- Nathaniel Byrne
Newsletter November 14th 2019

Calls & Opportunities
Turing Artificial Intelligence Acceleration Fellowships
The Turing AI Acceleration Fellowships have a budget of £18 million to fund 10-15 mid-career researchers with the potential to become world-leaders within the 5 years of the award. This call has a strong emphases on creativity of ideas, thought, and approach, and on enabling new models of collaboration between academia and other sectors.
The deadline for outline proposals is 18th February, 2020.
University of Birmingham is allowed to support up to four proposals.
The internal deadlines for the University of Birmingham will be as follows:
Stage 1: Applications to Colleges, Deadline: November 20th, 2019. Candidates should send up to 5-page Case for Support and CV to their College
Colleges nominate up to 3 candidates each by November 28th, 2019
Stage 2 Central Committee will meet in the first 2 weeks of December, 2019
Results announcement of 4 candidates: by December 15th at the latest.
Please, read the call and contact your College Research Support Officer in case you are planning to apply.
Pre-call announcement: Turing Artificial Intelligence World-Leading Researcher Fellowships
In addition to the Turing AI Acceleration Fellowships, outline proposals will soon be invited for Turing AI World-Leading Researcher Fellowships. This £18 million programme will invest in the international recruitment and retention of a small number of world-leading AI researchers, with significant packages of support (£3-5 million) to enable the building of new UK capability and capacity in key areas of AI research. It will enable world-leading researchers in AI technologies to move to (or remain in) the UK, thereby building and growing the UK’s international competitiveness and reputation in AI. The full call document will be published on the UKRI website in mid-November.
PhD Student Enrichment Scheme
Turing's Enrichment scheme offers students currently enrolled on a doctoral programme at a UK university the opportunity to join the Institute for up to 12 months. Students continue their PhD in conjunction with their current supervisor, while enriching their research and making new collaborations during their time at the Institute.
Applications for the 2020/21 Enrichment scheme will open on the 20th November 2019.
Turing Save Haven Secure Compute Environment
Turing’s Safe Haven secure compute environment is currently available through the Alan Turing Institute. Check out the background information here and a more in depth paper can be found via this arxiv link: https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.08737
European AI Policy Conference
Taking place on 5th March, 2020, this conference will bring together some of the leading voices in AI from across the continent to discuss why European success in AI is important, how the EU compares to other world leaders today, and what steps European policymakers should take to be more competitive in AI.
Events
Upcoming Events
Monday 18 Nov 2019
Machine learning offers a new and universal way of looking at the world, which is radically different than traditional domain-focused and theory-based approaches. However, while new machine learning algorithms such as deep learning have created a wave of applications in computer vision and natural language translation, there are a lot of complex applications which are yet to be investigated.
Thursday 21 Nov 2019 - Friday 22 Nov 2019
1st International conference on decision support and recommender systems
The 1st International ‘Turing’ conference on decision support and recommender systems will bring together junior and experienced researchers, industry professionals and domain experts to discuss latest trends and ongoing challenges in:
Human and AI-driven complex decision making, e.g. group and multi-criteria decision-making
Recommender systems as tools for personalised decision support
Interdisciplinary applications of decision making, decision support and personalisation
Role of machine learning and Data-Driven AI techniques in supporting decisions
Wednesday 27 Nov 2019
Hate and harassment: can technology solve online abuse?
The third event of the 'Driving Data Futures' lecture series in the Public Policy Programme, where we invite audiences to learn and critically engage with new research at the intersection of new technologies, public policy, and ethics. At this event, there will be presentations delivered by academia, industry, and government, in addition to the Turing’s Hate Speech project team presenting their latest research in the field.
Wednesday 27 Nov 2019
Turing Bright Club comedy showcase
Bright Club has been transforming researchers into stand-up comedians for ten years, promoting public engagement by scientists, academics and others with specialist knowledge. The Alan Turing Institute is delighted present some of its brightest minds to the comedy stage. Ticket includes a free drink.
Friday 29 Nov 2019
Data Debates: AI and fake news
Fake news is fuelling rising public mistrust of the media, politics and big business, with even health services subject to conspiracy around life-saving vaccines and other treatments. What role does AI play in creating and disseminating fake news and how can we harness the same technologies to counteract them? With confirmed panellists Chloe Colliver, Alex Krasodomski-Jones, Yulan He, and Bertie Vidgen, chaired by Timandra Harkness.
Tuesday 24 Mar 2020 - Wednesday 25 Mar 2020
The Alan Turing Institute continues to pursue its ambitious goals: by advancing world class research in data science and artificial intelligence (AI), training and inspiring the leaders of the future, and shaping the public conversation. For the first time a dynamic, two-day showcase will see the Turing bring together all three of these goals in an unrivalled showcase featuring the very best of UK academic work in AI and machine learning.
Future Events
Monday 02 - Tuesday 03 Dec 2019
Data science for physics and astronomy scoping workshop
Wednesday 04 Dec 2019
Turing Lecture: Secrets and lies Monday 09 Dec 2019 - Friday 13 Dec 2019
Data Study Group - December 2019
Monday 13 Jan 2020
Statistics and computation Monday 20 Jan 2020
Computational archival science (CAS) symposium Friday 24 Jan 2020
Reliability and reproducibility in computational science
NEW: 06 May 2020 - 07 May 2020
Data-Centric Engineering: Inaugural Global Summit
Many events are recorded, find the archive on YouTube.