SPRITE+ Sandpit 2021 Event Completed!

SPRITE+ Regional Meetups

ECR Training Calendar is Live!

SPRITE+ Member Spotlight – Mohamed Khamis

Call for Expert Fellows from Academia and Professional Practice

Call for Events and Activities

New Career and Funding Opportunities

SPRITE-Funded Sandpit Research Published!

News and Publications from the SPRITE+ Community

PhD scholarships available at the University of York

Research Associate in Automated Verification of CHERI C++ Programs Needed

Graduate Teaching Assistants Needed

Horizon Europe: Civil Security for Society €1.6 billion funding available

EPSRC grant: Enabling an equitable digital society

RITICS Fellowship Call (2021)

Connected Everything: Small grant and skills building programme

Connected Everything: Covid Career Recovery programme

FCA Sustainability TechSprint – October 2021

Applications are invited for a Chair and Members of a new Policing Science Advisory Council (PSAC)

REPHRAIN - launch of "In-Residence" programme

USENIX calls for papers and presentations

Turing trustworthy digital identity conference

Call for participants in THRIDI design workshop

Call for Evidence: new tech in the application of law

Second edition SERL Observatory dataset

Issues Alert

Contact Details

Subscription Details

The Department of Computer Science at the University of York has several PhD studentships available for UK Home students through the Doctoral Centre for Safe, Ethical and Secure Computing (SEtS).

There are several projects available to work with our SPRITE+ Expert Fellow Siamak F. Shahandashti on the following topics:

>Design of Privacy-Preserving Cryptographic Schemes and Protocols
>Measurement, Analysis, and Combating the Prevalence of Web Tracking
>Usable Security and Privacy / Human Factors in Security and Privacy

The University of Manchester seeks a research associate to research and apply novel formal software verification theories and methodologies on components of innovative DSbD technology being developed in the project.

"In particular, we will extend the Efficient SMT-based bounded model checking (ESBMC) tool with a Clang C++ frontend, new operational models reflecting the Morello architecture, new analyses for the modified notion of memory safety and compartmentalisation requirements, and further extensions to improve their applicability in the industrial context".

The Institute for Security Science and Technology is seeking 2-4 Junior Research Fellows / Post-Doctoral Researchers to support the delivery of the MSc Security and Resilience programme as Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs).

The GTAs will work on one or two of the following modules:

>Behavioural Science and Security (autumn term)
>Behavioural Research Methods (spring term)
>CBRNE (autumn term)
>Sensors (spring term)

Horizon Europe is the EU’s latest research and innovation programme and will run from 2021 - 2027 with an overall budget of at least €95.5 billion.

The UK will ‘associate’ to Horizon Europe, which means that UK entities can participate and apply for funding on the same terms and conditions as EU-based applicants.

Apply for funding to explore and develop human-centred digital technologies and services that enable an equitable society.

You must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for EPSRC funding.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), working in collaboration with the Research Institute for the Trustworthy Inter-connected Cyber-physical Systems (RITICS), is inviting proposals from academic researchers for fellowships.

Closing date: 20 Aug 2021.

Connected Everything and eFutures are looking to fund a number of small projects, led by Early Career Researchers, with a specific focus on Enabling Digital Manufacturing Technologies to Evolve. Alongside this funding opportunity, they are also offering a skills building programme.

Connected Everything has created a Covid Career recovery programme which will offer small amounts of funding to enable career progression that would not be possible otherwise. Awards will be made up to a maximum of £5,000 with £40,000 available in the budget.

TechSprints are events that bring together participants from across and outside of financial services to develop technology-based ideas or proof of concepts to address specific industry challenges.

"We see this as an excellent opportunity for firms from across the financial services ecosystem, academia, technology, innovators and start-ups to work with us, and other international regulators, to develop solutions to shared challenges".

PSAC is an expert committee whose members bring world-leading knowledge and experience of applying economics, engineering, social science, statistics, and the physical and life sciences to policing. ou will bring significant knowledge and experience of how science, technology and innovation can be leveraged in support of the police mission, bringing your expertise to bare on complex problems, often challenging established thinking and helping our teams find effective, practical solutions.

Positions are available for a chair, and for members.

Researcher-in-Residence programme invites proposals from researchers who wish to join REPHRAIN, the UKRI funded Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online as a REPHRAIN Academic Fellow. "We expect to fund up to 20 Researchers-in-Residence as part of this programme with an indicative maximum funding of £15,000 at 100% Full Economic Cost (fEC) per UK based researcher time".

Practitioner-in-Residence (Industry Fellow) Programme welcomes expressions of interest in this role. "REPHRAIN welcomes applications from members of the UK and international community, who may be based in industry (including SMEs), Government, Regulatory Bodies and third sector organisations who are interested in spending a defined period of time working within the REPHRAIN research centre".

Deadlines approaching:
25 Aug 2021: Talk proposals due for Enigma 2022.
09 Sep 2021: Paper submissions due for Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI) '22.
23 Sep 2021: Paper submissions due for File and Storage Technologies (FAST) '22.

This conference brings together prominent academics and key players in the field of digital identity from government and industry sectors to focus on opportunities in the assessment and development of trustworthy digital identity systems.

Conference submissions and extended journal abstracts of up to 1000 words are being accepted until 30 Jul 2021, 16:00 BST.

The workshop will aim to create a free-thinking and collaborative environment, involving 24 participants using online collaboration and communication tools.

The workshop would be especially suited to researchers in academia, industry, and public sector specialising in IoT, network security, privacy-enhancing technologies, user interface design, law, and policy.

The Justice and Home Affairs Committee seeks to explore the use of new technologies in the application of the law and the experience of people currently or previously engaged with them.

The second edition of the Smart Energy Research Lab (SERL) Observatory dataset is now available to SERL approved researchers.

The dataset includes daily and half-hourly domestic gas and electricity consumption data for approximately 4800 households recruited in SERL Waves 1 and 2. The data covers the period from August 2018 to October 2020.

> Network Security : Volume 2021, Issue 7.
> Cipher Electronic Issue (EI) 162, July 21, 2021.
> Computers & Security Volume 108 , September 2021.
> ACM Transactions on the Web (TWEB), Volume 15, Issue 4, (July 2021).
> IEEE Security & Privacy Vol. 19 , Issue 4, July-Aug. 2021.
> CREST Issue 11: Risk.
> International Journal of Information Security, Volume 20, issue 4, August 2021.

SPRITE+ 2021 sandpit saw 35 participants come together to form 9 teams and pitch their proposals to the panel of judges. The proposals were of very high quality making the panel's job a difficult one.

In the end, the panel agreed to fund 5 projects, with the details to be announced once contracts have been signed.

Subject to covid restrictions, SPRITE+ will be holding some regional meet-ups in the new academic year. If you are interested in hosting an informal meeting near you, either at your organisation or local venue, please get in touch for a chat about what it might involve (admin@spritehub.org).

Check the latest upcoming events that SPRITE+ has to offer!

Coming up on 11 Aug 2021: SPRITE+ Top Tips: Use of small grants.
Speakers: Dr Karena Kyne (Lancaster University) & Dr Nathan Smith (University of Manchester).

We continue to publish Career Journey interviews with SPRITE+ Project Partners, Experts, and Members.

The spotlight today is on Mohamed Khamis – Lecturer in Computing Science at the University of Glasgow, a member of the Glasgow Interactive Systems (GIST) Section, and a SPRITE+ member.

We are seeking new Fellows to join a diverse group of experts, each bringing deep expertise and creative thinking to SPRITE+ activities, and together providing a broad, challenging and informed range of viewpoints on TIPS in digital contexts.

We are offering logistical support to help organise the activity and will make available up to £5,000 of funding per activity to cover associated costs (e.g., travel, materials, professional facilitation/online production costs, data access).

We regularly collate PhD studentships, academic positions, and other opportunities related to digital TIPS.

This month's roundup includes EPSRC Software for research communities call, academic jobs in internet of things, data science, and AI, Community Manager in AI for Science and Government, and more!

SPRITE+ sandpit project: TIPS in blended home-work environments: A socio-technical perspective, resulted in a publication by the team (Emily Collins, Jason Nurse, Niki Pantelli, Nikki Williams, John Blythe, Ben Koppelman). Congratulations!

The article: "Remote Working Pre- and Post-COVID-19: An Analysis of New Threats and Risks to Security and Privacy" is available online.

Every month we ask SPRITE+ members to share their news with the community. All previous publications from members are available on SPRITEHub.

Congratulations to Marion Oswald and colleagues who have recently published "Observing Data-Driven Approaches to Covid-19: Reflections from a Distributed, Remote, Interdisciplinary Research Project".

Congratulations to Marie Oldfield and colleagues who have recently published "Analytical modelling and UK Government policy".

Congratulations to Matt Spencer who has recently published "Creative Malfunction: Finding fault with Rowhammer".

Congratulations to Karen Renaud and colleagues who have recently published "A cyber situational awareness model to predict the implementation of cyber security controls and precautions by SMEs".

Congratulations to Jason Nurse and colleagues, who have recently published "Developing a cyber security culture: Current practices and future needs", "When Googling It Doesn’t Work: The Challenge of Finding Security Advice for Smart Home Devices", and "SherLOCKED: A Detective-Themed Serious Game for Cyber Security Education". Jason Nurse was also a panelist at the Chatham House event "How do we tackle ransomware?".

Congratulations to Irum Rauf and colleagues who have recently published "The Case for Adaptive Security Interventions".

Congratulations to Habiba Farzand and colleagues who have recently published "The Interplay between Personal Relationships & Shoulder Surfing Mitigation".

Congratulations to Ola Michalec and colleagues who have recently published "Reconfiguring governance: How cyber security regulations are reconfiguring water governance".

Thank you to Gilad Rosner who has shared a video interview: Everyday Experiments on Privacy + Trust.

Congratulations to Pavle Avramovic and colleagues who have recently published "A Quantum Leap for Financial Services".