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 11 • Monday 4 December 2023 • #23.12

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Good morning UG! It’s Monday 4th December and it’s week 11, the penultimate week before the end of the semester 1 teaching period.

It was great to see so many people attending the 1st year poster session on Friday. Thanks to everyone who attended, and well done to the COMP10120 team for doing a great job of organising it. I enjoyed talking to group members and learning more about their planned projects. It was pleasing to see some good, challenging ideas being put forward, including some new ideas that we haven’t seen before. Well done to the winning teams (see below).

I’d like to welcome Andrea Schalk as the new Discipline Head of Education (DHoE) in the department from January 2024. Andrea is taking over the role from Sean Bechhofer and will become responsible for leading teaching and learning in the Department, contributing to the strategic development of teaching, learning and the student experience. I’d like to thank Sean for all his hard work supporting UG teaching over his tenure as DHoE.

The course unit surveys open this week and run until the end of December (more below). This is your opportunity to provide us with feedback on the course units you have taken. We take feedback seriously and always look to make changes as a result. In this respect, it’s really important to provide us with detailed comments about what you liked, or didn’t like, about a course unit. Without detailed comments it’s difficult to identify what changes need making, or where problems exist in our teaching. We are particularly interested in hearing what you liked so that we can highlight good practice.

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 (more details below).

Finally, good luck to all the 1st years with the group project presentation this week. I hope they go well.

It’s another bumper Monday Mail this week. Have a good week …

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

* STUDENT WELFARE SUPPORT IN CS. Issues can impact students at any time, particularly at the end of the semester when there’s pressure to complete assessments and the pressure to prepare for the upcoming examinations kicks in. If you are affected by any issues, then it’s vitally important that you speak to someone and get the help and support you need. You can speak to your year tutor, or you can speak to a member of our Student Wellbeing Team, Maria Sloan and Ben Herbert, 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. Maria and Ben are also the Disability Coordinators for CS, so you can speak to them if you have any ongoing physical or mental health problems, or conditions such as ASD or ADHD, that affect your studies, even if you are not already registered with the DASS Team at the University. If you are registered with DASS and there are problems with your DASS plan you can speak with them about this too. You can contact Maria and Ben at soe.wellbeing@manchester.ac.uk.

WELFARE WEEKLY - IS COUNSELLING FOR YOU?

This from Ben Herbert, Student Support and Wellbeing: Although full of great experiences, fun, and excitement, university can also be one of those very stressful times of your life. To be honest, if you don't feel like university is hard work then please email me your secrets!

The university offers a wide range of support to help get you through this period of your life. One of those resources is the Counselling Service. We understand maybe you feel counselling isn’t for you. What I would say to that, is if you feel you need help and the way you are feeling is having a significant impact on your daily life and academic performance, then do contact the Counselling service. You will start off with a 20-minute chat with a trained counsellor where they will identify the situation you are facing and help you get the support you need. This may be one to one appointments, workshops, social prescribing, or referring you to services outside the university. However you can still use the services on offer without needing to make an appointment, or talk to anyone on the phone.

Recently I had a great conversation with a student who had returned from interruption of studies after experiencing a difficult time with their mental health. They told me they were feeling much better in part due to the workshops that the Counselling service offered. So I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight this resource to you.

In the run up to the Christmas break workshops include: Developing skills in Assertiveness, Mindfulness Meditation, Busting Low Mood Behaviour, Finding Motivation, Managing Anxiety, Taking care of ourselves in new relationships, and lots more. You can find the full list and a link to book on to them here.

Don't forget My Learning Essentials is a great resource, especially for study skills as we head into exam season. More information can be found here. Also, visit the Six Ways to Wellbeing Page here. Finally take a look at the excellent page of resources for improving your mental health fitness.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

In the Department we have year tutors who are responsible for looking after the different cohorts in each year group. They are here to provide you with help and support if you need it, 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 during the teaching period:

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Thursday 14:00 - 15:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Tuesdays 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.80
Industrial Experience Year: Duncan Hull. Open hour: Wednesdays 10:00 - 12:00. Kilburn LF25
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: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, IT119.

PASS2.

The PASS2 team (See Jia Tong (Y3, CS), Salma Aljama (Y3, AI) and Divya Radhakrishnan Nair (Y3, CS)) write: Hi everyone! We will be holding a pizza party at the next PASS2 meeting ! First come first serve . 12pm Thursday in Collab.

FIRST YEAR POSTER SESSION:

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

The Application with the Best Idea or Concept: X2 Freakency: Sheet Music from Songs has Never been Easier - Natalie Sparks (CSwIE), Ying Rui Loh (CSwIE), Aminath Haidar (CS), Callum Bridges (CSwIE), and Kieran Ha (CSwIE). Tutor: Duncan Hull.
The most Visually Appealing and Imaginative Poster: Z5 Pixel Partner: Swipe Left to Blame - Arash Pournowrouzi (CS), Ellis McCarroll (CS), Kevin Yu (CS), Xiao Ma (CS), Ahmad bin Ahmad Azmi (CS), Abdullah Al Kalbani (CS), and Nishant Kamath (CS). Tutor: Youcheng Sun.
The most Carefully Thought Through Application and Plan: Z1 Lost Woods: Become a Virtual Explorer - Jonathan Tilley (CS) Jasper Hall (CS), Daniel Lamb (CSwIE), Boluwatife Ogunmodede (CSwIE), Fan Gao (CS), and Arnav Bisani (CSwIE). Tutor: Mary Mcgee Wood.

UNICS HACKATHONS TEAM APPLICATIONS.

Applications have now opened for the UniCS Hackathons team! Do you enjoy organising large scale events or taking part in hackathons in general? Apply now and help UniCS organise the next big hackathon of this academic year, StudentHack 2024! This is the perfect opportunity to meet people and have fun, whilst also doing something meaningful that you could add to your CV.

UNICS NEWSLETTER TEAM APPLICATIONS.

Apply now to join the UniCS Newsletter team! This is your chance to work on an exciting monthly newsletter that is shared with all UniCS members. You can read our latest issue here.

PROJECT SURVEY.

Mohammad Awais Y3, CS) and Sharmila Thirumurugan (Y3, CS) write: Migraine is an often debilitating condition that affects 10% of people worldwide. Triggers vary from person to person and can range from a lack of sleep to eating chocolate. To manage migraines, it is helpful to track symptoms and daily activities to see which can be linked with attacks. For our final year undergraduate project, we’re making an app to help people do this and would love your input to help it reach its full potential! If you want to help out, check out our short 10 minute survey. You will be shown a few pictures and a short video of how our app looks (or will look) and runs so far- tell us what you think is good and what could be improved. Thanks, we really appreciate it! Click here to take our survey!

PROJECT EXPERIMENT - APPLYING NUDGING TECHNIQUES TO FACILITATE CUSTOMISATION IN INTERACTIVE INFORMATION DASHBOARDS.

Hatim Alsayahani (PhD student) writes: Join our interactive dashboard experiment! Contribute to cutting-edge research in human-computer interaction at the Interaction Analysis and Modelling Lab. Help us design user-friendly and efficient decision-making tools. Share your insights and shape the future of dashboard design. Where? Interaction Analysis and Modelling Lab, Kilburn Building (LF1) How long? Approximately 30 minutes Compensation? As a thank you, receive an Amazon voucher for your valuable input! To participate, simply send me an email.

DATA SCIENCE OF THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT CONFERENCE.

Aditya Agarwal (Y3, CSwIE) writes: During the recent Data Science of the Natural Environment Conference at Citylabs 1.0, I gained insights into the fusion of data science, AI, and sustainability. A key moment was Dr. Riza Batista-Navarro’s presentation, where she detailed how AI and NLP could help reduce the carbon footprint in food choices by providing real-time analysis of cooking recipes. Her project, E.Care, emphasised accessible, actionable information for sustainable eating. In this context, I contributed by expanding the project's reach. Building on Rishi Ravikumar’s (Y3, AI4) previous work during his 2022 Software Engineering Internship at the university, where he upgraded the existing browser extension and integrated it with a firebase database, I developed a mobile app version of the browser extension during my 2023 internship. This app aims to offer instant, user-friendly data on the carbon footprint of recipes, encouraging sustainable food choices. It's been an enlightening journey to be part of such an impactful project.

GOOGLE DEVELOPER STUDENT CLUBS.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the Google Solution Challenge Info Session last Wednesday! We hope you found the session informative and inspiring, and that you enjoyed the pizzas as much as we did. A big congratulations to *Mridula Senthilkumar* for winning the Android statue through Lucky Draw for being one of the attendees! Keep attending our events for more chances to win exciting prizes in the future. Also note that registration for Google’s solution challenge is now open!

LEARNING TIPS:

How to prepare for exams. You might think that you're a seasoned expert at preparing for exams, since most of you have had a lot of experience with that during your academic journey to University. However, there are still some things that might catch you out. If you're a 3rd year student, then it’s possible that you may be sitting a paper-based exam for the first time after many years of online exams. If you're a 2nd year student, you have to balance having to attend more exams than ever before. Finally, if you're a 1st year student, then your main experience with preparing for exams is by having access to a lot of sample papers, thus learning how to answer particular kinds of questions rather than a potentially broader paper.

For some course units there may be limited information available, either because the course unit is relatively new, or because there are restrictions in place when it comes to releasing auto-marked questions. However, using the resources that are available to you for the course unit try and work out what it is that the exam questions are asking you to do. Don't draw conclusions based on a small sample set - bear in mind the risks of overfitting. Talk to students in higher years who have sat the exam for a particular course unit, for example via PASS, and find out what they think about the exam: How did they prepare, and is there anything they regret? Try to learn from their experiences.

It is important that you plan your revision. Think about how much time you may need to prepare for the exam for each course unit. Which are the course units where you are pretty comfortable with the material? Which course units will need more effort to improve your understanding of the material? Maybe you already have a solid grasp of the material for a course unit, meaning your revision doesn’t need to be as extensive. Or you find another course unit more difficult and may require more revision time, then you should plan your revision time accordingly. When you think you're in decent shape, have a go at solving a past paper, but make sure you do it as a timed exercise, much like the exam itself. You want to work out whether there's an area where you need to put in more effort, and also whether you need to practise some techniques a bit more in case you are struggling to answer the paper in the time given. Finally, it’s important to remember that to be in the best shape for your exams, you have to look after yourself as well, so build in some time to relax and take time away from revising. Take regular breaks, or go for walks to help refresh your mind. Ben from Student Support and Wellbeing will address this topic in a future issue. We'll be talking more about the technicalities of taking an exam next week.

SEMESTER 1 EXAMS.

The semester 1 exams take place over the period Monday 15th to Friday 26th 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 is not responsible for this. It is hoped that the exam timetabled will be published from the week commencing the 4th December (next week) 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. You may find that you are timetabled for an exam in a different location to your friend, or others on the course unit. It’s very important you attend the location stated in your exam timetable. If you have any queries regarding your exam timetable then please contact the assessment team.

COURSE UNIT SURVEYS.

EXAMINATION GUIDANCE:

As we approach the end of the teaching in semester 1, then your focus will shift to the upcoming examinations in January. We’ve produced some advice and guidance regarding timetables, revision, exam technique and what to do if you miss an exam in the UG Community Blackboard page. 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 assessment team.

GITLAB DOWNTIME WARNING:

This from Chris Page: On Wednesday 6th December the Department of Computer Science GitLab system will be taken offline to perform essential maintenance and upgrades. Work on the system will start at 14:00 and may take until 17:00, although we will attempt to minimise the time that GitLab is unavailable. A notice banner is currently shown on GitLab pages as a reminder for this work, and it will be removed when the work on the server is completed and tests indicate GitLab is operating normally. While GitLab is offline you will be able to continue to work locally in any currently cloned git repositories, including adding commits. However, attempts to interact with the GitLab server (via `git push`, `git pull`, `git fetch` and so on) will fail.

DATA SCIENCE SOCIETY.

Reinforcement Learning, Wednesday 6th December 2-4pm, Simon 2.39. The agenda is:

Understand the framework of RL and when to use it
Simple single-player algorithms
Tabular Q-learning
Extension into multi-agent settings!

Reinforcement learning (RL) has exploded in popularity in recent years, thanks to use in DeepMind's AlphaGo and ChatGPT among others. Applications are varied, with RL used to optimise drug discovery, reaching to 'Grandmaster' rank in the online multiplayer game Starcraft. In this workshop, we cover the basics of RL, including implementation of some classic settings. By the end of the session, students will be able to program a player in some simple games (bandit machine, gridworld). Prerequisites: Coding in Python. This workshop requires NO deep learning!

GDSC TEAM UP TODAY.

Join our Team Building & Brainstorming Session for Google's Solution Challenge! Connect with fellow innovators, form teams, and spark brilliant ideas. Don't miss this chance to network and create at the Atlas Room, Kilburn Building. Grab your spot now!

Date: Monday, December 4, 2023
Time: 15:00 – 16:00 GMT
Location: Atlas Room, Kilburn Building

***Snacks and refreshments provided*** Let your ideas soar and find the perfect team to bring them to life! #InnovationStartsHere #GDSCBrainstorm

GDSC CODE JAM SESSION.

Dive into our Weekly Code Jams! Collaborate on the Solution Challenge, enhance your skills, and enjoy coding in a vibrant atmosphere. Bring your laptop and ideas to Kilburn Lecture Theatre 1.4! Set your calendar!

Date: Tuesday, December 5th
Time: 15:00 – 16:00
Location: Kilburn Lecture Theatre 1.4

***Snacks and refreshments provided*** Sharpen your coding prowess and join the quest to build innovative solutions. #CodeTogether #SolutionChallenge. RSVP here.

CELEBRATING THE CAREER OF PROFESSOR STEVE FURBER.

After 33 years in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester, and more than 50 years in computing, we're celebrating the career of our colleague Steve Furber on Friday 12th January 2024, 9am - 4pm, with a Festschrift (“celebration publication”) to mark his retirement earlier this year.

Steve has led the Advance Processor Technologies (APT) research group in the Department since its inception in 1990, and before that designed a little known thing called the BBC Micro, as well as the original Arm processor. His most recent work has focused on the state of the art computation using spiking neural networks in the SpiNNaker powered Human Brain Project. From posting punched cards in the mail from the Manchester Grammar School to Imperial College London in the 60s through to studying mathematics at the University of Cambridge in the 70s, and becoming a Professor in the 90s, Steve has enjoyed a long and remarkable engineering career in industry and academia. You can find out more about Steve here or through his University research profile.

Register for this event to join us for a day of talks from Steve’s colleagues and friends, acknowledging his profound influence and contributions over 4 decades in computing, spanning both academia and industry. Speakers include: Ian Phillips, Sophie Wilson, Ivan Sutherland, Marly Roncken, Jamie Urquhart, Doug Edwards, Alex Yakovlev, Andrew Brown, Erik Brunvand, Piotr Dudek, Roger Woods, Ran Ginosar, Peter Cheung, Wayne Luk, Christian Mayr and more.

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 further details here. To apply, please complete this form by the deadline of 6pm (UK time) Friday 15th December 2023.

DIGITAL FUTURE REVIEW OF AI - GET INVOLVED.

AI is a disruptive technology that has the potential to drive fundamental change in University life. Digital Futures is leading a review of AI that will report to the University Senior Leadership Team and Board of Governors. The aim is to understand the opportunities and challenges posed by AI across the full range of the University’s activities, and make recommendations for action. We know that many colleagues have already recognised opportunities, and sometimes the necessity, for innovation, and we are keen to hear about and learn from existing initiatives. Please complete the online form by Monday 4th December to tell us about existing AI initiatives of which you are aware (survey has one question only).

MAKING A DIFFERENCE AWARDS 2024.

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 2024. The awards recognise the impact our staff, students, alumni and external partners are having on the social wellbeing of our communities and wider society, and offer the opportunity to share best practice about social responsibility initiatives and encourage others to get involved. There are 8 categories which recognise the various ways our University communities are making a positive impact. You can find guidelines for the award here. If you would like to nominate someone for one of the awards, then please complete this form.

DIGITAL EXPERIENCE INSIGHTS SURVEY.

The university has launched the student digital experience insights survey, so you can tell us about your views on your digital experience. Sharing your thoughts and opinions will really help us further develop the digital learning environment. There’s also an opportunity for you to win prizes for completing the survey including vouchers, university merch and speakers. The survey takes up to 10 minutes to complete – click here to complete it. As a thank you for your time, every University of Manchester student who takes part in the JISC insights survey can enter a prize draw of over 50 prizes to win one of the following:

£50 Ticketmaster voucher
£25 Lovetoshop voucher
A University of Manchester Hoodie
A Megaboom speaker

You can submit your email address in a form at the end of the survey to enter the prize draw. Any questions about the survey, we would love to hear from you, so please get in contact by email. You can find out further details on the student news website.

DEPARTMENT LINKEDIN PAGE.

Follow us on LinkedIn. We've recently created a Department page where you can follow news and events from the department. You can also follow us on X (formerly know as twitter).

MICE IN KILBURN.

Mice have been seen on the loose in the Kilburn building. Please can you make sure you put any unused food in a waste bin and do not leave food lying around to tempt them to take a nibble! The mice have been reported and pest control have attended.

Welcome to Gareth’s Puzzle Corner, this is your weekly fix of brain teasers and logic puzzles. You are given 5 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 we have a chess puzzle for you. Finally, each week you can compete with myself and other students/staff to see who has the best geography skills. Try your hand at Geoguessr below. 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 - Buplhuset by Holzanatom

Place 1-6 in each row, column and marked region. Digits on a thermometer must increase from the bulb end. Digits must not repeat within cages. All cages sum to some prime numbers which must be determined by the solver. Cages of the same size sum to the same number; cages of different sizes sum to different numbers. A digit in a thermo bulb counts double for cage sums. The inequality sign ‘points’ towards the smaller of two digits.

Pencil Puzzle - Nurikabi by Otto Janko

Colour the grey cells of the diagram black or white. The black cells divide the diagram in areas of orthogonally contiguous white cells. The white areas must not touch each other orthogonally. All cells with a number belong to a white area; to a white area belongs exactly two cells with a number. The sum of the numbers in these cells indicates how many cells belong to the white area. The black cells must not cover an area of 2x2 cells or larger and must form an orthogonally contiguous area.

Chess Puzzle - Shepel Vs. Baisheva, 2023

Drag and drop the Black pieces to win the match.

Geoguessr

And Finally, our weekly competition from geoguessr.com.

We are playing another new map again this week! This is a special Map which has been created just for us by a regular winner Ewan Massey (Y3, CSwIE) called UoM Around the World. All of the locations are based on the names of University of Manchester buildings. You need to take in as much information as you can from the Google street view and then drop your pin on the map. The closer to the correct location you are the more points you get. Can you get the top score after all 5 rounds? Remember though, you only get 1 min per round and running out of time will give you 0 pts. Winners will be announced next week!

The Winner from Last Week was Joshuasim2903 with a score of 24,532 out of a possible 25,000. An incredible score. The winner of the closest individual guess this week was Me with a guess only 5 yards away on Round 1. A great guess, well done Me! Self praise is always good!

Something to look forward to, in the last Monday Mail of this Semester (Week 12) we will be playing a custom Geoguessr Map that I have made! 5 rounds for you to complete, I wonder if anyone can figure out why the locations were chosen?

Answers to Last Week’s Puzzles

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

Week 10 • Monday 27 November 2023 • #23.11

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Good morning UG! It’s Monday 27th November and week 10 of the semester 1 teaching period. We are rapidly approaching the end of the semester when the pressure starts to pile up with deadlines and you need to start thinking about the impending examination period in January. Please remember to speak to someone if you are having problems keeping up. The semester one exams take place in January during the period from Monday 15th to Friday 26th January 2024, so now may be a good time to start thinking about your revision planning. The University usually releases the exam timetable in early December (more below). The Department has created a new LinkedIn page, so please make sure you follow us.

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 (more details below).

Lots of news this week. Have a good week …

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

* STUDENT SUPPORT VIDEO. The Students’ Union and Campus Life have produce a two-minute video to highlight the extensive support available at the University, normalise seeking support and to help you with navigating student life. You can find the video on the University Student Support webpage, or on YouTube.

STUDENT SUPPORT HUB EMAIL ADDRESS.

Just a reminder that if you need to contact a member of the Teaching, Learning and Student Experience team, then the email addresses are as follows:

soe.hub@manchester.ac.uk: general queries; advice on University policies and services.
soe.programmes@manchester.ac.uk: student record queries; registration advice and guidance; timetable queries/clashes; ATAS/Visa advice; extension to study period; project topics, allocation and supervisors; change of programme; return to study; professional accreditation
soe.studentexperience@manchester.ac.uk: student societies support; SSLC/student rep support; employability; graduation; PASS; academic advising; communications; summer internship programme; surveys (course unit and NSS).
soe.wellbeing@manchester.ac.uk: mitigating circumstances; interruptions; disability coordinator support; general wellbeing support (appointments and helping you access the support you need).
soe.attendance@manchester.ac.uk: attendance and engagement monitoring.
soe.courseunits@manchester.ac.uk: course unit selection.
soe.placements@manchester.ac.uk: placement support and coordination.
soe.assessment@manchester.ac.uk: publication of results, exam queries, assessment queries (including DASS), progression and award queries.
soe.appealsandconduct@manchester.ac.uk: academic appeals; malpractice and student complaints.

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

KEEPING SAFE ON CAMPUS.

Just like any large city, Manchester can have problems with crime. 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.

EXTENSION REQUESTS.

If you find you are falling behind due to circumstances beyond your control with an assessment then you can apply for a short extension to allow you to complete your work. You must apply for an extension BEFORE the deadline through the Department Mitigating Circumstances page. Please note that for some assessments you may not be able to request an extension for, these are highlighted in the deadlines Gantt chart, or in SPOT. You should only be applying for an extension if you really need one, we will be monitoring applications to ensure the system is not being abused.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Thursday 14:00 - 15:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Tuesdays 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.80
Industrial Experience Year: Duncan Hull. Open hour: Wednesdays 10:00 - 12:00. Kilburn LF25
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: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, IT119.

PASS1.

The PASS1 team (Max Beck-Jones (Y3, CS4), Luke Sanderson (Y3, CS), Sarah Saad (Y3, AI4), Nicolo Micheletti (Y3, CS), and Rosie Halsall (Y3, CS4)) write: Hello everyone! In case you had forgotten, PASS takes place on Wednesdays from 13:00-14:00 and will be running up until the last week of the semester 1 teaching. Not only is PASS a great way to improve your learning and understanding in groups with your peers, we also have several special events and sessions planned. You should be receiving weekly emails from your PASS leaders with details of your session, including the location and a reminder of the date and time. If you have not been receiving emails or do not know who your PASS leaders are, please send an email to Max. Finally, if you have any ideas or topics you want to cover, please let your PASS leaders know. We hope to see you on Wednesday!

On Wednesday the 6th of December, starting at 13:00 and replacing the normal PASS1 session, we are running a PASS1 Programming Competition! In teams of 3-4 people, made up from your PASS1 group, we are running a 2 hour competition, using HackerRank style questions. There will be easy questions up to very hard questions so we encourage everyone to participate, regardless of your skill level as this is great experience to put on your CV. Up for grabs, we have a £20 Amazon gift card for every member of the winning team, plus additional snacks and drinks for everyone throughout. The competition will last 2 hours however, we will likely not start at 13:00 exactly to give you time to set up and we will take some time at the end to conclude. The event will be finished by 16:00 at the latest. You can use this week’s PASS session to decide on how to split your group and, if you want, get some practice in.

PASS2.

The PASS2 team (See Jia Tong (Y3, CS), Salma Aljama (Y3, AI) and Divya Radhakrishnan Nair (Y3, CS)) write: Hi Everyone, we hope you're doing well ! We are nearing the end of the semester and wanted to give you some tips on the upcoming exams!

CIISECLIVE - CHARTERED INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION SECURITY.

This from Rushil Dhanuka (Y3, CS) who attended CIISecLive: Last week, alongside Dan Stoicescu (Y3, CSwIE) and Gundeep Oberoi (Y2, CS), I had the privilege of attending one of the UK’s largest annual cybersecurity events, CIISEC LIVE at the Etihad Stadium, courtesy of Professor Daniel Dresner. As an emerging cybersecurity enthusiast, I've attended various tech events in Manchester, but this one truly stood out. Connecting with professionals at different stages of their cyber journey, from vendors to senior practitioners and startups, was truly enriching. I'm always eager to discuss cybersecurity and learn something new (sometimes even delving into the mystic art of social engineering).

Meeting startups and understanding their innovation strategies and vision was another highlight. Networking aside, I sincerely enjoyed the talks and panel sessions held by senior practitioners at BAE Systems, UK Police, Deloitte, Qualys, etc., providing practical insights into the emergence of space security, proliferating supply chain attacks, modern-day attack surfaces, and the significance of audience understanding.

Events like these truly help me enhance my interest within the security sector, gain career guidance from experienced professionals, explore future work opportunities, and gain practical insights about the latest revelations within the cyber realm. Manchester has a great technology community, and I’d definitely recommend getting involved, utilising the opportunity to network and learn.

MEET A STUDENT REP.

The student rep of the week this week is Tran Khoi Nguyen Pham (Y1, CSwIE). Noah writes: My name is Khoi Nguyen, but everyone knows me as Noah! I come from Hanoi, Vietnam. I always wanted to make a positive change and improve everyone’s experience in university. I am eager to listen to all of you guys’ feedback and make your voices heard and recognised! If you want to have a chat about anything then please get in touch.

STUDENT-STAFF LIAISON COMMITTEE.

Tom Carroll, chair of the SSLC writes: Our next meeting of the SSLC will take place on 6th December, where the theme will be Assessment and Feedback. Improving Assessment and Feedback is a priority across the whole faculty, not just in the Department, so a consultation with students is a very important part of improving this. We would like to know what you think is good about the assessment and feedback you receive, but also why it is good, as we need to recognise what works. We also want to know what needs improving, and why it needs to be improved, as well as any potential solutions that you may have. Please contact your Student Reps with any ideas or comments. As always, you can find a list of your reps and current issues on the UG Community page.

LEARNING TIPS.

This week, Andrea is talking about “Making the most of feedback”. We all appreciate feedback on what we do because we want to perform better in the future. However, productive feedback becomes increasingly hard to come by, as you'll discover, as you progress further in your careers, so learning how to make the most of what is provided is a very useful skill.

Given their prior experience in education, it's natural that students concentrate on individual feedback supplied on their work, but is that really the only feedback worth their attention? Formative quizzes provide individual feedback on your understanding of the material - do you take the time to understand which answers you got wrong, and why? Sometimes you get feedback that provides an overview of where students did well, and where they didn't - do you take the time to critically evaluate your work against the descriptions given? When you solve past papers, do you also look at the feedback provided to see whether you made common mistakes described there? Or maybe you were marked against a rubric which describes levels of achievements - do you just look at the score you got, or do you think about what you could have done to meet a descriptor with a higher score? After all, the rubric itself offers feedback on your work, and how it can be improved. At other times, you may receive model answers for problems - do you work out where your own answers don't match those solutions, and whether that means your work has some shortcomings?

Learning to evaluate your own work is hard, but it's an incredibly useful skill that is very much worth developing. Once you become better at evaluating your work against given criteria, the next step is to come up with your own description of which properties a good solution should have - that gives you something to aim for as you design and implement your solution; a skill that is particularly useful when the time comes to tackle your Year 3 project. If you have ideas for what we can do to help with this then please get in touch with Andrea Schalk.

GITLAB DOWNTIME WARNING:

This from Chris Page: On Wednesday 29th November the Department of Computer Science GitLab system will be taken offline to perform essential maintenance and upgrades. Work on the system will start at 14:00 and may take until 17:00, although we will attempt to minimise the time that GitLab is unavailable. A notice banner is currently shown on GitLab pages as a reminder for this work, and it will be removed when the work on the server is completed and tests indicate GitLab is operating normally. While GitLab is offline you will be able to continue to work locally in any currently cloned git repositories, including adding commits. However, attempts to interact with the GitLab server (via `git push`, `git pull`, `git fetch` and so on) will fail.

SEMESTER 1 EXAMS.

The semester 1 exams take place over the period Monday 15th to Friday 26th January 2024 (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 is not responsible for this. It is hoped that the exam timetable will be published in the week commencing the 4th December (next week) 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. You may find that you are timetabled for an exam in a different location to your friend, or others on the course unit. It’s very important you attend the location stated in your exam timetable.

COURSE UNIT SURVEYS.

Every semester the University runs surveys where we ask students to provide feedback on the course units they have taken. The semester one course unit surveys are due to open on the 4th December and usually run for a few weeks. Any feedback provided by you is anonymous. We find feedback, particularly comments, extremely useful to understand what you feel about our teaching, and we do take note of your suggestions and make changes as a result. 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, as without these comments it’s difficult to make informed decisions on how to change and improve how we teach. We are always looking for ways in which to improve what we do, but it can be difficult to judge what that should be. Your feedback helps us make those decisions. If you think that something which is happening on another unit would be an improvement to another, then please do make the suggestion to the course unit leader outside of the survey process.

HARDWARE LIBRARY.

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

UNICS ICE SKATING SOCIAL.

Indulge in the elegance of ice skating at Cathedral Gardens with UniCS! Secure your tickets at a highly favourable rate here, priced at less than half the standard cost! Join us for a fun and affordable ice-skating experience in this picturesque setting. We will be meeting outside the main entrance of Kilburn at 6pm and we hope to see you there!

UNICS CHRISTMAS DINNER.

UniCS cordially invites you to our joyous Christmas Dinner Social! Join us for a festive evening of delectable food, refreshing drinks, and merrymaking as we embrace the spirit of the holiday season. Indulge in an extensive buffet spread, savouring culinary delights while engaging in meaningful conversations with fellow students. This event presents a wonderful opportunity to take a well-deserved break from studies and foster lasting connections with your peers. Tickets will go on sale soon here, so watch out for it!

R USER GROUP MEETING.

The R User Group at Manchester are holding a meeting on developing and publishing packages in R on Thursday 30th November, 12:00 - 13:00, Engineering Building A, Room 3A.057. Whether you are a R beginner or and enthusiast, then you are free to join.

BCSWOMEN LOVELACE COLLOQUIUM.

The 2024 BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium will take place on April 4th, 2024 at the University of Liverpool. The event is open to all, although if you would like to attend you need to register. The poster contests are open to women and non-binary students studying computing (BSc, BA, BEng, MSc, MComp or MEng) in the UK. Students who want to take part in the poster contests will have to submit a 250 word abstract. We usually accept about 125 posters, based on these submitted abstracts. Our call for abstracts is now open! You can find out more information and register here.

DIGITAL TRUST AND SECURITY SEMINAR SERIES.

Join us for a special edition of the Digital Trust and Security Seminar Series where we will host two of the co-founders of CyBlack: Omotolani Olowosule and Iretioluwa Akerele, on Monday 4th December 2023, 14.00-16.00 (UK) at DiSH Manchester, Heron House, 47 Lloyd Street, Manchester M2 5LE. . CyBlack is a black community for Cyber security students in UK, which currently has over 500 students. In this seminar, our speakers will discuss the outcomes of their research. Omotolani's research focuses on Mindfulness in Cloud Security, whereas Iretioluwa's research looks at Information Security Controls Integration and Implementation. Sign up for the event for free via Eventbrite

* VISUALISING THE CITY - DIGITAL TWINS AND BEYOND. This event on the 17th January 2024 will delve into the innovative ways to visualise cities and explore the potential of digital technologies to enhance city planning, design, resident engagement, and management. Join us as we gather academic and public sector professionals to discuss the power of digital tools in shaping the urban landscape. From digital twins to augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) and other creative methods, we'll explore multiple ways to visualise the city. Register today to avoid disappointment as limited free spaces are available!

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 a hardware engineering bias) with arm in Cambridge. All current Year 2 UG students in the Department are eligible to apply. See further details here. To apply, please complete this form by the deadline of 6pm (UK time) Friday 15th December 2023.

DIGITAL FUTURE REVIEW OF AI - GET INVOLVED.

DEPARTMENT LINKEDIN PAGE.

Follow us on LinkedIn, where we've recently created a Linked page, where you can follow news and events from the department. You can also follow us on X (formerly know as twitter).

PUBLICATION NEWS.

The Department has a very diverse research portfolio, due to the interdisciplinary nature of the subject, with staff working across a number of fields across Computer Science and Engineering. To illustrate the breadth of research the department carries out, we will talk about publications from time to time. An example of this is a recent publication from myself (a bit of self promotion here) and Tom Thomson in the Nano Engineering and Spintronic Technologies (NEST) research group. The paper, titled “Tunable multi-cycle terahertz pulse generation from a spintronic emitter”, has been published in Applied Physics Letters, achieving the recognition as being a featured article by the editor and being chosen to be the cover image on the Vol.123, Issue 21 of the journal. The work builds on from the NEST expertise in spintronics (utilising the electron spin rather than charge for the next generation of electronic devices with reduced power requirements and increased speed) and the expertise of our collaborators in the Terahertz Physics Group, in the Department of Physics. The work presents, for the first time, the ability to provide a tunable, narrowband THz pulse from a spintronic THz emitter, paving the way towards a narrowband THz source continuously tunable over the entire THz spectral range from 0.1 to 30THz, with sub-GHz linewidths. The work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Grant No. EP/S033688/1).

ASSESSMENT AND EXAM SUPPORT FROM THE LIBRARY.

As we get closer to the exam period then it’s good to know that the Library is here to support your revision and preparation. The University offers a range of workshops and online resources to support you with your productivity and wellbeing. Sessions include revising effectively, revision and preparation, dealing with procrastination, and managing exam stress.

Drop-in sessions: Join a drop-in session to ask specific questions and get guidance from a library expert. Browse workshops and drop-in sessions
MLE 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 our Library Support for Assessment resource. Browse revision resources.

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. New additional support is also available from the new Ask Me@ The Library service. Remember you can also find wellbeing support by accessing helpful resources and workshops via the Counselling Service and Student Support website.

LIBRARY & STUDY SPACE OPENING HOURS.

After the Christmas break, from 2nd – 26th January 2024, there will be extended opening until 2am in the Main Library. During this period additional study space will also be made available at Prospect House, Booth Street East (8am to 8pm, Monday to Friday) - which is behind the Kilburn building, next to the IT building. Bookable study space and group study rooms are available at Main Library and Alan Gilbert Learning Commons. You can find opening hours of all library sites on the Library website which will be kept updated over the assessment period.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - Fibonacci by Hobo

Normal sudoku rules apply. Digits cannot repeat on a marked diagonal. Digits separated by a white dot must be consecutive. Digits separated by a black dot must be in a 1:2 ratio.

Pencil Puzzle - Monogram by Otto Janko

Colour the grey cells of the diagram black or white. The black cells form stripes which are one cell wide. The number, sequence and lengths of the stripes are specified by the clue number sequences on the top and on the left edge of the diagram. Each clue number defines the length of a stripe in the corresponding row resp. column. Two stripes of black cells are separated by at least one white cell.

Chess Puzzle - Arca Vs. Sowinski, 2023

Drag and drop the Black pieces to win the match.

Geoguessr

And finally, our weekly competition from geoguessr.com

We are playing another new map again this week called Flags of the World. All of the clues are there, you just need to find them, the flags might help! You need to take in as much information as you can from the google street view and then drop your pin on the map. The closer to the correct location you are the more points you get. Can you get the top score after all 5 rounds? Remember though, you only get 1 min per round and running out of time will give you 0 pts. Winners will be announced next week!

The Winner from Last Week was again Ewan Massey with a score of 21,431 out of a possible 25,000. A great score considering how deceiving round 4 was. The winner of the closest individual guess this week was CoffeeDrinker89 (which I know is a lecturer in disguise) with a guess only 587 yards away on Round 5. A great guess, well done.

Something to look forward to, in the last Monday Mail of this Semester (Week 12) we will be playing a custom Geoguessr Map that I have made 5 rounds for you to complete; I wonder if anyone can figure out why the locations were chosen?

Answers to Last Week’s Puzzles

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

Week 9 • Monday 20 November 2023 • #23.10

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Good morning UG! It’s Monday 20th November and week 9 of the semester 1 teaching period. 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 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. The handbook is always linked in the Essential Links banner in Monday Mail.

Don’t forget that we publish Monday Mail for students to celebrate the great things that they have achieved. If you want to share something you've accomplished with the rest of the UG community then please do get in touch.

I hope you have a good week …

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

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

WELFARE WEEKLY - THE DEADLINE HEADACHE.

This from Ben Herbert, Student Support and Wellbeing: The past week or two has seen an uptick in the number of assessments students are expected to complete. This can lead to a feeling of being overwhelmed as you bounce from deadline to deadline if you are not able to manage your time properly. I wanted, therefore, to set out some practical strategies on how you can go about managing your deadlines. In future articles I plan to dig deeper into some of these points, but for now here are my top tips.

Prioritise your tasks: Identifying the most urgent and important tasks. Google "The Eisenhower Matrix" for more information. Prioritise assignments with closer deadlines or those carrying more weight. Consider how much the individual component is worth to the unit and use your time appropriately.

Break it Down: Large tasks can be intimidating. Break them down into smaller, more manageable pieces. Need to write a report? Start with outlining, then focus on each section separately. Give yourself a reward for each part you complete.

Create a Schedule: Allocate specific time slots to different subjects or assignments. Establishing a routine keeps you consistent and focused and avoids procrastination.

Talk about it: Don't hesitate to reach out to your friends, family and fellow students, tutors, or us at the support and wellbeing team. Discussing your challenges and building a supportive network around you can really help. We can also point you in the directions of extra help and resources. Why not start with looking through previous Welfare Weekly articles!

Remember to rest: Take short breaks during study sessions. Utilise these pauses for relaxation activities. Give your brain a chance to recharge, preventing burnout and improving overall focus. For more information Google "The Pomodoro Technique" (Yeah, it does mean tomato).

Embrace Self-care: Prioritise your well-being. Sick students submit poor work, FACT! Make sure you get a good amount of sleep, eat well, engage in extracurricular activities, and maintain good physical and mental health. Struggling to do this? Come and see us at the Student Support Hub.

Remember, you're not alone in this. Take a deep breath, break it down, and smash each challenge. Don't hesitate to reach out to me or one of your tutors if you need any advice or support.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Thursday 14:00 - 15:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Tuesdays 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.80
Industrial Experience Year: Duncan Hull. Open hour: Wednesdays 10:00 - 12:00. Kilburn LF25
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: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, IT119.

MEET A STUDENT REP.

The student rep of the week this week is Shiv Walia (Y1, CS). Shiv writes: I’m Shiv Walia and I'm an international student from India. My hometown is Dehradun, a relatively small town in India. In my high school life I have also been a student representative of my class, therefore I have some experience being a student representative. Please send Shiv an email if you have anything you'd like to discuss.

UNICS HACKATHON DIRECTOR VOTING.

UniCS is currently in the process of selecting a new pair of hackathon co-directors, and we are now opening voting to all computer science students! Please read through their manifestos and vote here. Your opinion matters, so please vote for the people who you think would do best in this role to help run our hackathons."

EXTENSIONS IN SPOT.

Stewart Blakeway, Discipline Assessment Lead, writes: If you have applied for, and been granted an extension for a piece of summative work it is important that this is reflected on your SPOT page. If an extension is granted you will see an ‘i’ symbol next to the submission information. If you hover the mouse pointer over the ‘i’ symbol, it will show the date of the extended deadline (see figure). If you have been granted an extension and it does not appear on your SPOT page within 2 days of receiving notification that an extension was granted it is important that you contact stewart.blakeway@manchester.ac.uk (otherwise normal late penalties will apply). Also note that work submitted after the extension deadline will be subject to normal late penalties of 10% each day (or part of) from the extended deadline.

LEARNING TIPS.

A new feature where teaching staff provide advice on various aspects of teaching and learning, this week is from me (Paul) and focuses on assessments and expectations: It’s the time of the semester when you will start to receive marks and feedback on your coursework. This means adjusting to the university scale of marking, which may be very different to what you’re used to. To be able to judge where you stand, bear in mind that any mark above 70% is classed as a 1st class mark and that when you graduate, your degree is classified into a limited number of classifications based on your overall mark, i.e. 70% or greater 1st class, 60-69% upper second class (2.1), 50-59% lower second class (2.2), 40-49% third class. Offers for jobs and postgraduate degrees are typically conditional on achieving a particular classification, rather than a particular average.

We find that some students work very long hours trying to maximise their marks, where there might only be a limited return on all the effort they have put in. Effort doesn’t necessarily equate to better marks, and for many pieces of work we set you, getting a really high mark is meant to be hard - we only expect a limited number of students to achieve very high marks. Such pieces of work are designed so that a good solid solution gets a mark in the 60s, but achieving a mark above 80% may well require a deep delve into the subject matter to produce something outstanding; it may require some element of self-learning, i.e. thinking beyond the material provided in the course unit.

We recommend that you start making conscious decisions about your work: How much time is it worth spending on something? How will this affect your ability to keep up with the other course units? How much stress do your expectations put on you? Are you forcing yourself to give up other activities to spend all your energies on your studies? Instead, we suggest you learn when to call it quits, and that you focus on making the most of the feedback you receive, so that you can learn how to work smarter. Remember, University is not just about work, it’s about making the most of the experience that comes with attending University - you shouldn't be spending all your time chasing all the marks available. Take a breather and balance your workload.

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. You can check yourself when SPOT last received data from Blackboard since SPOT tells you this information.
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 text ‘not submitted’ under the column heading submission will change to show the date and time of the submission.
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.

COURSEWORK DEADLINES CHART.

To help you visualise your deadlines and manage your time, don't forget that we have produced a deadlines chart, which can be accessed here. The chart is populated with the deadlines for all COMP course units, for each year groupo, in semester 1. It aims to give you an overview of your deadlines and to help you plan your time, which will depend upon the course units you are taking. Please note that deadlines may still change and that only SPOT indicates up-to-date information on deadlines, so please use SPOT to confirm deadlines.

THE UNDERGRADUATE HANDBOOK.

The Undergraduate Handbook is your one-stop resource for all information related to your studies. It contains information about our degree programmes, details on progression, how to change degree 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.

UNICS SPONSORED MOCK INTERVIEW EVENT.

UniCS is excited to present a unique opportunity for our members: a mock interview event supported by our esteemed sponsors: bet365, Roku, Booking.com and BNY Mellon! Taking place on November 22nd from 3pm-5:30pm at the Alan Turing building room G.107, this event aims to enhance your professional skills essential for job and internship interviews. Join us for a valuable chance to practise and refine both your technical and social competencies in a simulated interview setting. It's an ideal platform to prepare for your internship and job applications this academic year. Your participation could be the key to unlocking your potential in the professional world. We encourage all students to seize this invaluable opportunity and come along! Register your interest for this event here!

DATA SCIENCE SOCIETY.

Generative Adverserial Networks, Wed 22nd Nov 2-4pm; Simon 2.39. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) excel in creating realistic synthetic images, text, videos and sound. GANs are the precursor to popular generative AI such as ChatGPT, DALL-E and more. In this workshop we will:

Understand what generative models are
Intro to Autoregressive models
Autoencoders and Variational Autoencoders (VAEs) for Generative Deep Learning

Join us for your first look at this dynamic and relevant field of research! As always, we're there to support your learning, and all questions are welcome. Prerequisites: Intermediate level, as some mathematics is required to understand GANs.

UNICS CHRISTMAS MARKET EVENT.

Come along on Friday 24th November and join us at Manchester’s Christmas Market for a fun night of exploring food stalls, getting toasty cups of hot chocolate, getting to know new people, and enjoying the festive spirit! We will meet at Kilburn Byte Cafe at 5:30pm and walk there together as a group. Register your interest for this event here, we hope to see you there!"

CELEBRATING THE CAREER OF PROFESSOR STEVE FURBER.

GOOGLE DEVELOPER STUDENT CLUBS MANCHESTER.

Dive into IOT and Automation!

Date and Time: 22nd November from 4-5pm
Location: Lecture theatre A, Eng. building A

Further details to be released on our socials!

DIG DEEP KILIMANJARO CHALLENGE.

@manchesterkili are a group of students who have partnered with the charity Dig Deep, to lead a team up Kilimanjaro in aid of improving water sanitation in Kenya. They are taking on the challenge next August and are currently looking to recruit individuals, both university students and beyond who are up for the challenge of fundraising for an amazing cause with the opportunity to climb Kilimanjaro. If you think you, or anyone else you know might be interested then check here to take you to the sign up page. Sign up closes on the 30th November. You can find more information here. For any questions, message their Instagram @manchesterkili for more information.

ASSESSMENT AND EXAM SUPPORT FROM THE LIBRARY.

Drop-in sessions: Join a drop-in session to ask specific questions and get guidance from a library expert. Browse workshops and drop-in sessions
MLE 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 our Library Support for Assessment resource. Browse revision resources.

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. New, additional support is also available from the new Ask Me@ The Library service. Remember you can also find wellbeing support by accessing helpful resources and workshops via the Counselling Service and Student Support website.

LIBRARY & STUDY SPACE OPENING HOURS.

After the Christmas break, from 2nd – 26th January 2024, there will be extended opening until 2am in the Main Library. During this period additional study space will also be made available at Prospect House, Booth Street East (8am to 8pm, Monday to Friday) - which is behind the Kilburn building, next to the IT building. Bookable study space and group study rooms are available at the Main Library and Alan Gilbert Learning Commons. You can find opening hours of all library sites on the Library website which will be kept updated over the assessment period.

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 - Another Lost Toy by Sandra & Nala

Normal sudoku rules apply. Every digit that appears in a circle must also appear in at least one of its 4 surrounding cells. If an arrow is present in a cell, the digit in the cell the arrow comes from appears in the grid in the direction of the arrow at a distance of N cells, where N is the digit in the arrow's cell. (Not all arrows are necessarily given - there is not a negative constraint.) Example: If R3C4 had an arrow pointing to the left and was a 3, and the digit below that arrow in R4C4 was a 5, then another 5 would be placed in R3C1. The grid is partially covered in fog. Placing correct digits will clear the fog from surrounding cells, possibly revealing more clues.

Pencil Puzzle - Thermometer by Otto Janko

Tint the gray boxes of the chart black or white. A number at the edge of the chart indicates how many squares in that row or column are black. The fields of a "thermometer" may only be blackened from the bottom (circle) to the top (without a space in between), but they do not necessarily have to be all black.

Chess Puzzle - Maurizzi Vs. Rasmussen, 2023

Drag and drop the White pieces to win the match.

Geoguessr

And Finally, our weekly competition from geoguessr.com.

The Winner from Last Week was Ewan Massey with a score of 14,858 out of a possible 25,000. A great score considering how difficult rounds 2 & 3 were, what are the chances of two rounds being in Senegal? The winner of the closest individual guess this week was also Ewan Massey with a guess only 30 yards away on Round 1. An incredible guess, well done. I think you are definitely our player of the week this week.

Answers to Last Week’s Puzzles

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

Week 8 • Monday 13 November 2023 • #23.09

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Good morning UG! It’s Monday 13th November and we are in week 8 of the semester 1 teaching period. I hope everything is going well and you are managing to keep up with your work. It’s that time of the semester when pressures start to set in and you may find yourself struggling to keep up with everything and meeting deadlines for coursework. If any issues prevent you from submitting your work by a deadline (illness etc) then you should ask for an extension (if available) and complete the work and submit late (within the extension period). You may also want to consider submitting a mitigating circumstances application if you are still struggling to meet the extended deadline. If you are impacted then it’s important that you seek help and advice by speaking to either your Academic Advisor, your Year Tutor, or contact a member of the Department Wellbeing Team (see below). Often students leave it until the last minute, usually after the exams, to let us know they've been affected during the year, by which point it is too late to do anything to help. Contacting us immediately when something happens, offers you the best chance of receiving help and support when you need it.

Have a good week. It’s a bumper edition of Monday Mail today, so 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 speak to your year tutor, or you can speak to a member of our Student Wellbeing Team, Maria Sloan and Ben Herbert, 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. Maria and Ben are also the Disability Coordinators for CS, so you can speak to them if you have any ongoing physical or mental health problems, or conditions such as ASD or ADHD, that affect your studies, even if you are not already registered with the DASS Team at the University. If you are registered with DASS and there are problems with your DASS plan you can speak with them about this too. You can contact Maria and Ben at soe.wellbeing@manchester.ac.uk.

COST OF LIVING SUPPORT.

If you’re struggling to make ends meet and you’re unable to cover essential, day-to-day costs, the University’s Cost of Living Support Fund may be able to help. The fund can provide grants between £250 and £2,000 for students in need, which doesn’t have to be paid back. Any full-time student can apply, regardless of social background, nationality, or level of study. The amount you receive will be based on an assessment of your circumstances. For example, you may be:

relying on part time work, or struggling to find sufficient part time work, to supplement your living expenses
be a student whose sponsors have withdrawn funding, or where payments are delayed
be an international student experiencing difficulties in transferring funds from overseas
Or you may have another cause to be in financial hardship.

Whatever the cause, if you are struggling financially, we want to hear from you. Find out more about applying to the fund, and read about our other cost of living measures.

ANTI-BULLYING WEEK:

MAKE A NOISE ABOUT BULLYING. This week marks anti-bullying week, so it’s a good opportunity to understand what bullying looks like and highlight the range of support we have available if you see bullying take place, or if you have been personally affected. Too often, we are silent when we see bullying, silent about the hurt bullying causes, and find it easier to dismiss it as ‘just banter’. Now is a good time to take a stand against bullying and the harm it causes. If you are affected and want to reach out and get help, then help is available. You can find further information here.

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 here. In the 3rd year, your academic advisor is your project supervisor, and in the 4th year it is Tim Morris.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Thursday 14:00 - 15:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Tuesdays 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.80
Industrial Experience Year: Duncan Hull. Open hour: Wednesdays 10:00 - 12:00. Kilburn LF25
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: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, IT119.

STUDENT-STAFF LIAISON COMMITTEE.

This from Tom Carroll, Chair of the SSLC: We held our most recent SSLC on 25th October, with a theme of "Student Voice". It was highlighted that as many avenues as possible should be given for students to make their voice heard. Your reps suggested an SSLC notice board to highlight the work of the SSLC, as well as providing a suggestion box. A notice board has now been installed in the LF area, and will soon be furnished for this year's SSLC. So please keep an eye out for new additions to the notice board - one of several ways in which you can learn about the work of the SSLC. Reps highlighted that students are unhappy with some aspects of functionality and the user interface of Blackboard. It has recently been announced that Canvas will be replacing Blackboard as our central learning environment in 2025. Find out more here. Reps highlighted that it is sometimes difficult to recognise GTAs when in a lab. The department has recently issued GTAs with purple name badges and lanyards, which will help with identification. Please don't forget, that if you have any issues that you wish to highlight, or if you want to let us know about a positive thing, then please contact one of your reps. You can view a list of reps, see what issues have been raised to the SSLC, track their progress, and also review minutes of the meetings on the Blackboard UG Community space.

UG TO RESEARCHER.

This week we hear from Alistair Kressel (graduated 2021, CSwIE). Alistair writes: For my third year UG project, I worked on optimising the first dynamic binary modification (DBM) tool for 64-bit RISC-V, under the supervision of Mikel Luján. This enabled powerful debugging and analysis of RISC-V binaries. Doing something which hadn’t been done before helped to spark my interest in the idea of research as a career path. This year we published a paper based on that work, which I presented at ISPASS’23 in USA in April. However, I still wasn’t sure if research was right for me or not. To find out, I next did an MPhil (like a PhD but one year) under the supervision of Pierre Olivier. During this year, I researched compartmentalisation in single address space OSes using a technology called CHERI which enables fine-grained memory isolation. This also resulted in a publication, which I presented at PLOS’23 in Germany in October. I highly recommend an MPhil to anyone who is unsure about research.

Three things I learned during my MPhil year were, firstly, research is hard but also really rewarding. You become an expert in your field of research and will produce new and exciting work, which has never been done before. Secondly, you will get to travel to some cool places when you get papers published (I have been lucky enough to go to the USA, Italy, and Germany in the past 6 months!). Finally, as a researcher, you are more like an employee than a student, which brings with it more responsibility and autonomy, including the management of your own time and research.

I am now continuing the work started in my MPhil in my PhD! Please feel free to send me an email if you have any questions regarding research in general or would like to discuss my research further!

STUDENT PUBLICATION SUCCESS.

Congratulations to Andrei Hutu (on placement, CS4wIE) who had his paper published in the Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids (SmartGridComm 2023). Andrei presented his paper at SmartGridComm, in Glasgow, the leading conference in smart grid. “Privacy Preserving Billing in Local Energy Markets with Imperfect Bid-Offer Fulfilment” provides privacy-friendly billing mechanisms for users while tackling discrepancies between committed volumes of energy at local energy markets and the actual volumes delivered. He wrote and submitted the paper while working on his third-year project. Andrei is now doing a placement as a Software Engineer Intern in arm, in Cambridge, where he is based in the Machine Learning Engineering department working on Apache TVM in the ML Compilers team. Very well done, Andrei!

MEET A STUDENT REP.

The student rep of the week this week is Callum Bridges (Y1, CSwIE). Callum writes: I'm a caring person with varied interests, ranging from swimming to gaming. I aim to develop my skills in computer science through helping others and supporting the Department. As a creative individual, playing two different instruments (classical guitar and saxophone), I will listen to my colleagues and provide suitable feedback to the Department. I have also had experience creating end products for consumers - as an organiser for a local Lego show, I was responsible for designing a suitable website for the charity.

GREATUNIHACK 2023.

Two weeks ago, UniCS ran GreatUniHack 2023 at the MMU Business school and a whopping 200 people came and took part! We would like to say a big congratulations to the winners of GreatUniHack 2023: ‘Number Ninjas Math Game’ in first place, ‘Pronounce It’ in second place, and ‘Visual sizer’ in third place. Congratulations to all the other teams that won prizes in various categories as well, and to everyone who came and took part. We loved seeing all of your cool projects come together over the 24 hours and we hope you enjoyed it just as much as we did! FInally, thank you to the hackathon directors Asma Alshebli and Asma Ali, and the team for spending the last 10 months organising this and ensuring everything went well despite all the unexpected challenges that surfaced near the end.

COMPUTING CAREERS FAIR.

Duncan Hull writes: Thanks to all the exhibitors at our annual Computing Careers Fair in the engineering building foyer last week. We hope you enjoyed speaking to staff and former Computer Science students now working at arm.com axelera.ai, bjss.com , morganstanley.com, spglobal.com, pwc.co.uk, mediatek.com, matillion.com seechange.com, bet365.com, codethink.co.uk, netcraft.com, intel.com, palantir.com, roku.com and tpp-uk.com More upcoming employer events are described at www.careers.manchester.ac.uk and the next big careers fair for Computer Science students will be the Digital Skills Festival in the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester on the 7th February 2024 after the January exam period, see digitalskillsfestival.com

EXTENSION REQUESTS.

If you find you are falling behind due to circumstances beyond your control with an assessment then you can apply for a short extension to allow you to complete your work. You must apply for an extension BEFORE the deadline through the Department Mitigating Circumstances page. Please note that you are unable to apply for an extension for some assessments, these are detailed in the deadlines Gantt chart, or in SPOT. You should only be applying for an extension if you really need one, we will be monitoring applications to ensure the system is not being abused.

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 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.

UNICS GAMDEV WORKSHOPS.

Hello everyone! Join us a week from now, James Chadwick Building, Room 3.008 , on November 15th from 3 - 4pm and participate in our 3rd Game Dev workshop! This workshop will cover the basics of Monogame Rendering and I/O. We will also explore more complex Object Oriented concepts like interfaces and structs. Follow my GitHub and star the repository below to keep track of and refer to things programmed during our live coding sessions (we will be using this repository for subsequent workshops). As always, these workshops are still beginner-friendly and aim to shed light on underlying concepts which apply to any engine! See you guys there :) Register your interest here!

STRIKE NIGHT AT TENPIN PRINTWORKS.

This from Google Developer Student Clubs. Join us for an evening of bowling at Tenpin Printworks! VERY LIMITED TICKETS – Are you quick enough to snag one? Check the link in our bio and secure your spot via the SU website!

Date: Friday, November 17, 2023
Time: From 19:00 onwards
Location: Tenpin Printworks
Address: 27 Withy Grove, Manchester M4 2BS

Please note:

Please book only one game per person as we'll all play simultaneously in multiple lanes. Feel free to book more games at your own expense!
Student ID and Age proof required – make sure they're valid!
Food and Drinks not included.
Exclusively for students.

UNICS LEETCODE WORKSHOP.

Join us this Wednesday, November 15th, in Collab 1 from 4 to 6 PM to learn about Competitive Programming, the interview process, and getting started with Leetcode! We'll guide you through the typical steps of a technical interview, share ideal timelines for starting your application process, discuss how to approach problems, and provide resources on essential data structures and problem-solving patterns to learn. Additionally, we'll walk through some example problems, dissecting them to show how to make incremental improvements. Register your interest here!

UNICS INTERNSHIP NETWORKING EVENT.

Come along to Revolution Manchester (Oxford Road) from 7pm onwards on Friday November 17th for a casual networking event where you get to hear from our students that have gained internship experience from various companies, such as Amazon, ARM, Wise, and BNY Mellon! This is your chance to ask any burning questions you have about application processes and advice, or any general things you are curious about, all in a casual setting! Register your interest here!

GRAPHENE HACKATHON.

Unleash your inner entrepreneur: Design, Prototype & Pitch a new graphene product idea over a weekend of hacking at the University of Manchester, 9-10th December 2023! Join us in an energetic environment for rapid development, failing & innovating! Work with entrepreneurs, industry experts, and academics. Win cash prizes and startup support! The Graphene Hackathon is open to everyone from all backgrounds. You can enter in ready-made teams (4-6 people) or we can group you together with other applicants. Visit our website for more information & information on how to apply before the 18th November. Travel and accommodation costs for people outside of the University of Manchester will be covered. Email us with any questions: info@graphenehackathon.com.

POSTGRADUATE OPEN DAY.

If you are a final year student, have you thought about your next steps and maybe consider moving into research to do a PhD, then this is for you. The Faculty of Science and Engineering will be running a Postgraduate Research Open Day On Wednesday 15th November (this Wednesday) – 12 pm to 4.30 pm, in Engineering Building A. Find out whether a PhD at Manchester is right for you at our Open Day. If you’re passionate about your subject, and have the dedication needed for research, a PhD could be for you. Come along to our Open Day on Wednesday 15 November discover more about research in the area you’re most interested in, including entry requirements, available projects, how you could be fully funded, and much more. Find out more and register your place.

UNICS HACKATHON CO-DIRECTOR APPLICATIONS.

We are now accepting applications for two Hackathon Co-Directors UniCS! As a Hackathon Co-Director, you will be in charge of planning and running our annual StudentHack, as well as planning the foundations of GreatUniHack2024. Applications close today at 6pm so apply here ASAP!

STUDY RECRUITMENT.

This from Paul Stott, PhD Researcher in Linguistics: Hello everyone. I am recruiting participants for a study. It’s a simple task: you’ll listen to 120 sentences and respond to words that pop up on the screen. You’ll also answer some comprehension questions. It should take around 40 mins to 1 hour to complete. Please see the Participant Information Sheet which provides detailed information on the study. If you’d like to participate, or have any questions, please do get in touch with me via: PAUL.STOTT-2@MANCHESTER.AC.UK. I am recruiting participants as of NOW and will begin running the study as soon as possible.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - Lexicon by MicroStudy

Fillomino: Divide the grid into regions of orthogonally-connected cells such that no two regions of the same size share an edge. Enter a number into each cell equal to the size of its region. Look-and-Say Cages: Digits can repeat in cages. The number in the top left corner should be read as a look-and-say number and says which digits are in that cage. For example, if a cage has the clue "12" then it means there is one 2 in the cage. If it has the clue "3314" then it means there are three 3s and one 4 in the cage.

Pencil Puzzle - Snake by Otto Janko

Colour the grey cells of the grid black or white. The black cells must form a single "snake" which is exactly one cell wide, starts and ends in the marked cells and never touches itself, not even diagonally. A number on the top and left edge of the grid indicates how many cells must be blackened in the corresponding row or column.

Chess Puzzle - Pogosyan Vs. Pultinevicius, 2022

Drag and drop the Black pieces to win the match.

Geoguessr

And Finally, our weekly competition from geoguessr.com.

We are playing the new map again this week called GeoDetective. All of the clues are there, you just need to find them! You need to take in as much information as you can from the google street view and then drop your pin on the map. The closer to the correct location you are the more points you get. Can you get the top score after all 5 rounds? Remember though, you only get 1 min per round and running out of time will give you 0 pts. Winners will be announced next week!

The Winner from Last Week was Again Me (but I still don't count), so it was HillyCanyon282 with a score of 15,107 out of a possible 25,000. A great score considering how difficult round 2 was! The winner of the closest individual guess this week was again Ewan Massey with a guess only 7 yards away on Round 5. An incredible guess, well done.

Answers to Last Week’s Puzzles

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

Week 7 • Monday 6 November 2023 • #23.08

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Good morning UG! Today is Monday 6th November, it’s week 7 of teaching, and November is here already! I hope you managed to take a break over Reading Week to recharge your batteries. I also hope you enjoyed the celebrations on Bonfire Night.

Teaching activities resume as normal this week, so please make sure you check your personal timetable. We are hitting that point in the semester where you may find deadlines start to bunch up. As such, it’s important to manage your time and do not leave coursework to the last minute. Don’t forget we have the deadlines chart (see below) so you can visualise the deadlines across the semester. Information is also available in SPOT (see below).

Have a good week. On with today’s news …

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT - NIGHTLINE.

In the Week 6 Monday Mail I advertised the services of Nightline. However, unfortunately Nightline is no longer available as a service.

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.

WELFARE WEEKLY - SLEEP IS FOR THE WEEK.

This from Ben Herbert, Student Support and Wellbeing: Sleep can very easily be something we can struggle to get enough of when at university. Whether it be from being up all-night partying or cramming in that last minute coursework, binge watching Married at First Sight, or being kept awake by noisy flatmates. When we do get to sleep it can sometimes be low quality due to stress, worry, alcohol, or caffeine in our system.

Sleep hygiene is a term I learnt last week, that refers to habits and practices that promote good, restful sleep. By incorporating sleep hygiene into your daily routine, you can optimise your sleep quality and overall health. Ways to improve sleep hygiene include:

Maintaining a consistent sleep schedule to regulate your body's internal clock, making it easier to fall asleep and wake up feeling rested;
Creating a Sleep-Friendly environment with dim lights, a cool temperature, and removal of distractions;
Limiting stimulants by avoiding caffeine, nicotine, and heavy meals close to bedtime.

More tips on Sleep hygiene can be found in this article from Cornell University and this one from the NHS.

Sometimes, despite practising good sleep hygiene, insomnia can persist. Here are some additional strategies to help overcome this:

Engage in relaxation techniques like deep breathing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation, or meditation;
Develop a wind-down routine that signals to your body and mind that it's time to sleep, such as reading, taking a warm bath, or listening to calming music;
Limit electronic device usage;
Consider Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) and seek help from a qualified professional who can provide CBT-I techniques to address and manage the underlying causes of your sleep difficulties.

Achieving good sleep hygiene and managing insomnia requires consistency and patience. By implementing these tips and strategies, you can set the stage for restful nights and wake up feeling refreshed, making your waking hours more productive. This in turn will have benefits on your grades and general wellbeing. Sleep well!

Do you have insomnia? Take the self-assessment test, get tips, and find support on the NHS website here. If you have any concerns, speak to your GP. Learn about sleep hygiene in this podcast.

KEEPING SAFE ON CAMPUS.

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 Wellbeing 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 16th November 2023 in order to receive support in the January 2024 examinations.

ACADEMIC WRITING AND SPEAKING WORKSHOPS.

The University provides free workshops to help students develop key academic English skills via the Academic Success Programme. Workshops are delivered face-to-face and online and focus on:

Academic speaking
Academic writing and grammar

Information on the workshops and details of how to register can be found here. New start dates will be made available from 6 November 2023.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Thursday 14:00 - 15:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Tuesdays 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.80
Industrial Experience Year: Duncan Hull. Open hour: Wednesdays 10:00 - 12:00. Kilburn LF25
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 - Kilburn12:00, 2.103
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, IT119.

PASS2.

The PASS2 team (See Jia Tong (Y3, CS), Salma Aljama (Y3, AI) and Divya Radhakrishnan Nair (Y3, CS)) write: Hi everyone! welcome back, we are aware of the many upcoming deadlines you have and wanted to dedicate a session to discussing the best way to tackle your upcoming coursework from our experiences.

STUDENT PUBLICATION SUCCESS.

Congratulations to Alexandru Buburuzan (On placement, AIwIE) who had his paper published in the Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Uncertainty for Safe Utilization of Machine Learning in Medical Imaging held in conjunction with the 26th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI 2023). Alexandru presented his paper at MICCAI, in Vancouver, the leading conference in computer vision for medical image analysis. "Breaking Down Covariate Shift on Pneumothorax Chest X-Ray Classification" tackles one of the main problems when deploying computer vision algorithms in clinical scenarios: their generalisation on out-of-distribution data. As one of the two primary authors, Alexandru proposed LISA-topK, a domain generalisation algorithm for multi-label classification on X-ray scans, which improved the out-of-distribution performance of his model on three covariate shifts. He wrote and submitted the paper in his second year, during his previous part-time position as a Research Engineer at Rayscape. In the company, he was deploying computer vision algorithms in hospitals and wanted to study their possible degradation in performance. Alexandru is now doing a placement as a Research Engineer Intern in computer vision for self-driving cars at FiveAI, in Cambridge. His current research focuses on multimodal perception and ways to fuse different modalities, such as camera and lidar. Very well done Alexandru!

MEET A STUDENT REP.

This week’s featured student rep of the week is Arefin Ahammed (Y2, CSwIE). Hi, I'm Arefin Ahammed, one of your student reps this year. As an advocate for our student community, I'm dedicated to bridging the gap between students and faculty. Whether it's addressing concerns, organising events, or lending a helping hand, I'll be there to help you in all the matters. Feel free to reach out whenever you need or have issues. You can contact me at arefin.ahammed@student.manchester.ac.uk or any other social media or even whenever you see me in person. I'll be looking forward to hear your feedback on Uni life so that we could make it better for everyone.

DATA SCIENCE SOCIETY.

Introduction to Computer Vision, Wednesday 8th 2-4pm, Simon 2.39. Get ready for this week's workshop on Medical Image Analysis using Convolutional Neural Networks! Computer Vision tools for Medical Image Analysis are allowing radiologists to become faster, better, and more accurate in diagnosis. Content list:

Understand how Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) work.
Learn how to build a Computer Vision pipeline using PyTorch.
Train a CNN to classify organs from CT scans.

Prerequisites: It would be useful to understand how basic neural networks work.

MANDATORY UNITS.

SPOT.

SPOT shows all your assessment marks in one central system for the course units that you are taking with the department of Computer Science. SPOT also provides other information for the course units 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. SPOT can be accessed here and further guidance can be found on the departmental wiki pages.

NEED A PLACE TO WORK?

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

COURSEWORK DEADLINES CHART.

The Department has put together a coursework deadlines chart, which can be accessed here. The chart is populated with the deadlines for all COMP course units, for each year group, in semester 1. It aims to give you an overview of your deadlines to help you plan your time. Which deadlines are relevant will depend upon the course units you are taking. The chart also lets you know if it's possible to apply for an extensions for a given piece of work. Please note that deadlines may still change and that only SPOT indicates up-to-date information on deadlines, so please use SPOT to confirm deadlines.

GDSC INTERN INSIGHT EXCHANGE.

In the job hunt? Join us for the Intern/Placement Insight Exchange event, where fellow students who've made their mark with prestigious internships and placements will share invaluable insights and experiences.

Date: November 8th (Wednesday)
Time: 16:00 onwards
Location: Engineering Building A, Theatre A

Tentative companies we’ll cover (keep an eye out on our socials for more information): Microsoft, Tradedesk, Atmos, EY, Arm, UBS, Intel, Visa, JLR and NHS. Ever wondered how to make a mark at top-tier companies? This session is your gateway! Can't wait to see you there! Follow us here.

HOUSE HUNTING FOR 2024-25.

If you are looking for somewhere to live next academic year (2024-25), make the most of the help Manchester Student Homes (MSH) can provide by attending one of the upcoming fairs, where you can meet University accredited accommodation providers. MSH Accommodation Fairs will take place as follows, and you are welcome to attend either:

Wednesday 8th November 2023 – The Drum, University Place, UoM – 10am to 4pm
Thursday 9th November 2023 – Brooks Building, Birley, Manchester Met – 10am to 4pm

More information can be found on the MSH Accommodation Fair website.

UNIVERSITY CYBERHIVE.

Do you want to take part in simulated cyber incidents, make high-stakes decisions to thwart the attackers? Then this competition with a difference is for you! This is not about technology...there are no flags to capture! This is a competition about strategy and policy. We’re looking for students from all Faculties to join our CyberHive team for the UK Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge. We want to build a diverse team that brings together students from all academic disciplines and backgrounds (but do not work in cyber security or have held positions that would give them an advantage). The University of Manchester CyberHive team will aim for glory at the finals, set to take place at the BT Tower in London from 20th – 21st February 2024. Critical thinking and communication skills are essential! You can find out more information here, along with details on how to apply..

TELL US HOW IT SERVICES CAN WORK FOR YOU.

For your chance to have your voice heard and to shape the student experience, sign up today for one of our IT Services workshops. You’ll be helping to generate innovative ideas to resolve pain points and contributing to our vision and strategy for IT Services. This is your opportunity to really make a difference. In return you’ll receive free tea/coffee, free lunch and a £30 Amazon voucher! There are a number of workshops running:

Monday, 6 November (9.45am – 4pm), Room 5.204, University Place
Tuesday, 14 November (9.45am – 4pm), Room A3.7, Ellen Wilkinson Building
Thursday, 23 November (9.30am – 4pm), Location: TBC

You can find more information here, along with details on how to register for the workshops.

TANGO BINARY TRANSLATOR.

Mikel Lujan writes: The Xiaomi 14 has a 32bit to 64bit Arm Translator - Can you guess the technology behind it? The Xiaomi 14 is a flagship Android smartphone using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. This System-on-Chip lacks hardware support for AArch32 (ARM 32 bit), but there are still plenty of Android Apps relying upon AArch32. Here you can read about some nice detective work to uncover that the underlying technology is known as Tango. Thanks Mishaal Rahman. To learn more about the Tango Binary Translator check out this website. Another important milestone for Tango. Great to see technology developed at The University of Manchester helping the Arm ecosystem and having industrial impact. Amanieu D’Antras studied his undergraduate degree and PhD in Computer Science in our Department. The Tango Binary Translator is the successful commercialisation of his PhD. The PhD was supervised by Prof Mikel Lujan and Dr Jim Garside. This news item can also be found on LinkedIn.

ELECTRICAL WORK ON THE LOWER FIRST FLOOR.

The electrical work has now been completed, and the new furniture (tall desks and pods on lower first and the seating behind lecture theatre 1.1) has now been connected, so any plug or USB sockets should now be working. Apologies for the delay in connecting these up.

NEW CENTRAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT ANNOUNCED.

Over the summer staff and students were asked to evaluate potential replacement for Blackboard Learn, as the main central learning environment (CLE) used by the University. As a result of this consultation the Flexible Learning team have decided to adopt Canvas by Instructure as the new CLE from 2025. You can find out more information here.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - Killer In The Mist by Flinty

Normal sudoku rules apply. Most of the grid is covered in fog. Placing correct digits will clear the fog from the surrounding cells. No guessing is required. Digits in cages must sum to the small clue in the top-left corner of the cage. Digits cannot repeat within a cage. All cages are exactly 3 cells in size, and do not overlap / share cells.

Pencil 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 into those cells. If a region has 4 cells, you need to insert the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 into those cells. Each number can't be next to the same number in an adjacent cell, this includes horizontally, vertically, and diagonally.

Chess Puzzle - Dvoirys Vs. Feher, 1991

Drag and drop the White pieces to win the match.

Geoguessr

And Finally, our weekly competition from geoguessr.com.

The Winner from Last Week was Me (but I don't count), so it was Mo_Bargit with a score of 17,252 out of a possible 25,000. A brilliant score considering how difficult round 4 was! The winner of the closest individual guess this week was Ewan Massey with a guess 1,237 yds away on Round 3. A brilliant guess, well done.

Answers to Last Week’s Puzzles

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

Week 6 (Reading Week) • Monday 30 October 2023 • #23.07

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Good morning UG! It’s Monday 30th October, it’s week 6 and we are halfway through the semester. This week is Reading Week, 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. Please check your personal timetable if you are not sure. The University, and the Kilburn building, remain open as normal.

It’s great to see the Kilburn building, particularly the lower first area, so busy. Hopefully the sense of community will continue to develop after the impact of COVID. We hope you feel at home in the Kilburn building.

Tuesday is Halloween, so have a spooktacular day! Sunday (5th November) is 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 good week and try to take a break if you can. On with today’s news …

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT - NIGHTLINE.

Greater Manchester Nightline is a confidential listening and information evening service run for students by students. They offer anonymous, non-judgemental and non-directive support for all callers, regardless of the situation, where 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.

STUDENT SUPPORT HUB EMAIL ADDRESS.

Just a reminder that if you need to contact a member of the Teaching, Learning and Student Experience team, then the email addresses are as follows:

soe.hub@manchester.ac.uk: general queries; advice on University policies and services.
soe.programmes@manchester.ac.uk: student record queries; registration advice and guidance; timetable queries/clashes; ATAS/Visa advice; extension to study period; project topics, allocation and supervisors; change of programme; return to study; professional accreditation
soe.studentexperience@manchester.ac.uk: student societies support; SSLC/student rep support; employability; graduation; PASS; academic advising; communications; summer internship programme; surveys (course unit and NSS).
soe.wellbeing@manchester.ac.uk: mitigating circumstances; interruptions; disability coordinator support; general wellbeing support (appointments and helping you access the support you need).
soe.attendance@manchester.ac.uk: attendance and engagement monitoring.
soe.courseunits@manchester.ac.uk: course unit selection.
soe.placements@manchester.ac.uk: placement support and coordination.
soe.assessment@manchester.ac.uk: publication of results, exam queries, assessment queries (including DASS), progression and award queries.
soe.appealsandconduct@manchester.ac.uk: academic appeals; malpractice and student complaints.

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

WELFARE WEEKLY - FEELING SAFE AND SUPPORTED AT UNIVERSITY.

This from Ben Herbert, Student Support and Wellbeing: With the conflict between Israel and Hamas understandably impacting many people in the University community, we understand this can lead to personal struggles, heightened emotion, and potential conflict among individuals. I wanted to take some time to remind you of the University's stance and the support on offer here.

The University has a zero tolerance policy to hate and discrimination in all its forms - If you experience or witness discrimination on campus then please do report this to our specialist Report and Support team here. This can be done anonymously, however confidentially providing your details will allow the team to offer you support. Alternatively you can report incidents to the Students’ Union Advice Centre or the Student Support and Wellbeing team at the Student Support Hub. It is important to reiterate that signalling support for a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK, such as Hamas, including expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive, is a criminal offence as outlined in the Terrorism Act (2000).

The University can offer support for any difficulties you are experiencing both personally and academically - You can reach out to the school's Student Support and Wellbeing team either at the Student Support hub or by e-mailing soe.wellbeing@manchester.ac.uk if you have any concerns and we will endeavour to support you. Alternatively you can speak to one of our trained counsellors by booking an appointment here.

You can find the full statement regarding the Israel and Hamas conflict, its stance on discrimination , and support on offer, written by the University and Student's Union here.

COST OF LIVING SUPPORT.

The University, along with the Students’ Union, is committed to supporting you with the rising costs of living. There are lots of ways that help is available, including:

Helping you to spend less whilst you’re on campus
Providing financial support when you need it
Providing free health and wellbeing support

You can find more information here, or full details about all the support on offer can be found on the Cost of Living webpages.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

In the Department we have year tutors who are responsible for looking after the different cohorts in each year group. They are here to provide you with help and support if you need it. The Year Tutors will not be running office hours in Reading Week, however, you can still contact them by email:

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

PASS1.

The PASS1 team (Max Beck-Jones (Y3, CS4), Luke Sanderson (Y3, CS), Sarah Saad (Y3, AI4), Nicolo Micheletti (Y3, CS), and Rosie Halsall (Y3, CS4)) write: Hi everyone! We hope you're all settled in now and have had fun over the past 5 weeks. Next week is reading week which means there will be no activities timetabled for any COMP units, including PASS sessions. During this reading week, as well as catching up on your learning, it’s important for you to take time and have a break: go and see a movie or a show, visit a museum, or go on a day trip somewhere with your friends. The important thing is to come back refreshed and ready for the rest of the semester! Sessions will continue after this week where we you will be planning a roadmap for the remainder of the semester, including how to plan your revision for the first exam period (so don’t stress!).

STUDENT-STAFF LIAISON COMMITTEE.

This from Tom Carroll, Chair of the Student-Staff Liaison Committee (SSLC): On Wednesday 25th October, we held our first SSLC with the theme of "Student Voice". The meeting was well attended, and your reps discussed ways in which we can encourage more students to make their views and opinions known. We discussed issues such as accessibility in the Department, and noise in labs whilst teaching is occurring. Reps also highlighted good teaching within the Department, such as the workshops in COMP23111, the GTA marking in COMP26120, and feedback in COMP22712. It is also good to hear that people like the addition of new study booths in the LF area of Kilburn. I will give further updates in a future edition of the Monday Mail, once the minutes of the meeting become available. Please don't forget, that if you have any issues that you wish to highlight, or if you want to let us know about a positive thing, then please contact one of your reps. You can view a list of reps, see what issues have been raised to the SSLC, track their progress, and also review minutes of the meetings on the Blackboard UG Community space.

HACKCHESTER.

Happy reading week everyone! There will be no Hackchester workshop this week, however that doesn't mean we're not doing anything! Today we're hosting a small event in the Benugo Café in the Simon building at 10am where you can meet the founder of Teachforce. If that sounds like something you're interested in then please come along! Otherwise we'll see you next week for our usual weekly workshop.

MEET A STUDENT REP.

This week’s student rep is Vidhi Jalan (Y1, CMwIE). Vidhi writes: Hii guys! I'm Vidhi from Chennai, India. I am currently a first year studying BSc Computer Science and Mathematics with IE. Sports is my therapy (especially basketball and football). I love socialising and meeting new people. I am so excited to be your Student Rep this year. Having been the Sports Captain of my school, I have some experience in being a representative of the student body. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or concerns regarding the course or uni life!! You can reach out to me on Instagram (@vidhijalan27) or email me.

STUDENT PUBLICATION SUCCESS.

Congratulations to Yang Cui (Graduated 2023, CS, now MSc) who has had his research paper titled "MedTem2.0: Prompt-based Temporal Classification of Treatment Events from Discharge Summaries" by Yang Cui, Lifeng Han and Goran Nenadic, published in the Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL, Volume 4: Student Research Workshop). ACL is a top-tier conference in the NLP and AI field, and ACL-SRW publishes papers that have the first author as a student. While the vast majority of papers in that track comes from PhD students, the paper presents Yang’s final year UG project, in which he has built on the development in clinical NLP by temporally classifying treatments in clinical texts. Yang developed state-of-the-art NLP methods including prompt-based learning on Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPTs) models and fine-tuning on pre-trained language models to classify temporal relations between treatments and hospitalisation periods as reported in clinical letters. You can find out more information here. Congratulations Yang on what is a great achievement indeed!

FREE BREAKFASTS.

Weekly free breakfasts are now available every Wednesday during term time. The Library Team will hand out vouchers in Alan Gilbert Learning Commons which can be exchanged for breakfast goodies, including a hot drink and pastry, at the Learning Commons Café. The giveaways start at 9am, every Wednesday. Get your breakfast fix before stocks run out! Check out our Cost of Living page for more initiatives, including information on our Cosy Campus spaces with hot water and microwaves, and free fresh food available in the community fridge.

HARDWARE LIBRARY.

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

3D PRINTER.

The Department has two 3D printers that are free for you to use (Original Prusa i3). The 3D printers can be found in Tootill 0. If you’d like to use one of the printers, then please speak to Steve Rhodes (corner off Tootill 0) first.

GITLAB DOWNTIME WARNING.

On Wednesday 1st November the Department of Computer Science GitLab system will be taken offline to perform essential maintenance and upgrades. Work on the system will start at 14:00 and may take until 17:00, although we will attempt to minimise the time that GitLab is unavailable. A notice banner is currently shown on GitLab pages as a reminder for this work, and it will be removed when the work on the server is completed. While GitLab is offline you will be able to continue to work locally in any currently cloned git repositories, including adding commits. However, attempts to interact with the GitLab server (via `git push`, `git pull`, `git fetch` and so on) will fail.

COURSEWORK DEADLINES CHART.

The Department has put together a coursework deadlines chart, which can be accessed here, The chart is populated with the deadlines for all COMP course units, for each year group, in semester 1. It aims to give you an overview of your deadlines to help you plan your time. Which deadlines are relevant will depend upon the course units you are taking. The chart also lets you know if it's possible to apply for an extensions for a given piece of work. Please note that deadlines may still change and that only SPOT indicates up-to-date information on deadlines, so please use SPOT to confirm deadlines.

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. You can check yourself when SPOT last received data from Blackboard since SPOT tells you this information.
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 text ‘not submitted’ under the column heading submission will change to show the date and time of the submission.
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.

EXTENSION REQUESTS.

If you find you are falling behind due to circumstances beyond your control with an assessment then you can apply for a short extension to allow you to complete your work. You must apply for an extension BEFORE the deadline through the Department Mitigating Circumstances page. Please note that you are unable to apply for an extension for some assessments, these are detailed in the deadlines Gantt chart, or in SPOT. You should only be applying for an extension if you really need one, we will be monitoring applications to ensure the system is not being abused.

MANCHESTER TECH FESTIVAL.

Manchester’s biggest tech festival returns this week at the Victoria Baths from 1st to 2nd November. Former Computer Science student Anna Lackey (MEng 2023, now at https://www.roke.co.uk) will be talking about “AI for the completely baffled”, alongside many other talks from tech employers in Manchester. Discounted Student tickets are available. If you’d like to see a “dress rehearsal” of Anna’s talk, she’ll be doing it in Kilburn 2.19 on Wednesday 1st November at 1pm.

LOWER FIRST FLOOR ELECTRICAL INSTALLATION.

During Reading Week we will be having electrical supplies installed to the new furniture on the lower first floor of Kilburn. We believe this is taking place on Friday, but it could be another day of the week. As such, there may be disruption as the power is switched off to allow the work to be undertaken. We apologise if this affects any labs you are working in.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - Deep Space 9x9 By Haley Prochilo

Normal sudoku rules apply. Circles contain odd digits. Each line contains a sequence of consecutive digits in any order. There is a hidden 9 cell ‘thermometer’ entirely contained in one box, along which digits increase from one end to the other. It only moves orthogonally and does not cross itself.

Pencil 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. One light bulb is not lighting 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 - L'Ami Vs. Gujrathi, 2023

Drag and drop the White pieces to win the match.

Geoguessr

And finally, our weekly competition from geoguessr.com.

We are playing a new map this week called GeoDetective. All of the clues are there, you just need to find them! You need to take in as much information as you can from the google street view and then drop your pin on the map. The closer to the correct location you are the more points you get. Can you get the top score after all 5 rounds? Remember though, you only get 1 min per round and running out of time will give you 0 pts. Winners will be announced next week!

The Winner from Last Week was Lewis Pankhurst with a score of 17,913 out of a possible 25,000. A brilliant score considering how difficult round 2 was! Last week's winner of closest individual guess (Idris) has been beaten this week by CoffeeDrinker89 with a guess which was only 27 yds from the exact location! Well done both of you!

Answers to Last Week’s Puzzles

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

Week 5 • Monday 23 October 2023 • #23.06

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Good morning UG! It’s Monday 23rd October and it's the 5th week of teaching - the semester is flying by! Next week (w/c 30th October) is Reading Week, 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 also a time for you to take a bit of a break and relax if you can. The clocks change on Sunday 29th October (at 02:00 am), going back by one hour so we move back to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). So, 02:00 am becomes 01:00 am giving you an extra hour in bed on Sunday morning!

The first meeting of SSLC takes place this week focused on “Student Voice”, if you’d like to raise any issues with your students reps then please do so (see below). Finally, congratulations to everyone who took part in UKIEPC on Saturday (see below).

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

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

The 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.

WELFARE WEEKLY - MAÑANA,

MAÑANA! This from Ben Herbert, Student Support and Wellbeing: About 8pm last Sunday, along with the haunting sounds of the Antiques Road Show theme tune, came the realisation I'd done nothing with my day. I'd not done the laundry, or the washing up, or called the guy about booking driving lessons (again!), or done anything productive on my to-do list. This wasn't because I spent all day doing fun stuff I'd much rather do. It's because I'd watched a week's worth of Four in a Bed, listened to all the YouTube reviews on an amplifier I can’t afford anyway, and then spent so long scrolling through reels on Instagram that my eyes started to hurt.

We are all guilty of procrastination. When we start to let it get out of hand to the point it impacts our work, home life, and mental health, we have a problem. Symptoms of procrastination include: Being distracted from work by non-work activities; Leaving everything until the last second; Worrying about work but not getting it done; spontaneously performing tasks that you wouldn't normally be enthusiastic about; A sense of helplessness at feeling you have too much to do.

Procrastination and time management issues in general have a pivotal role to play in many people coming to see me. Students start with not managing their time well; From there they fall behind in their work. This gets them stressed and anxious which makes the situation worse. Feeling in control of your workload and remaining productive is a cornerstone of good marks and better mental health.

If your mental health is impacting your day-to-day life and/or your studies, or you think you may have ADHD then contact your GP. The University Counselling Service is also there to help. DASS can also provide support to those with ADHD. Where procrastination is an issue for you, time management strategies such as creating a weekly schedule and setting realistic goals can really help.

This great set of two online resources put together by the My Learning Essentials team and the Counselling service are well worth doing instead of doom scrolling. The first gets you understanding the procrastination cycle and the second covers strategies for dealing with procrastination. Also, while you're on your way into Uni, listen to this Podcast on beating procrastination from the Skills team at the University of Derby (33 mins). Plus this one on overcoming procrastination from the Exam Study Expert podcast (20 mins)

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Thursday 14:00 - 15:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Tuesdays 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.80
Industrial Experience Year: Duncan Hull. Open hour: Wednesdays 10:00 - 12:00. Kilburn LF25
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, 2.103
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, IT119.

UK IRELAND PROGRAMMING COMPETITION.

This from Ian Pratt-Hartmann: On Saturday, 21st October, the UK 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. Twenty teams from Manchester took part. Of these, the teams Beef Chew Mein, Duduienii, SYS, Solo Bolo, 404, Ctl+Alt+Defeat, MVJ, CoKoMan23 and GTS solved a creditable five problems. The final standings can be found here. Congratulations to the top three Manchester teams:

Beef Chew Mein: Yang Hu (Y3, CS4) , Thomas Jones (Y3, CS) and Shani De Silva (Y3, CS).
Duduienii: Alexandru Stoica (Y3, CSwIE), Mihnea Popeanga (Y3, CSwIE) and Diana Constantin (Y3, CSwIE).
SYS: Muhammad Hussain (Y2, CMwIE), Shay Boua (Y2, CMwIE), Stanley James (Y2, CM).

Well done to everyone who took part.

STUDENT-STAFF LIAISON COMMITTEE:

This from Tom Carroll: Our first Student-Staff Liaison Committee (SSLC) meeting is coming up on 25th October (this week!) and will have the theme of "Student Voice". We will be particularly interested in hearing how you feel your Student Voice is heard within the Department, and ways in which we can improve how we incorporate Student Voice in the Department. Also, if you have any other 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.

UNICS MAILING LIST.

To make sure you don't miss out on any activities you're interested in, you now have the option to opt-in to our mailing list! You will have a wide array of activities to choose from (Socials, Workshops, Networking events, Hackathons,...). Whatever you choose to select, we will email you whenever we have an event planned for it! (P.S you can choose to opt-out at anytime!)

MEET A STUDENT REP.

Meet our first student rep to feature this academic year: Hanzila Hussain (Y2, CSwIE). Hanzila writes: University of Manchester was always my dream university and I am forever honoured to be given the position of a Student Representative, to be able to uphold the voice of students in the Computer Science faculty. As a second-year student hoping for a placement, I am deeply committed to fostering a supportive academic environment. So, if you ever spot me in the corridors of Kilburn (or playing a table tennis match), feel free to drop by, say hi, and have a nice chat. This role presents a wonderful opportunity to bridge the gap between the student body and the faculty, so do not hesitate to raise your concerns. Your feedback is invaluable in creating an inclusive and enriching university experience for everyone.

UG TO RESEARCHER.

Next in our series looking at past UG students who have moved into PhD study. This from Gwydion Smit (graduated 2023, CS): For my third year project I worked on optimising quantum computing circuitry, under the supervision of Richard Banach. It was extremely theoretical and needed a lot of background research, which helps if you want to make the jump from bachelors straight to PhD. Otherwise, you can always apply for an MSc/MPhil first.

Upon submitting my project work Richard had a preliminary look over it and sent me an email saying there was potential for a PhD in that subject area if I wished to pursue it. I didn't really know what my next step was after graduation at that point, so I thought why not, and agreed to pursue it. Now a couple months of work into it interspersed with some funding and registration confusion, I realise I made the right choice and like it a lot. I'm now researching in the same area, in more depth and with a bigger end goal. If you're into research definitely consider it - you get paid to do it unlike your UG study. Ask your supervisor about any research opportunities if you're interested in their area, or someone else's in the department/university.

If you're at all curious about what I exactly did for my project or what I'm doing now, you can send me an email, or alternatively I will probably be a TA for the 3rd year quantum computing module next semester and you could ask me there. Explaining it further may take a bit though...

NEW TABLE FOOTBALL TABLE.

As the old table in the Turing lounge got damaged, we have replaced it with a new table football table for you to enjoy. Have fun, and please try not to lose the balls!

MANDATORY UNITS.

First Year students must complete the tests in the COMP1HS unit for Health and Safety and the COMP1AMP for the Academic Malpractice. Students must achieve 70 or above in all 4 Health and Safety Modules and must achieve full marks in the Academic Malpractice module along with completing the Self Declaration form. You must complete this by the deadline of Friday 3rd November as failure to do so will result in a Negative Service Indicator (NSI) being added to your student record. This will prevent you from seeing your grades on SPOT and from seeing your exam results. Please email soe.programmes@manchester.ac.uk stating your student ID number and department along with your screenshots showing the completed tests.
* EXTENDED OPENING HOURS. Normal working hours for the Kilburn building are 8am - 6pm, Monday to Friday. However, extended opening hours are available from 6pm - 9pm, Monday to Friday. Please note that access to the Kilburn Building is still not available outside these times or at weekends. If you would like to use the Kilburn building during the extended opening hours (6pm - 9pm) then you will need to complete the following tests:

Health & Safety (On the CS UG Community for all except First Years)
Academic Malpractice (On the CS UG Community for all except First Years)
EDIA Test
Extended Working Hours test

First Year students will need to complete the test in the COMP1HS unit for Health and Safety and the COMP1AMP for the Academic Malpractice. Continuing students (Years 2-4) who have previously been granted Extended Working Hours will need to complete the EDIA test as it is new for the 23/24 Academic Year. If you experience any issues with any of the tests or have further questions, please email soe.programmes@manchester.ac.uk along with your student ID number and department. The extended working hours test will tell you how to obtain access once you have successfully completed the test, which will enable your university swipecard for access during the extended working hours. Entry to the building outside of normal working hours is via the loading bay entrance (opposite University Place) using your swipecard. 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.

EDIA TRAINING.

The Faculty has produced training on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDIA) based on feedback we have received from students directly in the Faculty. The eModule has been updated in consultation with the University of Manchester’s Students’ Union and student societies. This new eModule is more reflective of day-to-day experiences in the Faculty – particularly with our new Engineering A and Engineering B buildings. The training covers a variety of experiences including the challenges men face, misconceptions on disability, the experience of women and gender diverse people in STEM, and others. Please can you complete the test by the end of teaching week 7 (the week after reading week). The training takes roughly 45 minutes and you can access the eModule here. Feedback on the training is welcomed.

* UNICS GAMEDEV WORKSHOP. Join us for our second Game Development workshop on the 25th of October from 3-4pm in University Place room 4.209. In this workshop, we will delve into Monogame and its inner workings. As a byproduct, we will also discuss the fundamentals of rendering and game architecture, which are essential for building any large-scale game project. This workshop is beginner-friendly, and snacks will be provided :) Register using this link. See you there!

GDSC - INTRO TO ML AND TENSORFLOW.

Join us for an Exciting Workshop: "Intro to ML and TensorFlow!"

Date: Wednesday, October 25th
Time: 15:00 - 16:30 BST
Location: Engineering Building A, Lecture Theatre A

Calling all aspiring data scientists and computer science enthusiasts! Are you eager to dive into the world of Machine Learning and master TensorFlow?

Here's what you can expect:

Understanding the fundamentals of Machine Learning.
Hands-on experience with TensorFlow.
Practical tips and tricks for building ML models.
Insight into how these concepts can elevate your Third Year CS Project!

Whether you're new to ML or looking to sharpen your skills, this workshop is tailored for you. See you there!

HACKCHESTER.

This week at Hackchester, we'll be holding our third workshop of the year on Tuesday at 5pm in Atlas. Come along to play with Kali Linux and nmap this week. We're looking at network vulnerabilities and how to spot them. As always, this is a introductory workshop series, so we welcome anyone with any experience in ethical hacking (including none) and there's no requirement for you to have already attended any of our previous workshops. Additionally, we're looking for people to join our podcast team. Anyone who wants to be involved in PR, Audio Editing/Post Production, or Script and Content development should apply here by Tuesday 31st October.

DATA SCIENCE SOCIETY.

Introduction to Deep Learning, Simon 2.39, Wednesday 25th 2-4pm. Journey into deep learning and neural networks, taught by our very own president Saurav! Neural networks are the basis of many AI/ML models, and the starting point to more advanced topics. Deep neural networks are applied to an almost infinite range of problems, from financial forecasting to protein folding prediction. In this workshop you'll learn about the components of neural networks and will program your own for classifying objects. Prerequisites: This is the second of our introductory ML workshops. To make the most of this session you should understand basic Python concepts (see the first half of MUDS Week 4), and have preferably seen simple uses of NumPy. Join our discord server:

INSTITUTE FOR DATA SCIENCE AND AI SEMINAR.

The next seminar will take place on Friday 27th October, 13:45 - 15:30, at No 1 Circle Square, Manchester. The talk will be presented by Petar Veličković, Staff Research Scientist, Google DeepMind and Affiliated Lectureship at the University of Cambridge, and is titled: “Decoupling the Input Graph and the Computational Graph: The most important unsolved problem in graph representation learning”. When deploying graph neural networks, we often make a seemingly innocent assumption: that the input graph we are given is the ground-truth. However, as this talk will unpack, this is often not the case: even when the graphs are perfectly correct, they may be severely suboptimal for completing the task at hand. This will introduce us to a rich and vibrant area of graph rewiring, which is experiencing a renaissance in recent times. Petar will discuss some of the most representative works, including two of our own contributions, one of which won the Best Paper Award at the Graph Learning Frontiers Workshop at NeurIPS'22. Places are limited so we advise you to secure your place now to avoid disappointment. We hope to see you there!

CAREERS FAIR.

A two day careers fair aimed at students from The University of Manchester looking for internships, placements and graduate jobs. We are delighted to be welcoming recruiters across the two days offering opportunities from Consultancy to Marketing, Business to Finance, HR to Project Management and much more. Taking place centrally on campus in the Whitworth Hall, this careers fair is an ideal opportunity to speak directly and in-person with organisations from a range of industry sectors and find out more about their opportunities. You can find out more information here.

CYBERSECURITY CAREER INSIGHTS FOR STUDENTS.

The Cyber Resilience Centre is running an event, Securing Your Future: Cybersecurity Career Insights for Students, focused on the world of cybersecurity careers, specifically designed for students. Get ready to explore the endless possibilities and gain valuable insights from industry experts. including the University’s Chief Information Security Officer, Heather Lowrie, on 24th October at the Manchester Technology Centre. You can find out further information, as well as book a place at the event here.

NEW COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT:

Securing Ethereum's Consensus Protocol: A Path to Blockchain Innovation. Researchers from The University of Manchester, Youcheng Sun and Lucas Cordeiro, recently kicked off the collaborative research project with the Ethereum Foundation. Their research focuses on software testing and formal verification for securing Ethereum's consensus protocol. The consensus mechanism is a fundamental component of any blockchain. Ethereum is a blockchain platform that supports smart contracts, and its cryptocurrency ether holds the second-largest market capitalisation after bitcoin. The platform operates as open-source software. This collaboration is closely related to several student projects currently being supervised by the Systems and Software Security (S3) research group in the computer science department, and it offers future opportunities. Please contact Youcheng Sun or Lucas Cordeiro to collaborate with this research via a summer internship or a final-year project

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - "Breakout" By BremSter

Normal sudoku rules apply. Digits within cages are friendly (i.e. they correspond to the number of their row, column, or box).

Pencil 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 centres 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 - Alexander Vs. Cherepkov, 1967

Drag and drop the Black pieces to win the match.

Geoguessr

And Finally, our weekly competition from geoguessr.com

You need to take in as much information as you can from the google street view as you can and then drop your pin on the map. The closer to the correct location you are the more points you get. Can you get the top score after all 5 rounds? Remember though, you only get 1min per round and running out of time will give you 0pts. Winners will be announced next week!

The Winner from Last Week was CoastalSummit660 with a score of 20,494 out of a possible 25,000. A brilliant score! And our closest guess winner was a tie for distance but Idris was 1s faster and was only 38 yards away from the exact spot in Round 5! Well done both of you!

Answers to Last Week’s Puzzles

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

Week 4 • Monday 16 October 2023 • #23.05

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Good morning UG! It’s Monday 16th October and the 4th week of teaching in semester 1. I hope everything is going okay and you have now settled into a routine. It’s that time of year when coughs and colds are prevalent among the student and staff population. If you are ill, then you should consider staying away to minimise the spread of infection. If any illness impacts your ability to complete work by the deadline then you should request an extension and submit at the appropriate time. If you're unfortunate enough to be ill for more than a week, then please fill in a mitigating circumstances application and tell us about all the assessments that were affected - you will need evidence to support an application. Remember that you can find useful links in the Essential Links banner below.

Congratulations to those who were successful in becoming elected as student representatives in the Department. Student representatives are an important part of the student body, they form the link between students and the department with a view to improving the student experience.

If you have anything you would like to share in Monday Mail, such as advertising an event, promoting your success in a hackathon etc, or whatever you think the UG student body will find interesting, then just get in contact with me.

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

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

STUDENT SUPPORT HUB EMAIL ADDRESS.

If you need to contact the Department/School then there are a range of email addresses that can be used to communicate with the Teaching, Learning and Student Experience teams. The email addresses are as follows:

soe.hub@manchester.ac.uk: general queries; advice on University policies and services.
soe.programmes@manchester.ac.uk: student record queries; registration advice and guidance; timetable queries/clashes; ATAS/Visa advice; extension to study period; project topics, allocation and supervisors; change of programme; return to study; professional accreditation
soe.studentexperience@manchester.ac.uk: student societies support; SSLC/student rep support; employability; graduation; PASS; academic advising; communications; summer internship programme; surveys (course unit and NSS).
soe.wellbeing@manchester.ac.uk: mitigating circumstances; interruptions; disability coordinator support; general wellbeing support (appointments and helping you access the support you need).
soe.attendance@manchester.ac.uk: attendance and engagement monitoring.
soe.courseunits@manchester.ac.uk: course unit selection.
soe.placements@manchester.ac.uk: placement support and coordination.
soe.assessment@manchester.ac.uk: publication of results, exam queries, assessment queries (including DASS), progression and award queries.
soe.appealsandconduct@manchester.ac.uk: academic appeals; malpractice and student complaints.

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

WELFARE WEEKLY - THE CURSE OF EXTENSIONS.

This from Ben Herbert, Student Support and Wellbeing: Some of you may have one-week automatic extensions granted through DASS support plans. Others, at some point during your time at university, need to request an extension from the Student Support and Wellbeing team. Extensions can be very useful to give yourself a little extra time needed to get your work done and submitted at the standard you expect from yourself, when mitigating circumstances arise. But extensions are a double-edged sword. Especially if you get them for multiple pieces of work. Time after time I see students running into difficulties caused by them taking full advantage of their extension and submitting exactly a week after the original deadline.

In Computer Science the assessments come thick and fast. The programme has one of the highest volumes of coursework at the university. Taking a week extra to complete one assignment will mean, if you don't manage your time well, you will simply have one week less for the next assignment.

If you get extensions through DASS or apply for them through our team, then it is very important that you manage your time well and use only what time you need to submit. Keeping on top of your assignments will prevent a concertina effect that risks you ending up in a worse position than when you started. It's important to note that the impact on assessments caused by extensions to deadlines is not an acceptable reason to request more extensions or mitigating circumstances. Don’t forget, extensions can only be requested prior to the deadline. You can find further details on the extensions and mitigating circumstances process in the undergraduate handbook, and the main university page here.

REPORT AND SUPPORT.

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

TRAFFORD RAPE CRISIS STUDENT DROP-IN.

Trafford Rape Crisis (TRC) Sexual Abuse and Rape Support Greater Manchester 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. No matter when something happened, you can come along; If you are confused about exactly what happened, you can come along; and if you are worried about a friend or loved one, you can also come along. Drop-in dates:

Dates for semester 1
Thursday 9th November 2023, 12pm – 2pm
Thursday 7th December 2023, 12pm – 2pm
Dates for semester 2
Thursday 1st February 2024, 12pm – 2pm
Thursday 7th March 2024, 12pm – 2pm
Thursday 11th April 2024, 12pm – 2pm
Thursday 2nd May 2024, 12pm – 2pm

Confidentiality: TRC is an external service and independent of the University of Manchester. Their drop-in service is a confidential service and you do not need to disclose your personal details to them. If you do share personal details at the drop-in they will usually only share information with the University or other external third parties with your consent. If TRC do not have your consent they will not release information about you to third parties unless they have significant concerns about your wellbeing and/or safety, or the wellbeing and/or safety of other members of the University community.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Thursday 14:00 - 15:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Tuesdays 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.80
Industrial Experience Year: Duncan Hull. Open hour: Wednesdays 10:00 - 12:00. Kilburn LF25
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, 2.103
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, IT119.

PASS2.

The PASS2 team (See Jia Tong (Y3, CS), Salma Aljama (Y3, AI) and Divya Radhakrishnan Nair (Y3, CS)) write: The tech interview is more than just getting answers right. Recruiters value many skills like sharp problem-solving, and your ability to explain your methods. To help you through this, we're hosting a mock interview in our next PASS session, be sure to attend!

STUDENT REPRESENTATIVES.

This from Tom Carroll, Chair of the Student-Staff Liaison Committee (SSLC): I would like to thank all who applied to become a Student Rep, and to welcome your Student Reps for this academic year. You can find a list of your Reps here. The role of the 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 study facilities 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 25th October (Week 5) and will have the theme of "Student Voice". We will be particularly interested in hearing how you feel your Student Voice is heard within the Department, and ways in which we can improve how we incorporate Student Voice in the Department. Also, if you have any other 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.

GITLAB AND ACADEMIC MALPRACTICE.

It's important to adhere to academic integrity and ethical standards when using platforms like GitLab or any other tools for coursework. Sharing or distributing materials related to your assessments or assignments, such as your answers, can be considered a form of academic malpractice, and it can lead to serious consequences, including disciplinary action. To prevent the risk of inadvertently sharing files stored in git repositories (within the Department or on an external account) make sure you set those repositories immediately to Private. This will restrict access to only authorised individuals and will prevent other students from seeing your solutions and then being able to copy your work. Be assured that when we create git repositories for you that are required for your courses, we automatically set them to private for this very reason. Even if you didn’t mean to share your work, you could still be found guilty of academic malpractice.

THE UNDERGRADUATE HANDBOOK.

ACADEMIC MALPRACTICE.

The use of external services to help you complete assessments is 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, but ultimately engaging with their services is cheating. What also constitutes academic malpractice?

copying code from the internet and substituting it as your own,
copying work from a friend, or working too closely with a friend,
using services such as ChatGPT (unless your assignment specifically allows you to do so),
giving other students access to your work, even if unintentionally, as it allows other students to plagiarise you. 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 mark will be penalised in some way, such as being zeroed. However, repeated cases of AMP could lead to sterner action, such as facing a University malpractice hearing, or ultimately you could be withdrawn from your studies. The work you submit should be your own; passing off someone else’s work as yours is AMP! 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.

DATA SCIENCE SOCIETY.

Introduction to Python for Data Science, Simon 2.39, Wednesday 18th 2-4pm. Driven by popular demand! Based on your feedback, MUDS is delighted to offer an interactive and introductory Python bootcamp. Expect to learn basic Python with a data science twist! We'll cover basic syntax and popular data science libraries, followed by introductory OOP (essential for our machine learning workshops). Come along and tell your friends - this is an ideal opportunity for all STEM and non-STEM beginners. As usual, all our workshops are absolutely free ;-) Get ready to step into coding! Join our discord server.

GOOGLE DEVELOPER STUDENT CLUBS.

Explore the Potentials of TypeScript with Rossano D'Angelo in our Upcoming Session: TypeScript 101! (in collaboration with GDG: Google Developer Groups Manchester)

Date: Monday, October 18th
Time: 16:30 - 18:00
Location: TBD

Based on the attendance of our last event, we are in search of a new, larger venue. Stay tuned to our social media channels for upcoming details and further information. Connect with us here. Dive into the powerful world of TypeScript with our expert speaker, Rossano D'Angelo, a proficient software engineer with an impressive trajectory that includes his current role at KrakenFlex (Octopus Energy Group) in Manchester and notable stints at IBM, BBC, and Lego. Rossano will guide you through a comprehensive journey exploring TypeScript, its functionalities, and its edge over JavaScript with his vast experience and multifaceted knowledge from the industry. During this insightful session, you'll delve into:

JavaScript vs TypeScript
TypeScript basics
TypeScript workshop
An interactive Q&A to clarify all your curiosities!

FREEBIES ALERT!!! Drop in, enjoy pizza on us, plus, get your hands on some exciting Google swag such as exclusive Google Pins, stickers, trendy T-shirts, handy notepads, etc. Looking forward to seeing you there! Please register here for the event.

AI SAFETY FUNDAMENTALS PROGRAMME.

Adrians Skapars writes: Why are researchers worried about AI? Join our new 8-week UoM-based fellowship to find out! Explore why this field may be the most important work of our time. Grow your ML knowledge. Prepare for future research projects with your cohort. Receive personalised career coaching. AI Safety Fundamentals: Our curriculum has been developed by Richard Ngo (OpenAI) with input from multiple experts in the field of alignment such as David Krueger (University of Cambridge), Adam Gleave (FAR) and Beth Barnes (Alignment Research Center Evals). See who else was involved on our site. It begins with an exploration of what general AI systems look like today and what they might look like in the future. We'll investigate fundamental alignment problems such as reward misspecification and goal misgeneralization, and why these might lead to undesirable or even catastrophic outcomes.The latter half of the course covers four techniques which aim to prevent misalignment, followed by research which tries to understand ML systems at a deeper level, including interpretability and agent foundations. Finally, we'll cover two topics at a high level: AI governance and careers in alignment. Want a quick introduction? Check out these videos: Intro to AI Safety Remastered, The Easiest Path to Transformative AI Likely Leads to AI Takeover. Have a peek at our curriculum: Alignment Course - Note that most readings are available in audio! If you are interested then please APPLY HERE BEFORE 20th OCTOBER. Existing knowledge of Machine Learning is beneficial to your applications success, though we will do our best to organise groups according to the cohort’s expertise. Even as a student, you have the power to shape this technological revolution! For any questions, feel free to email me.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - Why Not? By EasilyAmused

Normal sudoku rules apply. Digits within cages are friendly (i.e. they correspond to the number of their row, column, or box).

Pencil Puzzle - LITS by puzzlemadness.co.uk

The grid is split up into 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 - Sarana Vs. Clarke, 2022

Drag and drop the Black pieces to win the match.

Geogueser

And Finally, our new weekly competition from geoguessr.com

You need to take in as much information as you can from the google street view as you can and then drop your pin on the map. The closer to the correct location you are the more points you get. Can you get the top score after all 5 rounds? Remember though, you only get 1 min per round and running out of time will give you 0 pts. Winners will be announced next week!

The Winner from Last Week was Muhammad Kalmani with a score of 24,631 out of a possible 25,000. A brilliant score! And our closest guess winner is Popz who was only 166 yards away from the exact spot in Round 3! Well done, both of you!

Answers to Last Week’s Puzzles

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

Week 3 • Monday 9 October 2023 • #23.04

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Good morning UG! It’s Monday 9th October and teaching week 3. Course unit selection has now closed, so hopefully you have enrolled on the course units that you are interested in. You may find that your timetable gets busier 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 Wellbeing Team (see below). We have a new feature this week called "UG to Researcher", where I invite a former UG student who has made the transition into research to discuss what interested them in starting a PhD.

When it comes to submitting work, you should always check that it has been submitted properly, especially if you are submitting via Blackboard, (which at times can be slow). The onus is on you to ensure you have submitted the correct item, in the correct place, and by the deadline. We’ve provided some advice (see below) on how you can check whether your work has been submitted.

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

WELFARE WEEKLY - BOOST YOUR STUDY SKILLS.

This from Ben Herbert, Student Support and Wellbeing: As many of you will already know and some of you will soon find out, university is a big step-up form school and college, and things only get harder year on year.

Your old techniques for taking notes, managing your time, and revising for exams will just no longer cut it. I didn't learn a revision technique that worked for me until the second year, and I don't think I ever really developed an effective note taking strategy. My personal approach to revision was to read through a section of notes and then present them to someone (ideally someone also doing the course). This technique helped me memorise the information and practice my wording for exam answers. Having someone doing my course doing the same back to me, helped me pick up on areas of knowledge and understanding I might have missed. You probably won't get a lot of guidance to improve your study techniques in class, but those that do have the skills will do best when it comes to assessment. Luckily for you I have a great resource to use.

My Learning Essentials is the University's one stop shop for helping you gain the skills you need to make your studies go more smoothly and hopefully up your grades. Good study skills can easily make the difference between and 2.2 and a 2.1 degree. They also have resources to help you develop skills around mindfulness, resilience, and other ways to generally improve your mental health and wellbeing. Alongside that there are a bunch of useful podcasts. My learning essentials has a host of on-campus workshops such as Academic writing, Note making, Critical analysis, and Proof reading. You can book onto workshops and see the full list here. There are also online resources including Referencing, Group work, Dissertation skills, Presentations, and Revision. The full list can be found here. Do yourself a favour this week and book on to just one workshop or work through just one online resource. See how it goes. Block out some time for personal development on My Learning Essentials once every week or two. I promise it will be worth your time!

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

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

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Thursday 14:00 - 15:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Tuesdays 11:00 - 12:00, Kilburn 2.80
Industrial Experience Year: Duncan Hull. Open hour: Wednesdays 10:00 - 12:00. Kilburn LF25
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, 2.103
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, IT119.

PASS1.

The PASS1 team (Max Beck-Jones (Y3, CS4), Luke Sanderson (Y3, CS), Sarah Saad (Y3, AI4), Nicolo Micheletti (Y3, CS), and Rosie Halsall (Y3, CS4)) write: Hello everyone! We hope you found your first PASS session enjoyable and worthwhile. This week, the theme is going to be more academic as you’ll be discussing your first coursework deadlines and time management tips. As always there will be icebreaker activities and snacks so you’re not going to want to miss out. Keep an eye out for emails from your group leaders as your room assignment will have changed since last week (hopefully for good!). Finally, please be sure to give any feedback on the scheme to us directly (through email or in person in Collab 1+2 before the sessions start at 13:00) or to your PASS leaders; we want to make these sessions as engaging and useful to you as possible.

PASS2.

The PASS2 team (See Jia Tong (Y3, CS), Salma Aljama (Y3, AI) and Divya Radhakrishnan Nair (Y3, CS)) write: Join our upcoming application session! This session would provide you information about the application process and personal internship/placement application experiences. This session will also provide you top tips to help you succeed. We have invited a special guest, Duncan, who will share his invaluable experiences and advice in this session too. So, don't miss out on this opportunity. Join us on Thursday 12/10 12 - 1pm at Kilburn Collab 1.

HACKCHESTER.

This from the Hackchester team: Welcome back to a new year at Hackchester! Our old members will remember us as Crackchester, but we assure you we're the same and ready to jump back into it. This week we're holding our first workshop "Introduction to Hackchester" on Tuesday at 5pm in IT 407, Kilburn. The bigger room means we can support our expanding base of regulars, so feel free to bring yourself and your friends to our event. We'll be covering an introduction to Ethical Hacking and Cyber Security. There's no experience or prior knowledge needed and it's completely free. Soon we'll be advertising for discord moderators and PR team staff, so if you want more responsibility in the society, look out for our links! As always more info can be found on our Discord.

STUDENT PUBLICATION SUCCESS.

Congratulations to Alex Havlin (Year 2, CM) who has had his research paper titled "Signer Discretion is Advised: On the insecurity of Vitalik’s threshold hash-based signatures" by Alexander Havlin and Mario Yaksetig, accepted for presentation at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security. The result in the paper came about from Alex’s summer Enterprise Cayman (EC) Internship Programme, working with BitFashioned SEZC, a technology consulting firm specialising in the web3 space. The paper critically examines a proposal for the Ethereum network by Vitalik Buterin concerning a threshold Lamport scheme for signatures of blocks. We identified a vulnerability in the proposal that would allow a malicious block to be perceived as valid by all signers, risking its addition to the Ethereum network. The research was inspired by a blog post from Vitalik Buterin and was further explored with the guidance of Mario Yaksetig, a Cryptographer at BitFashioned SEZC. Our demonstration code proved the feasibility of the attack in mere seconds, emphasising the importance of thorough scrutiny and testing of proposals for large networks like Ethereum. Alex will present his work at the conference, which is taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark, in November. Alex says “This internship deepened my understanding of the tech industry and honed my research skills. Being recognised at a renowned conference like ACM emphasises the value of diligent research in tech. This milestone has fueled my passion for research and the ongoing quest for knowledge in a rapidly evolving field.”. You can find out more information here. Congratulations Alex on what is a great achievement!

UG TO RESEARCHER.

This from Maciej Lewandowski (graduated 2023, CS). I did my final year undergraduate project under the supervision of Christoforos Moutafis from the Nano Engineering and Spintronic Technologies (NEST) research group. My project turned out to have two parts: simulations of some spintronics devices, and creating a basic simulator.

For simulations, I focused on simulating new nanodevices using micromagnetics, in particular, these nanodevices used skyrmions, a magnetic quasi-particle which can be thought of as magnetic vortices. Firstly, I focused on simulating skyrmion-based logic gates using micromagnetics simulations. I was able to successfully reproduce the result of a publication for AND, OR and INV gates, and then extended these simulations by adding a synchronisation mechanism using the Voltage Controlled Magnetic Anisotropy effect (which involves applying voltage to direct the movement of these quasi-particles). I replicated the simulations of skyrmion-based synapses that could be used potentially to design a neuromorphic computing system (low-power, brain-inspired hardware for AI). I extended these by experimenting with RKKY and Synthetic antiferromagnetic coupling, in order to make a multilayer structure for these synapses.

For the other side of the project, I implemented a simple Python-based, GPU-accelerated micromagnetics solver. The goal of it was to learn more about micromagnetics (from the computer science/numerical perspective) and for it to solve a few, very simple micromagnetics problems. The code had multiple solvers (both basic and adaptive time-step size), few physics terms and was expanded to use a GPU. The results of the solver were evaluated against a popular micromagnetics package (mumax3), which produced very similar results. The time for calculating the demagnetization tensor (one of the most computationally expensive terms to calculate) was reduced from 3 h (naive CPU implementation) to 15s (GPU).

I really enjoyed learning more physics and trying to use spintronics to design hardware for low-power computers (conventional or targeted for AI) so I decided to do a PhD and I am now a first-year PhD student in the NEST group, with my supervisors being Christoforos Moutafis and Paul Nutter. The goal of my project is to use these nanodevices (or design new ones) to create larger neuromorphic systems. I still work in micromagnetics but now also work with analog and mixed-signal CMOS, to create a larger system that perhaps could be used for Spiking Neural Networks.

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. You can check yourself when SPOT last received data from Blackboard since SPOT tells you this information.
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 text ‘not submitted’ under the column heading submission will change to show the date and time of the submission.
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.

NEED A PLACE TO WORK?

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

EXTENSION REQUESTS.

If you find you are falling behind due to circumstances beyond your control with an assessment then you can apply for a short extension to allow you to complete your work. You must apply for an extension BEFORE the deadline through the Department Mitigating Circumstances page. Please note that you are unable to apply for an extension for some assessments, these are detailed in the deadlines Gantt chart, or in SPOT. You should only be applying for an extension if you really need one, we will be monitoring applications to ensure the system is not being abused.

SPOT UPDATE.

Stewart Blakeway writes: SPOT is a student assessment record system used in the Department of Computer Science that shows all your COMP course units, in one convenient place. Once a course unit is selected by clicking on the course unit code, information about the course is shown, for example the course unit lead details, the coursework/exam split, and the coursework elements. For each coursework element there is also information related to that element, such as the deadline, weight, out of mark, submission status (and git tag if applicable). Once the work is marked the grade will be shown too. There are also handy links to the UG Handbook and an overview of all deadlines.SPOT has recently been updated to help make extensions and late information clearer. This PDF provides further details. SPOT was created by Toby Howard and is currently maintained and further developed by Stewart Blakeway.

COURSEWORK DEADLINES CHART.

The Department has put together a coursework deadlines chart, which can be accessed here, The chart is populated with the deadlines for all COMP course units, for each year group, in semester 1. It aims to give you an overview of your deadlines to help you plan your time. Which deadlines are relevant will depend upon the course units you are taking. The chart also lets you know if it's possible to apply for an extension for a given piece of work. Please note that deadlines may still change and that only SPOT indicates up-to-date information on deadlines, so please use SPOT to confirm deadlines.

THE UNDERGRADUATE HANDBOOK.

UNICS WORKSHOPS.

Join us on Wednesday, the 11th of October, for our weekly GameDev workshops! Our first meeting will tackle interpolation methods, the importance of interpolation in games, and a brief overview of the Monogame Framework. Feel free to join in and bring a friend, as anyone can attend these beginner-friendly workshops!! Register your interest now to receive more details soon about the time and location of the workshop.

UKIEPC PROGRAMMING CONTEST - GET INVOLVED!

This from Ian Pratt-Hartmann: The UK and Ireland Programming Contest (UKIEPC) will take place this year on Saturday, October 21st, 2023, 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 programmes 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 "Take Part" 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 24th to 26th November 2023. 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 2023. 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!

GDSC - INTRODUCTION TO FRAMEWORKS AND REACT.

The GDSC team write: Are you ready to take your skills to the next level? GDSC Manchester invites you to our exclusive event on "Introduction to Frameworks and React!"

Why Use Frameworks?: Discover the compelling reasons to embrace frameworks in your development journey.
Dive into React!: Get a head start with React, one of the most in-demand JavaScript libraries for building user interfaces. Unleash your creativity and develop the skills to create stunning web applications.
What's in it for You? Boost your resume with valuable skills; Excel in your first-year team project; Create your personalised profile website; Network with like-minded enthusiasts; Elevate your coding game to new heights.
Save the Date: Date: 11th October, Wednesday, Time: 4pm onwards, Location: Kilburn LT 1.4

Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to supercharge your coding journey! Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned developer, this event is tailored to help you succeed. Ready to Level Up? See you there!

COMPUTER SCIENCE FC.

Bryn Dowton (Year 3, AI) and Shivam Ray (Year 2, AIwIE) write: Hey guys, we are starting another season of Campus League Football this year and would love for Computer Science to be represented! All abilities welcome, as we are starting up - training location may vary but will be at 16:00 on Sunday afternoon's. All details will be posted in our WhatsApp group chat. Look forward to meeting you all! Bryn and Shiv

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - Barbed Wire by Jobo

Normal sudoku rules apply. Digits cannot repeat on a marked diagonal. Digits along an arrow sum to the digit in the attached circle.

Pencil 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 - Bagheri Vs. Sambuev, 2022

Drag and drop the White pieces to win the match.

Geogueser

And Finally, our new weekly competition from geoguessr.com

You need to take in as much information from the Google street view as you can and then drop your pin on the map. The closer to the correct location you are the more points you get. Can you get the top score after all 5 rounds? Remember though, you only get 1 min per round and running out of time will give you 0 pts. Winners will be announced next week!

The Winner from Last Week was Nick Lodeon with a score of 24,356 out of a possible 25,000. A brilliant score! And our closest guess winner is Vedant Agrawal who was only 12 yards away from the exact spot in Round 1! Well done, both of you!

Answers to Last Week’s Puzzles

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

Week 2 • Monday 2 October 2023 • #23.03

Paul pic

Good morning UG! It’s Monday 2nd October and teaching week 2 of semester 1. I hope everything has settled down and you now know your timetable and where your teaching activities are taking place. Apologies if any timetabling issues have affected you, this is due to a problem with the software used for timetabling. Don't forget that you have until this Friday to choose any optional course units. We know some course units have reached capacity due to room capacities being reached, we are looking at alternative arrangements to increase capacity so please bear with us. 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. Finally, I have put together a deadlines Gantt chart so you can visualise where assessment deadlines fall across the semester for all COMP course units (more below). Hopefully this will help you with managing your time.

I hope this week goes well, 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
Group workshops
Online support materials and self-help tools

You can find more information about the counselling service and what support they offer here. Remember, you can always contact the School Wellbeing Team are advice or help at any time.

WELFARE WEEKLY - MAKE TIME FOR YOU.

This from Ben Herbert, Student Support and Wellbeing: When I'm chatting to a student who is struggling with their studies I always ask them the same kind of questions: "What do you do to have fun?"; "What are your hobbies?"; "What sport do you play?"; "What do you do to make you feel good?" The answer is almost always the same… Nothing. When you have work to do, the idea of playing football, going to Pilates, or getting lost in the latest cinema release sounds counterproductive. But good work comes from people with a healthy body and a clear mind.

Make time for yourself. It will help your physical and mental fitness and allow you to decompress in a way that will complement your studies. I'm not talking about wasting away hours playing computer games or drinking down the pub. I mean blocking out a set time, even if it's only 20 minutes. Personally I use walking the dog to unwind after work; I use bouldering and working out to clear my mind and focus only on the here and now; I play board games to socialise while still stimulating my brain; I look after my houseplants to find my zen; and I listen to shouty, punk, ska, and hardcore while doing the washing up to blow off steam while still being productive.

What do you do to make time for you? If the answer is nothing, fix that now. It will be harder to fix when the work starts piling up. Why not take a look at the wellbeing calendar for some options. Coming up soon there is Meditation, Sunday Film Night, Breathwork for resilience, and Dog cuddling. DOG CUDDLING! This week, if you haven't already, sign up to one of the many societies at the SU. Block out set time to do something productive for your physical and mental health and stick with it for the semester. It will show benefits in your work!

REGISTER FOR A GP.

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

ACADEMIC ADVISORS.

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.

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 download and use Safezone can be found here.

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 9th October 2023. 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.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Thursday 14:00 - 15:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Tuesdays 11:00 - 12:00, 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, 2.103
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, IT119.

PASS1.

The PASS1 team (Max Beck-Jones (Y3, CS4), Luke Sanderson (Y3, CS), Sarah Saad (Y3, AI4), Nicolo Micheletti (Y3, CS), and Rosie Halsall (Y3, CS4)) write: Now that everyone has gotten into the swing of things, it’s time for your first PASS session! PASS sessions run on Wednesdays at 13:00 to 14:00 (the time was incorrect in the PASS intro lecture but is correct in your timetable). PASS leaders will be in touch through email before the session with a brief introduction and details of the room you need to go to. In the session, you will meet everyone else in your group and take part in a quick icebreaker before moving on to discussions about how you are settling in and how you are finding the course so far. At the end of the session, make sure your attendance is registered with your PASS leaders and you give them feedback from the session, so we know what to improve! We look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday! In addition to your first PASS session, we have organised an informal meetup before the sessions start. Starting at 12:00 on Wednesday and taking place in Collab 1+2, you will have an opportunity to meet your PASS coordinators (us!), PASS leaders, peers. There will also be free pastries and cupcakes provided so please come and join us and say hi!

PASS2.

The PASS2 team (See Jia Tong (Y3, CS), Salma Aljama (Y3, AI) and Divya Radhakrishnan Nair (Y3, CS)) write: Hey everyone! Join us for an awesome CV review session during the upcoming PASS2 on Thursday, October 5th. We'll give you tips to make your CV stand out for placements and internship applications. See you at Kilburn Collab 1 from 12-1 PM! Join the WhatsApp Group Chat and check out the group description to get access to our last session’s slides.

COURSEWORK DEADLINES CHART.

THE UNDERGRADUATE HANDBOOK.

EXTENDED OPENING HOURS.

Normal working hours for the Kilburn building are 8am - 6pm, Monday to Friday. However, extended opening hours are available from 6pm - 9pm, Monday to Friday. Please note that access to the Kilburn Building is still not available outside these times nor at weekends. 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 Extended Working Hours test in Blackboard. The extended working hours test will tell you how to obtain access once you have successfully completed the test, which will enable your university swipecard for access during the extended working hours. Entry to the building outside of normal working hours is via the loading bay entrance (opposite University Place) using your swipecard. 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.

COURSE UNIT SELECTION.

You have until 15:30 Friday 6th October 2023 (this Friday) 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. If you are a 4th Year MEng student then the deadline has passed to select your course units.

EXTENSION REQUESTS.

If you find you are falling behind due to circumstances beyond your control with an assessment then you can apply for a short extension to allow you to complete your work. You must apply for an extension BEFORE the deadline through the Department Mitigating Circumstances page. Please note that you are unable to apply for an extension for some assessments, these are detailed in the deadlines Gantt chart, or in SPOT. You should only be applying for an extension if you need one. We will be monitoring applications to ensure no-one is abusing the system.

REGISTRATION.

The deadline for completing registration was 30th September 2023. However, if you still haven't been able to complete it, then the very latest is the 9th October 2023. To register go to My Manchester CAMPSOL registration and login with your IT account details, go to the ‘Registration’ tab and follow the on-screen instructions. If you don't see the 'Registration' tab in My Manchester, go to 'Tools' in the top right-hand corner, select 'Student System' from the drop-down menu, click on 'Student Centre' and then 'Register'. You have ten sections to complete. At the end of each step, a green 'completed' tick will appear. To go back to a previous section, simply click on the step you want to return to; do not use the back button on your browser. If there is an element of registration that you haven't completed by 9th October 2023, then you will be withdrawn from the programme or forced to take a period of interruption. If you are having problems with registering then please contact soe.programmes@manchester.ac.uk.

HARDWARE LIBRARY.

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

DATA SCIENCE SOCIETY WORKSHOP.

The Data Science Society presents “An Introduction to Regression Analysis” on Wednesday 4th October, 2-4pm, Simon Building 2.39. In today's data-driven world, making informed decisions is essential, and one of the most powerful tools at your disposal is regression analysis. Whether you're a data scientist, analyst, business professional, or just someone interested in understanding relationships between variables, this workshop will provide you with the foundational knowledge and practical skills needed to harness the predictive power of regression analysis. We are happy to present you with a very introductory workshop on the mathematical idea of regression, which requires no preliminary mathematics and builds upon basic everyday concepts to develop ideas in regression analysis. Get ready to embark on a journey into the world of regression analysis, where you'll discover how to transform data into valuable insights. By the end of this workshop, you'll be equipped with a powerful toolset to tackle real-world problems and confidently make data-driven decisions.

GOOGLE DEVELOPER STUDENT CLUBS.

Discover Next-Gen Coding with GitHub Copilot Chat! Hey there, tech enthusiasts! Have you ever imagined having a real-time chat with your coding assistant, getting immediate answers, and taking your coding experience to the next level? Well, the future is here! Introducing: GitHub Copilot Chat: Recently, GitHub unveiled its new Copilot Chat beta for individual users – and yes, this includes all our university students! Dive into the tech magic by watching this introduction video: GitHub copilot chat. As your GitHub Campus Expert, I'm thrilled to present an exclusive workshop tailored for our CS students, especially the freshman brigade. Trust me, this isn't just new tech – it's a game-changer! Here's what you can expect from our session:

Introduction to the original GitHub Copilot.
Dive into the features of the all-new GitHub Copilot Chat.
Unveiling Real-world Applications: A personal walkthrough of how I harness Copilot Chat in my development. From generating mock data, whipping up tests, to decoding code from open-source contributions, and seeking advice on complex implementations – experience the magic of Copilot Chat firsthand!
Step-by-step guide on accessing Copilot Chat for FREE via the Student Developer Pack.
Inspiration time: Harness the potential of the developer pack and kickstart your personal projects!

Don't miss out on this chance to enhance your developer journey. Remember, innovation starts with knowledge, and I'm here to offer it! Join us on Wednesday, 4th October for this event being hosted by Kenji Phang. The specific time and location will be announced on our social media platforms. Stay updated by following us on our socials.

MANCHESTER 10/10:

Manchester 10/10 offers a series of tailored events and opportunities which support students to find community, build belonging and develop confidence in their place at The University of Manchester. Designed in partnership with Black Heritage students, our events support students to build their peer, professional and academic networks and develop the confidence to engage with all that the Manchester student experience has to offer. Manchester 10/10 is open to students who:

are of Black African, Black African-Caribbean, Mixed-race Black African or Mixed-race Black African-Caribbean background;
have Home fee status
are studying for an undergraduate degree.

You can find out more information here. To join our community, simply complete this short expression of interest form. You can also follow us on Instagram @UOM_M1010 to stay updated on our upcoming events.

SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING EIDA STUDENT VOICE NETWORK.

This from Marius Norbye: The School of Engineering is establishing an EDIA Student Voice Network to lift underrepresented voices and aid strategic and inclusive development within the school. We seek all students who want to contribute to systematic changes within the school and promote equality, diversity, inclusivity and accessibility, giving all students equal opportunities to succeed. If you want to get involved, join our kickoff event with free pizza on Wednesday, October 4th (this Wednesday) from 2 PM to 4 PM in the Engineering building, room 2A.014. You will get more information about the project and get to know students from the entire school. You can always get in touch via our WhatsApp chat.

JOIN OUR T1DM RESEARCH PROJECT.

This from Nicole Lubasinski: Are you living with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM)? We're looking for participants to contribute comprehensive T1DM lifestyle information. What's in it for you?

Get a FREE smartwatch
Receive a £100 voucher

Who are we looking for?

Individuals diagnosed with T1DM
At least 2 years living with T1DM
Aged 18+
No sleep apnoea or comorbidities (e.g., kidney disease, vision loss, pregnancy, Crohn’s)
Non-shift workers

Your role is simple:

Share your daily routine without changing it
Wear the smartwatch for 12 weeks to track activity and sleep 🛌
Report Food Intake, Blood Glucose, and Insulin Dosages

Help us advance T1DM research! For more info, REGISTER here or email us at diabetes@manchester.ac.uk.

DEPARTMENT TALK.

Marios Kogias, Imperial College London, will present a talk titled “Building Domain-Specific Operating Systems for Low Tail-Latency” on Thursday 5th October, 10am, in the Atlas + Mercury rooms (Kilburn 1st floor). Abstract: Online services play a major role in our everyday lives for communication, entertainment, socializing, e-commerce, etc. These services run inside datacenters under strict tail-latency service level objectives. In this talk, I will go over the research in designing domain-specific operating systems for latency-critical datacenter applications. I will explain their operational domains, the trade-offs involved, and how queuing theory has driven these efforts. I will start from ZygOS (SOSP2017), which was the first operating system to specifically optimise for microsecond-scale tail-latency. Then, I will talk about Persephone (SOSP2021) which optimises tail-latency for applications with extreme service time variability by leveraging application-level knowledge. Finally, I will introduce Concord (SOSP23) which depends on a codesign between the programming language and OS level to enable low tail latency without the need for expensive hardware interrupts. Marios Kogias is an Assistant Professor at Imperial College London and a visiting researcher in the Confidential Computing group at Microsoft Research Cambridge. His research focuses on operating systems and networking for the modern datacenter. His PhD thesis received the Dennis M. Ritchie Doctoral Dissertation Award, the honourable mention for the Roger Needham PhD award, and the ABB Dissertation Award. He was an IBM PhD Fellow and won the best student paper award at Eurosys 2020.

UNIVERSITY TEACHING EXCELLENCE FRAMEWORK RESULTS.

The University has achieved a Gold rating for Student Outcomes, a Silver rating for Student Experience and a Silver overall in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) 2023. TEF is a government-run evaluation that assesses how well UK Universities are performing with respect to: Student Experience - this looks at teaching quality, assessment and feedback, academic support, learning resources, and student engagement; and Student Outcomes, this looks at student continuation, completion and careers and the educational gains we support students to achieve at Manchester. You can find out more information here.

Easier Sudoku - Classic Sudoku by sudoku.com

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Challenging Sudoku - Cryptic Rune by Scruffamudda

Normal sudoku rules apply. Eight grey palindromes, reading the same from each end, all begin at the central cell of the grid. Inequality signs ‘point’ to the lower digit of the adjoining pair.

Pencil Puzzle - Snake by Otto Janko

Chess Puzzle - Raahul Vs. Arun, 2023

Drag and drop the White pieces to win the match.

… and finally, a new weekly competition from geoguessr.com

You need to take in as much information as you can from the google street view as you can and then drop your pin on the map. The closer to the correct location you are the more points you get. Can you get the top score after all 5 rounds? Remember though, you only get 1 min per round and running out of time will give you 0 pts. Winners will be announced next week!

Answers to Last Week’s Puzzles

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

Week 1 • Monday 25 September 2023 • #23.02

Paul pic

Good morning UG! It’s Monday 25th September 2023, and it’s the first week of teaching this academic year. It was good to see so many around the campus last week, and to see such a great turnout at the welcome talks. If you have just joined us, then 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.

Please make sure you are familiar with your teaching timetable and, more importantly, where teaching activities are scheduled, as these can take place at different locations across the campus. Check out the University’s interactive map if you are not sure where buildings are located. Those who are familiar with Monday Mail will notice that I’ve started to include news items about research that is happening in the department, including publications, research awards etc., this is because I’d like you to know what’s going on with regards to research, and also to highlight the successes of current and past UG students when it comes to engaging in research.

Today there’s a welcome return of Gareth’s puzzle corner, with your weekly mix of brain teasers for you to attempt in your spare time.

I hope this week goes well, on with today’s news …

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

SUPPORT SERVICE SPOTLIGHT:

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

THE STUDENT SUPPORT HUB.

The Student Support Hub is here to provide you with help and guidance, whether you need career advice, wellbeing support or help with course information, the team will be able to point you in the right direction. The Student Support Hub can be found in Room 1A.042, first floor, core 2, Engineering Building A, and is open from 9.00am to 5.00 pm, Monday to Friday (closed Wednesday 9am to 10am). Outside of non-teaching time, it is open 10am to 4pm, Monday to Friday. You can contact the Student Hub via email: soe.hub@manchester.ac.uk, or by telephone +44 161 529 3691, Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm, excluding University closure periods. The Student Support Hub can provide support in a number of ways:

Wellbeing or issues affecting your studies, including mitigating circumstances, interruptions or attendance (Telephone option 1).
Queries relating to course unit selection, programme changes, placements or timetables (Telephone option 2).
Assessment queries (Telephone option 3).
Appeals queries (Telephone option 4).
For document requests, to speak to someone on the Student Support Hub, or for any other query then use option 6 by telephone.

As the phone system is new, then please be patient whilst the teams adapt to the new system.

WELFARE WEEKLY - FIND YOUR TRIBE.

This from Ben Herbert, Student Support and Wellbeing: Over the next few weeks, I will share with you some top tips for surviving University from my seven years working in Student Support. Hopefully I can share some ideas and insight to help you stay healthy, motivated, engaged with your studies, and out of my office.

A very common conversation I have with new students in the first week or two of the year is about them struggling to settle in. The chances that you have been put into halls with your future BFFs is probably low. But don’t be disheartened. Feeling down, overwhelmed, lonely and homesick are totally normal. It’s a huge change. My advice is to take steps to find people you can connect with now, before your workload starts to build.

Your first weeks of university may lead you to feel the only way to socialise is to go out drinking and if you don't do that you will miss out. But there is so much more! Join a society through the Student's Union, sign up to a class, take up a sport or start a hobby. Joining a society, sports team or other activity allows you to get to know the people with the same interests, values, culture, or background as you. Building a network of friends is especially if you are a long way from home. This will have a direct impact on your wellbeing and that in turn will have a direct effect on your university work. Research has shown that students who participate in extracurricular activities are more motivated and tend to do better in their course. If you haven’t done so already, this week take steps to join at least one society or club. Get out there and find your tribe! Check out the SU’s Tips here. Find more ideas for helping you find your tribe here.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Thursday 14:00 - 15:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Tuesdays 11:00 - 12:00, 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, 2.103
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Tuesday 10:00 - 11:00, IT119.

PASS1.

The PASS1 team (Max Beck-Jones (Y3, CS4), Luke Sanderson (Y3, CS), Sarah Saad (Y3, AI4), Nicolo Micheletti (Y3, CS), and Rosie Halsall (Y3, CS4)) write: Congratulations on surviving welcome week! We had a wonderful turnout for our PASS introduction lecture and scavenger hunt with 61 people finishing using the form. Thanks to everyone who took part and uploaded pictures! Should anyone want a PDF copy of the scavenger hunt for future reference, please email Max. While there are no PASS1 sessions for 1st years scheduled this week, PASS leaders must attend the Meet Your Team session this Wednesday at 13:00; details are in the emails sent to you by Tom Carroll. Attendance in this session is mandatory without a proper excuse. Additionally, an email has been sent with a form for you to request specific co-leaders. It may not be possible to honour every request, but we will try our best.

PASS2.

The PASS2 team (See Jia Tong (Y3, CS), Salma Aljama (Y3, AI) and Divya Radhakrishnan Nair (Y3, CS)) write: Our next session will look at choosing the right modules, so the aim of this session is to guide you through the choices available. We do not have a time and place as yet, but we will let you know when this is confirmed

GOOGLE DEVELOPER STUDENT CLUBS.

This from the GDSC team: Thanks to everyone who joined us at the societies' fair and communities’ fair last week. We are absolutely thrilled by the overwhelming response! We've got a lineup of captivating workshops and social events for the year ahead. Stay tuned through our social media channels.

RESEARCH SUCCESS.

Well done to a past UG student, John Alistair Kressel, who graduated in 2022, and is currently completing an MPhil with a view to starting a PhD under the supervision of Pierre Olivier. John had his first paper accepted for presentation at the Workshop on Programming Languages and Operating Systems in 2023: John Alistair Kressel, Hugo Lefeuvre, and Pierre Olivier, “Software Compartmentalization Trade-Offs with Hardware Capabilities”, 12th Workshop on Programming Languages and Operating Systems (PLOS), 2023. In this paper, we investigate the security, performance, engineering effort, and scalability trade-offs of hardware extensions enabling software compartmentalisation on the ARM Morello architecture. Well done Alistair!

PUBLICATION SUCCESS.

Vlad-Radu Schiller (graduated in 2023) has had a paper accepted for a prestigious systems software conference in 2024 based on his 3rd year project under the supervision of Pierre Olivier: Hugo Lefeuvre, Gaulthier Gain, Vlad Bădoiu, Daniel Dinca, Vlad-Radu Schiller, Costin Raiciu, Felipe Huici, and Pierre Olivier, “Loupe: Driving the Development of OS Compatibility Layers”, 29th International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS), 2024. In this paper, we propose a novel method for guiding the development of compatibility layers allowing a custom/research operating system to run applications compiled for a commodity operating system such as Linux. Well done Vlad!

PUBLICATION SUCCESS.

Congratulations to Yiannis Charalambous (graduated in 2023) who has had a paper submitted to a major ACM Journal on Software Engineering and Methodology based on a tool he developed as part of his coursework for the MSC course unit on Software Security, taught by Lucas Corderio and Youcheng Sun. The work focuses on software security in the era of large language models. After the course unit finished, Yiannis continued to develop his tool while completing a summer internship with the Systems and Software Security (S3) group in the Department. He is now applying for a PhD at the University. Excellent work Yiannis!

REGISTRATION.

Remember that you need to register with the University before the 30th September 2023 (this Saturday) and collect your student card.You can find more information on the University “Become a Student” webpage. Any fee queries should be submitted using the Student Services Enquiry Form.

GITLAB MAINTENANCE.

Chris Page writes: On Wednesday 27th September the Department of Computer Science GitLab system will be taken offline to perform essential maintenance and upgrades. Work on the system will start at 14:00 and may take until 17:00, although we will attempt to minimise the time that GitLab is unavailable. A notice banner is currently shown on GitLab pages as a reminder for this work, and it will be removed when the work on the server is completed.

COMPUTERS IN KILBURN.

Just a reminder that the computers in the Kilburn clusters/laboratories need to be left switched on after use so that any updates can be applied overnight. Please remember to just log out, and not shut down a computer, when you have used it. Don’t worry, the machines do go into standby mode to save the planet (to some degree!).

FIRST YEAR BOOT-UP LABS.

Ahmed Saeed writes: If you are a 1st year student and you haven’t completed the boot-up labs, then we will be running a catchup session on Wednesday 14:00 - 16:00 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. It is vital that you complete lab 3, as this introduces you to Git and helps you to set up Git in your home file store, which you will need for several course units this year (and future years).

COMP10120 WELCOME WEEK WORKSHOPS.

Last week, we ran the Welcome Week Workshops for 1st year students where they had to solve some challenging task (you may remember this from your first year): each team built a gantry to carry a cow! This year’s students impressed the COMP10120 team with their innovative and clever designs - and with their good planning and budgeting skills! They showed great team spirit and amazing engagement throughout. We are looking forward to see more from this new cohort!

COURSE UNIT SELECTION.

You have until 15:30 Friday 6th October 2023 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. If you are a 4th Year MEng student then deadline has passed to select your course units.

PERSONAL TIMETABLES.

Your personal timetable should now be updated. However, please keep an eye on it as activities could change over the next week as the timetable is finalised. You can view your timetable on my.manchester.

UPDATE ON HOME DIRECTORIES FOR NEW STUDENTS.

As you may be aware, during Welcome Week we encountered some serious login issues for new students. Around midday on Friday last week, IT Services took the step of recreating all new student home directories and this has fixed the login issues. However, if you are a new student and you created or changed any files in your home directory during Welcome Week, those will no longer be present in your recreated home directory. Backups were taken before the new home directories were created, so if you need to recover a file, please send an email to support@cs.manchester.ac.uk stating your university username and the file(s) you would like to be recovered from the backup, and we will pass this information on to IT Services to restore your requested files.

EXTENSION REQUESTS.

If you are an existing student, you may be aware that the Department used to have late flag request system where you could request the removal of a late flag for a submitted piece of work in cases where issues that prevented you from submitting on time. This facility is no longer available due to a change in the mitigating circumstances regulations. Instead, you may request a short extension of a maximum of up to one week prior to the deadline if you are facing circumstances or issues that have or are impacting your ability to submit coursework on time. You should apply for this no-later than the deadline. You can find more information on the Department Mitigating Circumstances page. Any request made after the deadline will need to be made through the mitigating circumstances process, where evidence will be required to support your claim.

UNICS ICE-BREAKER EVENTS.

Join us for our first socials of the year this week! We will be hosting a fun evening of games, networking and free pizza on Wednesday 27th of September from 6pm onwards at Kilburn. Come along as well on Friday 29th September (from 7pm onwards) for a Pub Crawl, starting at Wetherspoons (Ford Maddox) - 7pm, Turing Tap - 8pm, 532(SU) - 9pm and Hatch - 10pm. Take this chance to meet other members of the society, let loose and just have fun! Don't forget to either bring a White T-shirt or buy one for £3 on our SU page! Your friends will turn it into a masterpiece using markers provided by us, so don't bring your favourite one!

GREATUNIHACK 2023.

Get ready for the biggest Hackathon of the year, the GreatUniHack! We are pleased to announce that this years’ Hackathon will take place in person at the MMU Business School, on the 28th and 29th of October. It is a fantastic opportunity to socialise and collaborate with like-minded students. There will be a chance to win prizes, get some experience and enjoy free food over a weekend of intense coding and other activities. Register your interest. You can also sign up to be a volunteer at the GreatUniHack.

UNDERGRADUATE TEACHING VOLUNTEERS OPPORTUNITY.

Andrea Schalk writes: Are you interested in supporting other students' learning? If you are a student in Years 3 or 4, we may have an opportunity for you to do so. After successful pilot schemes, we are inviting students to let us know if they would like to act as an Undergraduate Teaching Volunteer on a Year 1 or Year 2 course unit. We are not yet able to confirm for which units this opportunity exists, so please list all units you are potentially interested in when filling in the form by 08:00 am, Monday 2nd October. You'll help for a maximum of 2-3 hours per week on average, so you can only act on one course unit. You will be in a practical session such as labs or examples classes together with the course unit staff and/or graduate teaching assistants, so you don't have to worry about not being able to answer all questions. We won't ask you to be involved in marking (nor do we want you to tell students how exactly how to carry out assignments), but we do want you to help students understand anything that is puzzling them using your experience and knowledge of the material. We have found that students are typically closer to our learners, and can be really good at finding an explanation that works for somebody new to an area. Previous volunteers have found this activity satisfying, and it also looks good on your CV. We are also looking into providing training for those interested in becoming an Associate Fellow of Advance HE (see the Advance-HE website for details), the UK's professional membership scheme promoting excellence in higher education. If you have further specific questions, please email me.

NOMINATE YOURSELF TO BE A STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE.

This from Tom Carroll, Chair of the UG Student-Staff Liaison Committee (SSLC): Are you interested in making a change, developing your programme and working with staff to close the feedback loop? Sign up or to be a Course Representative today! If you are already a rep and want to continue the role, please also use the sign-up form. Reps are student leaders who gather feedback & work with staff to make positive change in their programme. Within the Department, Student reps have helped to bring about several positive changes, such as:

The Turing Lounge with Table Tennis
Kilburn LF with the Kitchen, Bean Bags and Study Space
New Lab Space
New furniture on the Lower First floor

The role counts towards the STELLIFY award “step up and lead” and you’ll gain great experience through attending meetings, gathering feedback from your course mates & working on projects to enact change. Interested? To sign up, head to this form and input your details by Thursday 28 September, 12 noon. After this we’ll get back in touch with the next steps! Please contact me if you have any questions.

KILBURN BUILDING OPENING HOURS.

The normal opening hours of the Kilburn building are 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. The building is closed at all other times, including weekends, bank holidays and over any university closure periods. The John Rylands Main Library and the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons are open outside of these times.

DEPARTMENT RESEARCH FUNDING SUCCESS.

Congratulations to John Goodacre, Lucas Cordeiro and Bernardo Magri who have received research funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for their research project SECCOM: Securing Composable Hardware Platforms, a collaborative effort between the Advanced Processor Technology Research Group and the Systems and Software Security Research Group. SECCOM is dedicated to addressing critical security challenges when constructing hardware platforms through composable hardware systems. Our primary objective is to explore and mitigate security concerns within the diverse landscape of composable hardware platforms. Specifically, SECCOM aims to conceptualise and evaluate various design options to determine if key security properties and threat models can be extracted. This exploration will enable us to construct a robust security model to validate composable hardware platform security. Furthermore, recognizing the dynamic nature of composed hardware, our research will explore the feasibility of implementing dynamic verification mechanisms. These mechanisms will empower composed hardware to assert security policies in real time. You can find more information about the project on the EPSRC website.

STRIKE ACTION.

There will be strike action by members of the University and College Union (UCU) this week that may impact some of the teaching taking place.

Welcome to Gareth’s Puzzle Corner, this is your weekly fix of brain teasers and logic puzzles. You are given four 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 - Pi V Square Snake by Tulrak

Normal sudoku rules apply. The cage shows its sum. A clue outside the grid shows the sum of the indicated diagonals. Digits joined by V must sum to 5. All possible V clues are given. Draw a 25-cell-long 1-cell wide ‘snake’ made of orthogonally connected cells, that does not touch itself, not even diagonally. The snake contains the first 25 digits of pi in the correct order going from snake's head to tail, ignoring the decimal point.

Pencil Puzzle - Nonogram by Yilmaz Ekici

Tint the gray boxes of the chart black or white. The black fields form a field wide stripes, the number, order and length of which is defined by the number sequences at the top and left edge. Each number represents the length of a strip of black squares in the corresponding row or column. Two strips are separated from each other by at least one white field.

Chess Puzzle - Stanley Vs. Zerega

Drag and drop the White pieces to win the match.

Answers to the Puzzles

The answers to this week’s puzzles will be available in next week’s Monday Mail!

Welcome Week • Monday 18 September 2023 • #23.01

Paul pic

Good morning UG! It’s Monday 18th September 2023 and the start of a new academic year. This week is Welcome Week. 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. 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 the batteries ready for another exciting academic year. Monday Mail is our weekly undergraduate newsletter, which is sent to all undergraduate students every Monday morning (hence the name) during the teaching and exam periods. The goal 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 you are involved with, for example University societies (such as UniCS), PASS, competitions and hackathons, whatever it may be. It would be great for you to share your successes with the rest of the UG cohort, so if you have anything you’d like to share via Monday Mail, then please just get in touch. We have a great community in the Kilburn Building, in particular the lower first floor, so please think of it as your home during your time in the Department. If you are a 1st year student, then don’t forget to attend the “Meet Your Tutor” lunch on Wednesday (see your timetable) where you will get to meet your personal tutor, as well as the other members of your tutorial group who you will be working closely with over the year. There’s also pizza for you to enjoy!

Have a great week, I'll hopefully see you around. On with today’s news …

Paul
Undergraduate Programme Director

THE STUDENT SUPPORT HUB.

Wellbeing or issues affecting your studies, including mitigating circumstances, interruptions or attendance (Telephone option 1).
Queries relating to course unit selection, programme changes, placements or timetables (Telephone option 2).
Assessment queries (Telephone option 3).
Appeals queries (Telephone option 4).
For document requests, to speak to someone on the Student Support Hub, or for any other query then use option 6 by telephone.

As the phone system is new, then please be patient whilst the teams adapt to the new system.

WELFARE WEEKLY.

This from Ben Herbert, Student Support and Wellbeing: Welcome (back) to the University of Manchester. I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce the Student Support Wellbeing team at the School of Engineering. You can find us every weekday from 9am (10am on Wednesdays) to 5pm in the Student Support Hub on the first floor of Engineering Building A or by emailing us on soe.wellbeing@manchester.ac.uk. The student support webpage provides links to detailed help and support in the University. The team members for Computer Science support are Ben, Maria and Aisling, but you can speak to any member of the team, or contact us through the email address above. The Support and Wellbeing team can assist you with any queries or concerns you may have about your wellbeing, personal or study struggles. We can answer any questions you have relating to mitigation of assessments and point you in the right direction for getting help from DASS or the Counselling Service etc. The Student Support Hub acts as your one stop shop to access information and support for personal as well as academic and (almost) all university related issues, so do stop by. For academic queries we also recommend speaking to your academic tutor or year tutor. Our hope is that you won't need to use the support and wellbeing team. For the majority, everything will go smoothly for you and you will leave with a degree you are happy with. But don't forget we are here if you need us. In future instalments of Welfare Weekly I hope to cover topics that will help you keep your mind and body healthy and your studies on track. Next week, top tips on surviving semester one! Before I go, let me link you to some useful podcasts about settling into University life, hosted by University of Manchester students, for you to listen to on your down time.

Students Maansi, Khadijat and our host Georgia, discuss the things you need to think about before coming to university. How easy is it to make friends? What is the step-up like? What's it like coming from abroad?
Freshers week - arguably the most anticipated week of university life. In this episode, Jodie and Jacob bust some myths about what can be an exciting yet daunting week. They chat about clubbing, flat parties, freshers fairs and the first few days of university.

STUDENT SUPPORT HUB CONTACT EMAILS.

If you need to contact a member of the Teaching, Learning and Student Experience teams in the School then a range of emails are available. Please use the email suitable for your enquiry:

soe.hub@manchester.ac.uk: general queries; advice on University policies and services.
soe.programmes@manchester.ac.uk: student record queries; registration advice and guidance; timetable queries/clashes; ATAS/Visa advice; extension to study period; project topics, allocation and supervisors; change of programme; return to study; professional accreditation
soe.assessment@manchester.ac.uk: assessment submission queries (including DASS adjustments)
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.

YEAR TUTOR OPEN HOURS.

In the Department we have year tutors who are responsible for looking after the different cohorts in each year. They are here to provide you with help and support if you need it, 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 starting from Week 1 of teaching (next week):

Year 1 (not CM): Gareth Henshall. Open hour: Thursday 14:00 - 15:00, Kilburn 2.82
Year 2 (not CM): Ahmed Saeed. Open hour: Tuesdays 11:00 - 12:00, 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, 2.103
UG Director: Paul Nutter. Open hour: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:00, IT119.

PASS1.

The PASS1 team (Max Beck-Jones (Y3, CS4), Luke Sanderson (Y3, CS), Sarah Saad (Y3, AI4), Nicolo Micheletti (Y3, CS), and Rosie Halsall (Y3, CS4)) write: Hello and welcome to everyone joining us this year! We are your PASS1 coordination team. We all hope you are settling in Manchester well and are excited to begin your studies. PASS stands for Peer Assisted Study Sessions and provides a relaxed, informal environment for you to receive support with your studies. There is a PASS Introduction Lecture for you to attend this Wednesday at 15:00 in Roscoe Lecture Theatre A. In this session we will briefly introduce ourselves and the PASS scheme, giving you an idea of what to expect during your weekly sessions.

PASS2.

The PASS2 team (See Jia Tong (Y3, CS), Salma Aljama (Y3, AI) and Divya Radhakrishnan Nair (Y3, CS)) write: Welcome back! We hope you had a refreshing summer vacation and are recharged for the exciting year ahead. As we dive into this new academic year, we're thrilled to introduce you to PASS2 - an extension of our Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) scheme. We've created a short Google form with just two questions. So, please take a few minutes to fill in the form and let us know your thoughts. Let's make this year memorable, productive, and full of growth. Here's to new beginnings with PASS2!

IMECHE FORMULA STUDENT UK 2023 WINNER.

Congratulations to Mike Fahey (Y2, CS) who won the overall Craig Dawson Most Valued Team Member Award at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) Formula Student Competition 2023 at Silverstone in July. The award is presented to a student participant, nominated by their fellow teammates, who has gone above and beyond to make their car a reality. Dr Theo Heath (Lecturer, EEE), who organised the University entry to the competition, says “Mike is a competent and diligent member of the team who has been willing to learn and support areas outside of his technical expertise. We would not have made it to the competition without him.” Congratulations Mike, it’s clear your teammates very much valued your contribution to the development of their car!

UNICS NEWS.

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. Join us for an exciting lineup of events this academic year! Visit us at the Societies’ Fair on 21st September from 10 am - 4 pm at Manchester Academy to learn about our teams and how to get involved. Plus, an Arcade Machine awaits, with fantastic prizes up for grabs! Be sure not to miss out on our first event of the year, the Tech Showcase, on the 21st of September from 3 pm - 5 pm. It's an opportunity to witness some amazing projects created by our talented students. For more updates on all our upcoming events, follow us on Instagram @unicsmcr, and read on more to find out about our annual hackathon, GreatUniHack! "

GOOGLE SCHOLARSHIP SUCCESS.

Congratulations to Dhruv Sharma (AIwIE, On Placement) who has been awarded a Google Scholarship. The scholarships are awarded annually by Google in two categories: Generation Scholarship, which are designed to help aspiring students pursuing computer science or gaming degrees excel in technology and becomes leaders in the field and is specifically aimed at women, and Google Europe Students with Disabilities Scholarship, which is to assist students with disabilities while they pursue education and promising careers in computer science and related fields across Europe. The scholarship offers a 7000 Euro bursary to the winning students. You can find out more information on the Build Your Future with Google webpage. Dhruv is currently on placement at Visa in Belfast. Congratulations Dhruv on your reward!

PUBLICATION SUCCESS.

Congratulations to Lukas Rimkas (Graduated 2023, CS), Jonas Verbickas (Graduated 2023, CS), Phoebe Pinney (Graduated 2023, CS), Nadine Abdelhalim (Graduated 2023, CS), Ingy Abdelhalim (Graduated 2023, CS), Darius Feher (Graduated 2023, CSwIE) and Faridz Ibrahim (Graduated 2023, CS), who had work from the their student projects, under the supervision of Riza Batista-Navarro, published or presented at conferences last academic year. Having work published/presented is a real success and demonstrates that the projects we can offer can have real impact. The publications are as follows:

Abdelhalim, N., Abdelhalim, I., & Batista-Navarro, R. (2023). Training Models on Oversampled Data and a Novel Multi-class Annotation Scheme for Dementia Detection. In Proceedings of the 5th Clinical Natural Language Processing Workshop co-located with The 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Toronto, Canada. In this paper, Nadine and Ingy describe their proposed deep learning-based method and multi-class annotation scheme for detecting dementia based on transcripts of doctor-patient conversations.
Pinney, P.A. & Batista-Navarro, R. (2023). English2BSL: A Rule-Based System for Translating English into British Sign Language. In Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Language Technology for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (LT-EDI 2023) co-located with the 2023 Conference on Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing (RANLP 2023), Varna, Bulgaria. Phoebe presents her work on developing a learning tool that translates English sentences to British Sign Language (available here).
Feher, D., Ibrahim, F., Cheng, Z., Schlegel, V., Maidment, T., Bagshaw, J., & Batista-Navarro, R. (2023). Few-shot entity linking of food names. Information Processing & Management, 60(5), 103463. This paper presents a new approach - a hybrid of string similarity-based and machine learning-based models - that was proposed by Darius to support the automatic linking/disambiguation of food names, as well as a food knowledge base implemented by Faridz and Zhuyan Cheng.
Rimkus, L., Verbickas, J., & Batista-Navarro, R. (To appear). Reviewer 2 Must Be Stopped: Transformer-based Approaches for Predicting Paper Acceptance. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Information Management and Big Data (SIMBig 2023), Mexico City, Mexico. Lukas and Jonas investigate the extent to which state-of-the-art transformer models can predict whether a conference paper will be accepted or not, and compare them with traditional machine learning-based approaches.

UNICS NEWS.

Introducing the UniCS committee for 2023/24:

Co-chairs: Sarah Saad (Y3, AI4) and Minahil Tariq (Y2, CS)
Treasurer: Luke Sanderson (Y3, AI4)
Secretary: Kayley Lam (Y2, CSwIE)
Inclusions Officer: Adwik Roshan (Y2, CM)
Procurement: Pallavi Nair (Y2, CSwIE)
PR: Yashika Gandhi (Y2, CS) and Kavya Jain (Y2, CSwIE)
Sponsorships: Diya Chutani (Y2, CSwIE)
Graphics: Hanzila Hussain (Y2, CSwIE)
Events: Anulome Kishore (Y2, CSwIE), Saurav Maheshkar (Y2, CS), Anisha Sahu (Y2) and Nayan Suresh (Y2, CS)
Dev: Rose Halsall (Y3, CS4)
GameDev: Abubakar Tafida (Y2, CS)
Hackathons: Asma Ali (Y3, CSwIE) and Asma Alshebli (Y3, AI)

Our contact details can be found on our website.

GOOGLE DEVELOPER STUDENT CLUBS.

This from the GDSC team: 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 and prepare students for the Solution Challenges and build a community of developers who learn and grow together. These are our events happening this week:

Dive into Zapp with Russell Wheatley! Join us for an insightful talk exploring Zapp's architecture and its incredible features, the Flutter application code sandbox! Register now through this link. Refreshments will be provided!|
Date: Tue, Sep 19
Time: 18:30 PM - 20:00 PM
Venue: University Place, Room 2.218
Meet the GDSC team at the Freshers' Fair and the Community Fair! Get to know about the exciting events and activities we've planned for this year. Don't miss out! See you there!
Freshers’ Fair:
Date: Wednesday, September 20th
Time: 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Location: Manchester Academy 1
Community Fair
Date: Friday, September 22nd
Time: 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Location: Table 22, Engineering Building

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

REGISTRATION.

You need to register with the University before the 30th September 2023 and collect your student card.You can find more information on the University “Become a Student” webpage. Any fee queries should be submitted using the Student Services Enquiry Form.

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: Monday 18th September, 3 - 5pm Roscoe A (building 53 on the interactive campus map), Thursday 21st September, 2 - 4pm, Engineering Building A, Lecture Theatre A (building 24 on the campus map).
Year 2: Tuesday 19th September 2 - 4pm, Engineering Building A, Lecture Theatre A (building 24 on the campus map)
Year 3: Tuesday 19th September, 12 - 2pm, University Place Lecture Theatre B (building 37 on the campus map)
Year 4: Thursday 21st September, 10am - 12pm, Engineering Building B, Room 2.B.026 (building 25 on the campus map)

First years also have the “Meet Your Tutor” lunch on Wednesday 20th September. 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 degree programme, so please check your personal timetable to find out which activities you are scheduled to attend.

COURSE UNIT SELECTION.

ATTENDANCE MONITORING.

We will be monitoring your attendance for wellbeing reasons as well as compliance with UKVI for students holding a study visa. We’ll be using multiple sources of data and will contact you if we have concerns about your attendance. You should be attending all scheduled activities. Further information about attendance monitoring for students with a visa will be sent out by the SSC in the next few weeks.

TEACHING TIMETABLES.

Your personal timetable will be updated by the end of Welcome Week to show your scheduled activities each week. You can view your timetable on my.manchester.

PASS1 SCAVENGER HUNT.

Following the PASS1 talk on Wednesday 20th September (see above), the PASS1 team have also organised a scavenger hunt throughout the main campus, ending in your home: the Kilburn Building! Not only is this a fantastic opportunity to familiarise yourself with the university campus and make some friends with others on your course, but we also have a plentiful supply of sweets for everyone at the end. We look forward to seeing you all then!

GREATUNIHACK 2023.

This from Sahar Rahman (Y2, CMwIE): Our student-led annual hackathon event, the GreatUniHack, is back! The event is scheduled to take place in person at the MMU Business School, on the 28th and 29th of October 2023. It is a fantastic opportunity for coding enthusiasts to enhance their technical and soft skills in a fun environment where they can socialise and collaborate with other like-minded students. Participants also have the chance to win exciting prizes, enjoy free food, and add a great project to their portfolios. To register for the event, students will simply need to visit the online registration page and sign up before the deadline on 29 September 2023. Students are encouraged to register early to guarantee an opportunity to participate and allow for sufficient time for those interested in forming teams. Interested students can follow our Instagram page, @greatunihack_, to stay updated. A list of FAQs regarding the event can be found at the GreatUniHack webpage. Any further questions should be emailed to hackathons@unicsmcr.com or messaged to our Instagram page, @greatunihack_.

DIGITAL TRUST AND SECURITY SEMINAR SERIES.

An Arms Race in Intellectual Property Protection of Deep Learning Models, Youcheng Sun. Youcheng Sun will give a seminar titled 'An Arms Race in Intellectual Property Protection of Deep Learning Models', followed by a Q&A and networking.
Date & Time: Tuesday 10th October 2023 | 14.00-15.30 (UK)
Venue: DiSH, Heron House, 47 Lloyd Street, Manchester, M2 5LE
Sign up for the event for free via Eventbrite

DIGITAL TRUST AND SECURITY SEMINAR SERIES.

Online Ads Against Cybercrime, Asier Moneva. Dr Asier Moneva will discuss an applied line of research developed in collaboration with the Cyber Offender Prevention Squad (COPS) of the Netherlands police. Researchers and police jointly develop online ad campaigns targeting potential cybercriminals and then evaluate their performance.
Date & Time: Wednesday 8th November 2023 | 14.30-16.00 (UK)
Venue: Manchester Tech Incubator, Circle Square, Oxford Rd, Manchester, M1 7ED
Sign up for the event for free via Eventbrite

DIGITAL TRUST AND SECURITY SEMINAR SERIES.

Omotolani Olowosule and Iretioluwa Akerele. Join us for a special edition of the Digital Trust and Security Seminar Series where we will host two of the co-founders of CyBlack: Omotolani Olowosule and Iretioluwa Akerele. CyBlack is a black community for Cyber security students in the UK, which currently has over 500 students. In this seminar, our speakers will discuss the outcomes of their research. Omotolani's research focuses on Mindfulness in Cloud Security, whereas Iretioluwa's research looks at Information Security Controls Integration and Implementation.
Date & Time: Monday 4th December 2023 | 14.00-16.00 (UK)
Venue: DiSH Manchester, Heron House, 47 Lloyd Street, Manchester M2 5LE
Sign up for the event for free via Eventbrite

NOMINATE YOURSELF TO BE A STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE.

This from Tom Carroll, Chair of the UG Student-Staff Liaison Committee (SSLC): Want to change something about your course? Want to represent your peers? Recruitment is now open to become an Academic Course Representative (or rep) for the 2023-24 academic year! Academic Reps are student leaders who work with the Students’ Union and University of Manchester and gather feedback & work with staff to make positive change in their programme. This opportunity is open to students of all years - and it does not matter if you have been a rep in the past, or if this will be your first time as a rep! Why get involved? You’ll develop skills in leadership, negotiation, and professionalism and build great relationships across your programme. In the past reps have been key in improving assessment deadlines, changing communication methods between staff & students and improving the way students are supported. You’ll receive training from the Students’ Union and from your programme, so you don’t need any prior experience – just an interest in helping improve student experience for yourself and your peers! Interested? To sign up, head to this form and input your details by Thursday 28 September, 12 noon. After this we’ll get back in touch with the next steps! Please contact me if you have any questions.

KILBURN LOWER FIRST FLOOR REFURBISHMENT.

Over the summer we’ve been busy refurbishing the lower first floor of the Kilburn Building (the home of CS students) by repainting the walls and providing new furniture/social seating for you to use, such as new high-level desks with power, seating booths (behind lecture theatre 1.1) and soundproof booths for private meetings, holding online interviews etc. We are still waiting for the electrical connections to be made to the power/USB sockets in the new furniture, and new coffee tables for some of the seating areas. We’ve also introduced some new seating in the open area outside the Turing lounge on the first floor. We hope you like the changes.

KILBURN WINDOW DESIGN.

Last year, Phoebe Pinney (Graduated in 2023, CS) won a prize for her eye-catching design in the Oxford Road Window Competition. The design was finally installed over the summer and can now be seen in all its glory in the large window on the Oxford Road side of the Kilburn building (top right hand side of Kilburn looking from Oxford Road).

LIBRARY STUDENT OFFER IN SEMESTER 1.

This from Gemma Smith: The Library is here to support student learning throughout their University experience. We provide students with:

access to resources like books, journals and databases
training to help them succeed in their studies
spaces to study when they’re on campus
help and support, including IT support

If students need introductory information to help them use the Library, or if they want to find out about tours and events, please visit the Library’s Get Started webpage. Students can also drop-in at any of our Library sites and chat to our friendly staff about how the Library can support their studies.