Women in Cyber 16 – Student Careers Event

GCHQ, together with the Cabinet Office, DSTL, HMGCC, the Government Digital Service and the National Crime Agency, are running an event at Birmingham University on 27 January aimed at female students who want to learn more about opportunities in UK Government cyber careers.

Research suggests demand for cyber professionals is growing 3.5 times faster than the overall IT job market and 12 times faster than the overall job market. Yet only 10% of the current global cyber workforce are women.   This event is an opportunity for female students to explore internships, graduate schemes, summer schools, etc., as well as network with government recruiters, cyber experts and peers from other  UK universities.

Guest Speakers will include:

  • Director Cyber GCHQ
  • Penny Endersby Division Head Cyber and Information Systems Division, Dstl 

Please note that anyone wishing to attend must apply in advance through the website by Monday 18th January.

Further details are available at www.WIC16.com

CDE Security for Internet of Things – Call

photo.jpgThe Ministry of Defence’s Centre for Defence Enterprise, in collaboration with the Security Secret Intelligence Services, will shortly be inviting proposals for its security for the internet of things themed competition. The call opens on 10 September 2015 when the full competition details will be published.

This competition seeks research projects that identify innovative technologies or approaches in order to meet the challenges created by the internet of things, such as multiple connected sensors that are capable of communicating with their environment. Proposals should address the following areas of interest:

• Collating and visualising data on subjects of interest from a diverse, sensor-rich, loosely connected environment that operates across different protocols and standards;
• Identifying how sure a hypothesis is that two events, users or devices are connected, based on the data gathered.

Each project may receive between £60,000 and £90,000 over three months in phase 1, followed by a split of £1m funding available for phase 2 projects, which will be considered on a per-project basis.

The competition will be briefed at the CDE Innovation Network Event on the 1st October 2015, with the closing date for this call being the 29th October 2015 at 5pm.

To find out more – Click Here
To sign up to the CDE Innovation Network Event – Click Here

Chist-ERA 2015 – Participate in defining the call

Chist-ERA LogoThe Call for the 2015 round of Chist-ERA applications will arrive in October 2015, and the two topics will be:

  • Security and Privacy in Internet of Things
  • Terahertz Band for New-Generation Mobile Communication Systems

The full topic descriptions, to appear in the call text, will result from the CHIST-ERA Conference 2015. This conference, held in Lisbon, June 16-18 2015, brings together scientists working in these research areas and CHIST-ERA representatives to refine the topics contour and scope of the Call 2015. All attendees are invited to participate in plenary and facilitated break-out sessions to identify and formulate the promising scientific and technological challenges at the frontier of research. This represents a unique opportunity for the scientific community to directly participate in scoping the call.

To find out more – Click Here (PDF)
To register for the conference – Click Here

4th IMA Conference on Mathematics in Defence 2015

Thursday 26 November 2015, Satellite Applications Catapult, Harwell Oxford, UK

Science and technology play an increasingly important role in equipping and supporting the armed forces. Mathematics is fundamental to these disciplines, providing a framework for understanding and solving the varied and complex problems faced, and is used to model military systems and scenarios. These models can be used to estimate system performance, suggest improvements, or find weaknesses of real systems.

This conference brings together a wide variety of mathematical methods with defence and security applications. The programme will include keynote speakers, contributed presentations and poster sessions as well as refreshment breaks for informal discussions. It is intended for mathematicians, scientists and engineers from industry and academia, as well as government and military personnel who have an interest in how mathematics can be applied to defence problems.

This will be the fourth Mathematics in Defence conference; the first three conferences, held in 2009, 2011 and 2013, each attracted over 100 delegates from a range of organisations including QinetiQ, Dstl, BAE Systems, Thales, Rolls Royce, the IMA, the MoD, academic establishments and international parties.

Conference Topics

The conference will cover the following themes: Data analysis: data and text mining, data fusion, information visualization, multidimensional data analysis; Modelling and Estimation: electromagnetic models, estimation theory, Markov models, non-linear models, mathematical models, simulation; Operational Analysis: cost benefit analysis, counter-terrorism, risk management, intelligence analysis, behaviour analysis; Security: cryptography and coding, security systems, secure communications; Signal Processing: adaptive processing, computer vision, digital signal processing, distributed sensor processing, emitter location, image processing, signal enhancement, super-resolution, synthetic aperture radar, time series analysis; Statistical Methods: Bayesian techniques, classification, detection, identification, tracking, Monte Carlo methods, particle filters, pattern recognition.

Confirmed Invited Speaker: Prof Simon Maskell, Professor of Autonomous Systems, University of Liverpool

Instructions for authors

Contributed papers or posters are invited on all aspects of mathematics in defence. Papers or posters will be accepted on the basis of a 300-500 word abstract which should be submitted by 14 May 2015 by e-mail to conferences@ima.org.uk. Abstracts are expected to conform to the following template in Times New Roman, size 10 font:

Title

Contributing author(s) Surname, Initials

Affiliation(s) Department, organisation.

Abstract: 300-500 words only.

Authors will be advised of acceptance by 15 June 2015. Successful authors will be invited to submit a paper or poster for inclusion in the conference proceedings by 14 September 2015. Authors accepted for oral presentations will be requested to submit a paper; authors accepted for poster presentations may optionally also submit papers. This is an open conference and all papers and presentations will be unclassified. The proceedings will be made available to delegates on CD and for download from the conference webpage. Prizes will be awarded at the conference for the best paper, the best poster and the best early career researcher’s presentation.

Further Information

For further information please visit the conference webpage (http://www.ima.org.uk/conferences/conferences_calendar/4th_mathematics_in_defence.cfm.html) or contact Lizzi Lake, Conference Officer (E-mail: conferences@ima.org.uk, Tel: +44 (0) 1702 354 020)

Future Calls: Cyber-Physical Systems / Human Language Understanding

A future call has been announced by CHIST-ERA which I think will have a broad interest across the department.

  • Resilient and Trustworthy Cyber-Physical Systems

Update: Two topics were announced however the second is not open to UK researchers as EPSRC is not participating in the Human Language Understanding call.

The CHIST-ERA ERA-NET is a consortium of 18 research funding organisations (including EPSRC). CHIST-ERA specifically promotes multidisciplinary and transnational ICT research with the potential to lead to significant breakthroughs. The funding organisations jointly support research projects selected in the framework of CHIST-ERA.

Below is a link to a flyer which gives more information, including a quick-view list of keywords which will allow you to decide if the calls are relevant to you (e.g. intrusion detection, verification, software and systems engineering).

A key point to note about this call is that it can be shaped by those who attend the CHIST-ERA Conference (Istanbul, June 17-18). If you would like to feed into the full topic description registration is still open: http://conference2014.chistera.eu

[ CHIST-ERA Call 2014 – Topics Flyer ]