11th & 12th of September
STIRLING COURT HOTEL
SICSA
CONFERENCE 2023
Building Research Programmes for Interdisciplinary Challenges

About the event
Building Research Programmes for Interdisciplinary Challenges
This year, the focus of the SICSA Conference will be on building research programmes to address interdisciplinary challenges. Increasingly, research focus and funding is led by societal challenges that are of international concern.
Although computing science research will be fundamental to addressing these challenges, they will also need to collaborate across disciplines and a wide range of stakeholders. The aim of this conference is to expose research students to the opportunities of interdisciplinary research as well as the skills and tools they will need to work effectively in this context.
The conference will include keynotes from high-profile speakers on the challenge-led research landscape, as well as workshops on research programme road mapping and interdisciplinary collaboration. Students will have opportunities to practice these skills in small teams drawn from the diverse fields of our discipline, in order to develop their own collective research visions.
Speakers and Organising Committee
Meet our speakers and organising committee

Tim Storer
SICSA Deputy Director
Tim is a Senior Lecturer in Computing based within the School of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow.

Stuart Anderson
SICSA Director
Stuart Anderson is a Personal Chair in Dependable Systems in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh.

Andrei Petrovski
SICSA Graduate Academy Director
Andrei is a Reader within the School of Computing Science and Digital Media at Robert Gordon University.

Matthew Barr
SICSA Education Director
Matthew is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow.

Aileen Orr
SICSA Executive Officer
Aileen is the SICSA Executive Officer based at the University of Glasgow.

Ezra Schoen
Education Session Panellist
Ezra is a PhD student at the University of Strathclyde

Gregor Haywood
Education Session Panellist
Gregor is an Associate Lecturer at the University of St Andrews

Jack Parkinson
Education Session Panellist
Jack is a Research Associate at the University of Glasgow

Laura Larios-Jones
Education Session Panellist
Laura is a Postgraduate Research Student at the Univerity of Glasgow

Marianne Wilson
Education Session Panellist
Marianne is a Researcher PhD student at Edinburgh Napier University

Dr Jason Adair
SICSA Conference Academic Chair
Jason is a Lecturer in Data Science at the University of Stirling.

Dejice Jacob
Keynote Speaker
Dejice is a post-doctoral researcher in the Systems theme at the School of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow.

Elizabeth adams
Workshop Facilitator
Elizabeth is an external consultant with expertise in researcher development and research culture.

Simon Fowler
Candidate - Reverse Visa
Simon is a Lecturer in Programming Language Foundations at the University of Glasgow

Dr. Janette Wark PhD, RTTP
EPSRC’s Head of Regional Engagement
Janette has more than 25 years of experience as a researcher, academic, and entrepreneur, working with a broad range of stakeholders from across Scotland and the UK.

Ike Nkisi-Orji
Workshop Facilitator
Schedule
Vast number of different speeches and activities
9:00 – 9:30 | Reception area and Silver Glen Room
Registration and Coffee
9:30 – 9:50 | Blair Atholl Lecture Style
Welcome to the SICSA Conference 2023
Introducing the theme of the conference – setting research agendas.
The state goal of the workshop is to develop their own research roadmap for a collectively identified topic.
9:50 – 10:50 | Blair Atholl Lecture Style
Keynote Speaker: The CS and Informatics Research Challenge Landscape
10:50 – 11:20 | Silver Glen Room
Coffee Break
11:20 – 12:30 | Blair Atholl Lecture Style
Interactive Ice-breaker for small groups
12:30 – 13:30 | Restaurant
Lunch
13:30 – 15:30 | Parallel Sessions
Workshop | Iona | Working in multidisciplinary teams
Workshop | Blairlogie | Horizon Scanning
Workshop | Ochil | Collective paper authoring, challenges, practices, tooling
Workshop | Hermitage | Building a Research Roadmap
Meetup | Mull | SICSA Education Panel & Meetup
15:30 – 15:50 | Silver Glen Room
Coffee Break
15:50 – 17:15 | Various Breakout Rooms
Team reporting back, initial brainstorming, sketching roadmaps, workshop facilitators, new academics, and directors on hand for advice and guidance.
17:15 – 18:45 | Stirling Court Hotel
Accommodation Check-in
18:45 – 21:00 | Restaurant
Conference Reception and Dinner
8:45 – 9:15 | Reception area and Silver Glen Room
Registration and Coffee
9:15 – 9:30 | Blair Atholl Lecture Style
Day 2 Welcome and Overview
9:30 – 10:30 | Blair Atholl Lecture Style
Keynote 2: PhD Best Thesis runner-up. DrDejice Jacob, University of Glasgow
Building a career post-research degree
10:30 – 11:45 | Reverse Vivas
Reverse Viva 1 | Blairlogie | Software Engineering
Reverse Viva 2 | Hermitage | AI
Reverse Viva 3 | Iona | Systems
Reverse Viva 4 | Ochil | Theory
11:45 – 12:00 | Silver Glen Room
Coffee Break
12:00 – 13:30 | Various Breakout Rooms
Develop roadmap pitch presentations, facilitators, directors etc on hand to support
13:30 – 14:30 | Restaurant
Lunch
14:30 – 15:30 | Various Breakout Rooms | Roadmap Pitching Parallel Sessions
Pitching Session 1
Pitching Session 2
Pitching Session 3
Pitching Session 4
15:30 – 15:45 | Comfort Break
Judges Agree Finalists
15:45 – 16:45 | Blair Atholl Lecture Style
Pitching final (4 parallel session heat winners) and awards
16:45 – 17:15
Prizes, closing ceremony
The venue
Stirling Court Hotel
University of Stirling Stirling FK9 5PH
The SICSA Conference 2023 program of talks, workshops, and events will take place at Stirling Court Hotel. Located only a short distance from Stirling with great transport links from both Glasgow and Edinburgh, PhD students and early-career researchers attending universities all around Scotland can get together for a couple of days.
And, on the evening of Day 1 of the conference (September 11th) there will be a conference reception and dinner at the conference’s venue restaurant.
There are no registration fees and one night’s accommodation is provided for students who require to travel to the event free as the event is fully funded by SICSA. Overnight accommodation will be in the Stirling Court Hotel and the Holiday Inn Express (coach travel to the Holiday Inn Express will be provided).

SICSA Education Panel & Meetup
Workshop

Tutoring is often the first taste a PhD student gets of teaching. Whether helping out in a lab, leading tutorials, or even delivering your first lectures, teaching can sometimes be a daunting prospect if you’ve not done it before. In this panel, chaired by SICSA Education Director, Dr Matthew Barr, we’ll hear from five seasoned tutors about their experience of teaching: Gregor Haywood (University of St Andrews), Laura Larios-Jones (University of Glasgow), Jack Parkinson (University of Glasgow), Ezra Schoen (University of Strathclyde), and Marianne Wilson (Edinburgh Napier University). The panel session will be followed by an informal meet-up and networking opportunity.
Reverse Viva
Workshop

In this workshop, an established academic has their own PhD thesis “examined” by a panel of current students in front of an audience.
The goal of this is to give students a chance to be exposed to the kind of questions and answers they will face in their own vivas. We are planning to have multiple parallel sessions, each covering one of the SICSA research themes.
Register to the event
PhD Thesis Competition

The SICSA Graduate Academy is an integral part of SICSA. The breadth and depth of research carried out by graduate researchers across Scotland is stunning indeed. To recognise and celebrate the very best of this research, we are excited to announce the SICSA PhD Award for Best Dissertation in Scotland.
Selected from PhD dissertations awarded in the past year (2021/2022), the award is intended to recognise and honour outstanding research and exposition.
The submissions showcase the best exemplars of graduate research across Scotland, with entries from Scottish institutions. The submissions are reviewed by a selection committee consisting of senior researchers in Computer Science and Informatics and chaired by the SICSA Graduate Academy Director.
A prize of £2,000 will be awarded to the winning dissertation.
SICSA Education
Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship Programme 2023-24
Early to mid-career colleagues involved in teaching Computing Science and related subjects at SICSA member institutions are invited to apply for the SICSA Education Learning & Teaching Scholars programme.
Launched in 2022, the Scholars programme is designed to develop and support early-to-mid career CS academics with a focus on education. Successful applicants will take part in a series of online and in-person activities to develop their scholarship, culminating in the presentation of an idea that can be taken forward into a publication.
The programme will also include an online workshop on Learning & Teaching leadership, delivered by an experienced external partner. In addition, Scholars will be assigned a mentor, with whom they will meet a minimum of twice over the course of the programme. At the end of the programme, Scholars will be invited to write about their experience for the SICSA Education blog.
Applications from academics on Learning & Teaching contracts are particularly welcome. If you’re not sure if this is right for you, or if you have any questions about the programme, please contact our Education Director, Dr Matthew Barr: Matthew.Barr@glasgow.ac.uk.
Apply here:

Dates
21 August 2023 Applications open
20 September 2023 Appplications close
22 September 2023 Scholars announced