SPRITE+ Conference - Registration opens 1 March 2023

SPRITE+ Conference – Call for lightning talks and posters – Deadline 24 February

Welcoming new members to the SPRITE+ team

News and Publications from the SPRITE+ Community

Launch of Leonardo's Accelerator Programme - 2 March 2023

The first open call of TRUSTCHAIN funding program is now live

Other Funding Opportunities

Job Opportunities

QUB LINAS Doctoral Training Programme

Call for Papers

Contact Details

Subscription Details

Trustworthy digital identities and data are the focus of this TRUSTCHAIN Open Call 1 on “Decentralised Digital Identity”. Applicants are invited to submit their proposals on any topic that serves the overall TRUSTCHAIN vision and objectives.

Proposals should be submitted by 10th April 2023 (17:00 CEST) – see the dedicated pages on their website for a full list of key dates and deadlines, as well as full details of the call, funding details, documentation, and how to apply.

UKRI Sandpit: Novel computing for UK defence and security, closing date: 28 February 2023. Read more here

UKRI: Develop a UK digital twinning research community with a NetworkPlus, closing date: 23 March 2023. Read more here

UKRI: Artificial intelligence innovation to accelerate health research, closing date: 28 March 2023. Read more here

Secondary Data Analysis Initiative (SDAI), closing date: open call. Read more here

EPSRC discipline-hopping in information and communications technologies, closing date: open call. Read more here

ESRC new investigator grant, closing date: open call. Read more here.

UWE Bristol - Dean and Head of School, Computing and Creative Technologies, closing date: 26 February 2023. Read more here

Cranfield University - Lecturer in Digital Technologies, closing date: 26 February 2023. Read more here

UWE, Bristol - Senior Lecturer Cyber Security, closing date: 5 March 2023. Read more here

Trilateral Research - Senior Research Analyst (Socio-Economic Impacts and Digital Security), closing date: rolling application. Read more here

PhD Studentship: Improving Railway System Resilience to Cyber-attacks, University of Nottingham, closing date: 28 February 2023. Read more here

PhD Project Proposal: Trustworthy Machine Learning for Industrial Control Systems Security, Queen's University Belfast, closing date: 28 February 2023. Read more here

PhD Studentship: Evaluation of healthcare Internet of Things (IoT) systems to monitor and protect older people via IoT trust, University of Liverpool, closing date: 28 February 2023. Read more here

15 PhD Studentships - Centre for Secure Information Technologies Doctoral Training Programme, Queen’s University Belfast, closing date: 28 February 2023. Read more here

PhD Studentship: Smart Homes, Smart Decisions: Establishing Accountability in Algorithmic Security Systems, Queen’s University Belfast. Closing date: 10 March 2023. Read more here

PhD Studentship: Return on Cyber Security Investment, University of Nottingham, closing date: 15 March 2023. Read more here

PhD Studentship - Learning to Trust Emerging Disruptive AI and Automated Technology, Cardiff University, closing date: 17 March 2023. Read more here

PhD Studentship: Institute of Cyber Security for Society (iCSS) at the University of Kent, closing date: 10 April 2023. Read more here

The QUB LINAS Doctoral Training Programme (DTP) seeks to develop a cohort of Doctoral Scholars who can address the implications of massive-scale data processing, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for both the actual operation of algorithmically driven public decision-making in wider society, and within science and engineering.

They have multiple studentships available and welcome applicants for Autumn 2023 start. Closing date: 10 March 2023. Read more here

Special Issue "AI-Driven Security and Privacy in 5G/6G Networks and Internet of Things". Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 November 2023. Read more here

Paper submission open for 20th International Conference on Security and Cryptography (SECRYPT 2023) Rome, Italy - July 10-12, 2023.Deadline: various. Read more here

NSS 2023: 17th International Conference on Network and System Security. Deadline for paper submission: 3 March 2023. Read more here

SocialSec 2023: 9th International Symposium on Security and Privacy in Social Networks and Big Data. Deadline for paper submission: 20 March 2023. Read more here

WACCO 2023: IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy 2023. Deadline for paper submission: 15 March 2023. Read more here

As we reach the end of our first four years, and look forward to the next four, save the date to come and celebrate with us!

We are holding a two-day conference in Belfast on 28-29 June 2023 at the Titanic Centre. We’ll be showcasing some of our achievements and working together to shape the next four years of SPRITE+.

Registrations for the conference open on 1 March 2023.

We invite community members to propose lightning talks, which are 5 minutes long talks on topics relevant to SPRITE+. These may accompany a poster or be standalone talks. Works in progress and early ideas are welcome.

We also welcome proposals for posters on any topic relevant to the future of digital TIPS. There will be prizes for the top three posters, as judged by attendees.

We will waive registration fees for all accepted presenters.

SPRITE+ is delighted to welcome Dr Catherine Rhodes who joined us in December as our Head of Operations and Engagement. Catherine is leading the operational management of the existing network, its growth, and the expansion of our activities for phase 2 of SPRITE+ (starts September 2023). She previously worked as the Executive Director of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University, leading its management activities, and has worked extensively with networks focused on addressing security and risk relating to emerging technologies.

We also send a warm welcome to Ayushi Gupta, who joined us in February as our new SPRITE+ Events, Projects and Communications Assistant. Ayushi completed her postgraduate degree in Development Economics and Policy at the University of Manchester in 2022, after which she re-joined the University of Manchester with SPRITE+. She has previously worked as a Research Assistant for projects focusing on food security in India, behavioural decision making within startups, and government compliance in India.

We sadly say goodbye to Katy Taylor who is leaving SPRITE+ having been promoted into a new role at the University of Manchester. We’re incredibly grateful to her for all her hard work with SPRITE+ and send her all our good wishes in her new position.

Every month we ask SPRITE+ members to share their news with the community.

SPRITE+ Member Benoit Dupont co-authored a paper titled Cognitive assemblages: The entangled nature of algorithmic content moderation.

SPRITE+ Expert Fellow Xiaochun Cheng recently published papers: Privacy-preserving and fine-grained data sharing for resource-constrained healthcare CPS devices; Android-IoT Malware Classification and Detection Approach Using Deep URL Features Analysis; and An efficient quality of services based wireless sensor network for anomaly detection using soft computing approaches

SPRITE+ Expert Fellow Mohammad Tahaei recently published a paper titled Stuck in the Permissions With You: Developer & End-User Perspectives on App Permissions & Their Privacy Ramifications. The paper is to appear in The ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2023.

SPRITE+ Expert Fellow Martin Gallagher published a paper titled Crime, terror and diasporas: The influence of historical ties on current criminality and violence.

SPRITE+ Member Karen Renaud recently published two papers: Human-centred cyber secure software engineering; and People want reassurance when making privacy-related decisions — Not technicalities.

SPRITE+ Member Partha Das Chowdhury published a paper titled From Utility to Capability: A New Paradigm to Conceptualize and Develop Inclusive PETs.

SPRITE+ Member Sotiris Moschoyiannis and his colleagues were awarded a research grant from EPSRC UKI-FNI for their research proposal, APT detection in 5G networks (APTd5G).

The Romance Fraud project which is being led by a SPRITE+ Expert Fellow Lynsay Shepherd, was featured in Scottish Legal News and on John Beattie’s BBC Radio Scotland’s Drivetime show.

A Capability Approach workshop by REPHRAIN was held at Bristol. This workshop led to a manifesto signed by the attendees, including several SPRITE+ Expert Fellows. The manifesto can be found here.

University of Manchester’s Centre for Digital Trust and Society has published details of forthcoming seminars. They include: The Intersection of Psychology and Cybersecurity: Implications for Research and Practice, register here. YOSO: You Only Speak Once - From public blockchains to large-scale multiparty computation, register here.

The Institute for Security Science and Technology (ISST) and Imperial Business Partners have partnered with Leonardo to support the launch of their accelerator programme (2nd batch) A forthcoming roadshow will offer start-ups and SMEs an opportunity to meet with colleagues from Leonardo and hear about the Business Innovation Factory (BIF), their corporate accelerator. To register for the roadshow on Thursday 2 March, click here.

The 2023 acceleration programme will focus on helping start-ups involved in the following two SPRITW+ relevant areas:

• Simulation and Gamification such as scenario simulation for mission awareness, digital twins, federated training and serious gaming.
• Network Cybersecurity such as IoT security, software-driven communication infrastructure, zero-trust applications, data protection and encryption, active-defence and quantum communications and computing.

Read more here.