate the fight-flight-freeze response, flooding our bodies with adrenaline and impairing rational thinking. Anxiety arises from perceiving exams as threats. This can hinder memory recall and trigger worst-case scenario thinking. Distinguishing between anxiety and motivational nerves is crucial. While both may share symptoms, motivational nerves (e.g. butterflies in the stomach and increase heart rate before your exam) can enhance focus and performance. So let’s overcome anxiety and harness our motivational nerves.

Getting ready

1. Prepare Adequately: Accept anxious feelings as indicators of the exam's importance. Establish a study schedule to regain control and ensure balanced preparation.

2. Prioritise Self-Care: Adequate sleep, good nutrition, hydration, social interactions, and regular exercise are fundamental for managing anxiety and alleviating stress. You may think less time revising and more time exercising is counter-productive, but it really does help.

3. Practical Preparations: Organise exam essentials beforehand, including stationery and knowing where to find the exam venue, to minimise last-minute stressors.

4. Connect with Others: Spending time with friends provides emotional support and helps alleviate stress. However, balance socialising with study commitments.

5. Maintain routines and healthy habits. Avoid last-minute cramming as it disrupts sleep and confuses the brain. Prioritise relaxation and sufficient sleep for optimal performance.

6. Revise in groups to share knowledge - Take advantage of any revision session your tutors arrange, or organise your own revision sessions.

On the Day

Ensure ample time for preparation, travel, finding the room, the frequent toilet trips, and have a nutritious breakfast. Spending time outdoors and listening to calming music can help manage pre-exam nerves. Choose whether to spend time alone or with friends based on personal preference.

During the Exam

Acknowledge normal nerves and employ relaxation techniques like 7/11 breathing (in for count for 7, out for a count of 11). Start with the parts you are confident with, plan your time wisely, and take breaks if needed. Focus on completing answers to the best of your ability. If you get stuck, move on.

After the Exam

Reflect on your achievements and areas for improvement. Spend time with friends or alone as needed, and reward yourself for your efforts. By understanding and implementing these strategies, you can effectively manage exam anxiety and optimise your performance.

BIG SISTERS IN STEM PODCAST.

A recent Big Sisters in STEM podcast featured our very own Zahra Montazeri talking about ‘Role models, unlocking creativity and shedding stereotypes’. From Star Wars to Avatar... you can find pieces of Zahra and her work throughout some of your favourite films. Today she explains not only how she employs science to create such magical results, but how important it is to believe in your abilities on your journey. From Iran to Turkey, and from California to the UK – Zahra knows talent, hard work, and self-belief can take you anywhere and everywhere. Make sure you have a listen - it’s Episode 4 (April 17th) - listen on Spotify, or YouTube. Follow @bigsistersinstem on Instagram!

COURSE UNIT SURVEYS.

The semester 2 course unit surveys are now open and will run until the 5th May 2024. Please complete the surveys for your course units and provide us with feedback on how they have gone. Any feedback provided by you is anonymous. We find feedback, particularly comments, extremely useful to understand what you feel about our teaching and we do listen to it and make changes as a result. Please provide us with written comments to explain why you rated course units as you did. Without these comments it’s difficult to make informed decisions on how to change and improve how we teach. Please be detailed with your feedback - if your comments are general, such as `I would like to see more examples', or `I found some of the material confusing', you're not telling us where exactly we should aim to make improvements. You can only complete the surveys via personal links sent to you by email. If you haven’t received an email, or are having problems completing the surveys then please contact teachingandlearningsurveys@manchester.ac.uk.

GET MICROSOFT CERTIFIED ON FUNDAMENTALS.

Get Microsoft Certified this summer (for free!) on Azure, Cloud, AI, Data, Security, CRM, ERP and 365 this summer. The Department of Computer Science are working with the Flexible Learning Program to pilot the introduction of Microsoft Fundamentals for students at the University of Manchester. These certifications, which would normally cost $99 each, enhance your CV and LinkedIn by validating your existing knowledge and skills in Computer Science. There are eight free qualifications to choose from, each of which require around 20 hours of study between now and the in person exam in Manchester during July. You can register for one (or more than one) exam, and find out more and register by this Friday (3rd May 2024) at https://www.cdyf.me/achieving#microsoft.

PAID TEACHING OPPORTUNITY.

Would you be interested in some work teaching 12-14 year olds that are interested in Science and Technology in June and July? MCS Projects are looking for students to assist leading activities and answer questions about University at some of our Challenge Days. Each event is a regional competition designed to raise enthusiasm for STEM subjects and encourage more young people to consider a career in them. Events run from 8.30-3.15, with activities including E-FIT forensics, medical diagnostics and electric cars. For more information please go to mcsprojectsltd.co.uk. Successful applicants would be added to a mailing list so they can sign up to any events that they’re available for in the North West. The pay is £84 plus travel expenses per event. A training session would be provided beforehand. To apply, send your CV to John Waterworth by Monday 6th May.

STUDENT WELLBEING SUPPORT IN COMPUTER SCIENCE...

STUDENT WELLBEING SUPPORT IN COMPUTER SCIENCE

As we approach the end of the semester, when deadlines mount and the pressure of completing work and starting revising for exams reaches its peak, it is worth remembering that we have a dedicated Student Support and Wellbeing team, Maria Sloan and Ben Herbert. Maria and Ben can also provide guidance with respect to submitting mitigating circumstances. If you are affected by any issues impacting your learning then Maria and Ben will be happy to speak to you. You can contact Maria and Ben by email, or drop into the student hub in Engineering Building A to have a chat.

COURSE UNIT SURVEYS

The semester 2 course unit surveys are open and will run until the 5th May 2024. Please complete the surveys for your course units and provide us with feedback on how they have gone. Any feedback provided by you is anonymous. We find feedback, particularly written comments, extremely useful to understand what you feel about our teaching and we do listen to it and make changes as a result. Without these comments it’s difficult to make informed decisions on how to change and improve how we teach. Please be detailed with your feedback - if your comments are general, such as `I would like to see more examples', or `I found some of the material confusing', you're not telling us where exactly we should aim to make improvements. You can only complete the surveys via personal links sent to you by email. If you haven’t received an email, or are having problems completing the surveys then please contact teachingandlearningsurveys@manchester.ac.uk.

CENTRE FOR DIGITAL TRUST AND SECURITY EVENT

Centre for Digital Trust and Society Seed Corn Showcase | 16th May (14:30 - 17:00) | Drinks reception available. The Centre for Digital Trust and Society (CDTS) Seed Corn Funding awards funding to cutting-edge proposals that further our research and understanding of digital trust and society. Come along and see how you can get involved with this initiative and explore the successes and learnings of our previously funded projects. Register here. Featured projects include:

• Demanding justice in the Cloud: An analysis of punitive attitudes in social media for traditional and cyber-enabled crime | Dr Nicholas Trajtenberg Pareja & Mr Pablo Ezquerra Silva

• Rebuilding Democratic Discourse: Online Harms and Trust | Dr Mihaela Popa-Wyatt, Dr Justina Berskyte, Prof Graham Stevens

• Defining the acceptability of ‘safe’ data linkage to identify women at risk of postnatal complication in Greater Manchester | Dr Victoria Palin, Prof Niels Peek, Prof Jenny Myers, Dr Anthony Wilson, Mr Bradley Quinn

• Modern slavery and digitisation in ‘fast-fashion’ supply networks | Dr Jonathan Davies, Prof Rose Broad, Dr Amy Benstead 

The Centre for Digital Trust and Society leads and delivers activity for the Digital Trust and Security theme within The University’s Digital Futures Research Platform.

INAUGURAL LECTURE. 

Professor Sami Kaski will present an inaugural lecture titled “Collaborative Machine Learning for Research” on 23rd April 2024, 1-2pm, Engineering Building A, Lecture Theatre B. Sami Kaski is Professor of Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester and at Aalto University, Helsinki. In Manchester he is the Research Director of the Christabel Pankhurst Institute for Health Technology Research and Innovation, and in Helsinki leads the Finnish Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research FCAI and ELLIS Unit Helsinki. He is also an ELLIS Fellow and Turing Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute.

Abstract: I will bring together two traditionally separate lines of research: (i) probabilistic machine learning, in which we combine flexible learning from multiple sources of data with prior knowledge in the form of simulators, and (ii) user interaction, starting from interactive intent modelling in information retrieval and extending to collaborative AI. This combination enables developing new kinds of tools for research tasks, including AI-assisted design tools for design-build-test-learn cycles. When R&D processes are formulated as virtual simulation-based laboratories, the tools can be applied across fields from experimental sciences to engineering design and medicine, and further to humanities and social sciences. The university is now building significant capacity in this field with the launch of the Centre for AI Fundamentals, AI-FUN, with research groups focusing on developing machine learning principles and seeking to do that in collaboration with other fields. 

To find our more, please contact ai-fun@manchester.ac.uk or ellis@manchester.ac.uk. Click here to register for the event. For catering purposes please register if you intend to attend.

COURSE UNIT SURVEYS.The semester 2 course unit surveys are now open and will run until the 5th May 2024.Please complete the surveys for your course units and provide us with feedback on how they have gone.

COURSE UNIT SURVEYS.

The semester 2 course unit surveys are now open and will run until the 5th May 2024. Please complete the surveys for your course units and provide us with feedback on how they have gone. Any feedback provided by you is anonymous. We find feedback, particularly comments, extremely useful to understand what you feel about our teaching and we do listen to it; we do make changes as a result. Please provide us with written comments to explain why you rated course units as you did. Without these comments it’s difficult to make informed decisions on how to change and improve how we teach. Please be detailed with your feedback - if your comments are general, such as 'I would like to see more examples', or 'I found some of the material confusing', you're not telling us where exactly we should aim to make improvements. You can only complete the surveys via personal, links sent to you by email - there is no link through Blackboard. If you haven’t received an email, or are having problems completing the surveys then please contact teachingandlearningsurveys@manchester.ac.uk.

EXAM TIMETABLE. 

The exam timetable has now been published. Individual timetables should be published in My Manchester this week. Please note that all examinations take place under invigilated conditions and on-campus (there may be one or two exceptions to this), so you must be in Manchester during the examination period. Make sure you know when and where your exams take place. If you have any questions, please contact the student support hub.

MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY DATA SCIENCE SOCIETY.

Our FINAL workshop this year is on GNNs, a type of neural network specialised for tricky unordered data. 

* Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) 

* Wednesday 17th 2-4pm 

• Simon 2.60

Join us for an interactive tutorial on:

1. Finding out how GNNs work

2. Learn how graphs are represented in Machine Learning

3. Use PyTorch Geometric for node and graph classification on various datasets

You can expect to use this wherever you have data that can't be split neatly into a grid, such as social media and consumer data. See you there! 

STAFF-STUDENT PROGRAMMING COMPETITION 2024. 

Ian Pratt-Hartmann writes: Staff and students in the School of Computer Science are cordially invited to take part in the Staff-Student programming competition.

• Date: Wednesday, 1st May, 2024

• Time: 14:00–17:00 (Results and explanation 17:00–18:00)

• Location: Kilburn Building Lower First Floor: Tootill 0 and 1 

• Registration deadline: Wednesday, 14:00, 24th April, 2024

The competition is open to all staff and students (incl. undergraduate) in Computer Science. Teams will consist of an integral number of persons between 1 and 3 inclusive, exactly one of whom will be designated the team captain. All teams are classified as either Staff teams or Student teams. Staff teams must have at least one member of staff (including RAs, but excluding PhD students) and must otherwise consist entirely of staff (including RAs) and PhD students. Student teams must consist entirely of students (graduate or undergraduate). No person may be in more than one team.

The Contest will be hosted on the Kattis system, and will feature a mix of problems of different difficulties. Newcomers to competitive programming are particularly welcome: you can get an idea of what the problems are like by logging on to Kattis and trying some. I suggest you cut your teeth on the "easy" (i.e. completely trivial) problems first: that will help you sort out reading input and writing output. Then you can try something more ambitious.

To participate, visit here  and return the completed form by 14:00 on 24th April, 2024. You must make sure all team members have obtained a Kattis account by this deadline.  (Go to https://open.kattis.com/register if you do not have a Kattis account.) You will receive an invitation to join the contest on (or about) 25th April 2024. You should accept this invitation as soon as possible, and certainly before the contest begins. Problems will be visible at the start of the competition. Teams will try to solve as many as they can. Contestants may use any of the supported languages, see the Kattis website for a full list.

One desktop machine (with ordinary University logins) will be available for each team.  Each team may additionally bring any number of laptop computers with the desired compiler(s)/IDEs installed. It is allowed to bring any printed materials into the competition room; however the use of stored electronic files or of the internet to access any sites other than the competition site is forbidden. Space is limited, and teams will be accepted on a first-come-first-served basis, subject to a reasonable balance of staff and students. If you have queries, please contact me.

CENTRE FOR DIGITAL TRUST AND SECURITY EVENT.

Centre for Digital Trust and Society Seed Corn Showcase | 16th May (14:30 - 17:00) | Drinks reception available. The Centre for Digital Trust and Society (CDTS) Seed Corn Funding awards funding to cutting-edge proposals that further our research and understanding of digital trust and society. Come along and see how you can get involved with this initiative and explore the successes and learnings of our previously funded projects. Register here. Featured projects include:

• Demanding justice in the Cloud: An analysis of punitive attitudes in social media for traditional and cyber-enabled crime | Dr Nicholas Trajtenberg Pareja & Mr Pablo Ezquerra Silva

• Rebuilding Democratic Discourse: Online Harms and Trust | Dr Mihaela Popa-Wyatt, Dr Justina Berskyte, Prof Graham Stevens

• Defining the acceptability of ‘safe’ data linkage to identify women at risk of postnatal complication in Greater Manchester | Dr Victoria Palin, Prof Niels Peek, Prof Jenny Myers, Dr Anthony Wilson, Mr Bradley Quinn

• Modern slavery and digitisation in ‘fast-fashion’ supply networks | Dr Jonathan Davies, Prof Rose Broad, Dr Amy Benstead 

The Centre for Digital Trust and Society leads and delivers activity for the Digital Trust and Security theme within The University’s Digital Futures Research Platform.

INAUGURAL SEMINAR. 

Dr. Mauricio Alvarez will present an inaugural seminar titled “Multi-task Learning and Physics-informed Probabilistic Modelling using Gaussian Processes” on Wednesday 17th April 2024, 2-3pm, in Kilburn building Lecture Theatre 1.4. Please use the link below to join the seminar on Zoom if you are unable to join us in-person, Meeting ID: 958 0188 2712, Passcode: 120653.

Abstract: Gaussian processes are Bayesian non-parametric models for non-linear regression. They are suitable in several data-driven problems where data is scarce and uncertainty calibration is required, such as Bayesian inverse problems and Bayesian optimisation. In this talk, I will introduce the audience to Gaussian processes and to two strands of research I’ve worked on in the last years: how to use Gaussian processes for transfer or multi-task learning and how to couple Gaussian processes with differential equations to build physics-inspired Gaussian process models.

ATLAS TALK. 

Dr. Anastasia Mavridou will present a talk titled “Let’s speak FRETish” on Thursday 18th April, 13:00 - 15:00 in Kilburn building Lecture Theatre 1.5. For those who are unable to join us in person, you can join us via Zoom. Anastasia Mavridou is a member of the Robust Software Engineering (RSE) Group at NASA Ames Research Center, employed by KBR Inc, where she leads the work on the NASA Ames' Formal Requirements Elicitation Tool (FRET). Before joining RSE, she worked as a postdoc at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems, Vanderbilt University, USA. She received her PhD in 2016 from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. She has authored more than 30 publications spanning the broad areas of formal methods and software engineering, with a focus on system design and formal analysis techniques. 

Abstract: FRET is a framework for the elicitation, formalization and analysis of requirements. FRET allows its user to enter requirements in a structured natural language called FRETish. Requirements written in FRETish are assigned unambiguous semantics. FRET supports its users in understanding this semantics and repairing requirements if applicable, by utilizing a variety of forms for each requirement: natural language description, formal mathematical logics, diagrams, and interactive simulation. FRET exports requirements into forms that can be used by a variety of analysis tools, including  state-of-the-art model checkers and runtime monitoring tools. The talk will cover some of the theory behind the framework, present case studies from the aerospace and robotics domains,  as well as current work on extending FRET for specifying requirements for software that learns.

INAUGURAL LECTURE. 

Professor Sami Kaski will present an inaugural lecture titled “Collaborative Machine Learning for Research” on 23rd April 2024, 1-2pm, Engineering Building A, Lecture Theatre B. Sami Kaski is Professor of Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester and at Aalto University, Helsinki. In Manchester he is the Research Director of the Christabel Pankhurst Institute for Health Technology Research and Innovation, and in Helsinki leads the Finnish Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research FCAI and ELLIS Unit Helsinki. He is also an ELLIS Fellow and Turing Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute.

Abstract: I will bring together two traditionally separate lines of research: (i) probabilistic machine learning, in which we combine flexible learning from multiple sources of data with prior knowledge in the form of simulators, and (ii) user interaction, starting from interactive intent modelling in information retrieval and extending to collaborative AI. This combination enables developing new kinds of tools for research tasks, including AI-assisted design tools for design-build-test-learn cycles. When R&D processes are formulated as virtual simulation-based laboratories, the tools can be applied across fields from experimental sciences to engineering design and medicine, and further to humanities and social sciences. The university is now building significant capacity in this field with the launch of the Centre for AI Fundamentals, AI-FUN, with research groups focusing on developing machine learning principles and seeking to do that in collaboration with other fields. 

To find our more, please contact ai-fun@manchester.ac.uk or ellis@manchester.ac.uk. Click here to register for the event. For catering purposes please register if you intend to attend.

Welcome back from the Easter break; I hope you had some time to relax, while also making some progress with your project and doing some revision in anticipation of forthcoming exams.

Welcome back from the Easter break; I hope you had some time to relax, while also making some progress with your project and doing some revision in anticipation of forthcoming exams.

The minutes of the most recent Staff-Student Liaison Committee meeting are now available in CS-PGT-COMMUNITY.  If you have any additional comments in the light of these, please let me know.

Norman Paton, PGT Director

PhD SCHOLARSHIP

Scholarship for a Dual-Award PhD from both the University of Manchester (UK) and the University of Melbourne (Australia) on the topic of Automatic Algorithm Configuration / Hyper-parameter Optimization / AutoML within the context of mathematical optimization. 

The University of Manchester and the University of Melbourne offer a fully-funded scholarship to their dual-award PhD programme that provides a unique experience for PhD candidates wishing to include study abroad as part of their research. 

This project aims to extend the capabilities of automatic configuration tools to handle multiple conflicting criteria and adapt to such changes in the problem characteristics. For this purpose, the teams at Manchester and Melbourne will join their expertise in automatic configuration of algorithms and instance space analysis. The result of this project will be more powerful tools for tuning and deploying the critical algorithms that our modern world relies on so that they can better adapt to changes in the problems being solved and let users decide the most appropriate trade-off among conflicting criteria. 

What you get: 

• Two PhD degrees from top universities, The University of Manchester (top 10 in Europe, top 50 in the World) and The University of Melbourne (1st in Australia, top 30 in the World). 

• All University fees paid by the project. 

• Competitive stipend of at least 18,622 GBP / year (tax-free) with yearly increments for the duration of the project (four years). 

• 3 years at the University of Manchester and one-year at the University of Melbourne. 

The candidate will be enrolled in the PhD program at the Alliance Manchester Business School at the University of Manchester and in the PhD program at the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Melbourne. Receiving a dual-award allows you to benefit from two world-leading institutions. 

More information: https://lopez-ibanez.eu/dual-award-2024 ;

For questions about the topic, please contact Dr Manuel López-Ibáñez (manuel.lopez-ibanez@manchester.ac.uk) with an up-to-date CV including any publication profile.

EXAM AND ASSESSMENT SUPPORT FROM THE LIBRARY.

The Library is here to support you to prepare and revise throughout the exam and assessment period. You can find more details on our Exam & Assessment Support page. You can:

• access workshops and online resources for revision, exam and assessment support

* speak to one of our Library experts via our Library drop-in support

* get wellbeing support by accessing helpful resources and workshops via the Counselling and Student Service

Listen out for announcements in Main Library and AGLC for drop-in support and wellbeing events in conjunction with Manchester Museum! There are a number of upcoming workshops that you can search and book online. 

• Assessment support: revision and preparation (on campus): A workshop focused on practical revision tips and advice ensuring you maximise your efficiency and focus on the build up to assessments. 

• Thu 25 Apr 2024, 13:00 - 14:00 

• Thu 2 May 2024, 12:00 - 13:00

• Assessment support - applying your knowledge (on campus): A workshop focused on taking your revision to the next level by focusing on the connections and links between your course areas. 

• Fri 26 Apr 2024, 12:00 - 13:00 

• Thu 9 May 2024, 12:00 - 13:00 

•  Mindfulness workshops (on campus): If you are finding it hard to concentrate, have racing thoughts or often feel anxious or overwhelmed then this workshop, run by The University of Manchester Counselling and Mental Health Service, will introduce you to simple techniques to learn about the nature of the mind and what we can do to alleviate stress.

• Tue 9 Apr 2024, 16:15 - 17:00 

• Tue 23 Apr 2024, 16:15 - 17:00   

• Tue 7 May 2024, 16:15 - 17:00 

UNICS STAFF AWARDS.

For the first time ever, the Department of Computer Science is holding the Staff Teaching Awards, hosted by UniCS! Is there a lecturer or teaching staff that you think has been supportive of your learning, or simply has been amazing and deserves recognition? Share your story by nominating them for an award to thank them for everything that they have done. It is uncommon for lecturers and teaching staff to receive appreciation and positive feedback from students. Help us change this by thanking those who make a difference. You can nominate them through this form here. You can nominate as many staff as you would like!

UNICS BLACKPOOL TRIP. 

UniCS is holding our very first trip to Blackpool Pleasure Beach Resort on Saturday 20th of April! Come along for a fun day with friends at the beach and exhilarating rides at the theme park, including the UK’s current tallest roller coaster and the Horror House! Don’t miss out on our heavily price reduced tickets costing only £9.99, tickets will go on sale at 15th April 12pm on our SU page. The tickets will cover travel and free lunch as well. There are a limited number of spaces so be quick!

STAFF-STUDENT PROGRAMMING COMPETITION 2024. 

Ian Pratt-Hartmann writes: Staff and students in the School of Computer Science are cordially invited to take part in the Staff-Student programming competition.

• Date: Wednesday, 1st May, 2024

• Time: 14:00–17:00 (Results and explanation 17:00–18:00)

• Location: Kilburn Building Lower First Floor: Tootill 0 and 1 

• Registration deadline: Wednesday, 14:00, 24th April, 2024

The competition is open to all staff and students (incl. undergraduate) in Computer Science. Teams will consist of an integral number of persons between 1 and 3 inclusive, exactly one of whom will be designated the team captain. All teams are classified as either Staff teams or Student teams. Staff teams must have at least one member of staff (including RAs, but excluding PhD students) and must otherwise consist entirely of staff (including RAs) and PhD students. Student teams must consist entirely of students (graduate or undergraduate). No person may be in more than one team.

The Contest will be hosted on the Kattis system, and will feature a mix of problems of different difficulties. Newcomers to competitive programming are particularly welcome: you can get an idea of what the problems are like by logging on to Kattis and trying some. I suggest you cut your teeth on the "easy" (i.e. completely trivial) problems first: that will help you sort out reading input and writing output. Then you can try something more ambitious.

To participate, visit here  and return the completed form by 14:00 on 24th April, 2024. You must make sure all teams members have obtained a Kattis account by this deadline.  (Go to https://open.kattis.com/register if you do not have a Kattis account.) You will receive an invitation to join the contest on (or about) 25th April 2024. You should accept this invitation as soon as possible, and certainly before the contest begins. Problems will be visible at the start of the competition. Teams will try to solve as many as they can. Contestants may use any of the supported languages, see the Kattis website for a full list.

One desktop machine (with ordinary University logins) will be available for each team.  Each team may additionally bring any number of laptop computers with the desired compiler(s)/IDEs installed. It is allowed to bring any printed materials into the competition room; however the use of stored electronic files or of the internet to access any sites other than the competition site is forbidden. Space is limited, and teams will be accepted on a first-come-first-served basis, subject to a reasonable balance of staff and students. If you have queries, please contact me.

APPLE TALK ON FORMAL HARDWARE VERIFICATION.

Apple are visiting us on the 17th April, Engineering Building Lecture Theatre A, 3pm, to talk about formal verification. It’s mostly aimed at CS/EEE students (from Bachelors to PhD) who are interested in working for Apple, but may also interest academics working in formal verification. This talk will aim to introduce the topic of formal hardware verification to students of EEE / Computer Science. During the talk, you will learn about Apple Hardware, highlighting the evolution of the SOC (System-On-Chip) and underlining the critical role of Verification. We will explore various verification methods such as Simulation and Formal Verification, discussing their advantages and potential drawbacks. We will also delve into different types of Formal Methods, elucidating how a hardware verification problem at Register Transfer Level (RTL) described in standard Hardware Description Languages (HDLs) like Verilog, can be converted to Boolean Functions or propositional logic, alongside techniques for robust bug detection and proving design correctness. The presentation further provides insights into the execution of Formal Verification, precisely control flow applications through small examples. Finally, we will conclude the talk with statements of FV success and the fantastic opportunities at Apple to tackle the hardest verification problems in the industry. Find more information and register here.

CENTRE FOR DIGITAL TRUST AND SECURITY EVENT.

The Centre for Digital Trust and Society Forum returns for a third year! 

• Date & Time: Wednesday 3rd July 2024 (in-person) | 9:30 - 16:30

• Venue: No.1 Circle Square, Oxford Road, Manchester M1 7FS

Book your place to hear from experts across digital trust and security, including Keynote Speaker Professor Genevieve Liveley, Turing Fellow, and Director of the Research Institute for Sociotechnical Cyber Security (RISCS), University of Bristol. There will be three dynamic panels bringing in expertise from across Academia, Government and Industry, on three themes:

• Panel 1 | Online Harms: Rebuilding Trust in Our Digital World

* Panel 2 | Power Dynamics in Digital Platforms

* Panel 3 | Generative AI & Security

Lunch will be provided, and participants are welcome to continue discussions over a drinks reception following the main event. Places are limited by venue capacity, therefore please register now via Digital Futures. If you have any questions, please contact Kitty Lo, at kitty.lo@manchester.ac.uk. The Centre for Digital Trust and Society leads and delivers activity for the Digital Trust and Security theme within The University’s Digital Futures Research Platform.

INAUGURAL SEMINAR. 

Dr Emily Collins will present an inaugural lecture titled “Building Trustworthy Robotics for Better, Safer Industry” on Tuesday 9th April 1-2pm, in Kilburn building Lecture Theatre 1.3. Note: this is a rearranged seminar. Abstract: My current research, as a DKO Fellow, aims to make robots work as effectively as possible for humans and society. In my inaugural seminar, I will describe how my career path led me here, where I am focussed on addressing the issue of how to build trustworthy robotics for society. Currently, it is relatively easy to build (remote-controlled) robotic systems and it is possible, though complex, to ensure their functions are reliable. However, despite messaging to the contrary, fully autonomous systems are still far away, and human interaction and direct control remain vital. No matter how reliable or effective the hardware or Artificial Intelligence is, the control of these systems is fundamentally dependent on how human operators use them; how much confidence and trust operators have in the systems; and how much easier these systems make the operators' working lives. In recent years, I have spearheaded a new interdisciplinary approach to this problem that aims to resolve the issues that occur between design, development, and eventual deployment. Focussed on the mediating variables contributing to an HRI study as the result of the relationships surrounding the interaction at the scenario’s core.

Please use the link below to join the seminar on Zoom if you are unable to join us in-person: Meeting ID: 918 2986 8190, Passcode: 737960.

INAUGURAL SEMINAR. 

Dr. Louise Dennis will present an inaugural seminar titled “Verifiable Autonomous Systems” on Wednesday 10th April, 2-3pm in Kilburn building Lecture Theatre 1.3. Abstract: How can we provide guarantees of behaviour for autonomous systems? In this talk I will explain how autonomous systems can be programmed in ways that make them amenable to formal verification. I will discuss how cognitive agent programming can be used to provide a transparent and verifiable decision-making core and show how properties of the system can then be checked – including properties related to ethical behaviour.

Please use the link below to join the seminar on Zoom if you are unable to join us in-person: Meeting ID: 921 1912 1061, Passcode: 023687.

INAUGURAL LECTURE. 

Professor Sami Kaski will present an inaugural lecture titled “Collaborative Machine Learning for Research” on 23rd April 2024, 1-2pm, Engineering Building A, Lecture Theatre B. Sami Kaski is Professor of Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester and at Aalto University, Helsinki. In Manchester he is the Research Director of the Christabel Pankhurst Institute for Health Technology Research and Innovation, and in Helsinki leads the Finnish Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research FCAI and ELLIS Unit Helsinki. He is also an ELLIS Fellow and Turing Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute. Abstract: I will bring together two traditionally separate lines of research: (i) probabilistic machine learning, in which we combine flexible learning from multiple sources of data with prior knowledge in the form of simulators, and (ii) user interaction, starting from interactive intent modelling in information retrieval and extending to collaborative AI. This combination enables developing new kinds of tools for research tasks, including AI-assisted design tools for design-build-test-learn cycles. When R&D processes are formulated as virtual simulation-based laboratories, the tools can be applied across fields from experimental sciences to engineering design and medicine, and further to humanities and social sciences. The university is now building significant capacity in this field with the launch of the Centre for AI Fundamentals, AI-FUN, with research groups focusing on developing machine learning principles and seeking to do that in collaboration with other fields.

To find our more, please contact ai-fun@manchester.ac.uk or ellis@manchester.ac.uk. Click here to register for the event. For catering purposes please register if you intend to attend.

It is now Week 7, and we finish on Friday for a three-week Easter break, with teaching resuming on Monday 8th April 2024.  Masters News will also take a break, and will return on w/c 8th April.

While you should try to take some time off, this is also a good chance to make sure you are on top of lab work and making progress with your project.  It's also not that long until the 2nd Semester exams, so it may be useful to make a start on some revision.  

Norman Paton, PGT Director

EASTER OPENING HOURS.

The Kilburn Building will be open as normal during the Easter vacation, 09:00 - 18:00 Monday to Friday, apart from the period Friday 29th March (Good Friday) and Monday 1st April (Easter Monday), when the Kilburn building will be closed and there will be no access for students. For students holding an extended working hours pass, access is still available when the Kilburn building is open.

SPRING CAREERS FAIR 2024.

We are delighted to be welcoming over 50 recruiters to campus with graduate jobs, placements, and internships. For students of all years, the careers fair offers an ideal opportunity for you to speak directly, and in-person, with local and national organisations from a range of business and industry sectors and find out more about their opportunities. The careers takes place:

• Tuesday 12th March, 11am – 4pm.

• The Academy - Building 78 on Campus Map.

• More information available via CareerConnect and the Careers Service website.

CLOCKS MOVE FORWARD.

Please note that on Sunday 31st March (during the Easter break) the clocks go forward by 1 hour at 2 am, when we move into British Summer Time (Greenwich Mean Time +1 hour).

UNICS STUDENT HACK.

UniCS is organising one of our flagship events for the April 13th weekend: StudentHack 2024. A 24 hour hackathon for Manchester's brightest and most creative students to combine their ideas and make an awesome project! We have a prominent history of running hackathons over the last decade, with GreatUniHack last October. We received approval to use the Engineering Building (MECD), marking the first time our hackathons have run on familiar territory :) Follow us on our Instagram, @unics_hackathons, for more information on how to take part! (free food, prizes, fun activities and more!)

MAY BALL.

UniCS is excited to announce that we are running our annual May Ball on the 3rd of May 2024 at Midland Hotel! Come along dressed to impress for our James Bond themed ball. Join us for music, dancing and an amazing three-course meal that you wouldn’t want to miss out on! If you missed the early bird tickets, do not worry because general tickets will be releasing on the 6th of March at 4pm on our product page so look out for those.

FORTHCOMING ONLINE PROGRAMMING COMPETITION.

This from Ian Pratt-Hartmann: We would like to announce the “UKIEPC 2024: Spring Practice” programming contest which will be held online at 12:00-14:30 pm, 23 March. Our main goal is to promote programming for everyone in the UK and Ireland. This contest is targeted at novices and amateurs - we expect the problems to be of Div. 3 - Div.2 level in the terms of the site codeforces.com. Programmers with a rating higher than 1900 are encouraged to join our team of problem setters (look at the bottom). The date is 23rd of March. The start time is 12:00. The duration is 2:30. The contest is in teams of two people and each team can use two computers. The contest will be held on codeforces.com, so, everyone should be registered there to participate. The link to our group is here. 

INAUGURAL SEMINAR. 

Dr. Mingfei Sun will present an inaugural lecture titled “Deep Reinforcement Learning for Complex Decision Making” on Wednesday 13th March, 13:00 - 14:00 in Kilburn Lecture Theatre 1.3. Abstract: Deep reinforcement learning proves to be an effective optimization method for resolving numerous complex decision-making problems. In this seminar talk, I will begin by providing a brief overview of deep reinforcement learning and the underlying model, Markov Decision Processes (MDP). Subsequently, I will delve into the challenges that make MDP hard to solve, addressing key issues such as the extremely vast state/action space, the reward alignment problem, and the policy generalization challenge. Furthermore, I will showcase examples of employing deep reinforcement learning to tackle challenging problems in video games, multiagent systems, and simulated robot controls. Towards the conclusion of the talk, I will introduce the ongoing challenges we are currently addressing, with a specific emphasis on combinatorial decision-making on graphs and efficient optimization methods for large models.

CENTRE FOR DIGITAL TRUST AND SOCIETY SEED CORN SHOWCASE.

Join us to celebrate the groundbreaking achievements of the four research projects funded in our 2022-2023 Seed Corn Funding on 16th May, 14:30 - 17:00. Find out how the Seed Corn program helps nurture promising ideas, fostering the next generation of digital trust research, and learn ways you can get involved! What to expect at the Showcase:

• Dive into the learnings and successes of the four funded projects.

• Discover the exciting advancements made by these innovative researchers.

• Learn how you can get involved in shaping the future of digital trust research.

Projects:

• Demanding justice in the Cloud: An analysis of punitive attitudes in social media for traditional and cyber-enabled crime | Dr Nicholas Trajtenberg Pareja (PI) and Mr Pablo Ezquerra Silva.

• Rebuilding Democratic Discourse: Online Harms and Trust | Dr Mihaela Popa-Wyatt (PI), Dr Justina Berskyte, Prof Graham Stevens

• Defining the acceptability of ‘safe’ data linkage to identify women at risk of postnatal complication in Greater Manchester | Dr Victoria Palin (PI), Prof Niels Peek, Prof Jenny Myers, Dr Anthony Wilson, Mr Bradley Quinn

• Modern slavery and digitisation in ‘fast-fashion’ supply networks | Dr Jonathan Davies (PI), Prof Rose Broad, Dr Amy Benstead 

CENTRE FOR DIGITAL TRUST AND SECURITY EVENT.

Feeling lost in the maze of privacy discussions? Then join us for a thought-provoking discussion led by Kieron O'Hara, author of the acclaimed "The Seven Veils of Privacy". Date & time: 20th March | 12:30 - 14:30. Location: Engineering Building A - Room 3A.071. Kieron O'Hara will unveil a clear and comprehensive framework to navigate the seemingly endless arguments around privacy and your rights. Discover why the clashing perspectives on social norms, human rights, personal preferences, and data processing often lead to frustration and confusion. Gain clarity and engage in meaningful dialogue as we dissect the different facets of privacy and work towards a path forward. Don't miss this chance to break through the ambiguity and shape your own understanding of privacy in today's complex world! There are limited seats available, so register now! The Centre for Digital Trust and Society leads and delivers activity for the Digital Trust and Security theme within The University’s Digital FuturesResearch Platform, including the Digital Trust and Security Seminar Series. These events are designed to highlight key insights into developments, challenges and identify areas for growth within Digital Trust & Security. Digital Futures is a highly interdisciplinary network that operates across the whole range of The University’s digital research.

STUDENT MENTAL HEALTH DAY EVENT.

The Social Prescribing team are holding a free event to celebrate Student Mental Health and Social Prescribing day! Join us for an afternoon of wellbeing activities in the University's beautiful botanical garden. You can take some time to do some mindful gardening, enjoy some arts and crafts or simply relax in nature.

• When: Thursday 14th March, 1-3pm

• Where: The Firs Botanical Ground, Fallowfield Campus

Pop in at any time during the event, everyone is welcome.

PRIMARY ROBOTICS WORKSHOPS.

IntoUniversity are looking for volunteers for Y5/6 (primary school age group) coding workshops. They will pay you £35 to develop a session, plus £35 for each one you deliver (and they will arrange transport for you to get to their centre). You can find further information here. Please contact abbie.mountford@manchester.ac.uk for further information. The University will be able to provide kit to support these activities.

Semester 1 exam results should be released this week. If you have any questions / concerns relating to your results, please speak with your Academic Advisor.

Semester 1 exam results should be released this week.  If you have any questions / concerns relating to your results, please speak with your Academic Advisor.  Please note that the PGT Handbook (available in CS-PGT-COMMUNITY in Blackboard) provides details on pass marks, how to meet the requirements for a degree, etc.

Norman Paton, PGT Director

UNICS MAY BALL.

UniCS is excited to announce that we are running our annual May Ball on the 3rd of May 2024 at Midland Hotel! Come along dressed to impress for our James Bond themed ball. Join us for music, dancing and an amazing three-course meal that you wouldn’t want to miss out on! If you missed the early bird tickets, do not worry because general tickets will be releasing on the 6th of March at 4pm on our product page so look out for those.

UNICS GENERAL MEETING.

UniCS will be holding a General Meeting on Wednesday 6th March at 3:30pm in Kilburn Collab 1+2 to discuss amendments to the constitution:

• First Amendment: All sponsors should be voted on by the UniCS committee

• Second Amendment: All hackathons sponsors should be voted on by the executive committee

• Third Amendment: Companies that manufacture or distribute weapons cannot sponsor UniCS

We hope you come along for this society wide vote, as we believe UniCS should be taking a step towards good ethicality in light of recent events.

UNICS QRT EVENT.

UniCS has invited QRT for a talk on Wednesday 6th of March from 3-4pm in Kilburn_TH 1.4. This is the perfect chance for you to learn more about what opportunities they have there and speak to their recruiters if you haven’t already found a placement so make sure to come if that is you!

DATA SCIENCE SOCIETY.

Applied Data Science: Build Your Own Churn Model,  Wednesday 6th March 2-4pm, Simon 2.60. MUDS host global AI company Peak with a special edition data science workshop! Suitable for all interested, this workshop will use Python and Google Colab. We will learn:

* An overview of the Data Science project life cycle

* Setting up a working environment and loading a dataset

* Working with Git

* EDA and data transformation

* Technical overview of the Churn Model

* Hyperparameter tuning

This is an excellent opportunity for hands-on data science experience and a chance to network with established professionals from the Peak offices. See you all there!

WOMEN+ IN COMPUTER SCIENCE SOCIAL.

Are you a woman or member of an under-represented group in computer science? Do you want to meet more people like you? Come join us as we celebrate International Women’s Day with cake, snacks and friendly chat. All students and staff are welcome at the Turing Lounge, 11 am on Wednesday 6th March.

VOLUNTEER FOR BRITISH SCIENCE WEEK 2024.

Manchester Museum are looking for volunteers to help more than 1000 high school students navigate their British Science Week event on 11th and 12th March. Contact mattie.davies@manchester.ac.uk directly to apply. If you are not available on the 11th and 12th but would still like to volunteer to help with museum work you can find out more information on their website.

REPORT AND SUPPORT.

The University’s Report and Support Service is available to students. If you or someone you know has experienced or witnessed any form of bullying, harassment, discrimination, gender-based violence, hate or micro-aggressions, or have a safeguarding concern, you can report it anonymously or get support from a trained advisor through Report and Support. To report an incident and speak to a caseworker, you can either fill out the online form or someone can do it on your behalf. The team will seek to understand your situation and aim to give you information, advice and support tailored to your individual circumstances. You can access this service here. Please be mindful that whilst you can send anonymous reports, the team is unable to contact you to offer support unless you provide your name and contact details.

UNICS LASER TAG EVENT.Join us for the ultimate Leap Day event at the Trafford Centre for a round of laser tag with lots of pizza and ice cream.

UNICS LASER TAG EVENT.

Join us for the ultimate Leap Day event at the Trafford Centre for a round of laser tag with lots of pizza and ice cream. We'll meet at the Byte Cafe in Kilburn at 5:45pm on 29th February and head to Trafford Centre together for an evening filled with lots of action and fun. Don't miss out on our limited tickets for only £5.99! Tickets will be available here [University of Manchester Students' Union (manchesterstudentsunion.com)]! 

UNICS GENERAL MEETING.

UniCS will be holding a General Meeting on Wednesday 6th March at 3:30pm in Kilburn Collab 1+2 to discuss amendments to the constitution:

• First Amendment: All sponsors should be voted on by the UniCS committee

• Second Amendment: All hackathons sponsors should be voted on by the executive committee

• Third Amendment: Companies that manufacture or distribute weapons cannot sponsor UniCS

We hope you come along for this society wide vote, as we believe UniCS should be taking a step towards good ethicality in light of recent events.

GITLAB DOWNTIME WARNING.

On Wednesday 28th February the Department of Computer Science GitLab system will be taken offline to perform essential maintenance and upgrades. Work on the system will start at 14:00 and may take until 17:00, although we will attempt to minimise the time that GitLab is unavailable. A notice banner is currently shown on GitLab pages as a reminder for this work, and it will be removed when the work on the server is completed and tests indicate GitLab is operating normally. While GitLab is offline you will be able to continue to work locally in any currently cloned git repositories, including adding commits. However, attempts to interact with the GitLab server (via `git push`, `git pull`, `git fetch` and so on) will fail.

GOOGLE DEVELOPER STUDENT CLUBS.

Navigating the nebula of cloud technology just got easier! Join us for an enlightening session on cloud deployment. From the ABCs of VPS to the latest in serverless, we've got you covered! Save the date: 28th Feb '24m 16:00-17:00, Kilburn 1.1.

HCRI PUBLIC TALK.

The Humanitarian & Conflict Response Institute (HCRI) is holding a public talk - Humanitarian Extractivism: The Digital Transformation of Aid, in the Samuel Alexander Building, Room SG.16 + Zoom. Our guest speaker is Prof Kristin Bergtora Sandvik of the Peace Research Institute, Oslo. 

• Info & Register via: https://digital-humanitarianism.eventbrite.co.uk/

• 7th March 2024, 4:00- 5:30 pm.

Join us to discuss how ‘data extraction' shifts power towards states, the private sector, and humanitarians. The talk will explore new practices and spaces, such as 'humanitarian drones', wearable innovation challenges, and ethics in global disaster innovation labs.

DIGITAL TRUST AND SECURITY SEMINAR SERIES. 

Kieron O’Hara - The Seven Veils of Privacy

• Date & time: 20th March | 12:30 - 14:30

• Location: Christabel Pankhurst Building, Manchester

Kieron O’Hara, from the University of Southampton, will unveil a rigorous and comprehensive framework from his groundbreaking book "The Seven Veils of Privacy" to navigate the seemingly endless arguments around privacy and your rights. Join to discover why the clashing perspectives on social norms, human rights, personal preferences, and data processing often lead to frustration and confusion. Places are limited so we advise you to secure your spot now to avoid disappointment.

CS SEMINAR. 

Matthew Bradbury, Lecturer in Cyber Security at Lancaster University, will present a talk titled:  Quantifying and Mitigating Adversary Information Gain via Actions Taken in Cyber Physical Systems on Monday 26th February at 12pm in Kilburn Lecture Theatre 1.3 (Zoom link). Matthew Bradbury is a Lecturer in Cyber Security at Lancaster University. His research focuses on the security and privacy of resource-constrained and distributed systems, especially how to take into account the limited resources when designing security mechanisms. This has covered a wide variety of domains from wireless sensor networks, connected vehicles to space systems. His current interests are focused on how arbitrary cyber physical systems reveal information via the actions they take to an observing adversary. Funding for this work has been received from various sources including the PETRAS National Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems Cybersecurity and EPSRC. Abstract: Over the last few decades there has been significant work protecting the privacy of data. For cyber physical systems, protecting data privacy is important, however, their physicality means that they are also vulnerable to observations directly by an adversary. This means that the actions a system takes and the context in which those actions are taken can reveal information to an observing adversary. So, in addition to protecting content privacy (e.g., data in transit) it is important to use techniques to provide context privacy. Many domains have independently had context privacy preserving techniques developed for threats they face (e.g., onion routing, change in identity for vehicles, location privacy in sensor networks). Developing context privacy preserving techniques is a lengthy process and does not allow for rapid responses to novel context privacy threats. The aim therefore, is to be able to translate an arbitrary system to reduce the information revealed by the actions it takes. This talk will give some early results on modelling adversary belief, quantifying the information revealed via directed information, and attempted approaches in system transformation.

AI CENTRE FOR DOCTORAL TRAINING. ...

AI CENTRE FOR DOCTORAL TRAINING. 

Mauricio Alvarez writes: The UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Decision Making for Complex Systems is a joint CDT between the University of Manchester and the University of Cambridge. At Manchester, the CDT is led by the Department of Computer Science. The CDT provides funding for four years of advanced studies towards a PhD. The first year is a taught program that will cover the fundamentals of Machine Learning with courses on AI for uncertainty modelling. This taught year is followed by three years of research at Manchester and/or Cambridge. Admissions to the PhD programme will be handled on a project-by-project basis. We would like to invite prospective applicants to contact supervisors who are proposing projects for the first cohort starting September 2024. You can find the list of supervisors and projects here.

DATA SCIENCE SOCIETY.

Datern presents: Data analytics with Power BI, Simon 2.60, Wednesday 21st February, 2-4pm. MUDS are hosting a special workshop presented by Datern! Datern help companies meet their data challenges by finding, recruiting and training undergraduate students from top universities, ensuring they start their internship with them ‘workplace ready’.

1. Introduction to Datern and their internship/spring week opportunities

2. How companies use Power BI professionally and why they care

3. Importing datasets and making visualisations in your own Power BI report

4. Designing your report to be interactive and accessible

In terms of preparation, please download Power BI Desktop. Just a reminder that Power BI is a Windows only software. Here is a guide on how to download it.

DIGITAL TRUST AND SECURITY SEMINAR SERIES.

Uncover the secrets of online drug markets - How is the digitalisation of social interaction changing illegal markets? Join us for a captivating exploration of the hidden world of illegal drug markets on social media on 29th February, from 13:45 – 15:40. Led by expert Silje Anderdal Bakken from Oslo University, we'll delve into how online interactions are reshaping the underworld, from coded messages to the interplay between virtual and offline dynamics. Gain valuable insights and spark discussion on this timely and complex issue.

Register today to secure your place and avoid disappointment. This is a Digital Trust and Security Seminar, presented by The Centre for Digital Trust and Society, which leads and delivers activity for the Digital Trust and Security theme within UoM Digital Futures Research Platform.

DIGITAL TRUST AND SECURITY SEMINAR SERIES. 

Kieron O’Hara - The Seven Veils of Privacy 

• Date & time: 20th March | 12:30 - 14:30

• Location: Christabel Pankhurst Building, Manchester

Kieron O’Hara, from the University of Southampton, will unveil a rigorous and comprehensive framework from his groundbreaking book "The Seven Veils of Privacy" to navigate the seemingly endless arguments around privacy and your rights. Join to discover why the clashing perspectives on social norms, human rights, personal preferences, and data processing often lead to frustration and confusion. Places are limited so we advise you to secure your spot now to avoid disappointment.

INAUGURAL SEMINAR. 

Professor Bijan Parsia will present an inaugural seminar titled “Prosthetic Autonomy” on Wednesday 28th February, 2-3pm in Lecture Theatre 1.3. Abstract: Physical prosthetics generally enhance a person’s autonomy. By replacing a missing body part, they restore capabilities inhibited by that loss. They may even allow their wearer to exceed most human performance at some tasks. This seems straightforward. But, we have increasing capable systems for enhancing or replacing various mental functions including general decision making. Here things are not so straightforward as many concepts of autonomy require independence of thought. In this talk I work through part of the conceptual landscape of prosthetic autonomy covering human-technical systems that either are pervasive (e.g., turn-by-turn navigation) or are easily made so with current technology and involve “prostheses” that are outside the head and not at human level. These sorts of prostheses are likely to be ever larger parts of our everyday lives for a considerable part of the near future. Thinking about how such systems enhance, alter, or inhibit our autonomy should be central to our design processes. If you are planning on attending the seminar, please complete this form.

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

My Learning Essentials. My Learning Essentials is the Library’s award winning programme of skills support, including both online resources and face-to-face workshops which will aid you in your personal and professional development. The workshops offer a relaxed group environment where you can try out new strategies for yourself while learning from and with peers whilst the online resources help you develop skills and interests which are relevant to you, at times and using the methods that suit you best. My Learning Essentials is a great way to get the most out of your time at Manchester; helping you to make the best use of all of the specialist resources and support the University has to offer.

DASS SUPPORT DEADLINE.

There is a deadline coming up for exam support through DASS (Disability Advice Support Service). DASS offers support to all students who have a condition which has an adverse and long-term effect on their ability to carry-out normal day-to-day activities. This includes Cognitive Developmental Delay, Physical Health and Mental Health issues. A DASS advisor is always happy to talk with you if you are unsure if you can register with them. You can find out more information about DASS and how to contact them here: who-do-we-support. The University has a deadline for putting exam support in place for each of the main exam periods. The next deadline is Thursday 14th March 2024 at 4pm, you’ll need to register and have met with an adviser to agree your exam support by then. For more details, see the exam support page.

HOW DO I CHECK IF I’VE SUBMITTED MY WORK IN BLACKBOARD? We often get asked by students how to check that they have submitted work successfully, and it’s quite easy to do.

In Blackboard, you can check under the “My Grades” link on the left on each course unit Blackboard page (under “Submitted” or “Marked”).

PRAYER ROOMS.

Whatever your faith, there are several prayer rooms in university buildings, or around the university campus. The closest to the Kilburn Building is in Engineering Building A. You can find all university prayer spaces by searching for “prayer space” in the University interactive map, or see the list at multifaithchaplaincy.org. 

HARDWARE LIBRARY.

Did you know we have a hardware library in the Department that contains a wide range of hardware components that are completely free to borrow? You can use these to support your 3rd year project, generally just to have a play with, or support a Hackathon. There are all sorts of items available, from Raspberry Pi components to drones, a wide range of microcontroller boards to gesture devices, basic electronic components to robots … even VR headsets. We also have computer items, such as keyboards, mice, and tablets - there’s a wide range of items available. To see what is available for you to borrow (for free!) have a look at the library catalogue. If you want to borrow an item then all you have to do is reserve it online. You will then be contacted by Steve Rhodes who will tell you when you can pick the item up from Tootill 0 on the lower first floor of Kilburn. Please note that items should not be taken away from Manchester and it is your responsibility to replace any damaged/lost items you borrow. You can also propose new items for the library, which we will consider. However, please note, we do have a limited budget to purchase new items, so we can’t fund all requests.

Hopefully you are now settling in to your 2nd semester theme, and starting on your project, at least in terms of background reading. You should be meeting your supervisor this week or next, so please take the initiative to contact your supervisor if you are not already in touch.

Norman Paton, PGT Director

 

DIGITAL SKILLS FESTIVAL 2024 - TALENT DAY.

Talent Day is the largest digital and tech careers fair in the North and a must-attend event for those looking to start work in the industry and takes place this Wednesday, 7th Feb, at the Bridgewater Hall, 10am to 4pm. 

Talent Day is back and bigger than ever! This year, we’re taking over Manchester’s iconic Bridgewater Hall for a day packed with opportunities to connect with tech employers across the region. Talent Day is the largest and longest-running specialist careers fair in the North. Each year over 1,800 graduates and job seekers attend to find out more about the latest tech and digital careers on offer at some of Greater Manchester’s most exciting and innovative tech companies. There are up to 60 different businesses to talk to, with a huge amount of jobs and other opportunities on offer. This event is great for students and graduates looking for exciting roles (summer internships, placements and graduate roles) in the digital and tech industry. To help us manage capacity and ensure that everybody has a good experience, tickets will be allocated across three 2 hour time slots. Please book the time slot that suits you, and ensure you stick to that time on the day. If you would prefer to visit when the event is less busy, we would advise booking for the final time slot of the day (2pm - 4pm). Exhibitors this year include: AJ Bell, Autotrader, Awaze, BAE Systems, Basecamp skills, Co-op, CDL Software, Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), GlobalLogic, Interact software, IMS insurance and mobility solutions, Manchester Airports Group, Naimuri, Nexer Digital, North West Cyber Resilience Centre, Robiquity, Starling Bank, Tracsis, West Yorkshire Pension Fund.

Talent day is partnered with all three Manchester Universities: the University of Salford, the Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Manchester. Find out more and register here.

DATA SCIENCE SOCIETY.

Setting Up Your Python Project, Wednesday 7th February 2:00-3:30pm, Simon Building 2.60. We present the first MUDS workshop of the year! This is a practical session on how to set up your Python project like a professional. We'll be covering the effective use of GitHub, Docker containers, Python debugging and linting among other tips and tactics to start your project off smoothly and write great, publication quality code.

GOOGLE DEVELOPER STUDENT CLUBS.

Ready to connect with the future? Join us on February 7th at 4pm in Kilburn 1.1 as we decode the magic behind the Internet of Things (IoT) at the University of Manchester. Unleash the power of smart technology and witness a live demo that will change the way you see your world, along with some free swag and snacks!

UNICS PUB CRAWL.

After the success of our first pub crawl in our first semester, we are getting ready for another pub crawl. This time, we are starting at the Turing Tap at 7pm and heading towards the city centre. Fill out this form if you're interested in joining! Can't wait to see you all there!

DASS SUPPORT DEADLINE.

There is a deadline coming up for exam support through DASS (Disability Advice Support Service). DASS offers support to all students who have a condition which has an adverse and long-term effect on their ability to carry-out normal day-to-day activities. This includes Cognitive Developmental Delay, Physical Health and Mental Health issues. A DASS advisor is always happy to talk with you if you are unsure if you can register with them. You can find out more information about DASS and how to contact them here: who-do-we-support. The University has a deadline for putting exam support in place for each of the main exam periods. The next deadline is Thursday 14th March 2024 at 4pm, you’ll need to register and have met with an adviser to agree your exam support by then. For more details, see the exam support page.

LEARNING TIPS - SUBMITTING YOUR OWN WORK.

Computer Science is a practical subject and, as such, it is natural to work together. In fact, in the outside world you will invariably be working as part of a team, whether it is developing software, or designing hardware. This is why a number of our course units offer you the opportunity to work as a member of a team. However, when it comes to individual assessments, this changes. What you submit as assessments reflect your learning and are a key part of measuring your academic progress. To ensure that work you submit is your own, we often look out for signs of academic malpractice, where someone is looking to gain an unfair advantage by submitting work that is not (entirely) their own.

There are generally two forms of academic malpractice: plagiarism, which is the copying of someone else’s work, including output from AI tools such as ChatGPT, without acknowledgement; and collusion: working closely with someone else to produce the same, or very similar, piece of work. In Computer Science, we find that collusion is the most common form of academic malpractice, and we use powerful software tools to identify similarities in code, even when changes such as renaming variables or restructuring code have been made to try and make code look different.

If you are found guilty of academic malpractice then this can have a dramatic impact on your progress/marks. Penalties range from the zeroing of marks for the assessment where academic malpractice has been identified as taking place, through to failing and having to resit a course unit. In the past, we have had students being excluded from their studies as a result of engaging with academic malpractice. It’s natural for you to work with fellow students to understand problems and the taught material, however, make sure the work you submit is your own. Overall, it’s just not worth the risk. For more information, see the University student guidance on plagiarism and other forms of academic malpractice. You can also view the full Academic Malpractice Procedure. 

I hope you have recovered from the exams, and are all set for your second semester units and project. We expect to release the semester 1 results in the week commencing 4th March 2024.

I hope you have recovered from the exams, and are all set for your second semester units and project.  We expect to release the semester 1 results in the week commencing 4th March 2024.

In relation to teaching, if you want to change second semester units / theme, please decide this week, as the short format makes it difficult to catch up if more than one week is missed.

In relation to your projects, you should be meeting with your supervisor in weeks 2/3 and weeks 4/5; thus please email your supervisor early in week 2 to ask for a meeting time if your supervisor has not got in touch by then.  If there is any difficulty establishing contact with your supervisor, please email Tom Thomson <thomas.thomson@manchester.ac.uk>.

Norman Paton, PGT Director

 

INAUGURAL SEMINAR: 

Prof. Davide Bertozzi will present an inaugural lecture titled “Systems Innovation By Leveraging the Enabling Properties of Communication Architectures and Technologies” on Wednesday 31st January, 14:00 - 15:00, in Kilburn lecture theatre 1.3. Abstract: Computing, as used in practice, is hierarchical, heterogenous, and distributed. This emerging paradigm is underpinned by computing architecture innovations encompassing biological inspiration, domain customization, multi-tenancy and data-intensive processing. In all cases, there is a converging trend toward shifting the fundamental bottleneck from computation to communication. By leveraging a strong drive toward cross-layer design and optimization, this talk will propose novel chip-scale communication architectures (for event-driven communication and/or for time-space partitioning) and technologies (silicon nanophotonic networks) playing a pivotal role in fulfilling the functional and non-functional requirements of macroscopic system-level design, especially tight power budgets and secure-grade isolation.

INAUGURAL SEMINAR: 

Dr. Jiaoyan Chen and Dr. Ramon Fraga Pereira will present inaugural lectures on Wednesday, 7 February 2024, 13:00 – 14:00 in Kilburn lecture theatre 1.3. The titles and abstract for the presentations are: Dr. Jiaoyan Chen, “Neural-symbolic Knowledge Representation with Ontology and Knowledge Graph Embeddings”. Abstract: Ontologies and Knowledge Graphs are becoming increasingly popular for knowledge representation and reasoning, with a fundamental role in AI and Information Systems. Their embeddings are to represent entities in a vector space with their formal and informal semantics (such as logical relationships and textual meta information) concerned. In this talk, I will first briefly introduce the definitions of ontology, knowledge graph and their embeddings, then introduce some embedding methods, including those using geometric modelling and (large) language models, and finally discuss the role of Knowledge Graph, Ontology and their embeddings in semantic reasoning such as knowledge completion, and in addressing Machine Learning challenges such as sample shortage and augmenting large language models. Dr. Ramon Fraga Pereira, “Goal Recognition and Deceptive Planning: Two (Different) Sides of the Same Coin”. Abstract: Goal Recognition is the task of discerning the intended goal that an observed agent aims to achieve by observing a sequence of its actions in an environment. In contrast, Deceptive Planning can be described as an inversion of the Goal Recognition task, where the aim is to generate a sequence of actions (i.e., a plan) such that an observer is unable to determine the intended final goal. Goal Recognition has various applications across different domains due to its ability to infer and understand the goals of observed agents, such as Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Assistive Technologies (e.g., Alexa, Siri, etc.), Security and Surveillance, Education and Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Healthcare, Fraud Detection, etc. Deceptive Planning also has several applications in several domains, such as Security and Real-Time Strategies (e.g., misdirection and decoys), Competitive e-Sports (deceptive moves and feints), Security and Anti-fraud Measures (e.g., deceptive signage and camouflage), etc. In this talk, I will present my research on Symbolic AI (Artificial Intelligence) techniques for the tasks of Goal Recognition and Deceptive Planning and their applications in real-world problems, as well as possible future directions in these fields of study.

VENTURE FURTHER AWARDS 2024.

Do you have the next best technology startup business? Turn your ideas into reality and win up to £15,000 in the 2024 Venture Further Awards, the annual start-up competition for all current students and recent graduates at The University of Manchester. Applications for the Venture Further Awards 2024 Competition are now open! Turn your ideas into reality and win significant early-stage funding to start your own business. The competition will introduce you to a world of support programmes, workshops, mentors and networks to grow your ideas. If you have a viable business proposal then get involved. Your entry needs to be a viable and credible business proposal that has the potential to succeed. If your entry is successful, you will be asked to pitch your business proposal to a panel of expert judges for a chance to win one of the cash prizes. Deadline for applications: MIDDAY on 22nd February 2024. On Thursday 1st February, competition organiser Tillie Page and Jess Lewis will be offering a VFA24 Drop in service in AMBS Reception Area, where you can ask any questions about the competition, or go through your application for this years’ competition. Bootcamps will be running on Saturday 3rd and Monday 5th February to help you create your Venture Further application. You can find further information here. 

NEW SUPPORT ZONE AT THE MAIN LIBRARY.

The Library has a new Support Zone for students on the Blue Ground Floor of the Main Library. The Support Zone is a space where our friendly Library staff can help you with a range of digital services and teaching and learning queries, including: 

* Accessing WiFi 

* Printing  

* Using MS365 

* Developing skills in academic writing 

* Accessing business data 

Consultations are on a one-to-one basis, so you get personalised support as you need it. Using the Support Zone is currently on a 'drop-in' basis. All you need to do is approach the Customer Services desk in Main Library and let them know what kind of support you need, then they’ll refer you to a member of staff who can chat with you in the Support Zone.

I hope your exams are going well .... only one more week to go!Teaching resumes next week with the start of semester 2, so your personal timetable will change to show learning activities for your semester 2 course units.

I hope your exams are going well .... only one more week to go! Teaching resumes next week with the start of semester 2, so your personal timetable will change to show learning activities for your semester 2 course units. If you have yet to finalise your course units, then it’s important you do so by the deadline (see below) as changes cannot be made after this date. The deadline to submit mitigating circumstances for semester 1 is this coming Sunday, so please make sure you submit any by then.

Norman Paton, PGT Director

COURSE UNIT CHOICES.

Course unit selection for semester 2 is now open. The deadline for choosing/changing your Semester 2 course units on the University system is 3pm Friday 9th February. Please do this urgently because the size of a course unit cohort has implications on room bookings and we need to finalise the timetable ASAP. This year we have a new course unit selection system. See our student support website for further information and guidance on using the system, along with contact information if you have any questions or issues.

BLACKBOARD DOWNTIME.

As part of a planned upgrade of the Blackboard interface, there will be some disruption to this service. Blackboard may be unavailable for a 30-minute period at some point between 8am and 2pm on Saturday, 27th January 2024. During this time, anyone using Blackboard may see some graphical changes as the upgrade takes effect. The upgrade will provide improvements to the Blackboard homepage design and several new features.

MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES DEADLINE.

The deadline for submitting mitigating circumstances for semester 1 is 4pm, Sunday 28th January 2024. University regulations do not allow us to accept applications after this date. You can submit mitigating circumstances by filling out this form.

INAUGURAL SEMINAR.

Prof. Davide Bertozzi will present an inaugural lecture titled “Systems Innovation By Leveraging the Enabling Properties of Communication Architectures and Technologies” on Wednesday 31st January, 14:00 - 15:00, in Kilburn lecture theatre 1.3. Abstract: Computing, as used in practice, is hierarchical, heterogenous, and distributed. This emerging paradigm is underpinned by computing architecture innovations encompassing biological inspiration, domain customization, multi-tenancy and data-intensive processing. In all cases, there is a converging trend toward shifting the fundamental bottleneck from computation to communication. By leveraging a strong drive toward cross-layer design and optimization, this talk will propose novel chip-scale communication architectures (for event-driven communication and/or for time-space partitioning) and technologies (silicon nanophotonic networks) playing a pivotal role in fulfilling the functional and non-functional requirements of macroscopic system-level design, especially tight power budgets and secure-grade isolation.

FREE BREAKFASTS.

Weekly free breakfasts are available each Wednesday, excluding the Easter break (18th March - 5th April). The Library Team will be handing out vouchers in Alan Gilbert Learning Commons which can be exchanged for breakfast goodies, including a hot drink and pastry, at the Learning Commons Café. The giveaways run from 9am to 11am every Wednesday. Get your breakfast fix before stocks run out! Check out the University Cost of Living page for more initiatives, including information on our Cosy Campus spaces with hot water and microwaves, and free fresh food available in the community fridges.

KEEPING SAFE ON CAMPUS.

Darker mornings and evenings are here for a bit longer, hence it’s important you keep safe when on campus and travelling to/from the campus. Keep in mind the following:

• Stay alert: Keep your belongings safe and out of view when travelling to or from campus and whilst you’re on it. Avoid wearing noise cancelling headphones so you know what’s going on around you, and stick to well-lit roads and pavements as you travel around the city, avoiding underpasses where possible. Keep your phone out of sight!

• Download SafeZone: Our mobile app SafeZone can be used to quickly connect you with Campus Support and Security team if you feel unsafe, need immediate help or require first aid or wellbeing assistance. The app is free to download, easy to use, and operates across the Manchester campuses. You can find out more about SafeZone here.

• Report unacceptable behaviour: Manchester has a zero-tolerance approach to bullying, harassment, discrimination, gender-based violence, hate or micro-aggressions. If you have witnessed any forms of this behaviour, or have a safeguarding concern, you can report it anonymously or get support from a trained advisor.  Find out more about Report + Support.

Happy new year. I hope that you have managed some rest and relaxation over the festive season, and that the exams are not coming as too nasty a shock.Norman Paton, PGT Director MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES DEADLINE.

Happy new year.  I hope that you have managed some rest and relaxation over the festive season, and that the exams are not coming as too nasty a shock.

Norman Paton, PGT Director

MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES DEADLINE.

The deadline for submitting mitigating circumstances for semester 1 is 4pm, Sunday 28th January 2024. University regulations do not allow us to accept applications after this date. You can submit mitigating circumstances by filling out this form. If you are unsure about how to fill in the form, whether what you have experienced qualifies for mitigation, or if you are experiencing problems with obtaining evidence, please speak to a member of the Wellbeing Team or your Academic Advisor.

EXAM BREAKFASTS.

Weekly free breakfasts are again available each Wednesday from the 17th January 2024, excluding the Easter break (18th March - 5th April). The Library Team will be handing out vouchers in Alan Gilbert Learning Commons which can be exchanged for breakfast goodies, including a hot drink and pastry, at the Learning Commons Café. The giveaways run from 9am to 11am every Wednesday. Get your breakfast fix before stocks run out! Check out the University Cost of Living page for more initiatives, including information on our Cosy Campus spaces with hot water and microwaves, and free fresh food available in the community fridges.

LEARNING TIPS: THE EXAM - ON THE DAY.

You’ve done all your preparation for the exam and you are (almost) confident you know all the material, then the day of the exam arrives. What do you do? Well, attend the exam of course, but what should you expect on the day? First, make sure you go to bed early the night before. It is important that you’ve had a good night's sleep before the exam, there’s nothing worse than sitting an exam feeling tired and being unable to concentrate. Whilst doing some revision the night before the exam is natural, resist the temptation to spend all night cramming for the exam - this is often counterproductive. It is usually beneficial to do something completely separate from revision before you go to bed: listen to music, play a game, watch a movie. That way your brain will get a chance to switch off, and doesn't keep you awake trying to solve more sample problems.

On the morning of the exam make sure you get up early and enjoy a good breakfast. You don’t want to be going into the exam on an empty stomach, with it growling and letting you know how hungry you are throughout. Avoid the temptation to cram for the exam beforehand. It’s okay to have a brief look at some material you feel unfamiliar with, but avoid cramming a load of revision in that morning as it won’t help. You should have already scoped out where the exam is taking place, so make sure you arrive plenty of time before the exam starts; at least 15 minutes before. Make sure you prepare your journey beforehand and are prepared for every eventuality, such as the bus not turning up, or the dog eating your bus pass etc. If you turn up late for an exam, you may not be allowed to enter. If you are late, you certainly won't be given any additional time. If you miss an exam, it’s important you contact the Student Hub immediately.

You will be allowed to enter the exam room just before it starts. The only items you can take into the exam are a pen/pencil/ruler etc and a calculator (if allowed), you will be told where to leave anything else you bring with you, such as your bag. You will need your University ID, so make sure you bring it along with you! If it’s an online exam, you will also need to know your university username and password. Take your assigned seat. Whatever the format of the exam, paper-based or online, the exam invigilators will instruct you what you need to do.

At the start of the exam, read the exam rubric (the instructions) so you are clear what is required for the exam, i.e. how many questions you should answer, how long the exam will last etc. Look through all the questions and identify any you feel confident answering and attempt these first. There’s no need to answer the questions in the order they are in the exam. Once you have answered the questions you are confident with, then attempt those that you find more difficult. Don’t spend too long answering a question - think about the number of marks available and the time for the exam. For example, if a question is only worth a few marks, then you shouldn’t be producing an essay for an answer! Whether your exam is online or paper based, make sure your answers are readable. You don’t want to be losing marks because the marker cannot read and understand your answers. Underline your answers to make them clear to the marker.

If you finish answering the questions early, resist the temptation to leave early. Make use of any remaining time to check your answers and make sure you’ve completed everything required for the exam. At the end , if it's a paper-based exam, the invigilators will collect your papers and they will instruct you on when and how to leave. If it’s an online exam you will need to log out of the computer before you leave. After the exam, resist the temptation to discuss with your friends how you answered the questions - this only leads to anxiety if you find people have answered questions differently. Take some time to relax, have a brief nap, watch a film, or have a nice cup of tea. Do not jump straight into revising for your next exam.

VISUALISING THE CITY: DIGITAL TWINS AND BEYOND.

Uncover the secrets of city visualisation at the upcoming free event organised by the Manchester Digital Strategy Research Network and Digital Futures. Engage with leading academics and public sector professionals as we delve into the latest advancements transforming city planning, design, resident engagement, and management through digital technologies. Date & time: 17 January | 12:30 – 14:30 pm. Register here.

SECURITY ON CAMPUS - BE CAREFUL OF THEFTS.

If you are using a University building during the examination period, maybe to find a quiet place to revise, then remember that there are fewer people around the University. As University buildings are publicly accessible during normal working hours, this means that there’s an increased possibility of thefts taking place. It is vitally important that you do not leave your belongings (bag, phone, laptop etc) lying around unattended when working. The LF area of the Kilburn building is a common target for thieves. If you need a bathroom break, or you need to pop out for a coffee, then ask a friend to look after your belongings. If there’s no one you can ask, then take your items with you. Please keep your belongings safe and do not leave them unattended! You can report any instances of theft to University security. You can find their number on the back of your University card.