SICSA Funding Opportunities

SICSA and EIT Digital Boost Scottish European Student Exchange Programme

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SICSA and EIT Digital partner to deliver Scottish Funding Council Saltire Scheme

Scotland & Brussels, March 2nd, 2022:

The Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA) have partnered with EIT Digital to deliver on a £75k SFC investment in renewing and strengthening Scottish – European research collaborations.

The “Saltire Emerging Researcher Scheme” is part of a £6.75m Programme funded by the Scottish Government to support international and EU activity and collaboration including boosting support for international research collaboration and talent attraction, increase scholarship offering to include EU students and support the effective use of alumni globally.

SICSA, in partnership with EIT Digital, has been awarded funding within the Saltire Scheme to reinforce and build new research partnerships while developing individual researchers’ networks with European partners across the Computer Science discipline. The scheme will fully fund incoming and outgoing exchanges of up to six months to both enhance the training experience for PhD Students and support Early Career Researchers in developing their networks and collaborations across Scotland and Europe.  The partnership leverages the reach of EIT Digital’s extensive network across Europe in research intensive institutions and SICSA’s strong network of partnerships across Scottish Computing Science.

Professor Stuart Anderson, Director of SICSA said “Informatics and Computer Science researchers in SICSA do have strong and vibrant links with researchers across Europe.  However, BREXIT has had a severe cooling effect on funding channels because of complex and protracted negotiations on funding.  The Saltire awards give our PhD students and Early Career Researchers an immediate boost in reinforcing existing and building new collaborations.  These will form the foundations of new long-term collaborative research across the EU.”

Jamie Hepburn, Minister for Higher and Further Education said: “I am delighted to see funding under the Saltire Emerging Research Scheme has enabled this partnership between SICSA and EIT Digital. This partnership has increased the reach and opportunities for exchange and collaboration for both Scottish and European researchers, to help them deliver a better digital future.”

Morgan Gillis, EIT Digital’s UK director, commented that: “EIT Digital is very pleased with the take-up of its programs in Scotland and delighted to be deeply involved in the international development of Scotland’s digital economy across a range of sectors. We much appreciate our close collaboration with Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Funding Council as strategic partners in making this success possible.”

Stuart Fancey, Director of Research and Innovation at the Scottish Funding Council, said: “Forging strong international links is a crucial part of maintaining and enhancing Scotland’s world-class reputation for research and innovation. The Saltire Emerging Researcher Scheme is therefore an incredibly important investment in the future. The partnership between SICSA and EIT Digital demonstrates the energy and commitment that will make the scheme a success for everyone involved. I am sure all those taking part in the SICSA/EIT Digital exchanges will benefit considerably from the experience.”    

EIT Digital in Scotland is funded by our partners Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Funding Council. We are also supported by Highlands & Islands Enterprise, FinTech Scotland, Edinburgh Innovations and University of Edinburgh.

Press notes

EIT Digital’s Satellite Office, opened in Edinburgh in April 2019 by Minister for Trade, Investment and Innovation Ivan McKee, has maintained strong progress within its remit to deliver impact to Scotland’s national digital economy with €6m of new investment to commercialise innovative new digital  products and the launch of three Scottish doctoral programs focussed on Fintech, Privacy and 5G/Future Wireless Communication – all domains of national strategic importance.

SICSA is a Research Pool, funded by the Scottish Funding Council and 14 partner Universities to promote collaboration in research, teaching and knowledge exchange across its partner Universities.  It is part of Research and Innovation Scotland that brings together all of the Scottish Research Pools and Innovation Centres to cooperate on multi-disciplinary challenges.

Contact details for:

EIT Digital: martin.beaton@eitdigital.eu
https://www.eitdigital.eu/

SICSA: Tiffany.Babey@glasgow.ac.uk
https://www.sicsa.ac.uk/

SICSA appoints new Director of Education

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We are delighted to announce Dr Matthew Barr, University of Glasgow is joining us as the new Director of Education. Dr Barr (Matt) commenced in post this week taking over from Dr Mark Zarb, Robert Gordon University who stepped down following 2 years in the role.

Matt is well known to SICSA due to his active involvement within our Education Theme over the years and will join the Directorate with a great ongoing vision for the role. He has been involved with events focused on Graduate Apprenticeships and championing the urgency of gender balance in CS Education. Matt initiated and led the organisation of a SICSA supported workshop on Gender Imbalance in Computing Science Education in May 2020 which ultimately resulted in the creation of the Ada Scotland Festival.  He has also been involved in supporting his colleagues with other SICSA funded workshops over the years.

Matt has been teaching in Higher Education in some form since 2008, after leaving industry to work as a research systems developer at the University of Glasgow.  He has built an expansive network of contacts over the years with colleagues from Skills Development Scotland, Scottish Government/Scottish Funding Council as well as a range of industry partners.

When notified of his appointment to the role as SICSA Director of Education, Matt said “I am delighted to be able to serve as Director of Education for SICSA. It is my intention to use this opportunity to work on improving equality, diversity and inclusion in Computing Science education across Scotland’s universities. I also hope to be able to create mentorship opportunities for colleagues engaged in teaching CS, and help to share the excellent teaching practice that I know goes on across all of our institutions!”

Matt is succeeding in the role by Dr Mark Zarb who has been the SICSA Director of Education for the last two years.  The SICSA Directorate would like to extend a huge thank you to Mark for his amazing work with CS Education.  Amongst other areas of achievement within the role, Mark has created and strengthened the CS Education community, supported a vast range of education events, and initiated the Educations Champions who produced ongoing webinars on how to adapt to on-line teaching which were a great source of support to our SICSA colleagues throughout the pandemic.  Mark’s enthusiasm, positivity and zest for CS Education is admirable and we wish him well in his new role at RGU!

SICSA welcomes Dr Andrei Perovski as its new SGA Director!

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We are delighted to let you know that we have appointed our new SICSA Graduate Academy (SGA) Director.  Dr Andrei Perovski, Robert Gordon University commenced the role as SGA Director of 1 August 2021 taking over from Dr Susmit Sarkar.

Andrei is a Reader in Computation Systems and holds the role of Research Student Coordinator at Robert Gordon. He has been active in SICSA in previous years and will continue the existing work that the Graduate Academy has been doing.  As well as overseeing the SGA funding programmes, his focus will be to promote industry placements and enhance our links with industry, continue to develop research ethos and culture across the pool and encourage active participation through organising PhD activities.

When informed of the decision to appoint him to the role, Andrei said “I am delighted and honoured to get appointed to the SICSA GA Director post during the challenging, but exciting, times of change in post-graduate research and education caused by the pandemic and gradual recovery from it. Together with other SICSA Directors and members of staff, I will endeavour to explore new and to enhance existing opportunities to benefit the community of post-graduate researchers in Scotland and beyond”

Andrei is joining SICSA at an exciting time of Research Pooling and we are looking forward to working with him in shaping the future of the SICSA Research Pool.

The SICSA Directors would like to pass on a huge thank you to Dr Susmit Sarkar for his support and input to SICSA in the last few years.

New Funding Call for PhD students to attend conferences

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With most national and international conferences currently being held on-line due to the pandemic, SICSA is taking the opportunity to open a new funding call which will allow PhD students, currently studying in a SICSA institution, to apply for the cost of the registration fees for a virtual conference.

If there is a specific Conference you are interested in attending and, it is in line with your research you can apply for funding for the registration fees.  There is no deadline for proposals to be submitted.

For more information and details of how to apply, please see the SICSA Funding Page

SICSA Conference 2020

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We are delighted to announce that the SICSA Conference 2020 will take place, on-line on 1 October 2020 and will be under the theme SICSA and the Sustainable Society.

The conference this year will be co-located with ScotSoft, which is Scotland’s leading tech conference allowing our delegates to access elements of the event throughout the day.

For this year’s conference we have prepared a rich and varied schedule addressing the many challenges presented by the idea of a future Sustainable Society. We are delighted to have Dr Elizabeth F. Churchill (UX Director, Google) and Professor Sally A. Fincher (School of Computing Science, University of Kent) as our Keynote Speakers.

You will have the chance to hear about issues and challenges encountered in Computing Science Education, discussed at the Education Panel Session. Excellent exemplars of graduate research across SICSA will be presented from the shortlisted candidates for the SICSA PhD Award for Best Dissertation during at the PhD Lightning Talks session.

We have invited participation from our partner research pools across Scotland, allowing us to bring together a large community of people to discuss the Computing and interdisciplinary challenges ahead. The SICSA Research Themes will show case research that demonstrates cutting edge computing research and its potential to address the Sustainable Society Challenge.

We have inaugurated a new award for Best PhD Thesis in Scotland at the Conference this year and the winner will receive a prize of £2,000 generously sponsored by Amazon Development Scotland.

Given the current situation with the COVID-19 pandemic the Conference this year will be held online, allowing us to increase our audience and have invited speakers from far and wide. The Conference will be open to all members from across the SICSA institutions, industry partners and all SICSA key stakeholders

Visit the SICSA Conference 2020 website to find out more and register your interest to attend the event.

SICSA Funding Call Now Open

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We are pleased to announce that the Scottish Funding Council has awarded us further funding to continue the Scottish Informatics & Computer Science Alliance (SICSA) research pool until July 2021

We now have a new series of funding calls open with increased support across our research themes with the aim to extend and expand our links with other research pools (SUPA/SULSA/SINAPSE etc.) and with the Scottish Innovation Centres https://www.sicsa.ac.uk/funding/

To support students in SICSA, we have a new program of SICSA Research Scholars to undertake studies and/or research via Summer/Winter Schools attendance and/or research visits.

For staff, SICSA can support, Academic and Research Distinguished Visiting Fellows from Academia or Industry, Research Theme Event Sponsorship, Postdoctoral and Early Career Researcher Exchanges (PECE), our European Leaders Programme and Education Event Sponsorship.  Full information on the funding opportunities can be found at https://www.sicsa.ac.uk/funding/.

The next deadline is April 30th, and we welcome applications for Research Theme Events which connect between SICSA themes or connect SICSA to other research pools.

Submissions with commitments of matched funding from other research pools or innovation centres are strongly encouraged.  Some of these events might aim to explore grand challenges while other events might focus of emerging research.

Student attends the International Conference on Intelligent Robots with the help of SICSA

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by Èric Pairet, Heriot Watt University
25 November 2019

Last week, I attended the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) organised by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ). IROS is one of the top conferences world-wide were scientists gather to present and discuss the state-of-the-art on robotics.

This year’s IROS edition was held in the majestic Venetian Macao, Macau, China. The conference consisted of a series of workshops, technical sessions and keynotes that lasted for a total of five days. I presented in one of the technical sessions my most recent research entitled “Learning Generalisable Coupling Terms for Obstacle Avoidance via Low-dimensional Coupling Terms”, which was received with great enthusiasm and admiration by the attendees. I received many interesting technical questions and got engaged in multiple discussions about my work which may help me to improve my future research. The conference received a total of 2,513 papers, a 44.8% from which were accepted for presentation.

Besides the learning experience in this type of events, the networking opportunities are incomparable. Overall, I would rate this experience as unique and would totally recommend it, especially for those interested on keeping on with state-of-the-art technologies and methods in robotics. Attending IROS conferences offers a unique opportunity, not only to new researchers but also to experienced academics to share ideas and get valuable feedback.

Thanks to SICSA I was able to attend and present my work in such a prestigious conference where I could share experiences as a researcher and get valuable advice on how to pursue my future career.

SICSA supports Code Your Future (CYF)

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by Gianluca Palombo
5 August 2019

CodeYourFuture are a charity who train refugees, asylum seekers and people from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds to become professional software developers. We are already running classes in London, Manchester, Glasgow and Rome – with plans to extend to other cities in the near future. On the weekend of the 27th June, CodeYourFuture students, graduates, applicants, mentors and public guests gathered to celebrate and find out more about our work and, more generally, efforts to use tech as a force for positive social change in society: https://conference.codeyourfuture.io/

Friday 28 June
Over 100 students, volunteers, applicants, partners and guests assembled throughout our first day of the CodeYourFuture Conference 2019 in Glasgow. The venue was the wonderful Sir Charles Wilson building, where we guaranteed a memorable day of work courtesy of the University of Glasgow and the UofG Computing Science department.Thanks to our insightful panels and guest speaker presentations, CYF members and public guests were able to gain fantastic and unique insights into the crossover between tech, community development and social justice.

Highlights included inspiring lessons and testimonies delivered by speakers such as Mel McKendrick, CEO at Optomize Ltd and Assistant Professor in Psychology at Heriot-Watt University, and Pheona Matuvo, co-founder and director at community interest company Radiant and Brighter. Our own CYF graduates shared their incredible stories in their own panel, inspiring current and future students – whilst through gratefully-received tea and coffee breaks, networks were built as new friends were made in addition to a lot of overdue catching up between CYF cohorts from across the UK.

Friday was wound down with a relaxing evening at the home of one of our amazing Glasgow volunteers, Carme! We should give a special thanks to SICSA for covering expenses for the food and refreshments we are able to provide at this occasion and others throughout the Conference weekend for the benefit of our CYF members and guests.

Saturday 29 June
On Saturday, we carried on, as CYF students, graduates, mentors and organisers got to work on technical skills development and strategy planning! On Saturday, we found ourselves in a similarly inspiring conference environment as we were hosted by BBC Scotland in their amazingly impressive Pacific Quay headquarters.

Students on the day were able to learn and share different skills alongside their counterparts and predecessors as well as mentors from CYF cohorts in different cities. Highlights included insightful and valuable workshops by Michael Antczak, experienced software developer and tech meet-up organiser, and Alec McEchran, former Senior Software Engineer at YouTube and Google and now Principal Engineer at KPV LAB Edinburgh.

For mentors and organisers, the day consisted of creative group work and discussions, helping to agree on fundamental universal goals of CYF cohorts and thinking how we can help provide even greater access to life-changing social and professional development for disadvantaged groups in the UK and further afield.

Saturday ended with us gathering at West of Scotland Cricket Club in Glasgow for a final winding down and celebration following a high-octane yet fulfilling two days.

Overall, we were delighted with how the Conference went, and hope that our public guests, in particular, were able to gain extra insight into the valuable and unique work we do at CodeYourFuture. For the CYF community, we come away with renewed energy, inspiration and more coherent aims and strategies. We hope these things will aid us in continuing to channel tech, education and community empowerment in an effort to improve our societies.

We thank SICSA for supporting the conference along with The University of Glasgow, BBC Scotland, Financial Times and our microsponsors who donated online.

SICSA funds student to attend the European Summer School in Information Retrieval (ESSIR)

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by Vasileios Stamatis
29th July 2019

The European Summer School in Information Retrieval (ESSIR) is a summer school for Information Retrieval and has been taking place since 1990 and the last few years it has taken by every two years.  The ESSIR 2019 took place in Milan, Italy, in the University of Milan-Bicocca. Myself and many other students from all over the world attended this summer school. For attending this summer school I was funded by SICSA. I wouldn’t be able to attend if SICSA hadn’t funded me for this summer school.
The summer school organised by the Information Retrieval Laboratory (IR Lab) at the University of Milan Bicocca and the Information Management Systems (IMS) research group at the University of Padua. The main focus was Information Retrieval (IR) courses and related research topics.

The first day started with some interesting courses about Information Retrieval as interaction in general, what it is and some main concepts such us offline vs online vs user-study evaluation etc. Then we learned about approaches in research. It was great to learn how to succeed in the PhD journey, how to choose a research area and how to approach research in general. The last 2 courses were about evaluation, we learned how important evaluation for IR and Research is in general and we also learned tasks and existing work in the evaluation field.
The second day started with user oriented IR and its foundations. We learned all these different IR models and the most significant contributions to the field. Also, we learned about experiments and how to approach an experiment and what factors are important during an experiment. Finally, machine learning and its approaches to IR were discussed, learning to Rank and Neural nets were the hot topics; and future research directions on the field.

The following day in the morning, the courses were about scalability in IR in which we learned about indexes and the importance of scalability in efficiency in web search engines. Then we learned about social media and how they are used to gather data and convert data to real knowledge. In the afternoon the Future Directions in Information Access (FDIA) presentations took place. It was great to hear presentations from colleagues and learn about their work, and have discussions afterwards.
Thursday started with medical IR and then recommender systems and after that we had a discussion about the summer school in general….what we liked and did not like and what should be included in the next summer schools. Then we discussed about IR in general, core skills, background, and internships in order to succeed. In the afternoon we had the FDIA poster session and I had the opportunity to present a poster. It was very helpful discussing, explaining and exchanging ideas about our work with other students and researchers as well. It is extremely helpful to make new connections by discussing our work. I met many people and I also learned about future events that I wouldn’t know otherwise.

The last day there were two courses, one of which was about task based IR systems. We learned about modelling search behaviours, inferring intents, how to evaluate such systems etc. The last course was on Biases on search and recommender systems in which we discussed different forms of biases. #ESSIR2019 in the University of Milan–Bicocca was an exciting experience. I really enjoyed my time in the summer school. I met many students and we shared ideas and challenges about our work. Now, we have been equipped with new skills and experiences in order to continue our research journey. This wouldn’t have been possible without SICSA. Thank you SICSA for this!

SICSA supports the new Teach Computing Science Handbook for Primary Teachers

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by Professor Judy Robertson, University of Edinburgh
24 April 2019

SICSA Education has recently sponsored the production of a handbook to help primary teachers to teach the new computing strand of the Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland. For the first time, children aged 3 years upwards will learn about key computing concepts as part of the Technologies curriculum. This is a great step forwards, because it will lay the foundations for understanding the fundamentals of process and information which young people can build on if they elect to study computing in the senior phase of high school. To help primary teachers and early years practitioners get to grips with the new curriculum, and give them lesson ideas, a group of volunteers got together to write a handbook – Kate Farrell (Computing at Schools Scotland, Judy Robertson (University of Edinburgh), Quintin Cutts (University of Glasgow) and Richard Connor (University of Stirling).

The guide has already proved popular with schools – for example, a parent wrote to tell us “I’ve been working with my daughter’s primary school and using the guide to help introduce CS throughout the school. The guide has been instrumental in rolling out a curriculum for P4 upwards”. It has also been adapted for use with West Dunbarton Council. We are currently working on a similar guide for the early stages of high school.

We have posted a paper copy of the guide to all the primary schools in Scotland. Why not check with your local school to see if they received it, or if you can give them a hand to teach some programming lessons? You can download a free copy of the guide at www.teachcs.scot.