Workshop: Building a community of interest in digital identity

Rising Star - Sameh Zakhary

SPRITE+ Sandpit Project Announced

Call for nominations: Early Career Researchers for the Rising Stars series

SPRITE+ Member Spotlight – Simon Scarle

Save the date: Connecting the Greater Manchester Cyber Ecosystem

SPRITE+ Accountability & Ethics in a Digital Ecosystem Group is seeking a Research Associate

News and Publications from the SPRITE+ Community

Upcoming events

Career opportunities

Call for papers

Funding opportunities

Join the University of Manchester FinTech and LegalTech Society

Contact Details

Subscription Details

Participatory Policies for IoT (at the Edge) Ethics (P-PITEE) virtual workshop, Friday 1st October 11.00am – 12.30pm (online). Register here.

SASIG Cybersecurity Skills Festival, Tuesday 12 October 9.00am - 5.00pm (online). Register here.

People, Data & the Pandemic Symposium, Wednesday 13 October 2.00pm - 4.00pm (online). Register here.

University of Sheffield: Research Associate to work on the SPRITE+ funded Accountability and Ethics in Digital Ecosystems Project. Closing date: 6 October 2021. Read more here.

University of Warwick: Postdoctoral Research Fellow to work on the UKRI project ‘Scaling Trust: An Anthropology of Cyber Security’. Closing date: 12 October 2021. Read more here

Lancaster University: Funded PhD Studentship - EPSRC Trustworthy Autonomous System Node in Security. Closing date: 7 December 2021. Read more here.

Abertay University: Funded PhD Studentship - Preventing Romance Fraud. Closing date: 29 October 2021. Read more here.

ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN) - Special Issue on Internet of Behavior for Emerging Technologies, submission due: 30 September 2021.

BlockSPAN2021: 1st International Workshop on Blockchain Security, Performance and Application, submission due: 15 October 2021.

Intelligent Signal Processing for Complex Industrial Systems, submission due: 15 October 2021.

Journal of Signal Processing Systems, see more here.

Cluster Computing: Secure Smart Solutions for High Performance and Cluster Computing, submission due: 26 October 2021.

PETRAS: Internal Strategic Projects and Engagement Fund (ISPEF) Call for Proposals. Total fund: £475K. Deadline: 8 October 2021.

EPSRC: Software for research communities. Total fund: £4.5M. Deadline: 14 October 2021.

UKRI: Inform design of cross-council digital research environments. Max. award: £400K. Deadline: 11 November 2021.

Horizon Europe: Civil Security for Society. Max. award: €1.6B. Deadline: open call.

Internet Society Foundation: Research Grant Programme. Max. award: US$200K. Deadline: open call.

ESRC: Secondary Data Analysis Initiative. Max. award: £300K. Deadline: open call.

The society is designed to set the basis of future student engagement with the legal and financial sectors involving technology and its advancements. Read more here.

On Wednesday 6 October (1-4pm), SPRITE+ and our Project Partner the Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS), together with the Alan Turing Institute Trustworthy Digital Identity interest group will be hosting an online community-building event around digital identity and age assurance.

Confirmed speakers include Tony Allen (CEO of ACCS), Julie Dawson (Director of Regulatory & Policy at Yoti), Prof Carsten Maple (Alan Turing Institute Trustworthy Digital Identity interest group lead and Professor of Cyber Systems Engineering at the University of Warwick), Almudena Lara (Global Lead for Child Safety Online, Google), Jordan Moodie (Head of Legislation and Evidence, Digital Identity, DCMS), Antonia Bayly (Safety by Design, Online Harms, DCMS) and John Baird (Joint Head Business Engagement & Cybersecurity, EPSRC).

Rising Stars is a blog series featuring SPRITE+ Early Career Researchers (ECRs).

Our Rising Star this month is Sameh Zakhary a Research Fellow in the University of Nottingham's Horizon Digital Economy Research Centre. Learn more about Sameh's work examining technologies for secure Internet of Things (IoT) in domestic environments.

In July 2021 we welcomed 35 participants from 25 different organisations to our online sandpit focussed on the theme of 'digital vulnerabilities'. Five teams secured funding for their four month projects which will explore aspects of digital vulnerability from technical, social, and socio-technical perspectives.

We are delighted to announce the first funded project is 'First RespondXR', which will map the types of digital vulnerabilities that are likely to emerge from the use of Extended Reality in the training of law enforcement, and how these weaknesses can be overcome.

First RespondXR is led by Dr Leonie Tanczer (UCL) with Professor David McIlhatton (Coventry University), Professor Jill Marshall (Royal Holloway University of London), Dr Mark McGill (University of Glasgow) and Dr Lena Podoletz (University of Edinburgh).

We are seeking nominations from Early Career Researchers (ECRs) to share their research story with the TIPS community as part of our Rising Stars series.

This is a great opportunity for ECRs to showcase their research to a range of audiences from senior academics to stakeholder groups. This may be the start of a new collaboration or the seed to a future post, so we encourage ECRs to put any modesty aside and share their achievements.

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

The spotlight today is on Simon Scarle – Program Leader for MSc Commercial Games Development at UWE Bristol, researcher in Applied Games Technology visualisation, and a SPRITE+ Member.

As part of our regional meet-up initiative, SPRITE+ is pleased to partner with the Greater Manchester Cyber Advisory Group to host an in person event on 11 November (15.30-18.00) to bring together representatives of the city-region’s cyber ecosystem in Greater Manchester.

This event will feature talks from SPRITE+, Greater Manchester Combined Authority and other regional and national government representatives with plenty of time for networking over drinks.

This event will be hosted at a venue in Manchester City Centre and is open to all SPRITE+ Members, Expert Fellows and Project Partners. Specific details of the programme will be confirmed in due course.

The Accountability and Ethics in a Digital Ecosystem project is led by Dr Jonathan Foster and Dr Julie Gore.

The overall aim of the project will be to inquire into the challenges of accountability and ethics that arise with the emergence of digital ecosystems. The project aims to identify and define the accountability and ethical challenges that currently exist within digital ecosystems and the challenges that may emerge in the future as digital technologies evolve as well as many other aspects.

University of Sheffield
Fixed-Term for Six Months: 1 October 2021-31 March 2022
Grade 7 £32,344 to £36,382 per annum (pro-rata)
Closing Date: 6 October 2021

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

Congratulations to Sandra Scott-Hayward who was recently selected as Polymath Fellow of the Global Fellowship Initiative at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. The Centre will be advocating for “polymath thinking” in the field of emerging technologies to bridge the gap between the tech and science communities and the world of policy and decision-makers.

Congratulations to SPRITE+ Project Partner Yoti who has been featured in articles on "Digital ID in supermarkets", "Post Office EasyID launch" and on "Digital ID".

Congratulations to Ola Michalec who has been awarded a Fellowship from the National Cyber Security Centre and the Research Institute in Trustworthy Inter-connected Cyber-physical Systems. The Fellowship will build an “extended community of interest” to enhance the current Indicators of Good Practice used by the UK Government during the implementation of the Networks and Information Systems Security (NIS) Directive. Ola will be reaching out to practitioners and academics working across critical infrastructure sectors with a broad interest in organisational risks (not only cyber security!). Please email ola.michalec@bristol.ac.uk if you’d like to find out more about the project.

Congratulations to Jason Nurse was a speaker at: Sophos Security SOS Week event: "Does Cyber Insurance Help Or Hinder Online Crime?"; Cybersecurity Capacity Centre for Southern Africa (C3SA) Identifying cyber threats and risks in SSA Webinar event: "The Evolving nature of Cyber threats"; and the Cybersecurity Investment Supporting SME decision making event: "Cybersecurity incentives and the role of cyber insurance".

Congratulations to Mohammad Shojafar and colleagues who have recently published "IADE: An Improved Differential Evolution Algorithm to Preserve Sustainability in a 6G Network”; "AFED-EF: An Energy-Efficient VM Allocation Algorithm for IoT Applications in a Cloud Data Center"; "HDMA: Hybrid D2D Message Authentication Scheme for 5G-enabled VANET; and "FIDS: A Federated Intrusion Detection System for 5G Smart Metering Network”.

Congratulations to Kaspar Rosager and colleagues who have recently published "When Is Software a Medical Device? Understanding and Determining the “Intention” and Requirements for Software as a Medical Device in European Union Law".

Congratulations to Qammer Abbasi and colleagues who have recently published "Making assembly line in supply chain robust and secure using UHF RFID".

Congratulations to Nadine Michaelides who has recently published "Always on, anytime, anywhere: The impact of the ‘new norm’
and digital training revolution on employees".

Congratulations to Vitor Jesus and colleagues who ran 1st International Workshop on Consent Management in Online Services, Networks and Things co-located with 6th IEEE EuroS&P (COnSeNT 2021). Vitor also presented a paper titles "Pragmatic Online Privacy: the SftE Approach". The website and full list of accepted papers can be viewed here.