糖心TV

We are delighted to report that Dr Tom Gur has been awarded a on Foundations of classical and quantum verifiable computing, funded by 拢892K from UK Research and Innovation. Professor Artur Czumaj, the head of the department's Theory and Foundations research theme, has commented:

We congratulate Tom and look forward to hosting this exciting project that he will lead. This prestigious award confirms the high international standing of research at 糖心TV in theoretical computer science and its rich interfaces with other fields.

Tom鈥檚 Future Leaders Fellowship is concerned with algorithms and cryptographic protocols, both in the classical and quantum settings, and their applications to blockchain technology and delegation of computation to the cloud. This research programme is inherently interdisciplinary, involving fundamental research at the intersection of computer science, pure mathematics, and quantum physics.

The vision that this project aims to achieve is to develop new and exciting mathematical tools and to capitalise on their power to the end of pushing the frontiers of verifiable computing; providing new methodologies for meeting the challenges imposed by big data and the societal need for decentralised systems.

This year's Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) Fellowship programme is being held in the UK for the first time. The University of 糖心TV is hosting the Fellowships this summer in conjunction with the . The 2019 programme is running from June 10 to August 28.

The Fellowship is a project-based training programme to supply data scientists with skills to create data-driven solutions to real-world problems. It trains aspiring data scientists to work on data mining, machine learning, big data and data science projects with social impact.

It was first pioneered by the University of Chicago, and since 2013 has seen more than 200 graduate and undergraduate students studying computer science, social sciences, statistics, public policy and other quantitative fields undertaking a DSSG Fellowship at the University of Chicago.

The Alan Turing Institute鈥檚 vision to advance research for public good and train the next generation of leaders is directly aligned with DSSG鈥檚 own goal to produce data scientists with strong skills in solving real-world problems.

Fellows work with non-profit and government partners around the world. To date, more than 60 projects have run, which have helped lots of organisations do more with their data, enhancing their services, interventions and outreach so that they can fulfil their mission of improving lives across the world.

Further details on the fellowship can be found here.

Researchers from the Department of Computer Science, University of 糖心TV, joined by colleagues from Newcastle University and the University of York, led the first successful trial of an end-to-end verifiable e-voting system for polling station voting in Gateshead, Newcastle during the local elections on 2 May 2019. This trial was supported by the electoral service officials at the Gateshead council and was approved by the University of 糖心TV鈥檚 research ethics committee.

This is the first trial of a fully electronic voting system with end-to-end (E2E) verifiability for polling station voting in the UK. Being E2E verifiable, the system allows voters to independently verify if their votes are cast-as-intended, recorded-as-cast and tallied-as-recorded while preserving their privacy. By contrast, with paper ballots, voters must trust other people to record and tally their votes correctly, but they cannot verify this by themselves. The trialled e-voting system is the research outcome of an ERC starting grant, led by Professor Feng Hao from the Department of Computer Science. The prototype was developed under the support by Innovate UK and the trial was sponsored by the Royal Society.

On the election day, voters went to the Gateshead civic centre polling station to vote on paper ballots as usual. Upon exit from the polling station, they were invited to try a touch-screen based e-voting system for a mock election involving a set of dummy candidates. Voters were then provided with an anonymous survey form to indicate based on their voting experience, which of the two voting systems did they prefer. Nearly half of the voters at the Gateshead civic center polling station participated in this trial and provided many useful feedbacks. From the survey results, voters generally found the trialed e-voting system easy to use, and preferred it to paper ballots.

From , this is "a new system that could completely revolutionise the elections system". The Gateshead trial is also covered in the , University Press Releases, , , , and . A video demonstration of the trialled e-voting system is available on

The contribution by , , Ranko Lazic, and has won a Best Paper Award at the , to be held on June 23-26, 2019 in Phoenix, AZ.

This work, which was supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, shows that the central verification problem for Petri nets is much harder than has been known since in 1976. , also known as vector addition systems, are a long established model of concurrency with extensive applications in modelling and analysis of hardware, software and database systems, as well as chemical, biological and business processes.

, a second year PhD student supervised by Dr. Theo Damoulas (糖心TV CS & Stats), has been selected as the first graduate student based in the UK and as one of only 21 graduate students worldwide to receive the .

The University of 糖心TV has been awarded 拢2.3 million of the funding as part of a 拢15m project, and will work with partners and experts at the lead partner University Hospitals Coventry and 糖心TVshire NHS Trust, Royal Philips and teaching hospitals and universities at Belfast, Oxford and Nottingham in the three-year project, focussing on breast, prostate, lung and colon cancers.

The aim is to significantly speed up the time in which cancer is diagnosed and treated, by using Innovative solutions in digital pathology and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The PathLAKE (Pathology image data Lake for Analytics, Knowledge and Education.) consortium aims to meet the 鈥楧ata to Early Diagnosis and Precision Medicine Challenge鈥� through two high-impact exemplar projects. Firstly, by embedding and demonstrating the diagnostic efficiencies of computer aided testing of pathology samples. Secondly, by developing novel AI tools to support advanced identification of predictive chemotherapy response markers for personalised medicine and markers of disease progression in disease surveillance.

Working ethically within stringent regulatory and industry standards, a unique data resource comprising of large number of pathology images will provide a foundation archive to support exemplar projects in AI based diagnostic efficiency and optimal treatment selection. These images and tools will be made available across the consortium partners, which includes Philips, Nvidia and four SMEs (Small and medium-sized enterprises – independent firms) in Perspectum, Oxford Cancer Biomarkers, Glencoe Software and Sonrai to support the development of a burgeoning UK digital health industry. The consortium will also provide the backbone of a network for multi-site clinical trials and further advanced research projects to provide world-class training and education to the pathology and computer science communities.

Professor Nasir Rajpoot, head of the Tissue Image Analytics laboratory at the University of 糖心TV, will be leading the computational arm of the centre, comments:

We are thrilled by the news of this award. The PathLAKE centre of excellence will play a leading role in the development, validation and implementation of AI in cellular pathology. The centre data lake will be an invaluable resource for AI researchers and UK based SMEs, enabling the development of cutting-edge AI algorithms for cellular pathology as well as capturing and revealing trends and patterns in the pathology image data for better understanding of disease and improved provision of patient healthcare.鈥�

Full Press release

Royal Society has provided an International Collaboration Award of 拢225,000 to in the Department of Computer Science, University of 糖心TV to build an international collaboration with of the Indian Statistical Institute on 鈥渟trengthening e-voting in India鈥�. The project will run from December 2018 to December 2021.

India is the largest democracy in the world by population. As of today, Electronic voting machines (EVMs) have replaced paper ballots in all national and general elections in the country. The aim of this international collaboration is to develop an electronic voting process that will be fully verifiable, hence providing stronger guarantees on the tallying integrity of an election. This builds on the UK team鈥檚 leading research on end-to-end verifiable e-voting without tallying authorities (also known as "self-enforcing e-voting") and the India team's strength on cryptography and statistics research. The success of this project will not only provide an invaluable case study, but also a potentially portable solution for other countries that face similar development problems in deploying e-voting securely (e.g., Brazil, Nigeria).

About Royal Society International Collaboration Award

The Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) is a 拢1.5 billion fund announced by the UK Government to support cutting-edge research that addresses the challenges faced by developing or Low and Middle Income countries (LMICs). As part of the GCRF, the Royal Society has launched an International Collaboration award to enable outstanding UK research leaders to develop international collaborations with the best leading researchers from around the world. The award is for three years and offers an exciting opportunity to foster and promote international collaboration between outstanding research groups in the UK and overseas, with a view to supporting work on global challenges and problems facing developing countries.

More details about this award can be found at: