Your weekly round-up of undergraduate life in The University of Manchester Department of Computer Science from Paul Nutter, Director of Undergraduate Studies.

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Week 2 • Monday 6 February 2023 • #22.17

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Good morning UG! It’s Monday 6th February 2023 and it’s week 2. I hope you are starting to settle down into a new routine and now know your new timetable (although be warned that this may change during the next week or so). Don’t forget that the deadline for selecting any optional course units is this Friday. There will be continued strike action from members of UCU on Thursday and Friday of this week, so some teaching activities will be affected.

Have a good week, plenty of news today …

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

STUDENT SUPPORT HUB EMAIL ADDRESS.

New email addresses are to be used to communicate with Teaching, Learning and Student Experience teams (Student Support Hub) in the School:

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.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.

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

Student Union Advice Centre. The Student Union offers advice and support with any questions, worries or concerns you might have through dedicated student advisors. What can they offer advice on?

Cost of Living.
Academic matters.
Finance.
Health and Wellbeing.
Housing.

Advice is always free, impartial and confidential. You can find more information, including opening hours and contact details, on the University of Manchester Students' Union Advice website. Remember you can always contact the Department Wellbeing Team for advice or help at any time.

SEXUAL ABUSE AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE AWARENESS WEEK.

This week (6th - 12th February) is sexual abuse and sexual violence awareness week, where we take a stand against sexual abuse and violence in all forms and start conversations about sexual violence and break the silence surrounding abuse. The aim is to spread the message that sexual violence or sexual abuse is never acceptable and anyone who is a survivor of sexual violence or abuse will be listened to and supported. Trafford Rape Crisis and the Students’ Union will be holding monthly drop-ins at the Students’ Union Advice Service (first floor of the Student’s Union). You can go to the drop-in for information, advice, support or just someone to talk to about any form of sexual violence, harassment, abuse or rape. This is not a clinical or therapeutic drop-in, simply just a safe space where you can talk to someone who understands sexual violence and has a knowledge of the help available in Greater Manchester. You can also find further support services, see this news article on the University Student News website.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

The year tutors are here to support you if you need any help and advice, so feel free to contact your year tutor by email. They also run a weekly open hour where you can pop in (in-person or virtually) for a chat:

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Tuesday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Wednesday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.80
Year 3/4 (not CM): Tim Morris. Open hour: Thursday 10:00 - 11:00, Kilburn 2.107
CM (all years): Andrea Schalk. Open hour: Monday 13:00 - 14:00, 2.103
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Tuesday 09:00 - 10:00, IT119.

PASS2.

Ingy Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) and Nadine Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) write: Hello from the PASS2 team! Please note that PASS2 times have changed to Wednesday 1-2pm in IT407! We hope you all had a great start to the semester! Due to timetable clashes we sadly had to cancel last week’s session. Sadly, due to a timetable clash we couldn’t have PASS last week but this week we will be discussing course unit selection. If there are any modules you are unsure about this semester, come along to the session on Wednesday 1-2pm IT407!

FOXDOG STUDIOS.

We hope you really enjoyed the show by two of our alumni, Peter Sutton and Lloyd Henning (aka foxdogstudios.com), last week. It was great to see so many students turn up to watch the show and interact. We hope you enjoyed being able to participate and now appreciate what fun tech can be! Don’t forget that there will be other guest lectures for COMP101 at the same time this semester, again featuring past students from the Department.

VISIT TO THE SCHOOL BY THE PRESIDENT AND VICE-CHANCELLOR.

The President and Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Dame Nancy Rothwell, will be visiting the School of Engineering on Tuesday 21st February 2023. We would like to invite students to register to attend an Open Meeting that will take place at 14.15 – 14.45 via Zoom/in-person. This will include an opening address from the President followed by a general question and answer session.

This is only open to Engineering students – you will have to enter your student ID number, programme details and department in order to register. Anyone from outside the School will not be permitted entry.
Neither audio nor visual recordings of the meeting are permitted.
Whether attending in person or online please arrive 15 minutes early to allow check-in.

Students wishing to attend the open meeting will need to register via this Form by 12pm on Friday 10th February 2023. After this date, attendees will receive further instructions including the room/Zoom details, so it is essential to register online by this date if you wish to join. Pre-submitted questions are welcome. If you wish to submit a question in advance, please send these to hosea.eng@manchester.ac.uk or use the registration form by 12pm on Friday 10th February 2023. We do hope you will be able to join the meeting.

STUDENT STAFF LIAISON COMMITTEE DECEMBER MEETING MINUTES.

Hello everyone! The minutes from the SSLC meeting held on 14th December 2022 are now available in the SSLC Blackboard space (CS UG Community). Thank you all very much for the comments and feedback. We will be in touch with the reps shortly with information regarding the next meeting which will be held in late February.

COMP101 GUEST LECTURE.

Join SeeChange this Tuesday at 1pm in the Engineering Building, Lecture Theatre A. They’ll be talking about their state-of-the-art recognition platform, SeeWare, which offers a modular and scalable architecture designed to interpret and understand the real world using AI. They’ll also be talking about opportunities at SeeChange for 1st year, 2nd year and final year undergraduate students. This is part of COMP101 Guest Lectures, all students welcome

COURSE UNIT CHOICES.

The deadline for choosing/changing your Semester 2 course units on the University system is 3pm THIS FRIDAY (10th February), see full details and instructions. Any changes after this date will not be permitted. If your choices do not meet the requirements for your degree programme, or you do not have the required prerequisites for a course unit, then you will be required to change your course unit choices. If you have any issues or need help, then please contact the relevant team in the student hub.

NATIONAL STUDENT SURVEY.

The National Student Survey (NSS), which offers final year students the opportunity to reflect on your time at Manchester, launched last week. Your feedback is important to us and can help us improve what we do. NSS is anonymised, so you can give your open, honest feedback. We want your views! All students eligible to complete NSS will receive an email this week from Ipsos Mori (an external company appointed by the UK Government to run NSS) with a link to complete the survey. There’s no need to wait, you can complete NSS directly via the NSS website. As a thank you for your time, every student who takes part in the NSS 2023 can enter a prize draw to win one of 17 prizes:

1 x iPad Air
2 x £200 voucher
2 x £100 voucher
4 x £50 voucher
4 x £25 voucher
4 x Graduation Day package

Additionally, for each response submitted the University will also make a £2 charitable donation, split equally between the following good causes:

The NSS is the only national survey of its kind and asks your views on a range of topics that have shaped your time at University – from teaching, feedback and support to resources and how you’ve been listened to. You can find further information here.

REPORTING ISSUES WITH THE KILBURN/IT BUILDING ENVIRONMENT.

If you are experiencing issues with (for example) the heating in the Kilburn/IT buildings (a room is too hot or too cold), or you see broken furniture, slip/trip hazards etc, then please use this form to report the issue. Please note: this form should only be used for reporting issues in the Kilburn and IT buildings, DO NOT use it to report issues in other buildings. This form should also NOT BE USED for reporting issues with the IT infrastructure (such as broken PCs, login issues etc), which should be reported to IT Services through the Service Portal. Any issues related to teaching, such issues with hardware boards used for teaching, or specific software packages, should be reported to the course unit leader in the first instance.

SEMESTER ONE RESULTS.

The semester one exam results will be released around 2nd/3rd March. Results will be released via the student system and the student services hub will email to confirm when they are available to view. For further information about semester one results please see the intranet page. Please note: all marks are provisional and may be subject to change, they will be confirmed in the end of year exam boards that will take place in June/July.

DISK QUOTA ISSUES.

If you are a 2nd or 3rd year student you may be experiencing issues with your disk quota, which can manifest itself as issues logging in, or problems cloning git repositories. The general cause of this is the size of the backup of your VM image, in a folder called csimage, from 2020/21 and 2021/22. As we don’t use this anymore, then you can delete it. However, this will result in any work completed using the VM image being deleted, so make sure you save anything you want to keep elsewhere. A good start is to delete the contents of the download folder, or cache folders for browsers. We have provided some advice on the Department wiki pages on how to recover disk space.

THE UNDERGRADUATE HANDBOOK.

The Undergraduate 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. You can always find the link to the handbook (as well as other useful links) at the top of each Monday Mail in the 'Essential Links' banner.

FINAL YEAR PROJECT.

Information on how the final year project will be assessed have been published on the COMP30030/40 Blackboard page. Please note that this has not yet been officially approved, so we can't guarantee that it will remain unchanged, although we don't expect that to happen.

BLUEDOT FESTIVAL.

The bluedot festival returns to Jodrell Bank Observatory from 20th - 23rd July 2023. The award-winning music, science and culture festival returns to the iconic surroundings of Jodrell Bank. Find out ticket information including camping options on the bluedot website along with details of the full line-up of artists, speakers and scientists.

QUBERT WORKSHOP - Join us for this talk where we delve into the land of tuning- where code,

operating system tweaks, hardware optimizations, and other strategies mix. It’s not just gaming… understand how we squeeze every ounce of performance out of a machine to process millions of messages a second at nano-second latencies as we demystify the world of electronic trading. You will hear from Pak Chiu and Jennifer Tirok who are current Manchester students that are on placement at QRT as technologists. They will share what financial services careers are like from their points of view and offer a window into life at the fastest growing and best performing quant hedge fund over the last few years. Followed by some insights into our opportunities, our interview process and how you can apply. Plus you will get your hands on a bunch of free epic QRT merch too. Our journey has just begun so don’t miss this! Do check out their website for more career-related information! Join us in Kilburn Collab 1 on 8th February from 4pm until finished. See you all there!!

WEEKLY WELLBEING EVENTS.

You can find out more about wellbeing in the University here, or view and book wellbeing events via the Student Support Wellbeing Calendar wepgage*, as well as the University Residents website**. There are a number of wellbeing events happening this week:

Monday: Roller Disco with the SU*
- The Roller Disco returns for another incredible party featuring.
.. roller skating, music & dancing! Get your skates on and start boogie-ing.
Tuesday: Yoga Breakfast
- Come down and enjoy a 30 minute yoga wake-up for your mind and body followed by breakfast in St Peter's House.
Suitable for all levels. More information on the St Peter's House website.
Wellbeing Wednesday: Meditation with Muse
- Try some mindfulness meditation practices using Muse headbands.
They provide real-time feedback on your brain activity and heart rate.
Thursday: Mindfulness at St Peter's House - Explore how mindfulness can soothe the nervous system, acknowledging what's real for us moment-by-moment. More information on the St Peter's House website.
Friday: Friday social with the International Society
- Come along and meet new friends or have a catch up over tea,
coffee and biscuits!

LEVELLING UP MATHS FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE.

Steve Pettifer writes: If you're a 2nd year BSc student or 3rd year MEng student and would like to support disadvantaged young people get the A-levels they need to access Computer Science undergraduate degree programmes, then this opportunity might be for you. The Department of Computer Science has signed up to a new scheme run by the British Computer Society that provides A-level students from local schools and colleges with online tutors to help them with their computer science and maths studies. We want to recruit up to six students to act as tutors. You will work for a 14 month period (in school term-time), from March 2023 until April 2024, and earn £15 per hour. The tutoring will involve working with 4 or 5 A-level Maths students for one hour a week. The sessions will be online. There will be approximately 32 hours of contact time over the 14 month period. You will also be paid for training and preparation and be given a graphics tablet to help with drawing diagrams and mathematical notation. We will arrange DBS checks and you will be supplied with all the materials. Materials have been supplied by the London Mathematical Society and British Computer Society and we will be working in partnership with the The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, the Greater Manchester Learning Partnership, Maths Hubs, the Advanced Maths Support Programme, Manchester Metropolitan University and Salford University. If you would like to apply for this role then please complete this form by 5pm Friday 17th Feb. If you have any questions about the role please email steve.pettifer@manchester.ac.uk.

STUDENT VOLUNTEERING WEEK.

Next week, 13th - 19th February sees the return of Student Volunteering Week, where the University teams up with the Students' Union to recognise our student volunteers and to encourage others to give it a go. A number of activities and events are scheduled throughout the week, which you can get involved in, from gardening workshops to packing period products to be distributed to homeless women. If you’ve been thinking of volunteering, or you’re just not sure if volunteering is your thing – Student Volunteering Week is a great, no-pressure way to explore the benefits of volunteering. It’s great for you, your CV and the community! If you’re already one of our student volunteers don’t forget this week is also about celebrating everything you do. We want to shout about your massive commitment to helping others – so you can share your own volunteering story on our social media channels @uomvolunteering and spread the love for volunteering.

VODAFONE THINK BIG,

THEN BIGGER COMPETITION. Rohan Joshi (Year 3, CS) writes: Enter Vodafone’s Think Big, Then Bigger competition to stand a chance to win amazing prizes, including a Tech Bundle, and mentorship!

Stage 1 - Take the short quiz to win a £50 Love2Shop voucher (Including brands like Amazon, Asos & Nike)!!!
Stage 2 - Answer the question: "If you were in Vodafone's innovation team, how would you take technology further?" - This is a 200 word submission.
Stage 3 - From stage 2, 5 finalists will be invited to the virtual event to network, listen to presentations, and present their ideas to the Vodafone team.

A grand prize will be awarded to the winner, plus a personalised mentorship and tech bundle worth £800!! Simply follow this link and enter the competition!!

SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING UNDERGRADUATE SUMMER INTERNSHIP SCHEME.

We are delighted to confirm that the School of Engineering Undergraduate Summer Internship Scheme will run this summer, 2023. Internships will be available to Year 2 undergraduate students on a 3- or 4-year programme, and Year 3 undergraduate students on a 4-year programme. This year, we would like you to complete an action prior to submitting your application(s) for the Internship Programme. In previous years, the quality of CVs submitted has been variable and we would therefore like you to complete the 'Get CV Ready Pathway' in CareerConnect to give yourself the best possible chance of being shortlisted for the project(s) of your choice. You can do this any time between now and when you apply, but we would encourage you not to leave it until the last minute. Once you have submitted a CV that achieves 70/100 or more (Activity 2) and you have indicated that you have completed the Pathway (Activity 3), this will be viewable by the Careers team within the system. A step-by-step guide has been attached to this email to help you navigate through the process. The Pathway can also be accessed through the Careers Service CareerConnect portal. Once you have completed the Pathway, you will also be eligible to book a CV Review appointment with the Careers Team if you would like further advice on your CV (this is not essential). Please complete the CV Pathway BEFORE submitting your application(s) to the SoE UG Summer Internship Programme. Please note that although we will be checking whether you have completed this, your CV Pathway scores will not be considered as part of the selection process. Further information regarding the internship and the application opening date will follow towards the end of February. If you have any questions, please contact soe.studentexperience@manchester.ac.uk.

UCU STRIKE ACTION.

Continued strike action by members of the University and College Union (UCU) will take place on the following dates:

Week 2 – Thursday 9th and Friday 10th February 2023
Week 3 – Tuesday 14th, Wednesday 15th and Thursday 16th February 2023
Week 4 – Tuesday 21st, Wednesday 22nd and Thursday 23rd February 2023
Week 5 – Monday 27th and Tuesday 28th February and Wednesday 1st and Thursday 2nd March 2023
(No action week commencing Monday 6 March)
Week 6 – Thursday 16th and Friday 17th March 2023
Week 7 – Monday 20th, Tuesday 21st and Wednesday 22nd March 2023.

The University will remain open during the periods of the strike action, however, some face-to-face teaching activities, such as lectures, examples classes, labs etc, may be affected. You can find out more information about why staff are striking on the UCU website.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

The deadline for sending in Monday Mail items: 12:00 (noon) every Friday. Just contact Paul.

Welcome to Gareth’s Puzzle Corner, this is your weekly fix of brain teasers and logic puzzles. You are given 4 different puzzles to tackle. One is an easier Sudoku, the second is a more challenging Sudoku, the third is a different form of logic puzzle and finally we have a chess puzzle for you. I hope you enjoy the puzzles and if you have any puzzles you wish to feature or ideas for Puzzle Corner then please get in touch.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - Mean Samurai by JayForty

Each of the coloured areas and the centre 4x4 is a 4x4 sudoku grid using four of the digits 1-9. Different areas may use different digits. Adjacent digits along a green line must differ by at least 5. A pink line contains a set of consecutive numbers, in any order. (In green, there are two separate lines that cross). Digits along an arrow sum to the digit in that arrow's circle. Cells separated by a black dot contain digits in a 1:2 ratio (ie one digit will be double the other). Cells separated by an X contain digits that sum to 10.

Bonus Puzzle - Dotchi Loop by Otto Janko

Draw a singe closed loop in the grid which passes through a cell at most once, but does not necessarily pass through all cells. The sections of the loop run horizontally and vertically between the centers of orthogonally adjacent cells. The Loop must pass through all white circles and must not pass through any black circle. Within each region , the loop must either turn in all white circles or go straight through all white circles.

Chess Puzzle - Caberoglu Vs. Milanovic, 2018

Drag and drop the White pieces to win the match.

Answers to the Previous Week

You can view the answers to last week’s puzzles here.

Week 1 • Monday 30 January 2023 • #22.16

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Good morning UG! It’s Monday 30th January 2023, and the start of semester 2. Hopefully, you got through your exams okay and now ready to get started all over again! As this is a new semester, then you have a new teaching timetable to follow. Please keep an eye on your timetable as changes may be made over the next couple of weeks as course unit enrolment settles down, and we assign students to practical sessions to ensure there are no clashes. Don’t forget that the deadline to select course units is Friday 10th February 2023 (see below). Please note that the emails used to contact student support in the Department have changed (see below).

On Tuesday two alumni of the Department, Peter Sutton and Lloyd Henning, will present their award winning show “Robot Chef”, an interactive experience combining tech, music, and comedy. If you are free then I highly recommend attending, everyone is welcome (see below).

Have a good week, on with today’s news … where we welcome back Gareth’s Puzzle Corner after its Christmas break.

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

CHANGES TO STUDENT SUPPORT EMAIL ADDRESS.

From January, there will be new email addresses to communicate with Teaching, Learning and Student Experience teams in the School (The "Student Support Hub"). The new email addresses are as follows:

soe.hub@manchester.ac.uk: general queries, advice on University policies and services.
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.appealsandconduct@manchester.ac.uk: academic appeals, malpractice and student complaints.

MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES.

The deadline for applying for mitigating circumstances for semester one (this includes coursework and examinations) is TODAY at 4pm (Monday 30th January 2023). If you would like to discuss your circumstances, or need help with your application, please don't hesitate to contact the Department Welfare Team, or speak to your year tutor (details below).

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Tuesday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Wednesday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.80
Year 3/4 (not CM): Tim Morris. Open hour: Thursday 10:00 - 11:00, Kilburn 2.107
CM (all years): Andrea Schalk. Open hour: Tuesday 13:00 - 14:00, 2.103
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Tuesday 09:00 - 10:00, IT119.

PASS1.

The PASS1 team (Pranav Aggarwal (Y3, CSwIE), Nikola Radulov (Y3, AIwIE), Ahmed Soliman (Y3, CS), and Nathan Taylor (Y3, CS4)) write: Greetings everyone! We are excited to announce that PASS1 is officially back in action for Semester 2. Our peer-led study sessions will continue to take place in your allocated rooms at 12pm on Wednesday or as arranged by your PASS Leaders. With the start of teaching activities, we understand that many of you may have concerns about module selection. We invite you to attend our PASS sessions and take advantage of the opportunity to receive guidance and advice from experienced second-year students. We look forward to continuing our support and assisting you with any questions or queries that may arise. For PASS1 Leaders - Debriefs are starting again at 1pm, as you know it. See you then!

PASS2.

Ingy Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) and Nadine Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) write: Hello from the PASS 2 team! We hope you all had a nice Christmas break and congrats on finishing your exams! This week we will be discussing course unit selection. If there are any modules you are unsure about this semester, come along to the session! As usual PASS 2 will be Thursday 2 February, 12:00-13:00 in Collab. See you there!

CHANGES TO THE DEPARTMENT WELLBEING TEAM.

Welcome to Ben Herbert who has joined the Department Welfare Team. Ben has worked at the University in other departments and roles, and is bringing lots of knowledge and experience with him. Aisling Bentham has also joined us, from a role outside of the University and will be answering some of your email queries. Guy Malkin, who some of you will have had contact with previously, has moved to another role in a different Faculty in the University.

WELFARE TEAM EMAIL ADDRESS.

The email address for the Department Welfare Team has changed and is now soe.wellbeing@manchester.ac.uk. When contacting the team please state your student id, department and whether you want a one to one meeting or a call. We can also help with your queries about mitigating circumstances, DASS registration, interruptions and other support that is available to you. You can also call into the Student Hub in Engineering Building A to see one of us or our colleagues with any query.

NATIONAL STUDENT SURVEY.

The National Student Survey (NSS) launches this week, which offers final year students the opportunity to reflect on your time at Manchester. Your feedback is important to us and can help us improve what we do. NSS is anonymised, so you can give your open, honest feedback. We want your views! All students eligible to complete NSS will receive an email this week from Ipsos Mori (an external company appointed by the UK Government to run NSS) with a link to complete the survey. There’s no need to wait, you can complete NSS directly via the NSS website. As a thank you for your time, every student who takes part in the NSS 2023 can enter a prize draw to win one of 17 prizes:

1 x iPad Air
2 x £200 voucher
2 x £100 voucher
4 x £50 voucher
4 x £25 voucher
4 x Graduation Day package

Additionally, for each response submitted the University will also make a £2 charitable donation, split equally between the following good causes:

REFRESHERS WEEK.

The University and the Students’ Union are holding a number of events over the next couple of weeks to welcome you back after the Christmas break and help you to settle back into life in the University, including a Refreshers Fair, trips, Silent Disco, Roller Disco etc. You can find out more information on the University Welcome Webpages, or on the Students’ Union Welcome Refreshers webpage.

COURSE UNIT CHOICES.

The deadline for choosing/changing your Semester 2 course units on the University system is 3pm Friday 10th 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. See full details and instructions. Any changes after this date will not be permitted. Please note that some units may have a maximum enrolment capacity (COMP22712 and COMP33312). If your choices do not meet the requirements for your degree programme, or you do not have the required prerequisites for a course unit, then you will be required to change them. If you have any issues or need help, then please contact the student hub.

DEADLINES CHART.

The coursework deadlines chart is in the process of being updated to reflect the deadlines for semester 2 course units. Please note: the deadlines shown are for indication purposes only and may be subject to change. Only SPOT indicates up-to-date information on deadlines, so please use SPOT to confirm deadlines.

EXPERIENCE THE ROBOT CHEF.

Join Peter Sutton and Lloyd Henning from foxdogstudios.com this Tuesday 31st of January at 1pm in Lecture Theatre A, Engineering Building A, for their award winning interactive DIY robotic kitchen. They've strapped motors and magnets to real cooking equipment so you can control the show from your phone. Connect to their WiFi, load a website, draw yourself a little cartoon character and, by the magic of AR and the joystick on your screen, move your virtual character around the real kitchen and operate the equipment. Move a pan with a wooden tractor, ignite a stove with a taser, and add a sausage with a cannon. Foxdog Studios' Robot Chef: the best worst way to cook a meal. Pete and Lloyd both studied Computer Science at The University of Manchester and will be kicking off our series of lectures throughout semester two by distinguished alumni and special guests from our community as part of COMP101. These lectures take place Tuesday at 1pm in the engineering building. All welcome, not just COMP101 students. Please note that, for copyright reasons, these lectures are NOT recorded, so if you can't make the live lecture we can't currently make a recording available.

WEEKLY WELLBEING EVENTS.

Monday: Welcome back for commuter students*- Grab a free hot drink/snack, meet other students who live off campus and check out the Dover Street Lounge for commuting students. No booking required.
Tuesday: Winter warmers*- Breakfast is said to be the most important meal of the day. Head over to the Atrium in University Place from 8:30am to get warm and receive a free breakfast.
Wednesday: Meet Qwell*- The University's online mental health support provider Qwell, will have representatives at a stand in the AGLC. Come along to find out more about this service.
Thursday: Reconnect*- Want to meet new people this semester? Drop in to try out fun activities, speak to the Social Prescribers and discover ways to get more involved in Semester 2. No need to book, just drop in.
Friday: Meditation with Muse*- Have a go at some mindfulness meditation practices using our multi-sensor Muse headbands, which provide real-time feedback on your brain activity and heart rate.

THE EFFECT OF TRAINING AND BRAIN SIMULATION ON VISUAL SEARCH PERFORMANCE.

We are recruiting individuals to take part in a study investigating whether we can enhance cognitive performance by applying a weak current on your scalp, using a method called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). This experiment has three components: an MRI scan (about 30 min), two EEG recording sessions (each lasting about 2 hours), and five training sessions (each lasting about 2 hours and spread across five days) during which tDCS will be used for some participants. So, your total time commitment will be 15 hours across a period of about 10 days. We realise that this is a considerable commitment therefore you will be reimbursed for your time. Contact: braintrain@manchester.ac.uk. You can find further information on study here.

CLYDE & CO GLOBALLY CONNECTED COMPETITION.

Rohan Joshi (Year 3, CS) writes: Clyde & Co pride themselves on their global outlook. Through their Globally Connected Competition, they want to give YOU the opportunity to travel and become inspired by the world around you. Does winning a £1000 Flight Voucher to a Destination of your choice seem exciting? Also, do you want to hear about Amazing Graduate Opportunities with a dynamic employer with offices in 60+ locations worldwide? If so, follow this link to enter our Clyde & Co Globally Connected Competition and be in with a chance to win a £1000 Flight Voucher.

UCU STRIKE ACTION.

The University and College Union (UCU) have announced that strike action by its members will take place on the following dates:

Week 1 – Wednesday 1st February 2023
Week 2 – Thursday 9th and Friday 10th February 2023
Week 3 – Tuesday 14th, Wednesday 15th and Thursday 16th February 2023
Week 4 – Tuesday 21st, Wednesday 22nd and Thursday 23rd February 2023
Week 5 – Monday 27th and Tuesday 28th February and Wednesday 1st and Thursday 2nd March 2023
(No action week commencing Monday 6 March)
Week 6 – Thursday 16th and Friday 17th March 2023
Week 7 – Monday 20th, Tuesday 21st and Wednesday 22th March 2023.

So, the first day of action will take place on Wednesday this week. The University will remain open during the periods of the strike action, however, some teaching activities, such as lectures, may be affected. You can find out more information about why staff are striking on the UCU website.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

The deadline for sending in Monday Mail items: 12:00 (noon) every Friday. Just contact Paul.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - Foggy Minefield by Albin Bernhardsson

Normal sudoku rules apply. The grid is covered mostly in darkness. Placing correct digits in cells will illuminate more of the grid. Digits must not repeat within a cage, and must sum to the given total. The given total is always in the uppermost, leftmost cell in the cage. All cells which correctly show the number of adjacent nines (including diagonally) are marked with circles. Bonus Hint: Remember all of the rules, I got stuck for a while because I forgot to use all of the rules.

Bonus Puzzle - Starbattle by Nyancharov

In each row, column, and area of the diagram, fill in as many stars as indicated for each puzzle. Cells with stars cannot touch each other orthogonally or diagonally .

Chess Puzzle - Pert Vs. McClement, 2022

Drag and drop the White pieces to win the match.

Answers to the Previous Week

You can view the answers to the quiz questions from week 12 of semester 1 here.

Exams Week 2 • Monday 23 January 2023 • #22.15

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Good morning. It’s Monday 23rd January 2023, and it’s the 2nd week of the semester 1 exams. I hope your exams are going well! Teaching resumes next week with the start of semester 2 teaching period, so your personal timetable should now show 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.

Don’t forget that Monday Mail is here to celebrate your successes and achievements. If you have any news you’d like to let CS UG students know about (such as your success at a Hackathon) then please let me know.

Have a good week, on with today’s news …
Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

The Counselling Service. The University counselling service is free to students and can offer help and support with a range of personal issues. Support is provided through a range of activities including;

Confidential one to one appointments
Workshops
Online support materials and self-help tools
Access to services, such as Health Assured and Qwell.

You can refer yourself to the counselling service by booking an appointment online. Remember you can always contact the Department welfare team, who are are always available to offer any help or advice at any time.

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

Manchester Student Homes & the Accommodation Office. It’s probably time to start thinking about your accommodation for next year. Manchester Student Homes is a free, University-run housing service for students who can offer independent housing advice. They can help you search for the perfect student home and put you in contact with accredited landlords. Alternatively if you’re thinking of staying in Halls next year, applications close on Wednesday 15th February 2023 via the UoM Accommodation Office. Halls are also available for short term stay over the summer vacation period – see their website for more details.

MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES.

The deadline for applying for mitigating circumstances for semester one (this includes coursework and examinations) is 4pm Monday 30th January 2023. Further information on mitigating circumstances can be found on the Department intranet pages here. We also provide some guidance on mitigating circumstances in Blackboard, including videos explaining the mitigating circumstances process. The undergraduate handbook also contains detailed information about the mitigating circumstances process and how the Department handles applications, along with the likely recommendations that the mitigating circumstances committee will make. If you would like to discuss your circumstances, or need help with your application, please don't hesitate to contact the Department Welfare Team, or speak to your year tutor (details below).

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.
Make the most of safety apps: There are so many apps to give you extra peace of mind. Kitestring is an SMS service that checks up on you and alerts your friends if you don’t respond. There’s also My SafetiPin, which is designed to keep women safe, and uses your GPS location to help calculate the best routes from A to B. Check out this article for more information.
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 and our latest campaign, It’s Never OK.
Looking after yourself this winter: We know that winter can bring its own challenges. If you’re struggling, please reach out and explore the services available to you which we’ve put together in one place in this article or check out help available via our student support website for more info on how to keep yourself safe and look after yourself during winter.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

The Year Tutors are here to support you if you need any help and advice. During the exam period the Year Tutors will not be running a weekly open hour. If you need help, or you would like to arrange a meeting, then please contact your year tutor by email:

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall.
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed.
Year 3/4 (not CM): Tim Morris.
CM (all years): Andrea Schalk.

UCU STRIKE ACTION.

The University and College Union (UCU) have announced that the first one day strike will take place on Wednesday 1st February. The University will remain open during the periods of the strike action, however, some teaching activities, such as lectures, may be affected. You can find out more information about why staff are striking on the UCU website.

EXAM BREAKFAST.

Don’t go into exams on an empty stomach! Take some time to chill, enjoy a snack and have a chat on the ground floor of Engineering Building A. You can get an exam breakfast weekdays, 8:30am - 10:00am, during the exam period (16h - 27th January). Don’t forget to bring your own mug for drinks!

SEMESTER ONE EXAMS.

Your timetable for semester 1 examinations should be available in your personal timetable in My.Manchester. Support and advice for exams can be found on the central exams website. For more information about the examination period please see our general exam guidance on Blackboard. If you have any questions about your exams then please contact the student hub. If you miss an exam due to mitigating circumstance, then you should follow the guidance given above and contact the student hub immediately to let them know of your absence.

COURSE UNIT CHOICES.

The deadline for choosing/changing your Semester 2 course units on the University system is 3pm Friday 10th February. Any changes after this date will not be permitted. If you haven't done so already, please select any optional course units urgently, because the size of a course unit cohort has implications on room bookings and we need to finalise the timetable ASAP. See full details and instructions. Note that some units have a maximum enrolment capacity (COMP22712 and COMP33312), which you will not be able to enrol on once the cap has been reached. Please note that if your choices do not meet the requirements for your degree programme, or you do not have the required prerequisites for a course unit, then you will be required to change them. If you have any issues or need help, then please contact the student hub.

QUBERT WORKSHOP.

Join us for this talk where we delve into the land of tuning- where code, operating system tweaks, hardware optimizations, and other strategies mix. It’s not just gaming… understand how we squeeze every ounce of performance out of a machine to process millions of messages a second at nano-second latencies as we demystify the world of electronic trading. You will hear from Pak Chiu and Jennifer Tirok who are current Manchester students that are on placement at QRT as technologists. They will share what financial services careers are like from their points of view and offer a window into life at the fastest growing and best performing quant hedge fund over the last few years. Followed by some insights into our opportunities, our interview process and how you can apply. Plus you will get your hands on a bunch of free epic QRT merch too. Our journey has just begun so don’t miss this! Do check out their website for more career-related information! Join us in Kilburn Collab 1 on 8th February from 4pm until finished. See you all there!!

BLOOMBERG BPUZZLED.

The event will be held on 31 January 2023, from 2:30pm - 6:00 pm in 6.207 Uni Place. You will be solving logic puzzles based on cities all around the world in teams of up to 4 people. And to top it all off, the winner of this challenge will get a free trip to Bloomberg’s headquarters in London. If you are interested, please register using this link or by scanning the QR code below, latest by 25th January 2023.

WEEKLY WELLBEING EVENTS.

Monday: Lunar New Year Celebration*
- Join ResLife in Grove House as they welcome in the Year of the Rabbit at this Lunar New Year Celebration!
Decorations and snacks provided.
Tuesday: Exam Preparation & Wellbeing Session*
- The ResLife Team will be holding a session with tips on exam preparation.
Come down to chat about wellbeing and pick up some snacks and study equipment!
Wednesday: Pick up a free water bottle - Come down to the main library to chat to the student wellbeing team and find out about the support services available. You will also be able to pick up a free water bottle to help you stay hydrated this exam season.
Thursday: Meet Guide Dogs!
- Take a break from exams and de-stress with some furry friends!
The Guide Dogs organisation will be making a visit to the Students Union. Find out more via the Wellbeing Calendar.
Friday: Friday social with the International Society
- Come along and meet new friends or have a catch up over tea,
coffee and biscuits!

APPLY FOR TO BE STUDENTS' UNION EXEC.

Applications for Students’ Union Exec. Officer roles are due to close on 13th February. As computer science students you can apply to the scheme and work the first year as a dedicated Science and Engineering Officer. Exec Officers are the elected leaders of Manchester Students’ Union. As an Exec Officer you could:

Meet with senior University leaders, the Mayor and the government to represent students and improve their student experience
Work with students to campaign on issues that matter to them
Network with other SUs across the country to learn from them and improve the student experience nationally
Represent students on national TV and radio, create blogs, host award shows and organise events
Lead major SU campaigns like Reclaim the Night and Cost of Living

Better yet, the 23/24 Officers will be paid over £22k for the year and get 30 days holiday + closure days! An Exec Officer role is full-time, salaried position – just like any job – and you can apply at whatever stage you’re at in your studies. Check out the roles and more information here.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

The deadline for sending in Monday Mail items: 12:00 (noon) every Friday. Just contact Paul.

Exams Week 1 • Monday 16 January 2023 • #22.14

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Good morning UG! It’s Monday 16th January 2023. Welcome back, and Happy New Year! I hope you managed to take some time to relax and take a break over the Christmas vacation.

The Semester 1 examinations start this week and run over the next two weeks, finishing on Friday 27th January. Almost all exams will be held on-campus, so please make sure that you are familiar with your exam timetable and the location of your scheduled exams. If you have any issues on the day of an exam then please contact the student hub immediately. I wish you the very best of luck in your exams!

Have a good week, on with today’s news …

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

DASS. The Disability Advisory and Support Service (DASS) at the University 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, as well as 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. If you would like one-to-one help and advice, then you can contact the Department’s welfare team.

MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall.
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed.
Year 3/4 (not CM): Tim Morris.
CM (all years): Andrea Schalk.

KNEEBONE ACORN BURSARY SUCCESS.

Congratulations to Max Beck-Jones (CS, Year 2) who is the recipient of this year’s Kneebone Acorn Bursary award, sponsored by the Kneebone Family and Arm in memory of one of the Department’s past students, Kate Kneebone. The panel was very impressed with the strength of the applicants this year, so thank you to all those who applied. It’s a shame that we are restricted to a single award. Max will receive a £500 bursary, as well as being given the opportunity to discuss a placement at Arm. Congratulations Max!

UNICS NEWS.

Hello all, we hope you enjoyed your Christmas break. Bloomberg has come up with an amazing puzzle competition called Bpuzzled. The event will be held on 31 January 2023, from 2:30pm - 6:00 pm, in room 6.207 Uni Place. You will be solving logic puzzles based on cities all around the world in teams of up to 4 people. And to top it all off, the winner of this challenge will get a free trip to Bloomberg’s headquarters in London. If you are interested, please register through here or by scanning the QR code below, latest by 25th January 2023. We hope to see you there and of course,we wish you all the best for your exams! :)

SECURITY ON CAMPUS.

If you are in a University building revising, then it’s important to take regular breaks. However, all buildings on campus are public buildings (including the Kilburn building) and, as such, are open to the general public during normal working hours. As there are fewer people in buildings during the exam period, it is vitally important that you do not leave your belongings (bag, phone, laptop etc) lying around unattended, as thefts can easily take place from inside any building. If you need to leave, even just for a bathroom break, then ask a friend to look after your belongings, or take them 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.

EXAM BREAKFAST.

UCU STRIKE ACTION.

The University and College Union (UCU) have announced that members plan to take 18 days of strike action before April, in the continued dispute relating to pay and working conditions and pensions. The dates of the strike action have not yet been announced. The University will remain open during the periods of the strike action, however, some teaching activities, such as lectures, may be affected. There will also be a marking and assessment boycott from April unless the disputes are settled. You can find out more information, and the reasons why staff are striking, on the UCU website.

EXAM OPENING HOURS AT ENG BUILDINGS A & B.

Engineering Building A and B will be open for longer until Friday, 27th January to allow students to make use of the range of study spaces available. Opening hours for Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE) students during the exam and assessment period are as follows:

Monday to Friday, 8am to 10pm.
Saturday and Sunday, 8am to 10pm.

Please make sure you are prepared to leave the building at least 15 minutes before it closes to give you time to pack away your belongings and make your way to the nearest exit. Please note, non-FSE students will not have swipe card access after 6pm Monday to Friday, or over weekends. The opening hours of the Kilburn Building will remain the same.

SEMESTER ONE EXAMS.

COURSE UNIT CHOICES.

The deadline for choosing/changing your Semester 2 course units on the University system is 3pm Friday 10th 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. You can find full details and instructions here. Please be aware that some units have a maximum enrolment capacity (COMP22712 and COMP33312). If your choices do not meet the requirements for your degree programme, or you do not have the required prerequisites for a course unit, then you will be required to change them. If you have any issues or need help, then please contact the student hub.

WHAT TO EXPECT IN EXAMS.

Being prepared for your exams is important if you want to achieve your potential. Below we have produced some advice when it comes to exams:

Exam Preparation Tips:

Visit the exam location before the day of the exam, so that you know where you are going.
Regularly check your timetable to make sure the date/time/location of the exam has not changed.
Wear warm comfy clothes for the exam.
Get a good night's sleep before, so you wake ready and focused for the exam.
Make sure you have everything you need - pen, student card, calculator (where allowed) etc.
Have something to eat beforehand and take a bottle of water with you - we will be holding revision breakfasts throughout the exam period (see above).

What to expect on the day:

Exams can take place in a lecture theatre, a lab space, a sports hall or a dedicated exam hall. Know where the exam is taking place and arrive in plenty of time.
When you go in the exam room you will be shown where to put your bags (you cannot take you bag with you).
Make sure you know your student number and where to sit, if you are unsure ask a staff member.
Bring your student card or alternative ID.
If it's a paper-based exam, then the exam invigilators will instruct you what you need to fill out on the papers. If it's an online exam, then you will be told what you need to do. Make sure you have your university username and password to hand.
You will be notified when you have 15 minutes left.
At the end of the exam, if it's a paper-based exam, the exam invigilators will collect your papers. They will instruct you on when and how to leave.

GOOGLE DEVELOPER STUDENT CLUBS.

Registration for the Google Solution Challenge is open! To find out more and to RSVP for the kick-off event, then please register using this link. Introducing the Google Solution Challenge! How can technology help us build a better world? The Solution Challenge is Google's global annual contest that invites all Google Developer Student Club members (including you!) to develop solutions to real world problems utilising Google technologies. This year’s Solution Challenge asks participants to solve for one or more of the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Since 2019, thousands of students have participated in the Solution Challenge and have coded their way to a better world! The top 50 Global Finalists and top winners receive mentorship from Google, cash prizes, swag, besides a great project (and story) to add to their portfolios! For more information, see the event webpage, and learn stories from the previous editions on the Google Developers blog! We look forward to seeing many of you!

Registration officially opens: January 11, 2023
Kickoff Event: January 18, 2023
Submissions accepted: March 17 2023 - March 31 2023

Follow us on Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | Discord to get updated. Visit our website and follow us for the latest events.

BCSWOMEN LOVELACE COLLOQUIUM 2023.

All women and non-binary students of computing and related subjects are invited to enter one of the poster contests at the BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium, which will be held on Wednesday 12 April 2023, at Sheffield University. To enter the poster contest, you will have to write a 250 word abstract on the topic of your poster. The abstract deadline is Monday February 6th 2023. Your abstract can be on any computing topic you like. You can find out more information here. Please submit your abstract using this online form. The best 100 or so abstracts received will get to present at the event, and we hope to be able to organise travel reimbursement, and also accommodation for those students who live too far from the venue.

CHINESE NEW YEAR TREASURE HUNT AT ENG BUILDING A.

The Chinese New Year is on the 22nd of January, bringing us into the Year of the Water Rabbit. To celebrate this occasion, we'll be running a Treasure Hunt from the Student Support Hub in Engineering Building A on Friday the 20th of January, with chocolate prizes to be won! All students are welcome to attend. Follow our Instagram page at @uomcompsci for more information or simply show up on the day and try and find any red envelopes with prizes hidden around the building!

ATLAS SEMINAR - INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS IN CITIES - ASPECTS OF VEHICULAR NETWORKS AND EDGE COMPUTING.

Dr Rodolfo Ipolito Meneguette (Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil) will present a seminar on Monday 23rd January 2023, Kilburn 2.19, 12 - 1pm. Abstract: Transportation systems constitute an essential part of modern life and large urban centers. These systems have emerged as major players in enabling the mobility of not only vehicles but also people residing in cities, playing a part in all issues related to mobility within urban environments. Owing to the unprecedented growth of urban centers and the introduction of new services that have emerged as a result of technological advancements, these systems have been increasingly requiring considerable support to manage resources and vehicles. Transportation systems play a role in coordinating vehicle traffic and guaranteeing safety, which involves tackling many challenging issues commonly observed in large urban centers. The advancements and support of information and communication technologies have enabled the design and implementation of transportation solutions, which led to the development of intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) and the provision of many innovative services, such as those related to guaranteeing safety, providing useful information to drivers, enabling greater flow of movement on streets, and avoiding congestion. ITSs combine various technologies and services to optimize urban mobility and reduce both the financial and environmental damage caused by the demand for vehicles in urban centers. Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) is a promising technology supporting ITS services, smart city applications, and urban computing. VEC can provide and manage computational resources closer to vehicles and end-users, providing access to services at lower latency and meeting the minimum execution requirements for each service type.

ATLAS SEMINAR - MODELLING SHAPES AND SURFACES - GEOMETRY MEETS MACHINE LEARNING.

Prof Sayan Mukherjee (Alexander von Humboldt Professor in AI at UL and a Fellow of the Max Planck Society, Professor at Duke University of Statistical Science, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Biostatistics & Bioinformatics) will present a seminar on 1st February 2023, Kilburn Lecture Theatre 1.3, 2pm – 4pm. Abstract: We will consider modeling shapes and fields via topological and lifted-topological transforms. Specifically, we show how the Euler Characteristic Transform and the Lifted Euler Characteristic Transform can be used in practice for statistical analysis of shape and field data. We also state a moduli space of shapes for which we can provide a complexity metric for the shapes. We also provide a sheaf theoretic construction of shape space that does not require diffeomorphisms or correspondence. A direct result of this sheaf theoretic construction is that in three dimensions for meshes, 0-dimensional homology is enough to characterize the shape. We will also discuss Gaussian processes on fiber bundles and applications to evolutionary questions about shapes. Applications in biomedical imaging and evolutionary anthropology will be stated throughout the talk.

WEEKLY WELLBEING EVENTS.

You can find out more about wellbeing in the University here, or see a list of events on the Students' Union website, as well as the University Residents website for activities in Halls. There are a number of wellbeing events happening this week:

Monday: Calm your Brain Workshop - These sessions run by the Counselling and Mental Health Service use guided relaxation to help start your day with a sense of calm. Book via the Wellbeing Calendar.
Tuesday: Exam Preparation & Wellbeing Session - We know that the exam period can feel overwhelming. It's important to know that you're not alone during this time. The ResLife Team will be holding a session with tips on exam preparation. Denmark Road residents only.
Wednesday: Paper Crafting with the International Society - Take a break from revision and join us for an origami event! Learn the art of paper folding to help ease the stress of revision whilst chatting to friends.
Thursday: Find out about Qwell - Qwell provides free, safe and anonymous online mental health support whenever you need it. Come to the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons, chat to staff and find out about the service.
Friday: Meet Guide Dogs! - Take a break from exams and de-stress with some furry friends! The Guide Dogs organisation will be making a visit to the Students Union. Find out more via the Wellbeing Calendar.

LIBRARY SUPPORT FOR EXAMS.

This from Gemma Smith: As we head into the exam and assessment period, it’s good to know that the Library is here to support your revision and preparation. There will be a number of support activities taking place during the exam period:

Workshops: Join one of our workshops offering practical revision support.
Drop-in sessions: You can attend one of our drop-in sessions to ask specific questions and get guidance from the My Learning Essentials team and the Library Student team.
My Learning Essentials online resources: There are a wealth of online resources to support all aspects of your study, but the team have put together specific packages to support you at this time:
- Browse revision resources
- Browse other exam and assessment support resources

LIBRARY OPENING HOURS.

Extended opening until 2am will be available at Main Library during January 2023 and additional study space is available at Prospect House, Booth Street East from 3 to 27 January 2023, 8am to 8pm. You can find opening hours of all library sites on the Library website, which will be kept updated over the assessment period.

LIBRARY FURTHER HELP AND SUPPORT.

To find out more about how the Library can help, visit our exams and assessment support page or chat online to library staff via the website.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

The deadline for sending in Monday Mail items: 12:00 (noon) every Friday. Just contact Paul.

Week 12 • Monday 12 December 2022 • #22.13

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Good morning UG! It’s Monday 12th December 2022, Week 12, and it’s the last week of teaching in semester 1. I hope the semester has gone well for you. It’s certainly gone very quickly!

The course unit surveys open this week, so please provide us with feedback on how things have gone this semester and what we do to improve our teaching (see below). The exam timetable has now been released (see below), so please check when your exams are taking place and put them in your diary! If you are a second year student, then you have until 5pm today to submit your application for the Kneebone Acorn bursary (see below).

This will be the last Monday Mail until the first week of the exam period (w/c 16th January 2023). Enjoy your Christmas break, and have a happy New Year. Make sure you take some time off to relax over the break before you start to prepare for the exams in January. I look forward to seeing you in 2023!

Have a good week, on with today’s news ...

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

EXAMS WELFARE SUPPORT.

This from the Welfare Team: As you are aware, the exams are approaching in January. This can be a challenging time for some of you, so please make use of the Welfare Team. Just contact us by email if you need any help and support. The Counselling and Mental Health Service run regular workshops all year round to help you get ready for exams, manage your current coursework or tasks and they also provide general wellbeing tips. You can find information on workshops you can attend, as well as useful information about workload management, both for exams and throughout the year. We hope these resources help, we will provide further information and drop-ins throughout the year.

MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES DEADLINE.

The deadline for submitting mitigating circumstances for semester 1 is 4pm, 30th January 2023. We will not accept applications after this date. You can submit mitigating circumstances by filling out this form. The UG handbook provides information on the mitigating circumstances process and how we handle submissions, you can also find further information in Mitigating Circumstances page in Blackboard. 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 Welfare Team or your Year Tutor (see below).

REGISTER WITH A GP.

Whether you are a new or existing student it is important that you register with a Manchester GP (general practitioner - local or family doctors in the UK). GPs provide a range of non-emergency services by appointment - including assessments, medication prescriptions, vaccinations and referrals to other medical specialists. This includes support for your mental health, as well as your physical health.

You can register with The Robert Darbishire Practice, which is located in Crawford House near south campus (shown on the Campus map here as Building 31), using their online portal. Find out more about the service on the Robert Darbishire Practice website.
Alternatively, you can 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.

If you do not register with a GP and you need to apply for Mitigating Circumstances, then you will not have evidence or a record of your illness. Failure to provide evidence with an application will likely result in a rejected application by the Mitigating Circumstances panel. As always, if you have been unwell recently or you are struggling and would like to organise a confidential conversation about your situation, then please contact the welfare team.

STUDENT SUPPORT OVER CHRISTMAS.

If you are staying in Manchester over the Christmas break, there are a number events happening, as well as support available if you need it:

Events for University of Manchester Accommodation residents during the Christmas break
Wellbeing Events: wellbeing activities that are taking place across the University
Christmas and New Year Get Together: 28th Dec 2022 11-1
Counselling Workshops (during the lead-up to Christmas but not during the break)
Mental Health Self-Help Resources
https://www.counsellingservice.manchester.ac.uk/buildyourmhexpertise/
24 Hour Helplines
- Qwell: provides free, safe and anonymous online mental health support whenever you need it
- Health Assured 24/7 Helpline: Freephone 0800 028 3766
- The Samaritans 24/7 Helpline: Freephone 116 123
- Greater Manchester Mental Health 24/7 Helpline: Freephone 0800 953 0285

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Wednesday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.80
Year 3/4 (not CM): Tim Morris. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.107
CM (all years): Andrea Schalk. Open hour: Tuesday 17:00 - 18:00, Online only
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, Online only

Over the Christmas break you can contact your year tutor by email. However, please be aware that staff will be taking time off, so may not respond immediately.

STUDENT-STAFF LIAISON COMMITTEE.

This from Tom Carroll: The next SSLC Meeting takes place this coming Wednesday 14th December. If you would like to voice your opinion on a matter, raise an issue, or you want to give some positive feedback, such as good teaching practice, then please contact one of your reps before the meeting. We are particularly interested in your views on Assessment, Feedback, and on Blended Learning in the Department. You can find a list of your reps in the Blackboard UG Community pages.

1ST YEAR POSTER SESSION:

Uli Sattler writes: Last Friday we held the annual COMP10120 Poster Session in the foyer of Engineering Building A. The session was great fun and attracted loads of interested visitors with good questions and suggestions. We received a number of positive comments from colleagues expressing how impressed they were by the range of ideas presented, and the qualities of the posters, so well done to everybody involved! We also had a public vote for the best posters in a range of categories:

The Application with the Best Idea or Concept: Z11 Wavelength: Music brings us closer (Alexander Tate, Jonny Breeze, Zak Mitchell, Abhishek Vijay, Yuvan Ganesan, Atsuhiro Tsukata, and Matthew O-Farrelly)
The most Visually Appealing and Imaginative Poster: Y13 Bee Human - Test Yourself (Christos Efstathiades, Amine El Idrissi, Oluwaniayomi Ogundana, Allen Zhao, Mher Ignatosyan, Yongyan Xie, and Michael Morris)
The most Carefully Thought Through Application and Plan: Z12 StudEats - Anyone can cook, but only the fearless can be great (Kian Davis, Dasharn Dennis, Lewis Murphy, Benjamin White, Jun Han, Yevhenii Voropaiev, and Charlie Allman-Shuttleworth).

SEMESTER ONE EXAMS.

Your personal timetable for semester 1 examinations should be published soon in My Manchester. A composite list of all exams can be found on the central exams website, where you will also find support and advice on how to plan your revision as well as general support. For more information about the examination period please see our General Exam Guidance on Blackboard. If you have any questions about your exams please don’t hesitate to contact the student support office.

COURSE UNIT SURVEYS.

Every semester the University surveys students to ask for feedback on the individual course units taken. The semester one course unit surveys should be opening anytime and usually run for a few weeks. Any feedback provided is anonymous. We do listen to your feedback, and we make changes to our teaching as a result. Staff are also required to provide a response to any issues raised in the feedback, which will be published at a later date. You can find out more information on the University Have Your Say webpages. 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.

LATE FLAG REMOVAL REQUEST.

If you have mitigating circumstances that are short term, for example, you have been unwell with a cold, and this has resulted in you submitting work late, then you can submit a request to have the resulting late flag removed. If you have been unwell for more than 5 working days (or major circumstances have impacted your ability to complete work) then you should submit a mitigating circumstances form, you can find more information on the Department intranet. We have also produced some videos to explain the mitigating circumstances process in Blackboard. The system for requesting the removal of late flags can be accessed via SPOT. Select the appropriate course, in the assessments table, any work submitted late will have a clock icon next to the submitted date. Clicking the clock icon allows you to apply for the removal of a late flag, or links you to the mitigating circumstances page if the work has been submitted more than 5 working days late. The mitigating circumstances team that considers the late flag removal applications meets weekly during the teaching period. You can check the status of your application by clicking the clock icon and clicking the apply link. Any late flag removal applications that are approved will result in the system in the unaffected grade being restored.

EXAMINATION GUIDANCE:

Remember, the examination period will take place in January, and you must be on-campus at this time. We’ve provided advice and guidance regarding timetables, revision, exam technique and what to do if you miss an exam on the UG Community Blackboard page. We will continue to update this material up to the start of the examination period. Please take the time to read this ahead of the exam period. If you have any questions regarding your exams please don’t hesitate to contact the student support office.

FESTIVE CALENDAR AT THE STUDENT HUB.

The Student Support Hub (Engineering Building A, First Floor) will be holding festive activities throughout December as we count down to the Holidays. There is lots going on you can get involved in: enjoying festive food and drink, creating cards and decorations, decorating gingerbread people! Remember the festive period is also about giving so it would be amazing if you could donate to our food bank collection on Thursday 15th Dec. Any non perishable goods are welcome, it could be as simple as a bag of rice or a tin of beans! Thanks for your support, we look forward to seeing you there!

ATLAS SEMINAR:

SCIENCE BEHIND STAR WARS MOVIES. Alain Hostettler and Sam Cordingley from Disney ILM will be visiting the Department on May 3rd, 2023, 2 - 3pm, to present a talk about the science behind the movies. If you are interested in pursuing a role as a graphics engineer, or just fancy meeting them to discuss all things graphics, then this is your chance to meet people working in the field. Come and meet them after the talk and hand in your CV for potential internship and full-time positions. Please RSVP through this EventBrite link and bring your sharp minds to impress them! The location will be shared with those who have RSVPed nearer the time of the presentation. Book now to avoid disappointment!

WIN A £25 LOVE2SHOP VOUCHER.

For an opportunity to win a £25 voucher, all you have to do is take part in our simple two-minute survey to rank the factors that matter most to you in your timetable. Respond with your University email address, by Wednesday, 14 December and we’ll enter you into the prize draw to win a voucher. Read more about the survey and how to take part.

KATE KNEEBONE ACORN BURSARY.

The Kate Kneebone Acorn Bursary is an annual award of £500 funded by the Kneebone family and ARM, which has been awarded since 2013 to commemorate the life of Kate Kneebone, a former student of the department. In addition to the £500 award, the Bursary offers the successful applicant the possibility of discussing an internship placement (which must have an Engineering bias) with ARM in Cambridge. All current Year 2 UG students in the Department are eligible to apply. See full details and how to apply. The deadline for submissions is 5pm (UK time) Monday 12th December (today!). Please return completed application forms by email to Paul Nutter.

CHRISTMAS CLOSURE.

The University will close at 9pm on Thursday 22nd December and will not reopen until 8am on Tuesday 3rd January. There will be no access to the Kilburn Building (and most University buildings) during this period.

LIBRARY OPENING TIMES.

This from Gemma Smith: There will be reduced hours for the Main Library from Saturday, 17th to Thursday, 22nd December 2022:

Monday to Thursday - 8am–8pm
Saturday & Sunday - 9am-5pm

The Main Library will be closed from Friday, 23rd December 2022 until Monday, 2nd January 2023. All other Library sites will be closed from Friday 23rd December 2022 until Monday 2nd January 2023. For full information, read this news article from the Library.

STUDY SPACES.

Study spaces will be available at the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons (AGLC) during the Christmas break. The AGLC will be open from Saturday, 17th December 2022 to Monday, 2nd January 2023:

Monday to Friday - 8am-8pm
Saturday & Sunday – 9am-5pm

However, the AGLC will be closed on Christmas Day (Sunday 25th December 2022) and Boxing Day (Monday 26th December 2022). For full information, read this news article from the Library.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

The deadline for sending in Monday Mail items: 12:00 (noon) every Friday. Just contact Paul.

Welcome to Gareth’s Puzzle Corner, this is your weekly fix of brain teasers and logic puzzles. You are given 4 different puzzles to tackle. One is an easier Sudoku, the second is a more challenging Sudoku, the third is a different form of logic puzzle, and finally we have a chess puzzle for you. I hope you enjoy the puzzles and if you have any puzzles you wish to feature or ideas for Puzzle Corner then please get in touch.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - The Secret by Marty Sears

Normal sudoku rules apply. The digits in each grey region sum to 45. Using different colours, colour 5 separate paths of orthogonally connected cells, each starting and ending at a different grey circle. No cell sits on more than one path (paths must not overlap each other or the grey regions). The digits along each coloured path must also sum to 45. Cells connected by a white dot contain consecutive digits. Not all white dots are necessarily given.

Bonus Puzzle - Mathgrid by puzzlemadness.co.uk

The aim of MathGrid is to move all the clues under the grid in to the grid so that all of the calculations are correct.

Chess Puzzle - L'Ami Vs. Spoelman, 2008

Drag and drop the Black pieces to win the match.

Answers to the Previous Week

The answers to last week's puzzles can be found here.

Week 11 • Monday 5 December 2022 • #22.12

Paul pic

Good morning UG! It’s Monday 5th December 2022 and it’s Week 11, the penultimate week of teaching this semester! Good luck to all first years who are giving their project presentations this week. The 1st year project presentations take place on Friday in Manchester Engineering Building A (more below). Everyone is invited to take a look at the projects proposed by the 1st year tutorial groups, so please attend the poster session if you are free.

If you are a second year, then please don’t forget to consider applying for the Kate Kneebone Acorn Bursary, an annual award in memory of a former student of the Department, Kate Kneebone (details below). The deadline is next Monday, the 12th December.

Have a good week, on with today’s news ... (come on England!)

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

COST OF LIVING SUPPORT.

Over the last couple of months, the University has been working with the Students’ Union to bring you extra support with the rising cost of living. There’s been lots going on, so we’ve recapped the offer below to make sure you don’t miss out:

Two weeks ago, we announced our one-off payment for students.
Back in October we set up dedicated warm spaces on campus for you to hang out, study and relax in. Our five cosy campus spaces are equipped with microwaves, hot water and heating so you don’t have to spend money at home
We’ve also made it easier to apply to our Cost of Living Support Fund, which is open to all students experiencing unexpected financial hardship, for grants between £250 to £2000

We understand that the cost of living crisis is ongoing, and we’ll be continuing to develop our support offer through the year. You can find full details about all the support on offer, including the Students’ Union offer, on our Cost of Living webpages.

DON’T BE A VICTIM OF FRAUD.

At The University of Manchester one of our top priorities is helping you to stay safe. We’ve been made aware of a number of scams that target students to scam them out of their money. Being aware of the types of scams that are currently happening can help you identify when a situation is a scam. We’ve listed some examples on the Student News website and provided information on where to go for advice and support if you think someone is trying to scam you. Neither the Home Office or any police force or legitimate company will ask you to give out your bank details over the phone, transfer funds, or pay a fine. Any caller who asks you to do these things is trying to commit a fraud. Please check out the information provided on the Student News website.

DECEMBER ENGLISH CLASSES.

The University Centre for Academic English (UCAE) is offering a set of standalone workshops throughout December. These workshops will focus on:

Academic Writing (Online Only)
Spoken English (On-Campus Only)

The workshops are available for both non-native English speakers and native speakers, as writing academic English can be challenging for all. UCAE provide a team of experienced tutors who can support you, and boost your confidence to work independently in English. If you would like to attend a workshop, then you will need to register via the UCAE webpage. You can find more information on the range of UCAE workshops to help with your studies on the UCAE website.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Wednesday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.80
Year 3/4 (not CM): Tim Morris. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.107
CM (all years): Andrea Schalk. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.103
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, IT119.

PASS2.

Ingy Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) and Nadine Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) write: Hello from the PASS2 team! We know that last week was tough so for our final session of the semester where we will be hosting a PIZZA PARTY! Come along to Collab 1 on Thursday 8th December 12:00-13:00 to grab a slice and chat! Spaces are LIMITED so please complete this Google Form by Tuesday 6 December at 12:00 to secure your place.

ACHIEVING EQUALITY FOR ALL STUDENTS STARTS WITH YOU.

The University of Manchester is firmly committed to being an open and accessible university that pro-actively seeks out students capable of benefiting from higher education. We are committed to improving retention and attainment rates for all students, as well as supporting progression into graduate level employment or further study. We want to hear from you if you are in years 2, 3 and 4, about your experiences regarding equality of access and support. If you are in Year 2, then you can find out more by filling out this Access & Participation Survey. If you are in Years 3 and 4: then you can find out more by filling out this Access & Participation Survey.

RACE EQUALITY CHARTER.

Share your views ahead of the University’s Race Equality Charter (REC) submission and shape our future commitments. The REC Student Survey is now open for all undergraduate and postgraduate students to share their experiences and views on being part of our University. This survey is for all students, regardless of race or ethnicity and all responses will be completely confidential. Our survey is open until Friday, 9th December, so please take ten minutes before then to share your views. Find out more and complete the survey.

WORK EXPERIENCE BURSARIES.

The University of Manchester Work Experience Bursary Scheme is open for new applications. The scheme offers financial support (up to £1,000) for full time undergraduates of all years to undertake career enhancing work experience. It supports low or unpaid work experience opportunities. Find out more on the Careers Service website.

RAIL STRIKES.

If you travel to campus by train, we’d like to remind you that National Rail services will be disrupted on the following days due to strike action which may affect travel over the next few months:

13 – 14 December
16 – 17 December
3 – 4 January
6 – 7 January

Find out more on Student News website.

1ST YEAR POSTER SESSION:

On December 9th, we will run the annual COMP10120 Poster Session: this week Friday 9th December, 11am-1pm in the Foyer for Engineering A. Each team of 1st year students will present a poster about the web application they are going to build in Semester 2. Please come along and see what this year's 1st years are planning to build, ask them some good questions, and share with them your experience of your first year!

LATE FLAG REMOVAL REQUEST.

EXAMINATION GUIDANCE:

As we rapidly make our way through semester 1, it is worth remembering the examination period will take place in January. We’ve provided advice and guidance regarding timetables, revision, exam technique and what to do if you miss an exam on the UG Community Blackboard page. We will continue to update this material up to the start of the examination period. The examination timetable will be published before the end of teaching (usually mid-December). Please take the time to read this ahead of the exam period. If you have any questions regarding your exams please don’t hesitate to contact Student Support.

WOMEN IN COMPUTER SCIENCE SOCIAL.

Ingy Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) writes: Hi everyone! Hope you are having a great December :) Back by popular demand, to everyone that identifies as a woman, we would like to invite you to our first women in computer science social this year. We know a lot of people enjoyed the socials last year, so we look forward to seeing a few familiar faces this Wednesday! Come and meet new people from undergrads to postgrads, to lecturers, everyone is welcome, find common interests and enjoy food and drink. The social will be in the Atlas room in Kilburn this Wednesday 7th December, 2-3pm. The Atlas room is past the doors after the Mega Lab (1.08 + 1.10). Looking forward to seeing you all there!

CRACKCHESTER WORKSHOP.

This week in Crackchester, we're holding our second workshop on Metasploit and we'll be spending some time looking at how viruses are made and so how we can protect our systems against them. You'll find us in Atlas 1 from 4 - 5 pm on Thursday 8th December. Make sure to get your hoodie designs in over the next few days for a chance to win a free hoodie. We're planning to host a Christmas social at the end of the year, info will be available on our Discord channel.

BPUZZLED BLOOMBERG EVENT.

Join us at Bloomberg’s annual competition where teams of up to 4 use problem solving, creative thinking and teamwork to solve challenging and intricate puzzles. There will be lots of prizes up for grabs so come along to Kilburn Collab 1 on the 7th December, from 2:30 - 6pm.

UNICS MOVIE NIGHT.

We present to you ‘The Imitation Game’ in partnership with Manchester Mind. 100% of all profits raised will be donated to the independent local charity supporting and improving the lives of those with mental health needs because nobody needs to face mental health alone. Bring your friends to Uni Place 2.218 on December 9th at 6:30pm and buy a goody bag, which will include popcorn, crisps, candies and chocolate. You can order your goody bag through the Students’ Union website.

UNICS LAKE DISTRICT TRIP.

Come with us on a day out to the Lake District completing the Rydal-Grasmere circuit. You can purchase tickets through the Students' Union website and make sure you are a member of the society by purchasing your membership, you can sign up through this link. Pick up will be at Kilburn at 8am, returning there by 6pm. There are limited tickets so get yours now and we’d love to see you there!

THE BLAIR PROJECT:

PLANET POSSIBILITY. The Blair Project is an award-winning social enterprise committed to working to engage young people from backgrounds that are underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) through projects in Greater Manchester. Projects include a STEM Activity Truck, science experiment TikToks, and running online STEM clubs. If you want to get involved, then come along, meet them and have a chat to find out more about what they do. An event takes place on Thursday, 8th December, 12pm-2pm (drop in any time), in Engineering A 2A012 (Floor 2, Core 1).

KATE KNEEBONE ACORN BURSARY.

The Kate Kneebone Acorn Bursary is an annual award of £500 funded by the Kneebone family and ARM, which has been awarded since 2013 to commemorate the life of Kate Kneebone, a former student of the department. In addition to the £500 award, the Bursary offers the successful applicant the possibility of discussing an internship placement (which must have an Engineering bias) with ARM in Cambridge. All current Year 2 UG students in the Department are eligible to apply. See full details and how to apply here. The deadline for submissions is 5pm (UK time) Monday 12th December. Please return completed application forms by email.

ROBOTICS TEACHING.

Are you interested in teaching robotics to Year 9 and 10 students at the University of Huddersfield on Friday 6th January? The event will involve young people using the colour sensors and proximity sensors on lego mindstorm robots to navigate around a maze. Applicants should have prior experience of programming lego mindstorm robots, although a training session would be provided beforehand. The pay is £75 plus travel expenses. To apply send a C.V to john.waterworth@mcsprojectsltd.co.uk by Friday 16th December. You can find out more about MCS Projects on their website.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE AWARDS 2023.

The University’s annual Making a Difference Awards are open for entries. If you or someone you know has made a difference, enter now! The deadline for entries is 16th January 2023. The awards are now in their eighth year, and are back for 2023 to celebrate yet more of the positive impact from our students, staff, alumni and local community. The University commitment to social responsibility captures our unique Manchester spirit and heritage as England’s first civic university and we hope that you can share some ways in which you’re part of this. Or do you know someone who’s making a difference to society or the environment? Then why not use the Awards as a perfect opportunity to celebrate their hard work and dedication? We have 8 categories which recognise the various ways our University communities are making a positive impact. You can fu=ind further information on the University Student News website.

CAREERS IN CODING PANEL EVENT.

This from Manchester University Data Science Society: Learn what it's like to work in Coding from actual successful professionals from companies such as NatWest, Qube-RT, Anumana, Peak AI, Amazon, and the NHS. The purpose of our Q&A panel with professionals who work in programming-related industries is to help students gain a deeper knowledge of these fields. This event will be organised in conjunction with MUDSS. The session is open to all interested students!

Date: Wednesday, 7th December
Time: 12:00-13:30
Location: Academy 2

CHRISTMAS CLOSURE.

The University will close at 9pm on Thursday 23 December and will not reopen until 8am on Tuesday 3rd January. There will be no access to the Kilburn Building (and most University buildings) during this period.

LIBRARY OPENING TIMES.

This from Gemma Smith: There will be reduced hours for the Main Library from Saturday, 17th to Thursday, 22nd December 2022:

Monday to Thursday - 8am–8pm
Saturday & Sunday - 9am-5pm

STUDY SPACES.

Study spaces will be available at the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons (AGLC) during the Christmas break. The AGLC will be open from Saturday, 17th December 2022 to Monday, 2nd January 2023:

Monday to Friday - 8am-8pm
Saturday & Sunday – 9am-5pm

However, the AGLC will be closed on Christmas Day (Sunday 25th December 2022) and Boxing Day (Monday 26th December 2022). For full information, read this news article from the Library.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

The deadline for sending in Monday Mail items: 12:00 (noon) every Friday. Just contact Paul.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - BYO Renbanmometers by Memeristor

Normal sudoku rules apply. Along “renbanmometers”, digits must increase from the bulb end and form a non-repeating consecutive sequence. The renbanmometers in this puzzle are all hidden, only their bulbs and tips are given. Bulbs are larger circles while tips are smaller circles. Corresponding tips and bulbs share the same colour (and letter). Renbanmometers can move diagonally or orthogonally, but renbanmometers cannot ever cross and different renbanmometers cannot share a cell.

Bonus Puzzle - Futoshiki by puzzlemadness.co.uk

The aim of Futoshiki is to place the numbers 1 to 5 (or higher, if the puzzle is larger) into each row and column of the puzzle so that no number is repeated in a row or column and so that all of the inequality signs (< and >) are obeyed.

Chess Puzzle - Geet Vs. Schaardenburg, 1993

Drag and drop the White pieces to win the match.

Answers to the Previous Week

The answers to last week's puzzles can be found here.

Week 10 • Monday 28 November 2022 • #22.11

Paul pic

Good morning UG! It’s Monday 28th November 2022 and it’s Week 10. We are rapidly closing in on the end of the teaching period, with just a few more weeks to go until the Christmas break. Don’t forget that the semester one exams take place in January during the period from Monday 16th to Friday 27th January 2023, so now may be a good time to start thinking about your revision planning. The University usually releases the exam timetable around mid-December (more below).

If you are a 2nd year student, then please consider applying for the Kate Kneebone Acorn Bursary, an annual award in memory of a former student of the Department, Kate Kneebone (details below).

Don’t forget that strike action by members of UCU will take place again this week, meaning that activities on Wednesday 30th November may be impacted as a result.

Hope you are enjoying the World Cup! Have a good week, on with today’s news ...

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

COST OF LIVING SUPPORT FUND.

If you’re struggling to make ends meet and you’re unable to cover essential, day-to-day costs, our Cost of Living Support Fund may be able to help. The fund can provide grants between £250 and £2,000 for students in need – and you won’t have to pay any of it back. All full-time students can apply, regardless of social background, nationality, or level of study. The amount you receive will be based on an assessment of your circumstances. You can find more information here.

STUDENT COST OF LIVING:

NEXT STEPS. Earlier this month the University announced our £9 million Cost of Living support package for students, which includes a one off payment available to students before the Christmas break. From Thursday 24th November, the University started emailing students to let them know that they need to do two things to receive the payment:

Make sure their UK mobile phone number is up-to-date on the student system by Sunday, 4 December;
Open a UK bank account if they don’t already have one.

You can find out more through the FAQs.

EXAMS WELFARE SUPPORT.

This from the Welfare Team: As you are aware, the exams are approaching in the New Year - you will receive further information later in December. This can be a challenging time for some of you so the Welfare Team have put together a few resources you can access now, to help you plan and organise to be well prepared. The Counselling and Mental Health Service run regular workshops all year round to help you get ready for exams, manage your current coursework or tasks and they also provide general wellbeing tips. Please book onto these now to ensure you have a place:

Managing acute and ongoing stress - 02/12/22, Zoom
Managing procrastination - 06/12/22, Alan Gilbert Learning commons.
Mindfulness for concentration - 13/12/22, Alan Gilbert Learning commons

This link provides further workshops you can attend as well as useful information about workload management, both for exams and throughout the year. We hope these resources help, we will provide further information and drop-ins throughout the year. Please request an appointment with welfare or drop by the student support hub between Mon-Fri 9am-5pm if you wish to speak to someone confidentially about anything that might be affecting you and your studies. Also, remember to contact your Academic Adviser (personal tutor or project supervisor) if you are struggling and feel you need guidance academically.

STUDENT SUPPORT HUB.

To help support and answer any questions from students, we have a student support hub in Engineering Building A, which can be found on the 1st Floor. The student hub will support face to face queries from students and is staffed by an experienced team who can answer your questions about university life. You can still make departmental queries to your own department via email. The student hub is open from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Wednesday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.80
Year 3/4 (not CM): Tim Morris. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.107
CM (all years): Andrea Schalk. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.103
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, IT119.

PASS2.

Ingy Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) and Nadine Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) write: Hi everyone! We hope you’re all LinkedIn gurus after the last session. This week is a general drop-in for whatever you need help on. Whether this is getting your CV checked or interview advice, we’ll be around to help out! As usual, PASS2 will be in Collab1 on Thursday 1 December 12:00-13:00. Remember that we’re always accessible on our Discord and you can find all PASS2 resources here.

UNICS NEWS:

Lake District Trip. Tickets for the Lake District Trip are available now!! Don't miss out and buy your tickets now. Come and bring your friends along for this trip. We hope to meet you all there!

REPORTING ISSUES WITH THE KILBURN ENVIRONMENT.

If you are experiencing issues with (for example) the heating in the Kilburn/IT buildings (a room is too hot or too cold), or you see broken furniture, slip/trip hazards etc, then please report these to the Department using the following form. Please note: you should only use this for reporting issues in the Kilburn and IT buildings, DO NOT use it to report issues in other buildings. When reporting issues, please provide as much information as possible (room location, date, time etc). If you are reporting issues with temperature then please report what the temperature was at the time affected (you can find thermometers in each lab space). If you are reporting issues with the IT infrastructure, for example a broken machine, wifi issues etc. (anywhere on campus), then this should be reported to IT Services through the Service Portal. DO NOT use the form above to report IT issues.

STRIKE ACTION.

Members of the University and College Union (UCU) will be taking further strike action on the 30th of November, in a dispute relating to pay and working conditions and pensions. The University will remain open during the periods of the strike action, however, some teaching activities, such as lectures, may be affected. You can find out more information here.

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, or generally just to have a play with. There are all sorts of items available, from Raspberry Pi components to drones, microcontroller boards to gesture devices, basic electronic components to robots … even VR headsets. 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.

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. Select “Locations”. In the window that opens, select the building you are interested in using for “Select Location” (for example Kilburn Building) select the lab/room you would like to use for “Select Location(s)”. The default view is this week, or you can select a particular week for the “Select Week(s)” option. 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 may have to be on campus or running the VPN to get access to the timetable. If a room is booked for teaching, then you should avoid using it.

SEMESTER 1 EXAMS.

The semester 1 exams take place over the period Monday 16th to Friday 27th January 2023 (see the University’s key dates webpage). 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. The timetabling of exams takes place centrally, the Department does not do this, and the timetable is usually released around mid-December and should appear in your personal timetable. 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.

BCSWOMEN LOVELACE COLLOQUIUM.

CRACKCHESTER WORKSHOP.

This Thursday from 4 - 5pm in Atlas 1 we'll be doing our first workshop on Metasploit. Metasploit is a very powerful tool we have in our ethical hacking toolkit. It allows us to make payloads for vulnerable systems so we can probe and test out ways to make systems more secure. If you've not joined our Discord server, then you're missing out. At the start of our workshops we'll now be doing a Q&A session. Submit your questions to us by email or on the Discord. Don't forget - submissions are still OPEN for our hoodie competition!! So make sure to get your hoodie design in and you can win a free hoodie if your design is chosen. More info on the Discord. Also, if you've not downloaded Kali Linux yet and want to get started with ethical hacking, then there's a tonne of info on the Discord now about how to get started, and of course we'll help you with any difficulties. We're also thinking about holding a social soon, so watch out for that on the Discord. Have we mentioned that you should join the Discord yet? You really should.

CYBER 9/12 STRATEGY CHALLENGE.

The UK Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge is the only cross discipline cyber security student competition of its kind in the UK. Teams of four from UK universities take on the role of advisors to the Cabinet Office during an escalating cyber-attack against the UK. Understanding technology, policy, strategy, law, international relations and every other aspect of national and organisational cyber incident response is key for teams to succeed. Through the UK Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge, students have the opportunity to connect with future employers across government and our commercial sponsors. The 2023 Finals will be held at the BT Tower on February 21st and 22nd. The application deadline is Friday 16th December 2022. We look forward to hosting you there! You can find more information about the challenge here.

UNICS BOOKING.

COM WORKSHOP: Continuous Improvement. This workshop will cover what software engineers know, what we don’t know, and how we solve problems anyway. Ever wondered if you know enough to be a software engineer? This workshop focuses on the idea that where we are is less important than whether or not we’re improving, and demonstrates some proven techniques for continuous improvement. Come along to Engineering Building A, Room 2A.011 on 30th November (4-6pm).

UNICS ADVANCED WORKSHOP:

Underutilised Concepts in Game Development. This will be the last advanced workshop in this semester. Do not be disappointed though, as our Game Dev department has something exciting in store for the finale of this semester’s advanced workshop. In this part of the advanced workshop series, we will look into the not-so-commonly used concepts in game development. In particular, we will be looking into coroutines, bezier curves and shader programming. It will take place in Kilburn Collab 1, on 30th November (2-3pm). So for all you game-developing enthusiasts out there, come join us in this exciting workshop!

WEEKLY WELLBEING EVENTS.

You can find out more about wellbeing in the University here, or see a list of events on the Students' Union website. There are a number of wellbeing events happening this week:

Monday: Yoga for Beginners: Introducing some principles of yoga philosophy and foundational postures. Practice yoga at a gentle pace with different breathing exercises.
Tuesday: Make your own Advent Calendar: Are you in halls? Relax and enjoy the festive spirit with an opportunity to personalise your own Advent Calendar.
Wellbeing Wednesday: Winter Warmer Wednesday: Breakfast is said to be the most important meal of the day. Head over to the Atrium in University Place from 8:30am to get warm and enjoy a free breakfast.
Thursday: Festive Spirit Tour with the SU: Come and see what Manchester has to offer! Taking a scenic route through the city centre, you'll discover some hidden gems as well as the must-see festive attractions. Book via the SU website.
Friday: Dodgeball with UoM Sports: Would you like to try out a new sport? How about Dodgeball? This Sporticipate session is aimed at beginners and new players.

KATE KNEEBONE ACORN BURSARY.

The Kate Kneebone Acorn Bursary is an annual award of £500 funded by the Kneebone family and ARM, which has been awarded since 2013 to commemorate the life of Kate Kneebone, a former student of the department. In addition to the £500 award, the Bursary offers the successful applicant the possibility of discussing an internship placement (which must have an Engineering bias) with ARM in Cambridge. All current Year 2 UG students in the Department are eligible to apply. See full details and how to apply here. The deadline for submissions is 5pm (UK time) Monday 12th December. Please return completed application forms by email.

CHRISTMAS CLOSURE.

The University will close at 9pm on Thursday 23 December and will not reopen until 8am on Tuesday 3rd January. There will be no access to the Kilburn Building (or any other University building) during this period.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

The deadline for sending in Monday Mail items: 12:00 (noon) every Friday. Just contact Paul.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - Non-Venomous by Scruffamudda

Normal sudoku rules apply. Within the grid lies a single snake of orthogonally connected cells which does not touch itself (even diagonally). The first and last cell on the snake contain the digit 9. Digits placed on circles and squares show the number of snake cells in the surrounding (up to) 9 cells including the circle or square itself if it is on the snake. Circles contain odd digits; squares contain even digits.

Bonus Puzzle - Tents by puzzlemadness.co.uk

Your task is to insert tents in the grid so that, each tree is paired with a tent - the tent must be next to the tree horizontally or vertically. Tents are never placed next to each other, including diagonally. The horizontal and vertical clues tell you how many tents are in that row or column.

Chess Puzzle - Kairbekova Vs. Florito, 2021

Drag and drop the White pieces to win the match.

Answers to the Previous Week

The answers to last week's puzzles can be found here.

Week 9 • Monday 21 November 2022 • #22.10

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Good morning! It’s Monday 21st November 2022, and it’s Week 9. If you want to know anything about your degree programme, such as how we calculate your final degree mark, how we deal with mitigating circumstances, what industrial experience involves, coursework processes etc. then you will find all this information in the undergraduate handbook (see below). We often get asked questions that can be easily answered by looking in the handbook, so please make use of it as a resource.

It’s good to see the University support our students by offering cost of living support. There’s some news below I’m sure you will want to read!

Glad to hear that GreatUniHack went well over the weekend of the 12th/13th November; the winning teams are listed below. Well done to the UniCS team for organising such a great, and well attended, event, and congratulations to all those who took part. It’s great to see our students getting involved in activities such as GreatUniHack.

Just a reminder that UCU strike action is taking place this week on Thursday and Friday, which may impact some teaching activities.

Have a great week, on with today’s news ...

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

COST OF LIVING SUPPORT.

We understand that the rising cost of living is impacting all of our community, especially you – our students. The University is pleased to announce that registered students will be offered a one-off cost of living payment. Full time students will receive £170 , paid into their UK bank account. Find out more information here. More information on cost of living support that the University offers can be found here.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Wednesday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.80
Year 3/4 (not CM): Tim Morris. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.107
CM (all years): Andrea Schalk. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.103
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, IT119.

PASS2.

Ingy Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) and Nadine Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) write: Hello from the PASS2 team! This week we will be talking about LinkedIn and how to make a profile that stands out. This will be incredibly important when searching for internships/placements, so make sure you attend! As usual, the session will be in Collab1 from 12:00-13:00 on Thursday. We will be around from 11:30 if you would like to ask any questions in private. Don’t forget to check out our website and join us on Discord!

FREE BREAKFAST.

Don’t forget to get your free breakfast. Every Wednesday until the 14 December, you can drop into the Atrium on the first floor of University Place and enjoy a free breakfast and hot drinks, between 8.30am and 10am, while stocks last. Find out more information here.

STUDENT-STAFF LIAISON COMMITTEE.

This from Tom Carroll: The first SSLC meeting was held on Wednesday 16th November, and many things were discussed - minutes of the meeting will appear on the UG SSLC Blackboard Page within 1 week of the meeting. Please don't forget - if you have any issues or would like to highlight some positive things (maybe you like someone's teaching, or you think the break area in Kilburn LF is really good), then please do get in touch with one of your reps. Now, let's meet some more reps:

Joshua Tan (Year 1, CMwIE ) writes: Hi fellow freshers, I am your first-year student representative Joshua. I am currently studying Computer Science and Maths and I am actually from Malaysia. I am also an avid pianist with hobbies in photography as well. I hope you all have had a great time at university so far, however, if there are any queries or feedback that you would like to voice out to the department, please do approach me or any of my fellow student reps as well.
Rushil Dhanuka (Year 2, MEng CS) writes: Hey guys !! I am Rushil and I am honoured to be presented with this wonderful opportunity to represent and work with you this year ! Please do feel comfortable to contact me and come up to me regarding any of your concerns and I assure you that I'll do my very best to help you resolve it and give you the voice you deserve. Fun facts about me are that I love football, photography and travelling. So even if you just want to talk about this, feel free to hit me up anytime !!
Lucy Porte (Year 3, CM) writes: Hello I'm Lucy and last time I submitted a picture for uni people said it didn't look like me so here is an accurate one. I would say my main hobbies and interests are computer science, maths and not keeping my mouth shut. I am hoping to apply this last skill during my time as a rep by informing the uni of any problems that are arising from a student perspective, so please let me know if you are having any and I will do my best to pass on.

GREATUNIHACK.

Mateusz Krajewski (Year 3, CS4wIE) writes: On the weekend of 12th and 13th November in MMU Business School, UniCS organised GreatUniHack – the biggest hackathon in Manchester, this year welcoming over 160 students from all over the country. Needless to say, the event was a massive success; the participants had a chance to spend two days talking with the sponsors, attempting hackathon challenges together, and enjoying free food and merchandise. A big thank you to the sponsors, who made that event possible: Palantir (platinum), Booking.com (gold), Bet365 (gold), Netcraft (silver), Marshall Wace (silver), Re:course AI (silver), Atmos International (bronze). We’d also like to congratulate the winners of GreatUniHack 2022 challenges:

Best domain name (Domain.com challenge): JustPhish
Best hack for social good (BlackRock challenge): FoodScan
Best use of Velo (Wix challenge): Online Dictionary Using Wix Velo
Hackiest Hack (HackathonsUK challenge): Football
Bet365 challenge:
- 3rd prize: Attack on Football
- 2nd prize: Al Bet
- 1st prize: Money on Balls
Real Impact Hack (Palantir challenge):
- 3rd prize: Came for the free food. Stayed for the free food.
- 2nd prize: Energy Crisis Management System
- 1st prize: Foundry VR
Best meme: smorg

The following teams were the winners of GreatUniHack 2022:

Finalists:
- Pentatonic
- Road safety
- Choss
- Fire Data Visualisation
- Clarity for Charity
- Commodore Ship
- Donalte
- Energy Crisis Management System
3rd prize: Miserly
2nd prize: Foundry VR
1st prize: Money on Balls

Thank you to all the participants, sponsors and volunteers, who made that event happen! We hope to see you at StudentHack, which is going to take place around March or April.

DO YOU LIVE IN A UNIVERSITY HALL?

The University has launched a new website where students who live in halls can find lots of useful accommodation-related information including how to get involved in activities and book chats with the Residential Life team. Find out more on the ResLife pages.

STRIKE ACTION.

Members of the University and College Union (UCU) will be taking strike action on the 24th, 25th and 30th of November, in a dispute relating to pay and working conditions and pensions. The University will remain open during the periods of the strike action, however, some teaching activities, such as lectures, may be affected. You can find out more information here.

THE UNDERGRADUATE HANDBOOK.

KNOWBE4 VIDEO CHALLENGE.

This from Prof Daniel Dresner: Creating a good security awareness culture and practices requires communication and different messaging to reach all sectors in the economy. Linking the skills of communication, creativity and good technical cyber know-how will seed new thought and deliver innovative experiences and grow collaborative project skills. It’s a worthwhile exercise that can be carried forward into your careers and shed some light on real industry challenges and strategies moving forward. So here's a competition to exercise this with prizes!

£10k in cash to give away...
...with £5k allocated to the winners...
...£3k for second place...
...and £2k for third place!

Find out more information here, and do let me know (daniel.dresner@manchester.ac.uk) if you're entering.

MUDSS WEEKLY WEDNESDAY WORKSHOP.

Touch less hand gesture recognition systems are becoming essential in automotive user interfaces as they improve safety and comfort. Various computer vision algorithms have been developed to handle gesture images. The title for this week's workshop is Sign Hand Gesture Recognition by Artificial Neural Network. Come join us this Wednesday, 23rd November to learn how you can:

Solve complex image classification problems.
Build your artificial neural network in PyTorch.

and more about the potential of ANN in more complex scenarios. Beginners are more welcome, and the content is explained in detail.

Location: University Place, 1st Floor, Room 1.219
Time: 3 pm - 4:30 pm

GOOGLE DEVELOPER STUDENT CLUBS.

Come join us this Wednesday for the Introduction to Web-Development workshop. An amazing opportunity to gain skills in HTML, CSS and Javascript. Make sure to bring your laptops! We are still recruiting for a position on our Graphics team! Apply using this link if you are interested. Follow us on Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | Discord to get updated. Visit our website and follow us for the latest events.

THURSDAYS WITH ALGOTRADING.

Can your interest in financial markets & trading really be integrated with algorithms and data science? Come find out in our Algotrading workshop as we will be looking to build from the foundations of our previous workshop, and aim to:

Backtest our strategy on our chosen portfolio of stocks.
Calculate the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) of our strategies.
Visualize our strategies and returns using plots.

More details of this workshop are below:

Date: 24th November, Thursday.
Location: University Place, 1st Floor, Room 1.219.
Time: 5 pm - 6 pm

UNICS BEGINNERS WORKSHOP.

In this part of the workshop series, we will be diving into Control Flow and Search Algorithms. It will take place in Kilburn Collab 1 from 2pm-3pm on Wednesday, 23rd November. Do come and bring your friends along for this interesting and important topic!

MACHINE LEARNING IN FINANCE SPEAKER EVENT - DATA CLUB EDITION.

Leading financial firms like JP Morgan, Jane Street, and NatWest are increasingly relying on AI and Machine Learning to facilitate heavy manual tasks, improve quality of work, and increase revenue. Accordingly, there has been an increased demand on employees to help automation, manage risk, and forecast stock markets, amongst other things. This Friday, 25th November, Dr. Eghbal Rahimikia, a lecturer in Finance at Alliance Manchester Business School, will be speaking on ML in Finance to give insight about how the implementation of Machine Learning in the financial industry is revolutionising the industry. Join in to learn how your interest in machine learning can be integrated with finance. More details below:

Location: Zochonis Building, LEC RM E.
Date: Friday on 25th November.
Time: 3 pm - 4 pm.

Make sure to get your tickets to the event before the spaces become full! Get yours for FREE using this link.

UNICS FIFA WORLD CUP WATCH PARTY.

Need a break from all your workload? Well, worry no more as the long-awaited FIFA world cup is airing this week of the month. To make things better, UniCS is holding a watch party for the match Spain v Germany on Sunday, 27th November 2022 at Turing Tap. We’d like to invite you football enthusiasts and non-enthusiasts alike to watch this highly anticipated match between the two European football giants. Can’t wait to see you all there!

INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY.

What’s coming up at the International Society? There are some great activities coming up in December over at the International Society including festive events and shopping trips.

Festive Wonderland, Sunday, 4 December, 2.30pm, Kickstart your Christmas celebrations with the International Society! Pose for fun photos in the photo booth, take on the Christmas quiz and enjoy eating lots of tempting festive treats with new friends.

For more info or to book visit the International Society’s website.

SUSTAINABLE FUTURES AT MANCHESTER.

Join us to celebrate one year of Sustainable Futures at The University of Manchester. This is your chance to network, meet our team and learn more about advances in sustainability related research straight from University of Manchester academics on 28th November 2022. During the showcase we'll hear from Professor Mike Shaver, Director of Sustainable Futures, followed by updates from each of the Sustainable Futures Challenge Leads. We'll also hear from University of Manchester researchers, who will discuss their area of research, including recent updates and calls for collaboration/support. Topics and speakers include:

Joe Cahill - Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Project with Artesia Consulting
Professor Ricardo Climent - Video Games & Sustainability
Dr Maggy Fostier - LEAF (Making lab work more sustainable)
Dr Stephanie Sodero - Climate Resilience of Supply Chains
Dr Torik Holmes - One Bin to Rule Them All
Dr Joe Blakey - Slow travel policy
Dr Gareth Clay - Wildfire risks and warning systems
Dr Claudia Henninger – Sustainability in fashion
Professor Sherilyn MacGregor - TBC
Professor Susanne Shultz – TBC
Dr Gina Galli - TBC

Places are limited, so reserve a ticket as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.

DIGITAL TRUST AND SECURITY SEMINAR SERIES.

Dr Meropi Tzanetakis will present the a seminar titled “Crossing bridges: From digital drug markets to the platform economy” on 29th November, 12:30 – 14:00, in the Whitworth Building Council Chamber, lunch is provided. You can register here. The talk will focus on the relationship between digital drug markets and the infrastructure of platform capitalism. It will discuss the design of digital drug platforms to extract data on the activities of their users and how the vast collection of user data feeds into the accumulation of capital. Dr Meropi Tzanetakis is a Lecturer in Digital Criminology at the University of Manchester. She is also a Research Affiliate with the Governance of Digital Practices Research Platform at the University of Vienna.

WEEKLY WELLBEING EVENTS.

You can find out more about wellbeing in the University here, or see a list of events on the Students' Union website. There are a number of wellbeing events happening this week:

Monday: Volunteering from Home: Instant Wild - Your involvement will not only contribute to conservation but you'll also get a window into the some of the world's wildest places!
Tuesday: Shared silence at St Peter's House - Many of us can feel lost in life. This is a silent, meditative space to ground our awareness around the simplicity of breathing.
Wellbeing Wednesday: Mindful Colouring Event - Take a break and do some mindful colouring. Boost your wellbeing and complete a thank you, festive or Christmas card to give to a friend. Drop by anytime between 1:30-4pm at Uni Place, 4.210.
Thursday: Zine Making for Disability History Month - This year's theme is Disability, Health and Wellbeing. Engage in crafts and document your own disabled history! Book via SU website.
Friday: Friday social with the International Society*- Come along and meet new friends or have a catch up over tea, coffee and biscuits!

TIMETABLE SURVEY.

Do you fancy being in with the chance of winning a £25 Love2Shop voucher? All you have to do is take part in our simple two-minute survey to rank the factors that matter most to you in your timetable. Respond with your University email address, by Wednesday, 14 December and we’ll enter you into the prize draw to win a voucher. Read more about the survey and how to take part.

UNIVERSITY RACE EQUALITY CHARTER.

Share your views ahead of the University’s Race Equality Charter (REC) submission and shape our future commitments. The REC Student Survey is now open for you to share your experiences and views on being part of our University. This survey is for all students, regardless of race or ethnicity and all responses will be confidential. It’s open until Friday, 9 December, so please take ten minutes to share your views. Find out more and complete the survey.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

The deadline for sending in Monday Mail items: 12:00 (noon) every Friday. Just contact Paul.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - X + Y = 15 by Spelldaddy

Normal sudoku rules apply. Cages show their sums. Digits may not repeat within a cage. Two digits separated by an X sum to 10, and two digits separated by a V sum to 5. Not all Xs or Vs are necessarily given.

Bonus Puzzle - Fillomino by puzzlemadness.co.uk

Divide the grid along the dotted lines into regions called polyominoes so that no two polyominoes with the same area share an edge. Inside some cells are numbers; each number must represent the area of the polyomino it belongs to. A polyomino may contain zero, one, or more of the given numbers.

Chess Puzzle - Helm Vs. Sattler, 2011

Drag and drop the Black pieces to win the match.

Answers to the Previous Week

The answers to last week's puzzles can be found here.

Week 8 • Monday 14 November 2022 • #22.09

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Good morning! It’s Monday 14th November 2022, and it’s Week 8. I hope everything is going well and you are managing to keep up with your work. If not, then it's important that you speak to someone, your personal tutor (for 3rd years, this is your project supervisor), your Year Tutor (see below), or contact our welfare team (see below). This is particularly important as we enter the latter part of the semester where you may find that you have more coursework to complete, and you may start to feel overwhelmed. If any issues have prevented you from submitting by a deadline (illness etc) then you should complete the work, submit late and then submit a late flag removal request (see below) - although it is important to note that for some course units work cannot be submitted late.

Finally, well done to all the students who took part in the UK and Ireland Programming Competition, and I hope those who attended Great Uni Hack over the weekend had a great time!

Have a great week, on with today’s news ...

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

STUDENT WELFARE SUPPORT IN CS.

Issues can impact students at any time, usually when you least expect it. 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 also speak to the relevant year tutor, however, you can speak to a member of our Student Welfare Team, Guy Malkin and Maria Sloan, or drop into the student hub in Engineering Building A and ask to speak to someone, in confidence, about anything that might be affecting you and your studies. Guy and Maria 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 Guy and Maria at CompSciWelfare@manchester.ac.uk.

REGISTER WITH A GP.

Whether you are a new or existing student it is important that you register with a Manchester GP (this stands for general practitioner and is what we call local or family doctors in the UK). GPs provide a range of non-emergency services by appointment - including assessments, medication prescriptions, vaccinations and referrals to other medical specialists. This includes support for your mental health, as well as your physical health.

You can register with The Robert Darbishire Practice, which is located in Crawford House near south campus (shown on the Campus map here as Building 31), using their online portal. Find out more about the service on the Robert Darbishire Practice website.
Alternatively, you can 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.

WHAT’S STOPPING YOU?

Do you need help with: Assertiveness? Concentration? Exam stress? Managing anxiety? The University’s Counselling and Mental Health Service are running workshops on all the above and more. Take a look at what they have to offer, scan the QR code below.

MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES DEADLINE.

The deadline for submitting mitigating circumstances for semester 1 is 4pm, 30th January 2023. We will not accept applications after this date. You can find the form to submit mitigating circumstances here. The UG handbook provides information on the mitigating circumstances process and how we handle submissions, you can also find further information in Blackboard. If you are unsure about hot 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 Welfare Team (see above) or a Year Tutor (see below).

WHAT TO DO IF YOU ARE FEELING HOMESICK?

Here at Manchester we are proud to welcome people from all over the world to study in our beautiful city every year. We hope that you all come to view Manchester as your home, but we know that doesn’t necessarily come easily or quickly. Whether you’ve moved 3000 miles away from home or 30, the majority of people will encounter homesickness in one form or another during their time at University. If you’ve recently moved to Manchester, you might be struggling to settle into your new home and city. It’s more important than ever to keep up contact with others if you’re feeling homesick or lonely. Here are a few ways that you can help to alleviate homesickness, or prevent it from arising in the first place.

NEVER OK - SEXUAL HARASSMENT CAMPAIGN.

A joint campaign is being run between out University, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Salford, promoting n environment and culture where sexual harassment or violence is never tolerated. The campaign encourages everyone in our University community to be active bystanders and challenge unacceptable behaviour when they witness it. We also want to empower survivors of sexual harassment or violence to seek support and feel confident about reporting incidents. Everyone is being asked to:

Educate yourself about sexual harassment
Become an active bystander
Report any incidents and get support

You can find out more about the campaign here.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Wednesday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.80
Year 3/4 (not CM): Tim Morris. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.107
CM (all years): Andrea Schalk. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.103
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, IT119.

PASS2.

Ingy Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) and Nadine Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) write: Hi from the PASS2 team! We hope you enjoyed our Oscar-worthy mock interview performances these past two weeks. This week will be a mental health check-in. We’ll have some special snacks and treats available, so drop in and have a chat with us! As always, PASS2 is on Thursday 12:00-13:00 in Collab1. We will be there half an hour before the session (not after this week) to answer any questions you might have. Don’t forget to join our Discord at and check out our website.

CRACKCHESTER NEWS.

This week Crackchester will be holding another workshop on how to use HackTheBox. Don't worry if you didn't come last week as we're always going over content from previous weeks. And for those who came last week, we'll be doing some slightly harder boxes. You can find us in Kilburn Atlas 1 from 4 - 5 pm on Thursday. For the best experience, please make an account with HackTheBox and get a virtual machine running Kali Linux before you come to the workshop. We have loads of help and resources on our discord including slides from all our previous workshops and how to install Kali Linux. We're also officially announcing our hoodie competition! You've got until the 9th of December to design the society hoodie. The winner of the competition will get a free hoodie. Please try to keep your design to a small design on the chest and a large design on the back. Make your design eye-catching and awesome!

UK AND IRELAND PROGRAMMING COMPETITION.

Ian Pratt-Hartmann writes: On Saturday, 29th October, the UK and Ireland Programming Competition (UKIEPC) took place, in which teams of three attempted a series of programming challenges over a five hour period. Teams from universities across the British Isles competed at a number of sites, one of which was Manchester. Fourteen teams from Manchester took part. Of these, the teams "Robuman" solved 7 problems and "Team DSD" solved 6. The final standings can be found here. Congratulations to the top two Manchester teams: Robuman (Andrej Velichkovski (Year 3, CS), Alexandru Stoica (Out on IE, CSwIE) and Ignes Simeonova (Year 3, CS)) and Team DSD (Sung En Chiang (Year 3, CM), David Demetriad (Year 3, CS4wIE), and Mihnea Dumitru (Year 3, CS)). These teams will be competing in the Northwest Europe Regional (NWERC) in Delft from 25th to 27th November. Good luck to them! Thanks to Hoi Ching Or (Year 2, CS), Yaqi Zhao (Year 2, CS), Lok Wong (Year 2, SE), Mohammad Altaisan (Year 2, AI), Ivan Zhechev (Year 3, CS), and Benjamin Kollar (Year 2, CS) for helping out with the running of the competition.

STUDENT-STAFF LIAISON COMMITTEE.

This from Tom Carroll: We have the first meeting of the Student-Staff Liaison Committee (SSLC) coming up on 16th November, so please get in touch with your reps if there is any issue you wish to raise, or if there is anything positive you wish to highlight. Continuing from last week, we have three more student reps to meet...

Nora Tuta (Year 4, HCI4wIE) writes: Hi! My name is Nora Tuta and I am a fourth year student. I am glad I can represent my integrated masters colleagues! Feel free to reach out to me if there is anything you would like me to bring up and discuss in the student rep meetings. I am very happy to see that our CS community is slowly coming back to the pre-covid normal, and I hope I can help with that as a student rep. Good luck this year and see you in Kilburn!
Maaz Ahmed (Year 1, CSwIE) writes: Hi! My name is Maaz and I’m a part of the first year Computer Science Representative team. Nice to meet you all and hope to represent you guys to the best of my abilities!
Sumaiyah Bhaiyat (Year 3, CS4wIE) writes: Hey everyone, my name is Sumaiyah and my favourite hobby is reading. Feel free to email me with anything you want changing at the university!

STRIKE ACTION.

COMPUTING CAREERS FAIR.

Thanks to all our exhibitors who came to last week's careers fair in the Engineering building. We hope you enjoyed speaking to the employers who came including AND Digital, Apadmi, Autocab, Barclays, Bet365, BJSS, Bloomberg, Booking.com, BT, Codethink, Cyberscience, D3T, Financial Force, KPMG, Matillion, Netcraft, Next, Palantir, Thales, TPP, Wise, Zuhlke, and the BBC. A huge thank you to Mabel Yau for organising another great fair.

FREE BREAKFASTS ON CAMPUS:

Winter Warmer Wednesdays. Every Wednesday until the 14 December, you can drop into the Atrium on the first floor of University Place and enjoy a free breakfast and hot drinks, between 8.30am and 10am, while stocks last. Get warm and comfy in our Cosy Campus soft seating, settle down and enjoy a free breakfast. What better way to start a cold, dark Wednesday? Each week, staff from different teams across the University will be available if you have any questions about their areas. If you just want a free breakfast though, that’s absolutely fine. They will be there if you need them. Find out more on the studentnews website.

THE UNDERGRADUATE HANDBOOK.

EXAMINATION GUIDANCE:

As we rapidly make our way through semester 1, it is worth remembering the examination period will take place in January. We’ve provided advice and guidance regarding timetables, revision, exam technique and what to do if you miss an exam on the UG Community Blackboard page here. We will continue to update this material up to the start of the examination period. The examination timetable will be published before the end of teaching. Please take the time to read this ahead of the exam period. If you have any questions regarding your exams please don’t hesitate to contact Student Support.

LATE FLAG REMOVAL REQUEST.

If you have mitigating circumstances that are short term, for example, you have been unwell with a cold, and this has resulted in you submitting work late, then you can submit a request to have the resulting late flag removed. If you have been unwell for more than 5 working days (or major circumstances have impacted your ability to complete work) then you should submit a mitigating circumstances form, you can find more information here. We have also produced some videos to explain the mitigating circumstances process in Blackboard. The system for requesting the removal of late flags can be accessed via SPOT. Select the appropriate course, in the assessments table, any work submitted late will have a clock icon next to the submitted date. Clicking the clock icon allows you to apply for the removal of a late flag, or links you to the mitigating circumstances page if the work has been submitted more than 5 working days late. The mitigating circumstances team that considers the late flag removal applications meets weekly during the teaching period. You can check the status of your application by clicking the clock icon and clicking the apply link. Any late flag removal applications that are approved will result in the system in the unaffected grade being restored.

WILL COMPUTERS REPLACE MATHEMATICIANS.

Professor Kevin Buzzard, Professor of Pure Mathematics at Imperial College London, will be presenting the Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Lecture on Tuesday 15th November from 6 - 8:30pm, in University Place - see the booking link for full details. For decades now, computers have been much better than humans at calculating. But mathematical research is not all about calculating – humans make conjectures and prove theorems. Until recently, mathematicians looked to be safe from the rise of the machine. But now computers are becoming capable of understanding the mathematics which modern researchers are doing. Will computers replace mathematicians? Or, perhaps more likely, will they start to help mathematicians in new ways? Not just number crunching for them, but also suggesting ideas and insights about how to push mathematical research further? Professor Buzzard will give an overview of this area as it stands in 2022, touching on such things as the rise of computer proof assistants and machine learning in mathematics.

WOMEN IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING SOCIETY EVENT.

The Women in Science and Engineering Society (WISE) along with MathSoc are running a careers panel events for women in maths and related STEM professions with presentations from a number of guest speakers including a former student of the Department, Petia Davidova, and former students of Department of Mathematics, Lauren Lane and Tamanna Haque. The event is free, and the audience is open to everyone regardless of degree or gender, with snacks and refreshments provided. You can book here.

Date: Wednesday 16th November 2022
Time: 1 - 3pm
Location: Alan Turing Building G.207

The guest speakers are:

Lauren Lane – Business Owner and Coach, BEE Coaching
Neesha Heal - Senior Business Optimisation Analyst at Co-op
Petia Davidova - Software Engineer at Bloomberg LP
Tamanna Haque - Lead Data Scientist at Jaguar Land Rover
Tsareena Brown - Owner and Director of Bee Digital Accountants Limited

The panel will introduce themselves, their current role within their company, as well as their hobbies and interests. They will talk about their career paths- academic background and how they achieved their current role. Topics will include experience as a woman in STEM, any challenges faced and overcome, future career goals. There will be opportunities for students to ask lots of questions and gain invaluable advice on how to succeed in their career. There will be a chance to network and connect with the speakers and other students.

UNICS ADVANCED WORKSHOP.

Intro to Unity. Our GameDev team will be conducting a workshop introducing Unity - a graphical platform that is heavily used in game development, 3D designing and visual computing. (Please install and set up Unity on your devices before you come for this workshop). It will take place in Kilburn Collab 1, on 16th October (2-3pm).

CAMBRIDGE CRYPTOGRAPHIC WORKSHOP.

UniCS is happy to announce that we will be having a workshop held by Cambridge Cryptographic. In it we’ll discuss The Innovation Game, a continuous competition around uploading and benchmarking algorithms to solve as many random computational challenges as possible, starting with 3-SAT, CVRP and Game AI challenges. It will take place online, on 16th November (3-3:30pm). See the poster below for more information.

BBC CHILDREN IN NEED BAKE SALE.

The IAG Team is organising a bake sale to support the BBC Children in Need. Find us on Friday 18th November on the Ground Floor of Engineering Building A and support the cause. We accept card payments. See you there!

INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY.

What’s coming up at the International Society? There are some great activities coming up this Autumn over at the International Society including some December day trips.

Trips:

Saturday, 3 December - Cambridge (as seen below)
Saturday, 10 December - Stratford-upon-Avon
Thursday, 22 December - Bicester Village Designer Outlet

For more info or to book click here.

Events:

Thanksgiving Celebration, Wednesday, 23 November, 6.30pm. Celebrate Thanksgiving with new friends! Learn about traditions, play fun games and most importantly enjoy a delicious hot meal and dessert.

For more info or to book click here.

DEPARTMENT SEMINAR.

TornadoVM: Transparent Hardware Acceleration for Java…and Beyond! The talk will be presented by Juan Fumero, a Research Fellow in the Advanced Processor Technologies (APT) Research group, on Thursday 17th November @ 2pm in Kilburn Room 2.15. Abstract: The proliferation of heterogeneous hardware in recent years means that every system we program is likely to include a mix of computing elements; each of these with different hardware characteristics that enable programmers to improve performance while decreasing energy consumption. These new heterogeneous devices include multi-core CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs. This trend has been followed by changes in software development norms that do not necessarily favour programmers. Prime examples of parallel programming languages are CUDA, OpenCL and oneAPI, which expose several low-level features to the API, making them difficult to use by non-expert users. Instead of using low-level programming languages, developers in industry and academia tend to use higher-level, object-oriented programming languages, typically executed on managed runtime environments, such as Java, R, and Python. Although many programmers might expect that such programming languages would have already been adapted for transparent execution on heterogeneous hardware, the reality is that their support is either very limited or absent. In this talk, we will show TornadoVM, a plug-in for OpenJDK that allows JVM programmers to automatically run their applications on multi-core CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs. Furthermore, TornadoVM performs task migration from one device to another at runtime, entirely transparent for the user. In this talk, we will explain how Java programmers can benefit from heterogeneous execution on heterogeneous hardware and we will show demos running on different GPUs, including the brand-new Intel ARC GPUs!

POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH OPEN DAY.

Find out whether a PhD at Manchester is right for you at our Postgraduate Open Day. If you’re passionate about your subject, and have the dedication needed for research, a PhD could be right for you. By continuing your journey here at Manchester, you’d get the opportunity to:

be fully funded for your project, mentored by world-leaders in their field.
work with industry, collaborate with leading minds, and accelerate your development.
make life-changing personal and professional breakthroughs, researching your passion, in an environment where there are no barriers to what you want to achieve.

Come along to our Open Day on Wednesday, 16th November and find out how postgraduate research (PGR) at Manchester could change your tomorrow, or visit our dedicated Postgraduate Research pages for more information.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

The deadline for sending in Monday Mail items: 12:00 (noon) every Friday. Just contact Paul.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - Go The Right Way by Panthera

Normal sudoku rules apply. Some Japanese sums rules apply: There is a 6x6 grid in boxes 5/6/8/9. Blue cells in boxes 2/3/4/7 act as Japanese sum clues for this 6x6 grid, giving the sum of contiguous runs of blue-shaded cells within the grid. Two-digit clues are read top-to-bottom or left-to-right. There must be an unshaded cell between runs of the same color. A black dot separates digits with a 1 to 2 ratio. A white dot separates digits with a difference of 1 (or the given number when given). Not all dots are given. Fog rules apply. The fog will clear as you place digits correctly. See this video for an explanation of the rules.

Bonus Puzzle - LITS Up by puzzlemadness.co.uk

The grid is split up in to regions with at least 4 cells each, your aim is to insert a Tetromino in each region such that, Two Tetrominoes of the same type can't touch horizontally or vertically. Additionally, this applies to rotations and reflections as well. The Tetrominoes should form one continuous area. 2×2 filled cells are not allowed. Tetrominoes are the possible shapes made of 4 connecting cells. There are 5 Tetromino shapes in total: L, I, T, S, and O, but rule 3 means we can't use the 'O' Tetromino. This is where the name of the puzzle comes from.

Chess Puzzle - Georgiev Vs. Mahajan, 2022

Drag and drop the White pieces to win the match.

Answers to the Previous Week

The answers to last week's puzzles can be found here.

Week 7 • Monday 7 November 2022 • #22.08

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Good morning! It’s Monday 7th November 2022, it’s Week 7, and we are into November already! I hope you managed to take some time off during reading week to recharge your batteries, remember that normal teaching activities resume this week, so check out your timetable. As we progress through the remainder of the semester you may find that deadlines start to accumulate. It's important that you plan your time and do not leave coursework to the last minute, so make use of the deadlines chart (see below) to see when deadlines fall.

Have a great week, on with today’s news ...

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

Health Assured Helpline. 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. Find out more here.

ACADEMIC WRITING AND SPEAKING WORKSHOPS.

The University Centre for Academic English (UCAE) offer students a suite of Academic Writing, Academic Grammar and Academic Speaking workshops. Students will need to register for these workshops, and we aim to offer on-campus and remote study options. Students will also be able to access self-study resources available via our Blackboard community – details and registration are via Blackboard self-enrolment. This is a fantastic resource for our international students, and we have received very positive feedback from students who attended the programme last year. Please visit here for more details.

KEEPING SAFE ON CAMPUS.

The University student support webpage offers a variety of resources that you can utilise to help keep safe. SafeZone is a mobile app that can also be used to quickly connect with the University Campus Support and Security team if you have an immediate concern, or require first aid or wellbeing assistance. The app is free to download, easy to use, and operates not just across our campus and accommodation areas, but also MMU and Salford campuses. Find out more about SafeZone here, along with additional Safety Apps that are available. There is also a Safe Taxi scheme, which is an exclusive partnership with Street Cars, to help get you home safely even if you can’t pay at that moment. Our Report and Support team are also available to contact should you experience or witness any safeguarding concern, and you would like to speak to a trained advisor.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Wednesday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.80
Year 3/4 (not CM): Tim Morris. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.107
CM (all years): Andrea Schalk. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.103
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, Online only this week.

PASS2.

Ingy Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) and Nadine Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) write: Hello everyone! We hope you all had a relaxing reading week. Make sure to come along for this week’s session 12:00-13:00 pm on Thursday, 10th November in Collab. We are going to be talking more about interviews, specifically technical ones, as well as demonstrating a mock technical interview. As always there will be snacks - hope to see you there! Remember to join our Discord if you haven’t already and check out our website to access all of our slides and resources! The PASS2 team will be in Collab from 11:30-13:30 if you want to ask us any questions privately before or after the session. If you have any suggestions or feedback do not forget to fill in the forms on our website.

MANDATORY TRAINING.

All UG students in the Department must complete the following training courses in the 1st year:

All H&S training modules, including the course completion form,
Both parts of the Academic Malpractice training (both the quiz and self declaration form).

These can all be found under the ‘Mandatory training’ tab on the CS UG Community Page on Blackboard. If you haven’t already done so, then please complete these. Failure to complete the training will result in restrictions being put in place, for example, you will not be able to view your exam results.

STUDENT-STAFF LIAISON COMMITTEE.

This from Tom Carroll: The first SSLC meeting has been moved to Wednesday 16th November (next week). If you have any issues you want to raise to the department, or you wish to highlight something that you particularly like (maybe some good teaching), then please contact one of your SSLC Reps. You can find a list of your Reps here.

COURSEWORK DEADLINES CHART.

Don’t forget that the coursework deadlines chart is available, which shows this semester’s deadlines. Hopefully this will help you in planning your work during the semester. Please note: the deadlines shown are for indication purposes only and may be subject to change. Only SPOT indicates up-to-date information on deadlines, so please use SPOT to confirm deadlines.

HOW DO I CHECK WHEN A LAB IS FREE?

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, select “Kilburn” 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 may have to be on campus or running the VPN to get access to the timetable. If a room is booked for teaching, then you should avoid using it.

HOW DO I CHECK IF I’VE SUBMITTED MY WORK?

We often get asked by students how to check that they have submitted work successfully, and it’s quite easy to do.

Blackboard: if the submission method is using Blackboard, then you can check under the “My Grades” link on the left on each course unit Blackboard page (under “Submitted” or “Marked”). You can also check via SPOT, although SPOT is only updated at 12pm and 6pm daily, so any submission between those times will not be shown until the update takes place. SPOT includes the date and time when the last data was received from Blackboard on each page.
Git: if the submission method is using git, then you can check via SPOT. Submissions via git will show in SPOT immediately (but you do need to refresh the SPOT web page). You know if you have submitted correctly because the due date will change to the submitted date. You should also see a ‘crossed fingers’ emoji, which indicates the work is submitted but not yet marked. Once the work is marked the emoji will be replaced with your provisional mark.
Software Engineering Y2: work submitted for Software Engineering will not show as submitted in SPOT until the work has been marked because tags are not used.
Whilst SPOT shows you something has been submitted, it does not know what, so cannot be used to verify you've submitted the correct required files. To check the files you have submitted use Blackboard or GitLab.

UNICS BEGINNERS WORKSHOP.

We are back with our weekly workshop series after the reading week. In this workshop, we will be covering conditional statements, looping and iteration as well as search algorithms. It will be held in Kilburn 2.19, from 2pm to 3pm on Wednesday, 9th November 2022. See you there!

MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY DATA SCIENCE SOCIETY WEEKLY WEDNESDAY WORKSHOP.

This from the MUDS team: Have you ever wondered whether machines can detect your emotions? This week, we are going to build a project on this enigmatic topic. This implies we are going to predict emotions based on EEG brain signals (ElectroEncephaloGram). The machine learning model to be used in this task is a simple logistic regression model. Don't be scared about the name, it is much easier than you will think. Come join us this Wednesday, 9th November to learn more about the connection between your emotions and a machine.

Location: University Place, 1st Floor, Room 1.219
Time: 3 pm - 4:30 pm

THURSDAYS WITH ALGOTRADING.

This from the MUDS team: Can your interest in financial markets & trading really be integrated with algorithms and data science? Come find out in our Algotrading workshop as we help you in:

Creating a simple trading algorithm.
Introducing you to backtesting and the importance it holds.
Backtest your created algorithm.

More details of this workshop are below:

Date: 10th November,
Location: University Place, 1st Floor, Room 1.219
Time: 5 pm - 6 pm

MUDS NETWORKING EVENT:

More details on the networking event will be posted on our social media channels & Wednesday Waggle. Make sure to keep a lookout on our Instagram: @uomdss and Linkedin.

GOOGLE DEVELOPER STUDENT CLUBS.

Introducing our highly requested workshop on Git! Come along to Kilburn Lecture Theatre 1.1 on Wednesday to learn Git from the basics to advanced. Make sure to bring your laptops! We are also excited to announce that we are recruiting for a position on our Graphics team! Apply using this link if you are interested. Follow us on Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | Discord to get updated. Visit our website and follow us for the latest events.

PALANTIR FOUNDRY WORKSHOP.

UniCS is happy to announce that we will be having a workshop held by Palantir. In it, we will be talking about Palantir Foundry, the world’s leading platform for data-driven operations and decision-making. Built on more than a decade of experience solving complex data challenges, Foundry helps leading institutions manufacture safer cars and planes, discover new drugs, support humanitarian aid projects, and digitise entire industries. It is also used as an enterprise and business management platform. The workshop will be held from 4pm to 5pm on 9th November 2022 in Kilburn Lecture Theatre 1.1 . We hope to see you there and have an insight on the Foundry OS, which coincidentally will also be used in our upcoming Great Uni Hack!

INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY.

What’s coming up at the International Society? There’s some great activities coming up this Autumn over at the International Society!

Trips:

Saturday, 19 November – York (St Nicholas Fair)
Sunday, 20 November – Peak District (Poole’s Cavern and Bakewell)

For more info or to book click here.

Events:

Thanksgiving Celebration, Wednesday, 23 November, 6.30pm. Celebrate Thanksgiving with new friends! Learn about traditions, play fun games and most importantly enjoy a delicious hot meal and dessert.

For more info or to book click here.

MEET THE GRADUATES.

The Meet the Graduates Engineering - Employability Skills Workshop will take place online on Tuesday 8th November, from 12.30pm - 2pm. This event aims to give you a better understanding of the skills employers are looking for during the application process, by connecting you with professionals who studied a similar degree to you and are likely to be working in fields of interest to you. We are due to have alumni attending the event from WSP, Colt Technology Services, Bechtel Corporation, Kantar (Data and Analytics), Wilde Consulting Engineers and United Utilities. You will be invited to ask questions and practice networking in a safe and informal environment. Our professionals were once in your shoes; they are friendly and helpful and looking forward to sharing their tips, advice and insights with you. Sign up here if you are interested.

STUDENT FOCUS GROUPS.

We are looking for students to tell us what they think of the new home of Engineering and Materials Science and to share their experience. How will it work? Our team will be hosting a focus group to speak with students about both the actual building and their experience of teaching and learning whilst here at MECD. We are looking for eight students to attend each session and would like to capture as much diversity as possible. Students only need to attend one session and would be compensated with a £10 voucher to spend at Food On Campus. The dates and times available are:

13.00 to 14.30, Monday 21st November
13.00 to 14.30, Tuesday 22nd November
13.00 to 14.30, Wednesday 23rd November

This will be carried out on Microsoft Teams. To register, please email emily.robertson@manchester.ac.uk.

FACULTY FORUM.

It’s not too late to sign up now to take part in our Faculty Forum!

Wednesday, 9 November, 1pm to 2.30pm
Blended Lecture Theatre, Ground Floor (GA.056), Engineering Building A

Cost of Living Support and Assessment Feedback are topics for discussion at this term’s forum, which is open to all Faculty of Science and Engineering students. Come along and share your views - refreshments will be provided. To secure your place, sign up to take part by 4pm on Tuesday, 8 November. If you wish to sign up after this point, please email studentreps@manchester.ac.uk for the joining information. We look forwards to seeing you there!

POSTGRADUATE OPEN DAY.

be fully funded for your project, mentored by world-leaders in their field.
work with industry, collaborate with leading minds, and accelerate your development.
make life-changing personal and professional breakthroughs, researching your passion, in an environment where there are no barriers to what you want to achieve.

Come along to our Open Day on Wednesday, 16 November and find out how postgraduate research (PGR) at Manchester could change your tomorrow, or visit our dedicated Postgraduate Research pages for more information.

IT INCIDENTS.

Recently, there have been a number of IT incidents across the University, especially during October, which may have resulted in you experiencing problems using services such as Wi-Fi, My Manchester, Blackboard, Library resources, printers and many others. Here’s a message from out Director of IT, PJ Hemmingway with more details about the nature of the disruptions and how you will be kept updated.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

The deadline for sending in Monday Mail items: 12:00 (noon) every Friday. Just contact Paul.

Welcome back to Gareth’s Puzzle Corner, this is your weekly fix of brain teasers and logic puzzles. Today we have five puzzles to tackle: an easier Sudoku, a more challenging Sudoku, a different form of logic puzzle, a chess puzzle, and finally a puzzle from the Crackchester team for you to mull over! I hope you enjoy the puzzles and if you have any puzzles you wish to feature or ideas for Puzzle Corner then please get in touch.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - Pinwheel by Paradox

Normal sudoku rules apply. Digits cannot repeat along the indicated diagonal. Digits in a cage cannot repeat and (if given) must sum to the total in the top left corner. Digits on an arrow must sum to the number in the attached circle. A clue outside the grid either shows the total of a diagonal, if indicated, or otherwise the sum of the digits sandwiched between the 1 and 9 in the column or row. Not all sandwich clues are given, but none would be zero. The numbers on a line must be between the circled digits. Digits joined by a white dot must be consecutive, not all dots are given.

Bonus Puzzle - Masyu Up by puzzlemadness.co.uk

The aim is to draw a path round the grid so that it passes through every black and every white node. These are the rules. The path must turn on a black node. However, it must pass straight through the nodes before and after. The path must pass straight through a white node. However, it must turn on one (or both) of the nodes before and after.

Chess Puzzle - Deysi Vs. Paehtz, 2020

Drag and drop the Black pieces to win the match.

Crackchester Puzzle

Can you figure out what this message says?

PBATE NGHYN GVBAF ABJFR
AQNQZ GBNPB ZZVGG RRZRZ
OREBA QVFPB EQ

Join the discord if you're stuck, or think you've solved it!

Answers to the Previous Week

The answers to last week's puzzles can be found here.

Week 6 (Reading Week) • Monday 31 October 2022 • #22.07

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Good morning UG! It’s Monday 31st October 2022, and it’s Week 6. It’s Halloween today … I hope it’s not too spooky for you! This week is reading week, so there are no teaching activities scheduled for COMP course units this week. However, you may still have some coursework to complete, or activities may still be running for some non-COMP course units. Please check your personal timetable if you are not sure. University buildings, including the Kilburn building, will be open as normal this week.

On Saturday (5th November), we celebrate Bonfire Night (or Guy Fawkes night) in the UK. What’s it all about? Bonfire Night is when we commemorate the failed gunpowder plot of 1605, where a dissident group attempted to kill King James I by trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London. The event is observed by setting off fireworks and lighting bonfires where we burn a ‘guy’, an effigy of Guy Fawkes, one of the key conspirators in the plot.

Have a great week, on with today’s news ...

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

QUELL. The University has changed it’s online mental health and wellbeing service from Togetherall to Quell. Qwell works in a similar way to Togetherall but has the added benefit of offering a chat or 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.

EXAM SUPPORT.

Do you need support for a disability, a long term medical or mental health condition, or a learning disorder for your Exams? If you need extra time, rest breaks etc. due to any of these, please contact the Disability Advisory and Support Service (DASS) ASAP to register. Alternatively you can contact the Department Welfare Team to discuss a referral. Please note that you must have fully registered with DASS and have met with a Disability Adviser to discuss and agree any exam adjustments by 17th November in order to receive support in the January 2023 examinations.

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.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

The year tutors are here to support you if you need any help and advice, so feel free to contact your year tutor by email. Please note that the year tutors will not be running open office hours during reading week, please contact them by email:

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed
Year 3/4 (not CM): Tim Morris
CM (all years): Andrea Schalk
UG Director: Paul Nutter

STUDENT-STAFF LIAISON COMMITTEE.

This from Tom Carroll: The role of the Student-Staff Liaison Committee (SSLC) is to facilitate dialogue between the students and the department, allowing your elected student reps to discuss ideas and issues relating to teaching, learning, and the department and facilities as a whole. The SSLC has brought about many positive changes in the past, and will do so again in the future. The first step is for you to speak with your rep about any issues, and ideas, that should be discussed, or any positive aspects that you think we could potentially adopt elsewhere. Maybe you loved some teaching activity last week, and you think this should be recognised? Do you love the new break area in Kilburn LF? Is there an idea for change that you think would benefit many students in the department? Our first SSLC meeting is coming up on 9th November (just after reading week), so if you have any issues you want to raise to the department, or you wish to highlight something that you particularly like (maybe some good teaching), then please contact one of your SSLC Reps. You can find a list of your Reps here.

MEET YOUR REPS.

Over the next few weeks, we will be meeting some of the SSLC Student Reps. This week we have:

David Demetriad (Year 3, CS4wIE) writes: Hello, I am David and I am glad that I have the opportunity to represent you this year. Thank you for voting me at the elections. I would like to emphasise that I am willing to hear any of your concerns regarding, not only the course itself, but also in general about anything that comes into your mind. I will be more than happy to help if possible, by discussing with the SSLC. Furthermore, if you want to just chat you can hit me up anytime.
Merve Turan (Year 1, CS) writes: Hi! Some fun facts about me are that I love the visual arts, I lived in three other countries before coming here, and I was a student rep before. I am looking forward to representing our student perspective this year and to positively influence your experience in your course! I dearly hope that you will feel comfortable to approach us and provide feedback via our surveys, and that you will see how much we value our student rep role and what you really feel about your course! :)
Kayley Lam (Year 1, CSwIE) writes: Hi! I will be one of your student reps for this year and I can't wait to get to know more of you. I will do what I can with the department to support you and your learning throughout the year so if you have any feedback about your degree and your experience in general, please do let us know! If you ever have any concerns or see me around, feel free to come say hi or email me :) A little bit about myself is that I love games, anime, playing piano and learning stenography!

You can find contact details on the SSLC Blackboard page.

GOOGLE DEVELOPER STUDENT CLUBS.

Thank you to everyone who came to our speaker session last Wednesday! It was a very insightful experience to hear about the role of a Technical Solution Manager and the various technologies they are involved with. We hope you all enjoyed (especially the free food!) Follow us on Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | Discord to get updated. Visit our website and follow us for the latest events.

FIRST YEAR COURSE UNIT SURVEY.

The first-year student reps write: Hi everyone! Calling all first years! We are your first year student representatives, you can find out details in Blackboard. We have made a survey for you to fill in to provide general feedback about how you are finding the first year so far. It will not take long, and we would very much appreciate your answers. The results will be used to feedback positives and negatives of the teaching so far. Do not worry, they will be anonymous :)

KILBURN BUILDING EXTENDED ACCESS HOURS.

Normal working hours for the Kilburn building are 8am - 6pm, Monday to Friday. However, extended opening hours from 6pm - 9pm, Monday to Friday, are available to students. If you would like to use the Kilburn building during the extended opening hours (6pm - 9pm) then you will need to complete the Health & Safety module in Blackboard, as well as successfully completing an out of hours test. Once you have completed the out of hours test, you should send proof to SSO. Access will then be granted. Entry to the building outside of normal working hours is via the loading bay (opposite University Place) using your University swipecard. Your card will not be activated unless you have emailed proof of completion of the out of hours test to SSO. During extended hours access is restricted to the lower first area of the Kilburn building. You will not be able to use labs or meeting spaces in any other locations in Kilburn. Please note: there is no access to the Kilburn building at weekends.

THE UNDERGRADUATE HANDBOOK.

Just a reminder that you can find all the information you need about your degree programme in the Undergraduate Handbook; your one-stop resource for all information related to your studies. It contains information on progression from year to year, how to change degree programmes or interrupt your degree programme, information on student support etc. The handbook also has information related to how to apply for mitigating circumstances if your learning has been affected. It also tells you how mitigating circumstances are handled in the department and what the mitigating circumstances codes means.. You can always find the link to the handbook (as well as other useful links) at the top of each Monday Mail in the 'Essential Links' banner.

ATTENDANCE MONITORING.

Please remember to record your attendance at scheduled activities using “My Attendance”. Students will be expected to attend - and check into - all timetabled activities as part of their studies. The only exceptions to this are optional/drop-in activities, which will be clearly shown on your timetable (and not available to check-into from My Attendance). Why do we want to check on your attendance? We are not checking up on you, it’s for your own wellbeing. The reasons for monitoring attendance are to:

support academic attainment and progression,
to ensure student wellbeing
to satisfy reporting requirements to accredited programmes and external bodies such as the Student Loans Company, UK Visas and Immigration, and third-party sponsors.

UNILEVER FUTURE LEADERS LEAGUE.

Rohan Joshi (Year 3, CS) writes: There is an upcoming business challenge event hosted by Unilever Future Leaders’ League. The competition structure is as follows:

By 1st Nov: Register your interest in the competition using my link! (find out more by clicking the link)
1st Nov: UFLL Career Coaching & Brand Reveal virtual event - attendees will find out which Unilever brand is hosting this year's business challenge
1st Nov - 9th Dec: In teams of 3, submit your response to the business challenge to enter the competition.

So, what are you waiting for? Visit the link above to find out more about the competition and register now for a chance to win amazing prizes!

WOMEN IN CS GRANTS.

The department offers a number of grants to women, and those of a non-binary gender, to attend activities designed to support students from under-represented genders in their computer-science studies/careers. This could include things like attending professional society meetings, running or participating in events for women in CS, or meeting mentors. Find out more here.

HELP SHAPE GOVERNMENT POLICY.

A new study, conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), aims to understand the experiences of Higher Education students. The results will be used by the Department for Education to inform and develop policy. Details on how to take part can be found here. The study will take approximately 15 minutes. The deadline for taking part is 4th November 2022 and taking part is voluntary.

FACULTY FORUM.

Sign up now to take part in our Faculty Forum! The Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE) and Students' Union would like to invite you to take part in this term’s Faculty Forum, which is open to all FSE students and takes place:

Wednesday, 9 November, 2022, 1pm to 2.30pm
Blended Lecture Theatre, Ground Floor (GA.056), Engineering Building A

This will be a chance for you to discuss big topics with your peers and academics and influence strategic change across the Faculty. We’ll be talking about Cost of Living Support and its impact on your student experience, as well as Assessment Feedback. In order to prepare for the Forum, you could think about examples of good practice, including examples of different forms of assessment and what good and bad feedback means. Alongside this, you may want to consider how the rising Cost of Living is impacting you. This will help your participation in the session. Refreshments will be provided. To secure your place, sign up to take part by 4pm on Tuesday, 8 November. If you wish to sign up after this point, please email for the joining information. We look forward to seeing you there!

FIRE ALARM.

Those who were in the Kilburn Building on Friday morning will be aware that we had a fire alarm test. Thanks to all the students in the building who safely left the building in the correct way. Just a reminder that fire alarms differ across the University buildings:

In the Kilburn Building, if the alarm is intermittent, then you should be prepared to leave. If the alarm is continuous then you must leave by the nearest fire exit immediately.
In the IT building the alarm is always continuous, so if it goes off then please leave immediately by the nearest fire exit.

When you leave the building, you must move to the safe assembly point, which for the Kilburn Building is the open area outside of the chaplaincy (north side of Kilburn) and for the IT building is outside George Kenyon Hall.

NEW FLEXIBLE LEARNING INNOVATION SPACE.

The feedback provided by students from the University Flexible Learning strategy workshops showed that students wanted more space on campus where they can study, collaborate and trial new learning tools and technology. As a result, a new Flexible Learning Innovation Space will be launched in early 2023 in Prospect House, which you can find between the IT building and the National Graphene Institute behind the Kilburn Building. The space will provide opportunities for you to engage with flexible learning activities and technology-enhanced educational experiences, such as the commuter lounge, an XR (eXtended Reality) space, a Hy-Flex space, and a lifelong learning suite. You can find more information here.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

The deadline for sending in Monday Mail items: 12:00 (noon) every Friday. Just contact Paul.

Welcome back to Gareth’s Puzzle Corner, this is your weekly fix of brain teasers and logic puzzles. Today we have the usual four puzzles to tackle. One is an easier Sudoku, the second is a more challenging Sudoku, the third is a different form of logic puzzle and finally we have a chess puzzle for you. I hope you enjoy the puzzles and if you have any puzzles you wish to feature or ideas for Puzzle Corner then please get in touch.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - Distant Relatives by Agent

Divide the grid into regions and enter into each cell the size of its region (ie how many cells large it is). No two regions of the same size may share an edge. A number in a cell with an arrow indicates the distance to the nearest copy of that same number in every indicated direction. Not all arrows are necessarily given.

Bonus Puzzle - Number Maze Up by puzzlemadness.co.uk

We start at the number 1, and we must draw a single line through the numbers 2, 3, and 4 covering every cell in the grid that isn't marked as blank.

Chess Puzzle - Neiksans Vs. Tihonov, 2006

Drag and drop the Black pieces to win the match.

Answers to the Previous Week

The answers to last week's puzzles can be found here.

Week 5 • Monday 24 October 2022 • #22.06

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Good morning UG! It’s Monday 24th October 2022, and it’s Week 5 of teaching - we are rapidly making our way through the semester! Our student representatives across all four years have now been elected (more below). Thanks to all the students who nominated themselves to be student reps, and congratulations to those who were successfully voted onto the Student-Staff Liaison Committee (SSLC). I’m looking forward to hearing what ideas you have for improving the student experience in the Department.

It’s reading week next week (w/c 31st October), which means there are no teaching activities scheduled for COMP course units. However, you may still have activities scheduled for any non-COMP course units you are taking, and may still have some coursework to complete. Reading week is a good time to catch up on your work (including the 3rd year project) and maybe to do some revision of the material that has been taught so far. However, it is important that you take a break if you can.

Finally, don’t forget that on Sunday (30th October) the clocks go back by one hour, so you get an extra hour in bed!

Have a great week, on with today’s news ...

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

Student Union Advice Centre. The Student Union offers advice and support with any wellbeing problems you’re facing in a safe and confidential space away from the University. What can they do?

Give free, impartial and confidential advice or simply offer a place to talk.
Provide free contraception and sexual health tests.
Help you report a hate crime, and give you advice and support if you have been the victim of a hate crime.
Provide confidential advice and support if you have been a victim of sexual assault.
Help you understand University procedures around bullying, harassment and discrimination.

You can find more information on their website. Remember you can also contact the Department welfare team, Guy and Maria, for help and advice.

ESSENTIAL THINGS YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE.

There are 7 essential things you should have done by now: Register with a GP (see next item); get up to date with your vaccines; sort your council tax (if applicable); register to vote; get on top of your finances; check out CareerConnect; and download Safezone. You can find out more information here.

ON-CAMPUS GP SERVICE.

A new GP (Doctor’s) service has launched on our University’s campus – and you can register as a patient now. GPs provide a range of non-emergency services by appointment – including examinations, medication prescriptions, vaccinations, and referrals to other medical specialists. The University of Manchester GP Service is based on the 4th floor of Crawford House (building 31 on the interactive campus map), and is open 9am to 5pm Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and 9am to 12pm on Wednesdays. You can register with the practice here. Once registered, you will be able to telephone the practice on 0161 225 6699 for an appointment to speak to a GP or Practice Nurse, or book online. See here for more details. It is important that you register with a local GP, as not being registered makes getting help and advice more difficult, as well as leaving you unable to get a sick note to cover absences and obtaining evidence to support mitigating circumstances claims. This is especially the case if you are an overseas student, as getting evidence from home can be difficult.

LEARNING TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF.

The start of the academic year is a busy time and that means it’s easy to neglect yourself as you try and settle into new routines while you’re catching up with old – or making new – friends. Before you know it, you have academic work in the mix as well, and it’s easy to become overwhelmed. So, it’s worth trying to instil some habits into your everyday routines that will help you keep on top of your emotional and mental health throughout the year, such as: communicate and be open and honest; ask for help; take time out for yourself; move in a way that works for you; organise yourself; and fix your sleeping schedule. You can find out more information here.

WELLNESS EVENT CALENDAR.

From pumpkin painting to beekeeping workshops, there are a number of events running across the university in the following week. Check out the wellbeing calendar to find what triggers your interests. Here is a sample of what is on soon:

Yoga to Energise
Beekeeping with St Peter's House
Pumpkin painting
Halloween Costume Competition
Mixed Dodgeball

Find out about the wellbeing activities that are taking place across the University here.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Wednesday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.80
Year 3/4 (not CM): Tim Morris. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.107
CM (all years): Andrea Schalk. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Online only
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, IT119

PASS1.

The PASS1 team (Pranav Aggarwal (Y3, CSwIE), Nikola Radulov (Y3, AIwIE), Ahmed Soliman (Y3, CS), and Nathan Taylor (Y3, CS4)) write: PASS1 Sessions are running this week, Wednesday at 12-1pm, and are there to help you! Run by 2nd/3rd year students for the benefit of 1st year students, your PASS session can prove extremely helpful to you:

Are you struggling with that tricky Maths exercise?
Can you not get that pesky function to work in your programming coursework?
Do you just want to be around other people in the same boat as you, and who have been there before?

Then join your PASS session! Your session may not take place in the room that shows on your timetable. Your PASS leader should have made contact with you already to tell you the room you should be in. If you can't remember your PASS group or room, you can find a list here.

PASS2.

Ingy Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) and Nadine Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) write: Hello from PASS2! We hope you enjoyed last week’s session on CVs. Make sure you come along to this week’s session 12:00-13:00 on Thursday 27 October in Collab, we’ll be talking about types of interviews, as well as demonstrating a mock behavioural interview. As always there will be snacks - see you there! Remember to join our Discord to ask questions whenever you like, and check out our website to access all of our slides and resources! The PASS2 team will be in Collab from 11:30-13:30 if you want to ask any questions privately before or after the session. If you have any suggestions or feedback do not forget to fill in the forms on our website.

CLOCKS GO BACK!

Don’t forget that on Sunday 30th October at 2am the clocks go back by 1 hour (so 2 am becomes 1 am) and we move back to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) from British Summer Time. The clocks will remain at GMT until March 2023. Enjoy your extra hour in bed on Sunday morning!

STUDENT REPRESENTATIVES.

This from Tom Carroll, Chair of the UG Student-Staff Liaison Committee (SSLC): I would like to extend my thanks to all those who stood to become an SSLC rep, and to all those who voted in the elections. The UG SSLC Reps for this academic year have been appointed, and you can see a list of them here. We have the first meeting of the SSLC on Wednesday 9th November. If you would like to raise any issues then please contact one of your student reps. SSLC is one way in which you can feed your opinions back to the department and report any issues. Remember, we are also interested in what’s going well, which course units are doing a good job etc, so we can learn from what works and what doesn’t.

GOOGLE DEVELOPER STUDENT CLUBS.

What a great turnout to our Introduction to App Development workshop! Everyone who attended last Wednesday's workshop will receive a certificate of attendance. Follow us on our social media platforms to be notified of our future workshops and events. Follow us on Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | Discord to get updated. Visit our website and follow us for the latest events.

CRACKCHESTER NEWS.

Hi everyone! Thanks to everyone who came to our Nmap workshop last week! We’ve got our next workshop this Thursday where we’ll be discussing and showing some techniques involving web vulnerabilities such as sqli, we are also planning a social event to take place later that evening so stay tuned on our socials for more details! You can follow our socials here for the latest Crackchester news! That’s all from us this week, see you at the workshop!

HARDWARE LIBRARY.

Did you know we have a hardware library in the Department that contains a wide range of hardware components, free for you to borrow? You can use these to support your 3rd year project, or generally just to have a play with. There are all sorts of items available, from Raspberry Pi components to Drones, Arduinos to Microsoft Kinects, basic electronic components to robots … even VR headsets. 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.

HOW DO I CHECK WHEN A LAB IS FREE?

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, select “Kilburn” 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 may have to be on campus or running the VPN to get access to the timetable. If a room is booked for teaching, then you should avoid using it.

COMPUTE RESOURCES FOR PROJECTS.

If you have a 3rd year project that could make use of some extra compute power, then you can now access the central compute resources provided by Research IT, thanks to a major investment by the Faculty. There are a range of applications available, and of course you can build and run your own software. GPU access is also included. More details can be found here. There are reasonable limits on how much resource is available per student, but this will be flexible based on demand. Please contact the team (via the link, above) to discuss requirements before proposing any hugely computationally intensive projects, just in case; GPU access in particular can become constrained, for example.

UNICS HALLOWEEN SOCIAL.

Tired of getting haunted by coursework deadlines? Don't you worry, because UniCS has cooked up a Halloween social for you to take a break from work. It's happening on the 25th October 2022 from 7pm -11pm in Brickhouse Social. We can't wait to see you in your outfits. Don't have a costume? Well, it's not a problem because we'll have pool and prizes! See you all there!

UNICS ADVANCED WORKSHOP.

We're back with another advanced workshop. This week, we will be continuing with our series "The Coding Interview" with the topic being Solving LeetCode-Style Questions. It will take place in Kilburn Collab 1 from 2pm-3pm on 26th October 2022.

SHORTS FRIDAY SOCIETY.

Daniel Farr (Year 2, CS) writes: Happy Halloween. SFS (Shorts Friday Soc) here with our 2nd event of the semester. We’ll be running some team games, so bring a couple buddies and we’ll have a spooky themed quiz… All with one big prize and some food to end your Friday night. We look forward to seeing everyone there, and as always. Wear. Shorts. Fridays.

GOOGLE DEVELOPER STUDENT CLUBS EVENT.

Get to know about Kyndryl and IBM in our Speaker Session on Wednesday from 4 pm onwards in Lecture Theatre 1.1, Kilburn Building. Free Pizza and snacks will also be provided. Don't Forget to rsvp.

THINGS TO DO IN MANCHESTER.

Discover 100 things to do in Manchester. You may be a first year who is new to the city, or you’ve been here a few years, whichever, there’s always plenty to discover about Manchester and the region. The University has put together a list of 100 things you can do in our brilliant city to inspire you to go beyond the campus and explore what the city and the region has to offer. Manchester not only offers a great city life, with loads of bars and cafes, but also has a rich cultural history, from the Suffragette movement to the Madchester years. There’s also plenty to do further afield, such as visiting Heaton Park, hiking in the Peak District or visiting Jodrell Bank. You can find out more here.

INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY.

What’s coming up at the International Society?

Celebrate Diwali – Wednesday, 26 October, 6.30pm: Celebrate the Indian festival of lights with the International Society. Step into the twinkling wonderland and learn about the Diwali holiday, play typical games and try some traditional, festive delights.
Great International Bake Off – Wednesday, 9 November, 6pm : An international twist on the Great British Bake Off. You’re invited to bring along a baked delicacy from your country, from classic cakes to pastries or bread, to share with the group. Make sure you arrive hungry!

Find out more information about all the Society’s up and coming events.

CAPTURING OUR HERITAGE AND SHARING YOUR NORTH CAMPUS STORIES.

Moving home is something many of us are familiar with. Whether it is leaving the family home or moving from halls into a student home, it is the memories that remain with us. In the new home for Engineering and Materials, we moved from our historic North Campus site this year to our new site, closer to Oxford Road. So we wanted to capture our story, capturing the significant moments in our history including Sackville Street opening, surviving in the Second World War and why there is a monument to Vimto and other statues situated around North Campus. Take a look at our video here.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

The deadline for sending in Monday Mail items: 12:00 (noon) every Friday. Just contact Paul.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - Renban-Anti-Kropki by Klaus

Normal sudoku rules apply. Digits along a line must be a set of consecutive digits in any order. No domino in the grid can consist of consecutive digits or digits with a ratio of 1:2 (In other words: normal Kropki rules apply, all dots are given).

Bonus Puzzle - Towers Up by puzzlemadness.co.uk

Each puzzle consists of an NxN grid with some clues along its sides. The object is to place a skyscraper in each square, with a height between 1 and N, so that no two skyscrapers in a row or column have the same number of floors. In addition, the number of visible skyscrapers, as viewed from the direction of each clue, is equal to the value of the clue. Note that higher skyscrapers block the view of lower skyscrapers located behind them.

Chess Puzzle - Kabanova Vs. Gunnarsson, 2020

Drag and drop the Black pieces to win the match.

Answers to the Previous Week

The answers to last week's puzzles can be found here.

Week 4 • Monday 17 October 2022 • #22.05

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Good morning UG. It’s Monday 17th October, 2022, and we are into Week 4 of teaching. I hope everything is going okay. It’s that time of year when coughs and colds (as well as COVID!) are prevalent among the student (and staff) population. If you have symptoms, then you should stay at home to minimise the spread of infection. If illness impacts your ability to complete work by a deadline then you should aim to complete your work and submit it late, you can then apply to have the resulting late flag removed (see below). If you're unfortunate enough to be ill for more than a week, then please do fill in a mitigating circumstances form and tell us about all the assessments that were affected while you were getting caught up. Remember that you can find useful links in the Essential Links banner below.

If you have anything you would like to share in Monday Mail, such as advertising an event, promoting your success in a hackathon etc, then just send me an email.

Have a great week, on with today’s news ...

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

ENERGY REBATE FOR STUDENTS.

The Government’s Energy rebate scheme, announced in February 2022, allows students to claim a one-off payment of £150 per household, to help towards the rise in energy costs. You can find out more about the eligibility criteria here. Remember that there is help and advice on the cost of living pages on what support is available.

KEEPING SAFE ON CAMPUS.

You can find information here about how to keep safe on campus, including getting to know the Campus Support and Security team (the new name for the University Security team) and the Safezone app, which you can use to contact the Campus Support and Security in an emergency when on campus (more below).

SAFEZONE.

Safezone is our mobile app designed to provide you with enhanced security and assistance whilst studying or living on campus. The app is free to download and easy to use. You can use it to:

'Check in' any time of day – tell us where you are on campus 24/7
Quickly and discreetly call for assistance – whether it’s for first aid or in an emergency
Keep up to date – notifications sent directly to your phone if there is an incident on campus

Further information about Safezone and how to register can be found online here.

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

Nightline. Greater Manchester Nightline is a confidential listening and information service run for students by students. They offer anonymous, non-judgemental and non-directive support for all callers, regardless of the situation. You can talk about anything you like. As well as the listening service, Nightline can also provide information, such as contact numbers for a wide range of places. Just give Nightline a ring and ask – it’s as easy as that! You can contact Nightline by phone or instant message. Find out more about and see contact information on their website.

FREE EYE TESTS.

As a student you can get free eye tests, as well as free contact lens fittings and checkups from the Optometry Department. They also supply glasses at set prices. You can find out more information here.

LATE FLAG REMOVAL REQUEST.

If you have mitigating circumstances that are short term, for example, you have been unwell, and this has resulted in you submitting work late, then you can submit a request to have the late flag removed. You should always aim to complete work and submit it late, do not submit at the deadline if you haven't completed it! If you have been unwell for more than 5 days (or major circumstances have impacted your ability to complete work) then you should submit a mitigating circumstances form, you can find more information here. We have also produced some videos to explain the mitigating circumstances process in Blackboard. The system for requesting the removal of late flags can be accessed via SPOT. Select the appropriate course unit, in the assessments table shown, any work submitted late will have a clock icon next to the submitted date. Clicking the clock icon allows you to apply for the removal of a late flag, or links you to the mitigating circumstances page if the work has been submitted more than 5 days late. The mitigating circumstances team that considers the late flag removal applications meet weekly during the teaching period. You can check the status of your application by clicking the clock icon and clicking the apply link. Any late flag removal applications that are approved will result in the system automatically restoring your unpenalised grade.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Wednesday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.80
Year 3/4 (not CM): Tim Morris. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.107
CM (all years): Andrea Schalk. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Online only
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, IT119

PASS2.

Ingy Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) and Nadine Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) write: Hi everyone! Thanks for coming along to the Internship/Placement session last week. We will be continuing this week by talking all about CVs, and how to make yours stand out. Duncan will be joining us so this week’s session is not one to miss! As always, PASS2 will be 12:00-13:00 on Thursday in Collab. Don’t forget your CV! Reminders: join our discord to ask questions outside of PASS, and check out our website to access all slides from previous sessions. The PASS2 team will be in Collab from 11:30-13:30 if you want to ask any questions privately before or after the session. If you have any suggestions or feedback do not forget to fill in the forms on our website.

WINNER OF THE KILBURN WINDOW DESIGN COMPETITION.

Last week, Phoebe Pinney (Year 3, CS) received a prize for her winning design in the Oxford Road Window Competition. Our new Head of Department, Andrew Stewart, congratulated Phoebe and handed her the winner's certificate and book token. The plan is to have Phoebe’s artwork immortalised on the large window looking out onto Oxford Road (top right hand side of Kilburn looking from Oxford Road).

CRACKCHESTER.

This from the Crackchester team: Hi folks, we at Crackchester would like to thank everyone who came to our first workshop, it was great meeting you all! We've got another workshop coming up this Thursday, where we will be covering how to use Nmap for port detection and enumeration. The workshop will run from 4-5pm in Atlas 1 in Kilburn, we hope to see you there! If you missed our last workshop, don't worry! The slides are uploaded to our workshops channel on our discord. Want to stay up-to-date with the latest from us? Be sure to check out all our social media platforms: Crackchester | Linktree. That's it from us this week, we'll see you next time!

GOOGLE DEVELOPER STUDENT CLUBS.

Thank you to everyone who joined our workshop last Wednesday, you should receive your certificate of attendance soon! In case you missed the workshop, here is a link to the recording. PS: Keep an eye out for Wednesday's workshop :) Follow us on Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | Discord to get updated. Visit our website and follow us for the latest events.

HOW DO I CHECK IF I’VE SUBMITTED MY WORK?

We often get asked by students how to check that they have submitted work successfully, and it’s quite easy to do.

Blackboard: if the submission method is using Blackboard, then you can check under the “My Grades” link on the left on each course unit Blackboard page (under “Submitted” or “Marked”). You can also check via SPOT, although SPOT is only updated at 12pm and 6pm daily, so any submission between those times will not be shown until the update takes place. SPOT includes the date and time when the last data was received from Blackboard on each page.
Git: if the submission method is using git, then you can check via SPOT. Submissions via git will show in SPOT immediately (but you do need to refresh the SPOT web page). You know if you have submitted correctly because the due date will change to the submitted date. You should also see a ‘crossed fingers’ emoji, which indicates the work is submitted but not yet marked. Once the work is marked the emoji will be replaced with your provisional mark.
Software Engineering Y2: work submitted for Software Engineering will not show as submitted in SPOT until the work has been marked because tags are not used.
Whilst SPOT shows you something has been submitted, it does not know what, so cannot be used to verify you've submitted the correct required files. To check the files you have submitted use Blackboard or GitLab.

THE UNDERGRADUATE HANDBOOK.

The Undergraduate 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 degree programmes or interrupt your degree programme, 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. You can always find the link to the handbook (as well as other useful links) at the top of each Monday Mail in the 'Essential Links' banner.

ACADEMIC MALPRACTICE.

Just a reminder that the use of assignment writing services is a form of Academic Malpractice (AMP). These services often advertise that they can write your coursework, essays or even undertake programming tasks for you, advertising it will be 100% plagiarism free. You should avoid copying code from the internet and substituting this as your own, or copy work from a friend, as both constitute academic malpractice. Giving other students access to your work, even if unintentionally, also constitutes AMP, as it allows other students to plagiarise you, so make sure your git repo is private and treat requests from other students to see your work with caution. What are the implications if you get caught? You will get zero for your work as a minimum, but you could also face a University malpractice hearing, and could even fail the year. The work you submit should be your own; passing off someone else’s work as yours is plagiarism! We ask you to complete coursework as part of your learning; engaging in AMP means that you are missing out on being able to understand the course material, which ultimately will make future work more difficult for you.

UKIEPC PROGRAMMING CONTEST:

GET INVOLVED. Ian Pratt-Hartmann writes: The UK and Ireland Programming Contest (UKIEPC) will take place this year on Saturday, October 29th, 2022, 11:00–16:00. UKIEPC is an annual event in which teams of three participants try to crack a series of programming challenges. This year, as usual, Manchester will be one of the participating sites. Note that participation at Manchester is be available ONLY to teams consisting entirely of students in the Department of Computer Science at Manchester (this, however, includes students on joint honours programs such as Computer Science and Mathematics). The contest itself will take place in the labs on the Lower First Floor of the Kilburn Building. Refreshments will be provided in the common area on the Lower First Floor for participants. (Obviously, no food and drink will be permitted in the labs.) Details can be found here. You should register using the Competition website. (There is a "TakePart" button in the top right corner, which is surprisingly easy to miss.) Registration is now open. Completing the form should be easy. 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 25th to 27th November 2022. 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 2022. The detailed rules on eligibility are explained on the ICPC website. However, in practice, any UG or Master's student at Manchester, as well as some PhD students, are eligible. Have fun and good luck!

UNICS BEGINNERS WORKSHOP.

Programming for Everybody: Variables and String Manipulation. In this workshop we will be teaching you how to write a few simple programs, making use of variables, and strings in Python.

Venue: Kilburn Collab 1
Time: 2pm to 3pm
Date: 19th October (Wednesday)

We hope to see you there!

INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY.

There’s lots going on over at the International Society in the next few weeks. Trips are open to students, non-students, internationals and locals! Visit the International Society’s website for more info or to book.

GO ABROAD FAIR.

The Go abroad Fair takes place on Tuesday, 25 October, 2-6pm, in University Place. Expand your horizons and discover exciting new places by attending a summer school or volunteering internationally. Enhance your employability, experience new learning styles and develop your confidence, communication skills and cultural awareness. At the Fair you will have the opportunity to meet staff from the Placements and International Programmes team and find out more about our partner Universities in over 30 countries around the world. Find out more about the Go Abroad Fair. Please note that the Department does not offer a Study Abroad programme.

USER STUDIES.

This from Markel Vigo: 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.

SCIENCEX.

We have a great opportunity to support the Faculty's Social Responsibility team managing our annual Science Festival, ScienceX, at Manchester Central Library. ScienceX is open to the public, giving them a fabulous opportunity to get hands-on with activities and interact with our volunteer students and staff, giving you the opportunity to showcase how exciting the world of science and engineering can be. The event takes place on the 27-29 October 2022. Find out about more and sign-up on the volunteer hub.

VENTURE FURTHER AWARDS.

Do you want to start your own business? Here's your chance to win up to £15,000 and make it a reality with the university’s annual start-up competition. Visit our VFA23 webpages where you can register to attend our online support sessions (from 18th October) to help strengthen your application and apply online. Deadline for applications – Thursday, 23rd February 2023, midday.

HELP SHAPE UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS.

Last year we brought together a Students’ Perspectives Group so current students could directly influence and shape our University’s communications – and we’re on the lookout for new members. The group was formed as part of our commitment to work in closer partnership with our students, and it has already made a big difference, with the group helping to develop important campaigns covering topics like sexual harassment, drug and alcohol harm reduction and exam support. If you join the group, you’ll be paid with a £15 Amazon voucher for each session you attend. You can find more information here.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

The deadline for sending in Monday Mail items: 12:00 (noon) every Friday. Just contact Paul.

Welcome back to Gareth’s Puzzle Corner, this is your weekly fix of brain teasers and logic puzzles. Today we have the usual four puzzles to tackle. One is an easier Sudoku, the second is a more challenging Sudoku, the third is a different form of logic puzzle and finally we have a chess puzzle for you. We also have a challenge from Crackchester this week. I hope you enjoy the puzzles and if you have any puzzles you wish to feature or ideas for Puzzle Corner then please get in touch.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - Ludoku by questionable_compensation

Normal sudoku rules apply. On green lines, adjacent digits differ by at least 5. Digits on the blue line must lie between the digits placed on either end of the line. On the red line, each set of 3 adjacent digits contains 1 number from each of the sets: (1,4,7) (2,5,8) (3,6,9). On the yellow line, each set of 3 adjacent digits contains 1 number from each of the sets: (1,2,3) (4,5,6) (7,8,9). The digit in a white circle must be in one of the cells connected to that circle. The central 'minimum' digit is smaller than its 4 orthogonally adjacent digits.

Bonus Puzzle - Light Up by puzzlemadness.co.uk

Your aim is to place light bulbs in to the grid so that all white cells in the grid are lit. No light bulb is allowed to light another light bulb. Some of the black cells in the grid will have number clues. This clue tells you how many light bulbs are surrounding that cell. A light bulb will light all the cells horizontally and vertically away from it until it either hits the grid's edge, or reaches a black cell.

Chess Puzzle - Nilssen Vs. Stalmach, 2020

Drag and drop the Black pieces to win the match.

Crackchester Puzzle

Can you complete the command to scan for web servers on a local network, including ones ignoring pings? There are (small) prizes for anyone who joins our discord and tells us the answer!

Answers to the Previous Week

The answers to last week's puzzles can be found here.

Week 3 • Monday 10 October 2022 • #22.04

Paul pic

Good morning! It’s Monday 10th October 2022, and it’s Week 3 of teaching. Course unit selection has now closed and you should be enrolled on your course units for this semester, if not, then you should contact the student support office, or the relevant year tutor if you have any queries. You may find that your timetable gets more busy from this week as labs for course units will have started, so planning your time is important - as is making sure you take regular breaks from your work! If you are experiencing any issues that may be impacting your learning, then you should speak to the relevant Year Tutor or a member of the Department Welfare Team (see below).

Voting for student representatives is now open (see below), so please vote. Student reps are appointed by you to represent you, so it’s important you make your vote count!

Lot's of news today. Have a great week ...

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

STUDENT WELFARE SUPPORT IN CS.

EXAMINATIONS AND RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE.

The University will make every effort, in its timetabling of examinations, to avoid holding examinations on religious days or festivals that occur during examination periods for those students whose commitment to the observance of their faith would otherwise cause them to miss the examination. If this affects you, you must fill in the Examinations and Religious Observance form which can be found here, which should be submitted to examtimetable@manchester.ac.uk. The dates you need to complete the form are as follows:

Semester 1 exams, 16th - 27th January 2023: completed form to be returned no later than 28th October 2022.
Semester 2 exams, 17th May - 7th June 2023: 3rd March 2023
Resit exams, 21st August - 1st September 2022: 7th July 2023.

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

TOGETHERALL. Togetherall is a 24/7 anonymous online mental health and wellbeing resource for students, staff and researchers. You can access the service by going to www.togetherall.com and signing up with your UoM email address. Whether you’re struggling to sleep, feeling low or finding it hard to cope, or just want the chance to think more deeply about your wellbeing, Togetherall can help you to explore your feelings and think things through. You will have access to a 24/7 online community, monitored by trained clinicians. Togetherall is a safe space online to get things off your chest, have conversations, get creative and learn how to manage your mental health and wellbeing. Togetherall is totally anonymous and confidential, so no one will know you’re using it unless you tell them! Find out more here.

LOST IN KILBURN.

Have you found yourself wandering aimlessly around Kilburn? Do you find Kilburn a maze? Have you struggled to find staff offices or 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.

STUDENT SUPPORT HUBS.

Need to speak to a member of our team? You can access a range of support from our Students Support Hubs which can be found on the first floor in Engineering Building A (just type 1A.043 into the interactive map), or the ground floor of the Alan Turing Building (map ref: 46), depending on the nearest location to you at the time. Our helpful and friendly staff will aim to resolve your query or refer and signpost you appropriately. If we can't answer your question we will find out who can! Services available include:

General student life enquiries - including help with registration, start of year questions, tuition fees, bank letters and non-specialist visa advice.
Advice and referrals - specific to your subject area.
Wellbeing support - including private space to discuss confidential queries with our team.

LATE FLAG REMOVAL REQUEST.

If you have mitigating circumstances that are short term, for example, you have been unwell with a cold, and this has resulted in you submitting work late, then you can submit a request to have the resulting late flag removed. If you have been unwell for more than 5 working days (or major circumstances have impacted your ability to complete work) then you should submit a mitigating circumstances form, you can find more information here. We have also produced some videos to explain the mitigating circumstances process in Blackboard. The system for requesting the removal of late flags can be accessed via SPOT. Select the appropriate course, in the assessments table, any work submitted late will have a clock icon next to the submitted date. Clicking the clock icon allows you to apply for the removal of a late flag, or links you to the mitigating circumstances page if the work has been submitted more than 5 working days late. The mitigating circumstances team that considers the late flag removal applications meets weekly during the teaching period. You can check the status of your application by clicking the clock icon and clicking the apply link. Any late flag removal applications that are approved will result in the system automatically restoring your unpenalised grade.

COST OF LIVING SUPPORT.

We’ve got lots of online resources available including all the latest information, support, and guidance if you are affected by the rising cost of living. We’re also working with the Students’ Union on additional support measures that will be announced soon. Get help and find out more on our finances webpage.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Wednesday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.80
Year 3/4 (not CM): Tim Morris. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.107
CM (all years): Andrea Schalk. Open hour: Tuesday 17:00 - 18:00, Online only
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, IT119

PASS2.

Ingy Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) and Nadine Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) write: Hi everyone! Last week’s turnout was amazing, thank you for showing up with your teams and we hope it was beneficial. Our next session is on Thursday 13th. The main bulk of the session is 12:00-13:00 but we have leaders present from 11:30 and after 13:00 if you can’t make it and have questions for us. We will be talking all about internships, placements and how to apply. See you there, and feel free to bring your CV too! Remember to join our Discord where you can ask us any questions. Checkout our website to get to know more about us, and get access to our weekly slides and forms.

STUDENT REP VOTING.

This from Siyana Gospodinova (Student Experience Intern): Student Reps voting is now live! Contribute to the Kilburn community by exercising your right to vote! You have until the 16th of October 10pm to choose your top 5 reps. Keep in mind the people you choose will be representing your whole cohort for the rest of the academic year, so vote wisely! If you are a 1st , 2nd or 3rd year student, check your university mailbox to find your year's voting poll. Alternatively, you can find the poll on your community page on Blackboard at "Undergraduate SSLC", found under "Student Experience". Thank you for casting your vote, and thank you to all those students who have volunteered to be student reps.

DEPARTMENT FOOTBALL TEAM.

Asim Abdelrazik writes: Are you looking to play 11-a-side FOOTBALL in the University of Manchester Campus Sport League? If so, then join the Computer Science Football Discord server for more information. We will have weekly training sessions and it will be a great opportunity to socialise and help keep fit too! The team is open for anyone in the department of Computer Science. We will be conducting trials for the team and the details for that can be found on the Discord server, so be sure to join! Either Scan the QR code or click on the following link to join.

UNICS AGM – The UniCS Committee would like to invite you to an Annual General Meeting on Wednesday,

19th October 2022 at Kilburn Collab, 3-5pm. In this meeting, we will hear general vision from the Chairs Report, Financial Report and Secretary Report on the society’s current state of affairs. We will also hold a vote for a few society constitution changes. We hope that your participation can help UniCS grow as a society, and continue to provide more opportunities as well as fun, engaging experiences for students.

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, select “Kilburn” 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 may have to be on campus or running the VPN to get access to the timetable. If a room is booked for teaching, then you should avoid using it.

2-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION.

All students (whether on or off campus) are required to use 2-factor authentication to log in to Blackboard, University email and Microsoft 365. The 2-factor authentication service is provided by a company called Duo and is used to help us stay safe and to improve the University’s security. If you’re already set up with Duo and have registered a device in the IT Account Manager then you are all set - just make sure you have the Duo App ready on your smartphone. You can find out more here. If you have any issues then you can either contact IT services on 0161 306 5544, or pop along to the help desk on the ground floor of the Kilburn building.

HOW DO I CHECK IF I’VE SUBMITTED MY WORK?

We often get asked by students how to check that they have submitted work successfully, and it’s quite easy to do.

Blackboard: if the submission method is using Blackboard, then you can check under the “My Grades” link on the left on each course unit Blackboard page (under “Submitted” or “Marked”). You can also check via SPOT, although SPOT is only updated at 12pm and 6pm daily, so any submission between those times will not be shown until the update takes place. SPOT includes the date and time when the last data was received from Blackboard on each page.
Git: if the submission method is using git, then you can check via SPOT. Submissions via git will show in SPOT immediately (but you do need to refresh the SPOT web page). You know if you have submitted correctly because the due date will change to the submitted date. You should also see a ‘crossed fingers’ emoji, which indicates the work is submitted but not yet marked. Once the work is marked the emoji will be replaced with your provisional mark.
Software Engineering Y2: work submitted for Software Engineering will not show as submitted in SPOT until the work has been marked because tags are not used.
Whilst SPOT shows you something has been submitted, it does not know what, so cannot be used to verify you've submitted the correct required files. To check the files you have submitted use Blackboard or GitLab.

The onus is on you to ensure that you submit your work properly and by the deadline. We will not point out you haven't submitted your work.

THE UNDERGRADUATE HANDBOOK.

The Undergraduate 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 degree programmes or interrupt your degree programme, 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. You can always find the link to the handbook (as well as other useful links) at the top of each Monday Mail in the 'Essential Links' banner.

DIGITAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT.

We're transforming our Digital Learning Environment with your help. The Flexible Learning Programme would like to extend a huge thank you to all students who took part in workshops and consultations during the Digital Learning Environment (DLE) Review, and provided feedback into how we can improve our digital learning platforms. Over the last 12 months, the DLE Review team have worked with over 100 students (plus University staff) to gather feedback about our future DLE – our digital environment that supports teaching and learning. Currently at the centre of our DLE is Blackboard Learn, a tool which allows students and staff to navigate learning content and tools. However, since our contract with Blackboard Learn is due to expire, we’re beginning to assess what tool could replace it – with a view to delivering a new DLE over the next few years. Your feedback told us that our future DLE should provide various benefits, including;

A consistent approach: a core set of tools that are supported and easy to use
Openness and sharing: enabling communities within students and staff with easy access to alternative courses
Connected and seamless: one log-in for all learning platforms, with easy access to important student information
Accessibility: a system that works for everyone
Student focus: engaging content that enables collaboration
Device agnostic: works across multiple different connected devices
Resilience: robust platforms with minimum ‘down time’

Your requirements have been captured in our final report and will help us to choose a new DLE that works for all. You can learn more about the report in this presentation, which summarises the content. What are the next steps? The process of choosing a new product for our DLE (and putting it in place) will take a few years – and there’ll be plenty of ways for you to get involved throughout that time. We’re planning even more student engagement opportunities, to make sure the system we choose works for everyone – and we’ll be sure to share these opportunities with you. If you have any questions about the Digital Learning Environment Review at this stage, you can contact us at FlexibleLearning@manchester.ac.uk. A huge thank you once again for all contributions to the project so far.

GREAT UNIT HACK.

GreatUniHack is back! We are pleased to announce that this year's hackathon will take place in person in MMU Business School, in less than two months. It is a fantastic opportunity to socialise and collaborate with other like-minded students. There will be a chance to win prizes, get some swag and enjoy free food over a weekend of intense coding and other activities. Register your interest here.

BOARDGAME SOC AND UNICS SOCIALS:

Are you in need of a break from all the workload you have? Well the Board Game Society has come to the rescue by preparing a social event with UniCS. It’ll take place at Student’s Union on the 14th October 2022, from 7-10pm. We’ll be starting off the first hour with socials (in B2) to get to know one another and after that, the amazing people from the BoardGame Soc will hold a Board Games Session (in Room 2.2) for the rest of the event. See you there and we hope you have a blast!

UNICS ADVANCED WORKSHOP.

Get Started with Careers in the Tech Industry. Our placement year students will share their experiences with the job application process. Come along to hear them, or clear any doubts you have regarding the job application process that include CV tips, job application tips, and on-campus resources. It will take place in Kilburn Collab 1, on 12th October (2-3pm).

UKIEPC PROGRAMMING CONTEST:

GET INVOLVED. Ian Pratt-Hartmann writes: The UK and Ireland Programming Contest (UKIEPC) will take place this year on Saturday, October 29th, 2022, 11:00–16:00. UKIEPC is an annual event in which teams of three participants try to crack a series of programming challenges. This year, as usual, Manchester will be one of the participating sites. Note that participation at Manchester will be available ONLY to teams consisting entirely of students in the Department of Computer Science at Manchester (this, however, includes students on joint honours programs such as Computing and Mathematics). The contest itself will take place in the labs on the Lower First Floor of the Kilburn Building. Refreshments will be provided in the common area on the Lower First Floor for participants. (Obviously, no food and drink will be permitted in the labs.). Details can be found here. You should register using the Competition website. (There is a "TakePart" button in the top right corner, which is surprisingly easy to miss.) Registration is now open. Completing the form should be easy. 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 25th to 27th November 2022. Realistically, we can expect to be able to enter two or three teams from Manchester in that round. Note that we will enter a team to NWERC only if all of its members have competed in UKIEPC 2022. The detailed rules on eligibility are explained on the ICPC website. However, in practice, any UG or Master's student at Manchester, as well as some PhD students, are eligible. Have fun and good luck!

OUTREACH MAILING LIST.

Louise Dennis writes: Are you interested in engaging with the public with Computer Science? The department runs a range of activities, such as Open Days, visits to schools and stands at science festivals and other events. We maintain an email list where we post calls for volunteers to help at such events. If you would like to be added to this mailing list then please send me an email.

TIMETABLE SURVEY.

Fancy being in with the chance of winning one of 100 Love2Shop vouchers up for grabs, worth £25 each? All you have to do is take part in our simple two-minute survey to rank the factors that matter most to you in your timetable. Respond with your University email address, by Wednesday, 14 December 2022 and we’ll enter you into the prize draw to win a voucher. Read more about the survey and how to take part.

NUTRITION REPORTING AND TYPE 1 DIABETES.

Study Participants Required. Nicole Lubasinski (PhD Student) writes: Are you a Type 1 diabetic? Do you know someone who is a Type 1 diabetic? We are investigating how much time and energy a person living with Type 1 diabetes is willing to contribute to better understand their food intake, and how it impacts on their future blood glucose levels. The information will help to design a practical predictor of future blood glucose levels for those living with Type 1 diabetes. Volunteers over the age of 18 years who have lived with Type 1 diabetes for at least 1 year are being asked to complete an online questionnaire. The questionnaire shouldn’t take more than 8 minutes. Please contact me if you have any questions. Thanks.

KILBURN BUILDING EXTENDED ACCESS HOURS.

Normal working hours for the Kilburn building are 8am - 6pm, Monday to Friday. However, extended opening hours from 6pm - 9pm, Monday to Friday, are available to students. If you would like to use the Kilburn building during the extended opening hours (6pm - 9pm) then you will need to complete the Health & Safety module in Blackboard, as well as an out of hours test. Once you have completed the out of hours test, you should send proof to the student support office. Access will then be granted to you once the new arrangements are in place. Entry to the building outside of normal working hours is via the loading bay entrance (opposite University Place) using your University swipecard. Your card will not be activated unless you have emailed proof of completion of the out of hours test to student support office. During extended hours access is restricted to the lower first area of the Kilburn building. You will not be able to use labs or meeting spaces in any other locations in Kilburn. You may be required to show proof that you have extended hours when requested by a building attendant or security. Please note: there is no access to the Kilburn building at weekends.

LIBRARY SUPPORT FOR STUDENT COST OF LIVING.

The University has launched several 'Bring and Ping' spaces across campus to support students during the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. As part of this initiative, students can now microwave their own food and prepare hot drinks in the 'Bring and Ping' space in the Library Lounge during Main Library opening hours. In due course, the Library will launch the 'Library Living Room'. Work is ongoing to add comfortable furniture to the Blue Ground Study and Support Space (the former High Demand area) to create a space where students can relax and socialise. Keep an eye on our social media channels for updates. Dedicated spaces in buildings across Campus have also been fitted with microwaves, free hot water, washing up and hand-washing facilities, and charging points. Other spaces include:

University Place Drum, open 9am-9pm
Dover Street Ex Café, open 9am-6pm
Dover Street G45 (lounge/ seating area), open 9am-6pm
MECD Ground Floor, open 9am-8pm (9am-10pm during exam time)

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

The deadline for sending in Monday Mail items: 12:00 (noon) every Friday. Just contact Paul.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - srelliK esreveR by Kuraban

Normal sudoku rules apply. A clue outside the grid shows the total of the X number of cells, starting on the OPPOSITE side of the grid, where X is the first cell next to the clue. Cages show their totals.

Bonus Puzzle - Suko by puzzlemadness.co.uk

Your aim is to insert the numbers 1-9 in to the grid so that each number only appears once, and all the totals are satisfied.

Chess Puzzle - Saito Vs. Alvares, 2020

Drag and drop the Black pieces to win the match.

Answers to the Previous Week

The answers to last week's puzzles can be found here.

[End of The Monday Mail - Week 3 - Semester 1 AY22 - #22.04

Week 2 • Monday 3 October 2022 • #22.03

Paul pic

Good morning! It’s Monday 3rd October 2022, and it’s Week 2 of teaching (October already!). I hope everything has settled down and you now know your timetable and where your teaching activities take place. If you are an overseas student and you are struggling with English then the University Centre for Academic English are offering a number of workshops (see below). Don't forget that the deadline for choosing any optional course units is 15:30 this Friday (7th October). If you are a 1st year student who has yet to complete the boot-up labs, then it's essential you do so, as you will need to set up Git which you will need for a number of course units (more below). Finally, a big welcome to our new Head of Department, Prof Andrew Stewart (more below).

Have a great week, on with today’s news ...

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

COST OF LIVING.

The university offers support to students facing financial hardship. You can find more information here of what help is available, including the latest information, support, and guidance for students affected by the rising cost of living. We are working with the Students’ Union on additional support measures that will be announced in due course.

WHERE TO FIND SUPPORT.

There are a range of services across the university to support you throughout your studies, covering everything from your academic life and personal wellbeing to specialist services like DASS, counselling and careers. Our Department welfare team are your first point of contact and can help direct you to the appropriate service as needed, please contact them by email. Bookmark the A-Z of services though so you always have these to hand!

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

Confidential one to one appointments
Group workshops
Online support materials and self-help tools

You can refer yourself to the counselling service by booking an appointment online. Remember you can always contact the Department welfare team are for any advice or help at any time.

ACADEMIC WRITING AND SPEAKING WORKSHOPS.

From the 3rd October, the University Centre for Academic English (UCAE) will be offering students a suite of Academic Writing, Academic Grammar and Academic Speaking workshops. The Academic Writing workshops offer faculty-specific support covering both the basics and the finer points of good academic writing. The sessions are interactive and encourage small group work to solve problems and edit ‘subject related’ texts. Our Academic Grammar workshops are open to students from all faculties and include the fundamentals of good sentence structure, as well as more subtle ways of showing nuance and emphasis. We are pleased to re-start our Academic Speaking workshops, which cover speaking and listening in different academic situations, helping students with aspects of pronunciation. Students will need to register for these workshops, and we aim to offer on-campus and remote study options. Students will also be able to access self-study resources available via our Blackboard community – details and registration are via Blackboard self-enrolment. This is a fantastic resource for our international students, and we have received very positive feedback from students who attended the programme last year. Please visit here for more details.

ACADEMIC ADVISORS.

Your academic advisor provides pastoral support if you are having any issues during your studies. Who is your academic advisor? If you are a 1st or 2nd year student, your academic advisor is your personal tutor. You can find out your tutor group and tutor is if you are in year 1 or year 2. In the 3rd year, your academic advisor is your project supervisor, and in the 4th year it is Tim Morris.

LATE ARRIVING STUDENTS.

If you are a late arriving student, then the latest start date, when you need to be physically on campus and attending, is 10th October 2022. Students who cannot physically be on campus ready to study by this date will need to request a deferral of their offer until the next academic year via the Admissions team or take a period of interruption.

RAIL STRIKES.

National rail services will be disrupted on Wednesday, 5th October. If you travel by train and the strike will affect you coming onto campus you can find out more information here.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Wednesday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.80
Year 3/4 (not CM): Tim Morris. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.107
CM (all years): Andrea Schalk. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Online only
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, IT119

PASS1.

The PASS1 team (Pranav Aggarwal (Y3, CSwIE), Nikola Radulov (Y3, AIwIE), Ahmed Soliman (Y3, CS), and Nathan Taylor (Y3, CS4)) write: Alright folks, hope you had an enjoyable welcome week and a productive first week of studies! This is just a reminder that your first PASS1 session is this week on Wednesday from 12 to 1. So please come along and meet your PASS group and your PASS leaders. We are meeting in several locations, so please find your room here - your PASS Group and room is based on your Tutor Group. See you soon!

PASS2.

Ingy Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) and Nadine Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) write: We hope everyone who attended our session on module selection found it useful! The next session will be on Thursday 6th in the Collab in Kilburn from 12-1pm. We’ll be giving Soft Eng 1 module advice and putting on an Icebreaker for your teams – so encourage everyone to come along and get to know each other! There will be snacks (as always), see you there! Remember to join our Discord so that you can freely ask us questions. Members of the PASS2 team will be in Collab half an hour before PASS2 (11:30-12) if you would like to ask questions in private

GOOGLE DEVELOPER STUDENT CLUBS.

This from the Google Developer Student Clubs (GDSC) team: First GDSC social of the year was a huge success! Many people from different backgrounds came together to network and enjoy free snacks. Many thanks to everyone who joined us last Wednesday! Keep an eye out for our very first workshop next week :) Follow us on Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | Discord to get updated. Visit our website and follow us for the latest events.

UNICS TEAM RECRUITMENT.

Team recruitment is still open. Check it out here. There are various teams that you can apply to. We would love to have more enthusiastic people in our teams!

CHEATING - CALL IT OUT.

Before most of your assessment deadlines start to hit, we wanted to raise awareness of contract cheating and what you can do about it. It’s the practice of engaging someone else to write any – or all – of a piece of assessed work for you (including online exams). Read more about contract cheating and how to protect yourself.

BLACKBOARD HINTS & TIPS.

Can’t remember if you’ve submitted your work to Blackboard? For each course unit, if you check out the “My Grades” link to the left, you will find information about which assignments have been submitted, which quizzes have been completed etc, along with any marks that are available. The “Submitted” page tells you what has been submitted (but has not been marked), the “Marked” page tells you what has been marked. Alternatively, you can use SPOT.

SPOT.

SPOT is a student assessment record system used in the Department of Computer Science that shows all your assessment marks in one central system for the modules that you are taking with the department of Computer Science. SPOT also provides other information for the courses you are taking, for example, assessment weights and deadlines, any git tags required for submission, etc. There are also links to the UG Handbook and an overview of all deadlines. If you submit work late and have reasonable grounds for submitting late, you can also apply for the removal of a late flag via SPOT (providing the work was submitted within 5 working days of the deadline). SPOT can be accessed via this link and further guidance can be found on the departmental wiki pages. SPOT was created by Toby Howard and is currently maintained and has been further developed by Stewart Blakeway.

COURSEWORK DEADLINES.

The coursework deadlines chart is now populated with this semester’s deadlines, you can find the chart here. Hopefully this will help you in planning your work during the semester. Please note: the deadlines shown are for indication purposes only and may be subject to change. Only SPOT indicates up-to-date information on deadlines, so please use SPOT to confirm deadlines.

COURSE UNIT SELECTION.

You have until 15:30 this Friday (7th October) to finalise your Semester 1 course unit choices. After that deadline your course selections freeze, and changes for Semester 1 will no longer be possible. Please ensure you are also enrolled on to your Semester 2 choices by this date (120 credits in total). Course unit selection will reopen in February for you to make changes to your Semester 2 course unit choices. Please note: 1st years have no choice in the 1st semester.

KILBURN LAB MACHINES.

If you are having problems logging into one of our lab machines, or if you find a machine that is not working, then you can request support via IT services. Go to the IT Services Support website, login using your university credentials, select ‘Request Support’ then ‘General request or IT Issue’ (you may need to scroll down), in the popup window that appears, click ‘Request’. You should enter your university username and for the question ‘Are you reporting a fault or experiencing issues’ select ‘Yes’. Fill in the remaining form, including as much detail as possible, such as the hostname of the machine (you can find this on the machine, or at the common line prompt in Linux), and error message you receive etc. Then select 'Review & Submit', then finally ‘Submit’. Please note that a typical mistake is for a student to use the wrong username to login, this should be just ab1234rc without adding @manchester.ac.uk.

ATTENDANCE MONITORING.

The University has a student attendance system called “My Attendance” which allows student attendance at timetabled activities to be recorded. Students will be expected to attend - and check into - all timetabled activities as part of their degree programme. The only exceptions to this are optional/drop-in activities, which will be clearly shown on your timetable (and not available to check-into from My Attendance). Why do we want to check on your attendance? We are not checking up on you, it’s for your own wellbeing. The reasons for monitoring attendance are to:

support academic attainment and progression,
to ensure student wellbeing
to satisfy reporting requirements to accredited programmes and external bodies such as the Student Loans Company, UK Visas and Immigration, and third-party sponsors.

This gives us an accurate picture of attendance and engagement so our student support teams can use the data to ensure that we can identify, reach out and help students who are having problems, whether those are welfare, personal or academic related issues. We have lots of help and information about how to use the online attendance system, and you can access this through the links below. If you have any questions or need help using it, please email the welfare team. For information about the system click on this link My Attendance | Welcome to Manchester | The University of Manchester. From this page you can link the Video portal of The University of Manchester, a video guide to using the Attendance Monitoring System and list of FAQs which includes how to access on a mobile device. Students may occasionally not attend a scheduled activity for genuine reason, such as illness, or may forget to check in. We are not concerned with the odd missed activity, more any prolonged pattern of absence, which may cause us concern. If you miss the odd activity, or you forget to check-in, then please do not contact staff to ask for your attendance to be recorded, as amending a record is not possible after the event has finished. You will not get access to My Attendance until you have completed your registration. Once you have done, you may have to wait a while until you can use the system.

FIRST YEAR BOOT-UP LABS.

If you are a first year student it is essential that you complete the boot-up labs from Welcome Week. One of the key activities is to set up Git in your home file store. Why is this important? Because you will need Git configured correctly for a number of course units this year (and future years). If Git isn’t set up properly, then you won’t be able to even start some labs! You can borrow a Raspberry Pi by speaking to Steve Rhodes in the office in Tootill 0. If you have any questions about the boot-up labs then you can ask them on the discussion forum in Blackboard, or contact Ahmed Saeed.

UNICS BEGINNERS WORKSHOP.

Here’s your perfect opportunity to learn python. Join us for our first workshop which is open to all CS and non CS students. As we mentioned last time, we are also looking for workshop volunteers to help us run these workshops. This will be a great opportunity for you to show off your skills as a Computer Scientist, and will count towards your volunteering hours! If you think you are up to the task, sign up for your volunteering interests here.

CRACKCHESTER.

Hi folks, we firstly want to thank everyone for turning up to our first society social! It was great to meet you all. We've got our first workshop 'An Introduction to Cybersecurity' which will be held on the 6th October from 4-5pm and from 5-6pm, the workshop is being run twice in case any of you can't make it to the other. This workshop will provide you all with a bit of insight into the field of cybersecurity, as well as including a fun demo to give you a taste of what our society can teach you. In other news, if you want to be in with a chance of winning a £100 Amazon gift voucher, you can fill out this sponsored survey by BT here. The Survey needs the password: cp5urvey£100. That’s it from Crackchester this week, stay tuned for any updates on our socials here.

GREAT UNI HACK.

GreatUniHack is back! We are pleased to announce that this years’ hackathon will take place in person in MMU Business School, in less than two months. It is a fantastic opportunity to socialise and collaborate with other like-minded students. There will be a chance to win prizes, get some swag and enjoy free food over a weekend of intense coding and other activities. Register your interest here.

EA MANCHESTER.

Adrians Skapars (Year 3, CS) writes: Are you interested in pursuing a career that improves the world? Apply for the EA Manchester Scholars Programme! I’m writing on behalf of the EA UoM society to let you know of upcoming events you might find very valuable, particularly if you are driven by having an impact or have a general interest in topics such as: Climate change, Catastrophic pandemics, Nuclear safety, Artificial Intelligence, Global priorities research, Global health, Factory farming, Institutional decision-making and even Space governance. We’re part of the global social movement of Effective Altruism, trying to use tools of evidence and reason to find the most effective ways of improving the world. How do you decide between lots of good causes when your resources are limited? Our Scholars programme will let you deeply engage with such questions and corresponding strategies, together with other like minded people within a weekly discussion group. Link to the ‘curriculum’ that covers lots more than that. It runs for 8 weeks, starting with a book giveaway, ending with tailored career advice and optional one-on-one coaching from a professional. It’s also just rewarding fun to discuss your stance and is probably the best way to first engage with the community. Please note that the deadline for applications is October 9th.

INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY UPCOMING EVENTS.

Welcome Week may be over but there are still lots of events throughout the term that are hosted by the International Society, where you can meet new friends from around the world.

Language & Culture Exchange, Friday 7th October, 3pm. Learning a language and want to meet native speakers? Or simply curious to learn more about the cultures and languages of other International Society members? Join the online language and culture exchange to learn from each other and make friends while there.
Speed Friending, Wednesday, 12th October, 6pm. The Society’s speed friending event is a great opportunity to meet some new friendly faces in a welcoming and casual setting.

For more information and to book.

MANCHESTER SATELLITE DEVELOPMENT GROUP.

Manchester Satellite Development Group is a multidisciplinary student-led group with a passion for aerospace design, in particular the construction, design and function of satellites. Founded in 2015 as the Manchester CanSat Project, we began competing in the AAS international CanSat design contest immediately and quickly became a formidable force in the competition, maintaining a top 10 ranking each year to date. Using the skills and knowledge gained from our success on the international stage, we have previously been involved in the creation of a highly successful UK based inter-university CanSat design contest, which we not only hosted but also had junior teams compete in. In recent years we have also competed in the AAS CanSat competition in America, and this year hope to compete in both the AAS CanSat competition, but also the MACH2022 competition. We'd love you to get involved with the society, either as part of our committee or to join either the AAS or MACH2022 CanSat teams. All information can be found on our Facebook Page. Or if you have a question, please send us an email and we'll get back to you as quickly as we can.

WOMEN IN CS GRANTS.

NEW HEAD OF DEPARTMENT.

On the 1st October we welcomed a new Head of Department, Prof Andrew Stewart, who has taken over the reins from Prof Robert Stevens. Welcome Andrew! Some of you will already have met Andrew at the Welcome Week presentations, you can find more information about him here. I would like to say a big thank you to Robert for his support of the Undergraduate school over the past 6 years. He has done an excellent job during his tenure - a hard act to follow Andrew! - leading us through the COVID pandemic, as well as being instrumental in ensuring we provide the best teaching facilities and environment in the Kilburn building for our students. Enjoy your sabbatical Robert!

YOUR GUIDE TO THE HOME OF ENGINEERING AND MATERIALS.

As a lot of teaching takes place in the Engineering Buildings, we’ve created a guide for students using the new buildings, so you can make the most out of the facilities, whether you’re in a quiet study space or one of the social areas. Find out more about:

teaching and learning spaces including blended lecture theatres and meet and teach rooms
our 3 on-site cafes, opening hours and how to book a room.

For any questions on the new home of Engineering and Materials please contact team@manchester.ac.uk.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

The deadline for sending in Monday Mail items: 12:00 (noon) every Friday. Just contact Paul.

Welcome back to Gareth’s Puzzle Corner, this is your weekly fix of brain teasers and logic puzzles. Today we have the usual four puzzles to tackle. One is an easier Sudoku, the second is a more challenging Sudoku, the third is a different form of logic puzzle and finally we have a chess puzzle for you. We also have a challenge set by the Crackchester team. I hope you enjoy the puzzles and if you have any puzzles you wish to feature or ideas for Puzzle Corner then please get in touch.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - Huey, Dewey, Louie by Crusader175

Normal sudoku rules apply. Digits along an arrow must sum to the digit in that arrow's circle. Divide the digits 1-9 into three different groups. Digits with the same letter must be in the same group. Two digits from the same group may not touch orthogonally.

Bonus Puzzle - Suguru by puzzlemadness.co.uk

The aim of Suguru is to fill each n-sized region with the numbers 1-n. For example, if a region has 3 cells, you need to insert the numbers 1, 2 and 3 in to those cells. If a region has 4 cells, you need to insert the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 in to those cells. Each number can't be next to the same number in an adjacent cell, this includes horizontally, vertically, and diagonally.

Chess Puzzle - Lange Vs. Papadopoulos, 2020

Drag and drop the Black pieces to draw the match.

Crackchester Puzzle

Can you identify the issue with this short snippet of code? There are (small) prizes for anyone who joins our discord and tells us the answer!

Answers to the Previous Week

The answers to last week's puzzles can be found here.

Week 1 • Monday 26 September 2022 • #22.02

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Good morning! It’s Monday 26th September 2022, and it’s the first week of teaching in semester 1. Please make sure you know your teaching timetable (see below) and, more importantly, where activities are scheduled, as these can take place at different locations across the campus. I hope you have settled into life in Manchester and have managed to get out and explore the campus and all the sights that Manchester has to offer. I’m sure it will soon feel like home.

Each year we recognise outstanding achievement by awarding prizes to our students, last year’s recipients are recognised below. Congratulations to all the prize winners, your awards are very well deserved! Also, well done to Phoebe Pinney for her winning entry in the Kilburn window design competition, you can see her eye-catching design below. Phoebe’s artwork will be immortalised on the large window looking out onto Oxford Road (top right hand side of Kilburn looking from Oxford Road).

Have a great week, on with today’s news ...

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

The Disability Advisory and Support Service (DASS) at the University 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 here. For advice talk to the welfare team. If you decide you don’t wish to register with DASS, this may affect the level of support that you can receive from the University.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Wednesday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.80
Year 3/4 (not CM): Tim Morris. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.107
CM (all years): Andrea Schalk. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Online only
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, IT119

PASS2.

Ingy Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) and Nadine Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) write: Hello from the PASS2 team! We hope you all had a great welcome week and are enjoying year 2 so far. The first PASS2 session will be held this week on Thursday 29th in the Collab in Kilburn from 12-1pm. We highly recommend that you all come as we’ll be talking about second year modules and there will be snacks. Hope to see you all there :D Make sure to join the PASS2 discord to keep up to date and ask any questions you like!

WINNER OF THE KILBURN WINDOW DESIGN COMPETITION.

During the summer, we ran a competition to suggest a design to be placed on the large window from Kilburn’s first floor onto Oxford Road to showcase Computer Science in Manchester. We are happy to announce that the panel has agreed on a winner, after receiving some very interesting and inspired designs: Phoebe Pinney (Year 3, CS). Her design (see below) was found to be well-suited for the unusual place and showing an engaging representation of the many aspects of CS, including a nice human touch. It will now be put forward to be realised on the Oxford road window, in collaboration with Estates and other relevant departments.

2021-22 PRIZEWINNERS.

Each year the Department recognises outstanding achievement by awarding prizes to UG students who have excelled academically or made significant contributions to life in the Department. We awarded certificates to winners at the 2nd and 3rd year Welcome Week talks last week. The following students received awards for last academic year:

Vlad Surbu (Year 3, CS): Professor’s Prize for Outstanding Performance in Year 2;
Joshua Coates (Year 3, CM): Professor’s Prize for Outstanding Performance in Year 2,
Wenqi Zhu (Year 3, HCI): Professor’s Prize for Outstanding Performance in Year 2;
Waadullah Hussain (Year 2, CM): Golden Anniversary Prize for Excellence in Year 1 Studies, Michael Jealous Prize for Best Year 1 Student;
Zachary Hales (Year 2, CMwIE): Golden Anniversary Prize for Excellence in Year 1 Studies;
Yat Hei Lau (Year 2, CSE4): Golden Anniversary Prize for Excellence in Year 1 Studies, Netcraft Prize;
Juying Voong (Year 2, CMwIE): Golden Anniversary Prize for Excellence in Year 1 Studies;
Alexandru-Stefan Buburuzan (Year 2, AIwIE): Golden Anniversary Prize for Excellence in Year 1 Studies, Netcraft Prize;
Rishi Ravikumar (Year 2, AI4): Netcraft Prize;
Yat Long Poon (Year 2, CS): Netcraft Prize;
Egor Chernyshev (Year 2, CSwIE): Netcraft Prize;
Kimi Goyal (Year 2, CS4): Netcraft Prize;
Vishal Kandasamy Sekar (Yer 2, CS): Netcraft Prize;
Jin Yun Wong (Year 2, CSE): Netcraft Prize;
Mohammad Altaisan (Year 2, AI): Netcraft Prize.

Huge congratulations to all, really well done and just rewards for all your efforts. Give yourself a big pat on the back!

HARDWARE LIBRARY.

Did you know we have a student hardware library in the Department? We have a wide range of components you can borrow, all for free! We have everything from Raspberry Pi components to drones, microcontrollers to Microsoft Kinects and basic electronic components to robots … even VR headsets. 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 the Kilburn building. Please note, any loaned items should not be taken away from Manchester and any lost or damaged items must be replaced. We also have a 3D printer that you are free to use, which is located in Tootill 0. Please speak to Steve Rhodes before using it.

GOOGLE DEVELOP STUDENT CLUBS.

Sambbhav Knare (Year 2, CS4) writes: Thank you so much for meeting with us at the Society Fair!! We have our first "Meet The Committee" Social on Wednesday, 28th September. Join us to get to know more about the workshops, speaker sessions, and competitions planned for this year. It's a great way to socialise and make friends. FREE SNACKS AND DRINKS WILL BE AVAILABLE!! (may also include Pizza.) Bring your friends too!! Follow us on Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | Discord to get updated. Visit our website and follow us for the latest events.

FIRST YEAR BOOT-UP LABS.

If you are a first year student and you haven’t completed the boot-up labs, then we will be running a catchup session on Wednesday 13:00 - 15:00 in 1.8/1.10. Please make sure you complete the activity as it exposes you to Linux which is the operating system you will be using for the majority of your time in the Department. In addition, you need to complete lab 3, as this introduces you to Git and helps you to set up Git in your home file store. It's vitally important you set up Git properly, as you will using it for a number of course units this year (and future years).

COMP10120 WELCOME WEEK WORKSHOPS.

Last week, we ran the Welcome Week Workshops for 1st year students and gave them some tricky tasks: they had to build a gantry to carry our well-known duck! This year’s students impressed the COMP10120 team with their innovative and clever designs - and with their highly ambitious constructions! They showed great team spirit and amazing engagement throughout. We are looking forward to see more from this new cohort!

TIMETABLES.

Your teaching timetable is now available via my.manchester. Please check your timetable regularly over the next few weeks as changes may be made. All course units should have a page in Blackboard, even if this just links to another location (such as Teams) where the course material can be found. Please note: timetables may differ between students doing the same course unit, this is because, due to student numbers, some activities, such as labs, run across multiple sessions. Please only attend those sessions indicated in your own timetable. If there are any issues with your timetable then please contact student support.

WEEK NUMBERING.

You may find that in your timetable this week is labelled as week 2. However, as this is the 1st week of teaching, then we generally refer to it as “Week 1”, so you will find all the course unit information will refer to this week as “Week 1”. You’ll be pleased to hear that the timetable and teaching week numbering matches in semester 2.

THE UNDERGRADUATE HANDBOOK.

The Undergraduate 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 degree programmes or interrupt your degree programme, information on student support etc. The handbook also has information related to how to apply for mitigating circumstances if your learning has been affected. You can always find the link to the handbook (as well as other useful links) at the top of each Monday Mail in the 'Essential Links' banner.

DEPARTMENT REGISTRATION:

A reminder that all students need to complete Department registration in the Undergraduate CS Community Blackboard Page. Please navigate to your year group on the left hand side menu in section 'Year Group Information' and complete the registration questionnaire no later than 30th September 2022.

COURSE UNIT SELECTION.

You have until 15:30 Friday 7th October to finalise your Semester 1 course unit choices. After that deadline your course selections freeze, and changes for Semester 1 will no longer be possible. Please ensure you are also enrolled on to your Semester 2 choices by this date (120 credits in total). Course unit selection will reopen in February for you to make changes to your Semester 2 course unit choices. Please note: 1st years have no choice in the 1st semester.

FIND YOUR WAY IN THE ENGINEERING BUILDINGS.

You will find that a lot of your teaching takes place within Engineering Buildings A and B; this is also where you will find the student support hub. To help you navigate the warren or corridors and floors in the building we have produced a Google Map. It is mobile-friendly and doesn’t require you to download any more apps. Use the search and type in your room number, lecture theatre name or study space. You can also find cafes, water fountains, printers as well as your nearest first aid kit. Just open the map and search for the room or area where you need to get to using the search box on the left hand side of your screen. For a step-free, accessible route, select ‘avoid stairs’.

BUILDING OPENING HOURS.

The normal opening hours of the Kilburn building are 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. Engineering Buildings A and B are open 8am to 8pm, Monday to Friday. Both buildings are closed at all other times, including weekends, bank holidays and over the university Christmas closure period. The John Rylands Main Library and the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons are open outside of these times.

UNICS ICE-BREAKER EVENT.

Join us for our second social of the year on 28th September 2022 (2pm till 5pm). Come along to a game of Human Bingo twisted within a murder mystery! This will be your chance to get to know other members of our amazing community. Come along for free snacks, games, and cheerful memories!

GREATUNIHACK.

UNICS SKILLS WORKSHOPS.

This year, UniCS is starting our skills workshops! These workshops are aimed to help you get started as a programmer, develop your skills by teaching you to use different frameworks and tools, and helping you with coding interview questions. You can register your interest for these workshops here. We are also looking for workshop volunteers to help us run these workshops. This will be a great opportunity for you to show off your skills as a Computer Scientist, and will count towards your volunteering hours! If running our workshops seems like a task you can manage, sign up to become a workshop volunteer here.

UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH INTERNSHIPS.

Sarah Clinch writes: Are you a first or second year looking to gain some experience of research? The interaction and modelling lab are hoping to recruit two undergraduate research interns for the academic year 2022/2023. You’ll be working on real research projects, helping to collect and analyse data, with the ultimate goal of getting a paper published. The positions are unpaid, but this is great experience for anyone considering a career in research, and a successful project will lead to co-authorship of an academic paper. More info and how to apply can be found here.

UNIVERSITY FORMULA STUDENT AI TEAM.

Nikola Radulov (Year 3, AIwIE) writes: Are you a Formula 1 fan? Have you ever wanted to know what happens when Verstappen and The Terminator combine? If the answer is yes, join the Formula Student AI team, where we aim to build a driving system that runs a fully autonomous vehicle and compete with it at Silverstone this summer. We are looking for people with interests in Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Robotics, Image Processing, System Integration, Robotic Process Automation and Simulation Modelling. If this is you, then please send your CV, along with a paragraph describing what you can bring to the team (max 150 words) to nikola.radulov@student.manchester.ac.uk.

STUDENT REPS.

Don’t forget that if you are a 1st, 3rd or 4th year student interested in being a student rep then you can nominate yourself by following this link and completing the form. The deadline is the 28th September 2022, that’s this Wednesday! So, please nominate yourself NOW if you are interested. If you want any further information then contact Tom Carroll, the Chair of SSLC. More information about SSLC and what being a rep involves can be found on the SSLC Page on the Blackboard CS UG Community page.

THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY.

Get out and about with the International Society. The International Society will help you make the most of your student life in Manchester. With over 4,500 members from over 130 countries, the Society is the best place for you to make new friends and get out and about both in Manchester and beyond. Check out the website to find out what’s on, from boat rides to British afternoon teas and bingo, there is something for everyone! Find out more: Welcome 2022 | International Society

BUDDY SCHEME - PARTICIPATE OR VOLUNTEER.

Are you looking to make a difference to somebody's time at university? Would you like to meet new people from all walks of life? If yes, then we have the perfect opportunity for you! We are looking for volunteers to provide social support to their peers by checking in on them every now and then, having regular chats or meetups with them, attend our events and more! All hours that you spend volunteering with us will count towards your Stellify Award (Make a Difference). We provide you with the training you'll need including a short safeguarding module. We offer support throughout the whole time you volunteer with us and answer any questions you may have. Scan the QR code below to sign up as a volunteer or a buddy, or reach the SU on the following contacts: peerbuddy.su@manchester.ac.uk, @umsubuddyscheme.

TURING LOUNGE.

We have a number of social areas in the Kilburn building that are available for students to use. One of these is the Turing Lounge, which can be found on the 1st floor of Kilburn (near the outside area). To help build a community feel in Kilburn, we have a table tennis table that you can use whenever you like; this was introduced at the request of the Student-Staff Liaison Committee a number of years ago. Please look after it, bats and balls are provided. A risk assessment is provided, so please read this (we don’t want anyone being blinded by errant ping pong balls!). Have fun!

LIBRARY.

This from Gemma Smith: Get Started – support from the Library. The Library is here to support your learning throughout your University experience. We provide you with:

Access to resources like books, journals and databases
Training to help you success in your studies
Spaces to study if you’re on campus
Help and support, including IT support

You can also attend an online drop-in session or visit us on campus to learn about using the Library from our friendly team:

Textbook Rescue: Get a free, pre-owned textbook for your subject donated by last year’s departing students. Visit the Main Library from 10am on Wednesday, 21 September. First come, first served.
Chat with Library staff: Visit our Get Started stand at the Main Library to chat to our friendly staff about how the Library can support your studies. Find us in the Main Library foyer from 11am-3pm, Monday-Friday (19 September-7 October).

Find out more:

Get Started with the Library

For further help see our Library Help pages or talk to us via LibraryChat.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

The deadline for sending in Monday Mail items: 12:00 (noon) every Friday. Just contact Paul.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - The Quiet Box by Akash Doulani

Normal sudoku rules apply. Along green lines, neighbouring digits differ by at least 5. A purple line shows a sequence of consecutive digits, not necessarily in order.

Bonus Puzzle - Network by puzzlemadness.co.uk

Each puzzle has one power cell marked with a lightning bolt, the aim of a Network puzzle is to link every cell in the puzzle to that power cell. Dead-ends are not allowed.

Chess Puzzle - Maidla Vs. Smyslov, 1996

Drag and drop the White pieces to regain material.

Answers to the Previous Week

The answers to last week's puzzles can be found here.

Welcome Week • Monday 19 September 2022 • #22.01

Paul pic

Good morning! It’s Monday 19th September 2022, it’s Welcome Week and the start of a new academic year. Today is a bank holiday (a national holiday) due to the state funeral of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, so there are no activities scheduled today and the University is closed. However, there are plenty of activities happening during the rest of the week (more details below). If you are a new student joining us, then welcome to the Department of Computer Science. My name is Paul Nutter and I’m the Undergraduate Programme Director, which basically means I’m responsible for the day-to-day running of the undergraduate degree programmes in the Department. This is our weekly undergraduate newsletter, which is sent to all undergraduate students every Monday morning (hence the name) during term-time.

If you are a returning student, then welcome back! I hope you had a good summer and, hopefully, found some time to relax and recharge your batteries.

The aim of Monday Mail is to keep you up-to-date with what’s happening in the Department, as well as publicising all the great things our students get up to! Our students are involved in lots of activities and events, for example university societies, PASS and hackathons. We use Monday Mail to tell you all about what’s happened and what our students have achieved. If there’s anything you’d like to share via Monday Mail, then please send me an email.

A lot has happened over the summer in the Department and in the Kilburn building (see below). What we’ve missed over the past few years, mostly as a result of the COVID pandemic, is the community feel in the Department. I’d really like to see this sense of community return and, hopefully, for you to think of the Kilburn building as your home. We’ve even put a brand new sign up on the lower first floor to identify it as the home of Computer Science students!

Have a great week, I'll hopefully see you around ...

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

STUDENT SUPPORT HUB.

Need help during Welcome Week? You can find your local hub in Engineering Building A. Our friendly staff are located on the first floor of the building (1A.042) between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday and are eager to help you with queries of any nature such as:

General student life enquiries, help with registration and start of year questions
Advice and referrals specific to your subject area.
Welfare, student support and student service general queries.

The team will always do their best to answer your query, but if they can’t, they will sign-post you to the right place. We also have private spaces for you to discuss confidential issues with our staff. So, if you have any questions or need support then just pop along to see us.

MEET THE YEAR TUTORS.

The Undergraduate team is here to support you throughout your time in the Department, and you’ll meet them during Welcome Week. Each year has a Year Tutor who is responsible for looking after that cohort of students, apart from CM students who have the same Year Tutor across all years. The tutors are here to provide you with help and support, so please contact them if you have any issues/questions. The Year Tutors are:

1st Year Tutor (not CM): Gareth Henshall (bottom left)
2nd Year Tutor (not CM): Ahmed Saeed (bottom centre)
3rd/4th Year Tutor (not CM): Tim Morris (bottom right)
CM tutor (all years): Andrea Schalk (top left)
Director of UG: Paul Nutter (top right)

Contact details can be found below in the year tutor open hour section below.

STUDENT SUPPORT IN CS.

Issues can impact students at any time, usually when you least expect it. 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. If you need any support then please request an appointment directly with our Student Support and Wellbeing Administrators, Guy Malkin and Maria Sloan, or drop into the student hub in Engineering Building A and ask to speak to someone confidentially about anything that might be affecting you and your studies. Guy and Maria are also the Disability Coordinators for CompSci. If you have any ongoing physical or mental health problems, or conditions such as ASD or ADHD, that affect your studies, and are not already registered with the DASS Team at the University (Disability Advisory and Support Service), contact Guy and Maria who can advise you. 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 Guy and Maria at CompSciWelfare@manchester.ac.uk

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

The year tutors are here to support you if you need any help and advice, so feel free to contact your year tutor by email. They also run a weekly open hour where you can pop in for a chat:

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Wednesday 12:00 - 13:00, Kilburn 2.80
Year 3/4 (not CM): Tim Morris. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.107
CM (all years): Andrea Schalk. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, Online only
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, IT119

PASS1.

The PASS1 team (Pranav Aggarwal (Y3, CSwIE), Nikola Radulov (Y3, AIwIE), Ahmed Soliman (Y3, CS), and Nathan Taylor (Y3, CS4)) write: Welcome and greetings from the PASS1 team! We’re sure you’re excited to be starting your studies and hope you’re settling in alright. PASS or Peer Assisted Study Sessions is a scheme where students mentor students. This week we have two scavenger hunt sessions set up for you on Tuesday 1pm-3pm and Thursday 3pm-5pm, starting in the Kilburn LF area, so do come along and say hello!

PASS2.

Ingy Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) and Nadine Abdelhalim (Y3, CS) write: We hope you are all having a great welcome week and are enjoying year 2 so far. The first PASS session will be held on Thursday 29th in the Collab in Kilburn from 12-1pm. We highly recommend that you all come as we’ll be talking about second year modules and there will be snacks. Hope to see you all there :D

UNICS NEWS.

Joshua Simanullang (Y2, CS) writes: UniCS is the Computer Science Society at the University of Manchester. We are a big community with a passion for technology and creating innovative solutions for everyone. Welcome to the faculty of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. We are proud to announce our committee for 2022/23:

Chairs: Germaine George (Y3, CS) and Gwydion Smit (Y3, CS4),
Secretary: Joshua Simanullang (Y2, CS),
Treasurer: Ali Lakho (Y2, CS),
Events: Dhrishaj Garg (Y2, CSwIE),
Procurement: Siqi Li (Y3, AI),
Graphics: Dhruv Sharma (Y2, AIwIE),
PR: Mehar Mehta (Y2 AI4),
Hackathons: Mateusz Krajewski (Y3, CS4wIE),
Dev: Sambbhav Khare (Y2, CS4),
Game Dev: MJ Ponsonby (Y2, CS) and
May Ball: Keshav Gupta (Y2, CMwIE).

We are opening positions for teams so please join us and register! Find us at the Societies’ Fair on 21st September from 10 am - 4 pm at Armitage Sports Centre and join us for our first social for this academic year - Pub Crawl, on 23rd September from 8 pm. The meeting point is Turing Tap. Also, don’t forget to register your interest in our upcoming workshops and GreatUniHack here. Become a member of UniCS today through the Students’ Union website.

GOOGLE DEVELOP STUDENT CLUBS.

Sambbhav Knare (Y2, CS4) writes: Google Developer Student Clubs are community groups for college and university students interested in Google developer technologies. Google Developer Student Clubs is a program supported by Google Developers. Our aim is to make learning fun and interesting for all students. We have planned a bunch of workshops for learning beyond classroom teaching. Prepare students for the Solution Challenges and build a community of developers who learn and grow together. Follow us on Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | Discord to get updated. Visit our website and follow us for the latest events.

WELCOME WEEK ACTIVITIES.

There are a number of activities scheduled for Welcome Week. You can find out more in the CS UG Community Blackboard space. There are welcome talks scheduled as follows:

Year 1: Tuesday 20th Sept, 3 - 5pm, Thursday 22nd Sept, 12- 2pm, Simon Building Lecture Theatre E (building 50 on the campus map)
Year 2: Tuesday 20th Sept 3 - 5pm, University Place Lecture Theatre B (building 30 on the campus map)
Year 3: Thursday 22nd Sept, 2pm, Simon Building Lecture Theatre E (building 50 on the campus map)
Year 4: Wednesday 21st Sept, 11am - 12pm, IT407 (building 40 on the campus map)

There will be other activities scheduled throughout the week, for example 1st year Intro Labs and COMP10120 Workshops, and some activities arranged specifically for students on the CM and HCI degree programmes, so please check whats happening for year group in Blackboard (see the relevant Year folder to the left).

REGISTER FOR THE ACADEMIC YEAR.

All students must register for the 2022/23 academic year on the student system by the 30th September. See the “get ready” welcome pages for further information.

COURSE UNIT SELECTION.

VIRTUAL MACHINE IMAGE.

As we are now fully back on campus, then we will not be providing a VM image moving forward. All machines in the Kilburn building are available for you to use and have been updated to a more recent version of Linux (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS).

SCAVENGER HUNT.

Are you a first-year student? With the help of PASS1 we are organizing a scavenger hunt throughout the whole campus. This is an excellent opportunity to familiarize yourselves with the university buildings and make some new friends from your course. Participate individually or in teams with friends! There is no need to register anywhere. Just show up on the day at the starting point - Kilburn LF area. We have two slots available during the week and you can drop in whenever as long as you finish in time. Come explore on Tuesday 1pm-3pm or Thursday 3pm-5pm at Kilburn LF area. Rewards? The friends we made along the way...NO. WE GOT CANDY. A lot of it. For more information and to keep up with news in CompSci follow our Instagram page at uomcompsci . See you there!

NOMINATE YOURSELF TO BECOME A STUDENT REP.

Gather feedback – work with staff – affect positive change! Develop your collaborative working, communication and leadership skills, and take a step towards achieving a Stellify award. As a student rep, you represent the students on your degree programme and work with staff to positively shape and change the university experience for your peers. As a member of the Student - Staff Liaison Committee (SSLC) you will work with staff and provide invaluable feedback from students about what's going well & what needs to be improved. We have got our complement of 2nd year nominations and are specifically interested in receiving nominations from 1st, 3rd and 4th year students. To nominate yourself, follow this link, or use the QR code below, and complete the form. Depending on how many nominations are received, we may hold an election to allow the students to decide who should be your rep or we may appoint all those students who nominated themselves. The deadline is the 28th September 2022, so please nominate yourself NOW if you are interested. If you want any further information then contact Tom Carroll, the Chair of SSLC.

CELEBRATING MANCHESTER COMPUTING LANDMARKS.

In June, the Department hosted an event to celebrate the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) History Committee approving two IEEE Milestone Awards for major developments that took place in Manchester: the “Baby” Computer and its Derivatives, 1948 - 1962; and the Atlas Computer and the Invention of Virtual Memory 1957 - 1962. The Baby and Atlas milsteones are the 17th and 18th (of 18) to be awarded in the UK and Republic of Ireland. As a permanent reminder of these achievements, two bronze plaques have been installed. The plaque celebrating the Baby can be found on the back wall of Coupland 1 on Bridgeford Street, which is on the outside wall of the room where the Baby was built. The plaque for Atlas, will be placed on the entrance to the Zochonis building, where Atlas was invented and the working machine installed on the 3rd floor in December 1962. You can watch the video of the full event here. If you are interested in reading the cases made for these awards, you can read them for Baby and Atlas. A paper on the Atlas supervisor (OS) and virtual memory can be found here.

DEPARTMENT MUSEUM.

To coincide with the IEEE Milestone event, the Department has had the museum on the first floor of Kilburn (outside Atlas and Mercury) refurbished. Here, we document some of the key development in the history of computing at Manchester. Thanks to Prof Jim Miles for spending countless hours putting the exhibits and displays together. Why not visit and have a look!

NEW COLLABORATIVE STUDENT SPACE.

Over the summer the Department had the rooms LF5, 6 and 8 in the lower first area redeveloped into one lab space. The new space has a glass front which allows natural light into the lower first floor area and opening windows (so no more musty smell!). The room has four collaborative working pods (three for 6 people and one for 4 people) as well as 14 PCs. We are still finishing off the installation of the PCs, but hope to have the room completed soon. This room will not be timetabled for teaching activities, so is free for students to use throughout the year.

BYTE CAFE.

Those who were with us last year will know that the Byte cafe has been closed since the COVID lockdown, and there were no plans for it to reopen. So, over the summer we have had this space refurbished, with the three vending machines moved into this area. We have also introduced a kettle and a microwave for you to use. Please keep this area clean.

LF AREA.

We have made some changes to the Kilburn lower first (LF) area to provide some more social seating for you to use. You may also notice a strange box outside LF31. What is it? Well, it’s a (semi) soundproofed acoustic pod, where you can have private discussions, Teams/Zoom meetings, or have video interviews. There’s no need to book it, just use it when necessary.

LIBRARY.

This from Gemma Smith: Get Started – support from the Library. The Library is here to support your learning throughout your University experience. We provide you with:

Access to resources like books, journals and databases
Training to help you success in your studies
Spaces to study if you’re on campus
Help and support, including IT support

You can also attend an online drop-in session or visit us on campus to learn about using the Library from our friendly team:

Textbook Rescue: Get a free, pre-owned textbook for your subject donated by last year’s departing students. Visit the Main Library from 10am on Wednesday, 21 September. First come, first served.
Chat with Library staff: Visit our Get Started stand at the Main Library to chat to our friendly staff about how the Library can support your studies. Find us in the Main Library foyer from 11am-3pm, Monday-Friday (19 September-7 October).

Find out more:

Get Started with the Library

For further help see our Library Help pages or talk to us via LibraryChat.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

The deadline for sending in Monday Mail items: 14:00 every Friday. Just contact Paul.

Welcome to Gareth’s Puzzle Corner, where every week Gareth Henshall will provide you with a weekly fix of brain teasers and logic puzzles. This week, you are given 4 different puzzles to tackle: one is an easier Sudoku, the second is a more challenging Sudoku, the third is a different form of logic puzzle and finally we have a chess puzzle for you. I hope you enjoy the puzzles and if you have any puzzles you wish to feature or ideas for Puzzle Corner then please get in touch.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - Two Given Digits by Dipak R

Normal sudoku rules apply. Cells separated by X must contain digits summing to 10; cells separated by V must contain digits summing to 5. Not all possible Xs/Vs are given. Digits along an arrow must sum to the circled value. There are no repeated digits on the marked diagonal.

Bonus Puzzle - Star Battle by puzzlemadness.co.uk

The aim of this particular Star Battle puzzle is to insert one star in to every row, column, and region. Stars can't be adjacent horizontally, vertically or diagonally.

Chess Puzzle - Golsta Vs. Koellnew, 2020

Drag and drop the Black pieces to draw the chess match.

STUDENT SUPPORT HUB EMAIL ADDRESS.

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

SEXUAL ABUSE AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE AWARENESS WEEK.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

PASS2.

FOXDOG STUDIOS.

VISIT TO THE SCHOOL BY THE PRESIDENT AND VICE-CHANCELLOR.

STUDENT STAFF LIAISON COMMITTEE DECEMBER MEETING MINUTES.

COMP101 GUEST LECTURE.

COURSE UNIT CHOICES.

NATIONAL STUDENT SURVEY.

REPORTING ISSUES WITH THE KILBURN/IT BUILDING ENVIRONMENT.

SEMESTER ONE RESULTS.

DISK QUOTA ISSUES.

THE UNDERGRADUATE HANDBOOK.

FINAL YEAR PROJECT.

BLUEDOT FESTIVAL.

QUBERT WORKSHOP - Join us for this talk where we delve into the land of tuning- where code,

WEEKLY WELLBEING EVENTS.

- The Roller Disco returns for another incredible party featuring.

- Come down and enjoy a 30 minute yoga wake-up for your mind and body followed by breakfast in St Peter's House.

- Try some mindfulness meditation practices using Muse headbands.

- Come along and meet new friends or have a catch up over tea,

LEVELLING UP MATHS FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE.

STUDENT VOLUNTEERING WEEK.

VODAFONE THINK BIG,

SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING UNDERGRADUATE SUMMER INTERNSHIP SCHEME.

UCU STRIKE ACTION.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

CHANGES TO STUDENT SUPPORT EMAIL ADDRESS.

MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

PASS1.

PASS2.

CHANGES TO THE DEPARTMENT WELLBEING TEAM.

WELFARE TEAM EMAIL ADDRESS.

NATIONAL STUDENT SURVEY.

REFRESHERS WEEK.

COURSE UNIT CHOICES.

DEADLINES CHART.

EXPERIENCE THE ROBOT CHEF.

WEEKLY WELLBEING EVENTS.

THE EFFECT OF TRAINING AND BRAIN SIMULATION ON VISUAL SEARCH PERFORMANCE.

CLYDE & CO GLOBALLY CONNECTED COMPETITION.

UCU STRIKE ACTION.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES.

KEEPING SAFE ON CAMPUS.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

UCU STRIKE ACTION.

EXAM BREAKFAST.

SEMESTER ONE EXAMS.

COURSE UNIT CHOICES.

QUBERT WORKSHOP.

BLOOMBERG BPUZZLED.

WEEKLY WELLBEING EVENTS.

- Join ResLife in Grove House as they welcome in the Year of the Rabbit at this Lunar New Year Celebration!

- The ResLife Team will be holding a session with tips on exam preparation.

- Take a break from exams and de-stress with some furry friends!

- Come along and meet new friends or have a catch up over tea,

APPLY FOR TO BE STUDENTS' UNION EXEC.

SOMETHING TO SHARE?

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

KNEEBONE ACORN BURSARY SUCCESS.

UNICS NEWS.

SECURITY ON CAMPUS.

EXAM BREAKFAST.

UCU STRIKE ACTION.

EXAM OPENING HOURS AT ENG BUILDINGS A & B.

SEMESTER ONE EXAMS.

COURSE UNIT CHOICES.

WHAT TO EXPECT IN EXAMS.

GOOGLE DEVELOPER STUDENT CLUBS.

BCSWOMEN LOVELACE COLLOQUIUM 2023.

CHINESE NEW YEAR TREASURE HUNT AT ENG BUILDING A.

ATLAS SEMINAR - INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS IN CITIES - ASPECTS OF VEHICULAR NETWORKS AND EDGE COMPUTING.