DATA@Birmingham Newsletter, 4 June 2021
Welcome to DATA@Birmingham, 4th June 2021
Turing Fellow Call 2021
Applications are now open to eligible candidates wishing to become Fellows at The Alan Turing Institute for the 2021-2022 academic year. Professor Iain Styles has arranged a third drop-in session for eligible academics wishing to apply
Key Dates and Details
- Final drop-in session: 8 June 2021 (14:00-15:00, email Prof Styles for Zoom link)
- Call closes: 23 June 2021 (at 23:59)
- Fellowships start date: 1 October 2021
- Open to: Researchers employed at one of the 13 Turing university partners.
Interested applicants with queries should first read the call document and FAQs on the applicant page (link above) and then contact Professor Iain Styles, Turing University Lead, or Nathaniel Byrne, University Liaison Manager.
You can find more information about The Alan Turing Institute here.
Data Study Groups
University of Birmingham DSG: Final Call for PIs
The University of Birmingham is hosting a Data Study Group (DSG), in partnership with the Alan Turing Institute.
DSGs are intensive, collaborative hackathons that bring together organisations who provide real-world problems and datasets to be tackled by carefully selected researchers who brainstorm and engineer data science solutions.. For full details of this format, including the time commitment involved, please visit the latest Turing event page.
Full details, including information on the Challenges and how to apply will be circulated in due course. In the meantime, if you would like any more information or have questions about the DSG, please contact Kim Ekste, DSG Project Manager.
A call for participants will open very soon.
Turing-LIDA DSG July 2021: Call for Participants
Our colleagues at the Leeds Institute of Data Analytics (LIDA) are also hosting a Data Study Group and are looking for PhD students, postdocs and other early career researchers to apply as participants.
The challenges will be in the following general areas:
- Geospatial data, particularly involving 3D point cloud data (LIDAR), and methodology to identify relevant features.
- Consumer data relevant to nutrition, behaviour and government policy.
- Commercial data and business planning.
The DSG will take place remotely over the 2 weeks 12 – 23 July 2021. Participants will need to be able to commit to the full two weeks as well as to take part in a few training and introductory sessions in the week commencing 5 July.
To learn more and to apply please visit the LIDA website.
Deadline: 9 June 2021
Please contact Rosaleen McDonnell or the DSG Project Manager, Bina Champaneria, if you have any questions.
Become a Data Study Group Principal Investigator for Dementia themed projects
As part of the Turing's mission to train the next generation of data scientists, we are looking for early career researchers who want to act as a Principal Investigator (PI) on a DSG challenge. The projects have all come through the UK Dementia Research Institute network.
The deadline for applications is 14 June 2021 with applications reviewed on a rolling basis. To apply, please send your CV and a cover letter to datastudygroup@turing.ac.uk.
Calls & Opportunities
Using data to improve public health: COVID-19 secondment
Funded by the MRC and ESRC, this is an opportunity to work for a year with experts in the analysis and interpretation of:
- national anonymised linked electronic health records
- multiple population longitudinal studies.
You can apply if you have an analytical background, early to mid-career researchers and professionals from eligible organisations will be funded.
You will work with a team on one of these coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic-related public health themes:
- long COVID
- mental health
- health and society
- healthcare disruption
- vaccination.
Eight to ten secondments will be funded, at 80% of the full economic cost. Funding will last one year, starting on 1 October 2021.
See the UKRI page for more details and to apply.
Events at the University of Birmingham
Data Science and Computational Statistics Seminar
The Data Science and Computational Statistics Seminar series is jointly between the School of Mathematics and the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham. Seminars are scheduled for Tuesday afternoons. Upcoming seminars:
- 8 June 2021, 15:00-16:00, Convergence, Robustness and Flexibility of Gaussian Process Regression, Aretha Teckentrup (University of Edinburgh)
- 22 June 2021, 15:00-16:00, Yulong Lu (University of Massachusetts)
- 6 July 2021, 15:00-16:00, Unbiased Inference for Discretely observed Hidden Markov Model Diffusions, Neil Chada (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology)
- 20 July 2021, 15:00-16:00, Allen Hart (University of Bath)
For more information and links to the talks, please visit the Seminar page on Talks@Bham.
Events at the Alan Turing Institute
The Turing is committed to working flexibly and staying connected. You can watch highlights of our past events at the video archive on YouTube.
The Turing Lectures: Engineering the future of medicine with René Vidal
Tuesday 8 June, 15:00 - 16:30. René Vidal is a 2021 Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award winner, for "pioneering contributions to subspace clustering and generalized principal component analysis with applications in computer vision and pattern recognition". Reserve your place at June's Turing Lecture here.
Atlas of AI: Kate Crawford in conversation with Judy Wajcman
Wednesday 9 June 2021,12:00 - 13:00 In this special event, Turing Fellow and Women in Data Science and AI project lead, Judy Wajcman, will host a fireside chat and audience Q&A with Kate Crawford to uncover the damaging effects of the global networks underpinning AI technology, and how our technical systems are designed to serve and intensify existing systems of power, as detailed in Kate Crawford's book 'Atlas of AI'. Find out more and reserve your place here.
Breaking the code: Alan Turing’s legacy in 2021
To mark the release into circulation of the new £50 banknote in his name, and his 109th birthday (both 23 June), The Alan Turing Institute is hosting a virtual panel discussion exploring the life and legacy of Alan Turing to find out why he still means so much, to so many. You can register to attend and find out more information here.
Job Opportunities
Centre Fellows, Centre for Systems Modelling and Quantitative Biomedicine
SMQB are seeking three individuals with a strong background in one or more of dynamical systems, complex networks, parameter inference (including Bayesian methods), machine learning and artificial intelligence, clinical data analytics and visualisation, advanced (medical) imaging, diagnostics and clinical decision support systems. If you are curiosity driven, seeking to further develop your quantitative skills and want to tackle some of the most pressing healthcare and societal challenges, then you can apply and find out more here.
Closing Date: 6th June 2021
Associate Director - HDR UK Turing PhD Programme in Health Data Science
HDR UK are seeking to appoint a part-time Associate Director to provide leadership for the PhD programme under the mentorship of the Programme Director and in conjunction with academic representatives from our partner universities. We are particularly interested in an Associate Director who can provide expertise in either Artificial Intelligence (encompassing machine learning, computational statistics, etc) or the Biomedical and Clinical Sciences. Find out more and apply here.
Closing date: 14 June 2021
AI for Science and Government Theme Lead – Health and Medical Sciences
AI for Science and Government (ASG) is a major integrated research programme at the Alan Turing Institute with a goal to deploy AI and data science in priority areas to support the UK economy. The Health and Medical Sciences Programme delivers research into the theory and methods of AI, statistics, and data analytics underpinning medical and health applications that will enable scientists to do better science, without compromising respect for privacy and patient trust. This role will provide leadership to the ASG Health Theme, which has a diverse portfolio of work across the full range of healthcare concerns – from the genomic, molecular and cellular basis of disease to clinical data analytics and epidemiological modelling – in partnership with significant stakeholders including the NHS and Health Data Research UK.
You can find more information, the advert, job description and application form here.
This post is available up to 0.4 FTE.
Closing date: 17th June 2021
Conferences
WebSci’21 | 13th ACM Web Science Conference
Hosted by the University of Southampton, UK, delivered online, 21 - 25 June 2021.
The 13th ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci’21) is an interdisciplinary conference where a multitude of research disciplines converge with the purpose of creating a greater insight into a complex global Web than the sum of their individual parts.
Visit the conference website for more details.
Royal Statistical Society 2021 Conference
This year’s Royal Statistical Society International Conference will take place from 6 - 9 September in Manchester. The conference welcomes all statisticians and data scientists, and regularly attracts around 600 participants from over 30 countries.
Full details can be found on the conference website.
CompBioMed Conference 2021: Building the Virtual Human
CompBioMed Conference will return on 15-17th September 2021, in the online vFairs conference platform and will again address all aspects of the rapidly burgeoning domain of computational biomedicine, from genome through organ to whole human and population levels, embracing data driven, mechanistic modelling and simulation, machine learning and combinations thereof.
The theme for 2021 is Building the Virtual Human: How to bring experimental research into your digital twin. See the conference website for full details.
The call for papers is open now and can be accessed at the Linklings page. Submission deadline is 16th June 2021 (23:59 BST).
Virtual access to the Alan Turing Institute
You can also stay connected to the Turing via: Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.
Thanks for your continued support.