The University is one of 21 universities to receive the status by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) - the UK's lead technical authority on cyber security.

It is one of several initiatives outlined in the UK government’s ‘Protecting and promoting the UK in a digital world’, which describes how the government is working with academia and industry to make the UK more resilient to cyber attacks.

The scheme aims to enhance the quality and scale of academic cybersecurity research and postgraduate training being undertaken in the UK; make it easier for potential users of research to identify the best cybersecurity research and postgraduate training that the UK has to offer; and help to develop a shared vision and aims among the UK cybersecurity research community, inside and outside academia.

The Centre will be led by colleagues in the University’s , which has a long history of world-leading cyber security research and will be directed by and co-directed by Professor Daniel Dresner and .

Nicholas Lord, Professor of Criminology at The University of Manchester, said: “We are very proud to be recognised as an Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research. Receiving this status is further recognition of our long-standing commitment to world-leading cyber security research and key to the realisation of our five-year research plan.

“Our cyber security research has been a focal point for the University since founding our Digital Futures platform in 2018, with our sociotechnical approach to cyber security coming together recognisably in 2021 by the creation of our Centre for Digital Trust and Society - a truly unique Centre with a strong interdisciplinary nature.

“Over the next five years we hope that we can use our ACE-CSR recognition to strengthen our collaborations with other ACEs and NCSC, as well as enhance our collaborations with the Greater 91ֱ�� Combined Authority with a view to integrating cyber security into the city region’s business community.”

Professor Colette Fagan, Vice-President for Research at The University of Manchester, added: “I am thrilled that our University has been recognised as an Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research. This achievement, led by our Centre for Digital Trust and Security, underscores our commitment to pioneering cyber security research and innovation through interdisciplinary collaborative research. This approach and ambition is vital to ensure that the benefits of the rapid pace of technological change are developed in ways that ensure a safe and more secure digital world for our citizens and organisations.”

The University was required to show evidence of NCSC’s tough standards to be considered, including: commitment from the University's leadership team to support and invest in the University's cyber security research capacity and capability; a critical mass of academic staff engaged in leading-edge cyber security research; a proven track record of producing high impact cyber security research; and sustained funding from a variety of sources to ensure the continuing financial viability of the research team's activities.

Chris Ensor, Deputy Director Cyber Growth at NCSC, said: “I’m delighted that 21 universities have been recognised as Academic Centres of Excellence in Cyber Security Research, including four who have received the award for the first time. These recognitions are testament to the dedication of academics, support staff and senior management who have ensured that cyber security remains high on the university’s agenda. And they demonstrate that the UK has a growing number of world-class universities carrying out cutting-edge research into all areas of cyber security. We very much look forward to working with them over the coming years to tackle the most difficult cyber security challenges.”

The Centre for Digital Trust and Society at The University of Manchester is one of few cyber and digital security and trust research centre in the UK led from social science, rather than a computer science or engineering department.

It focuses on barriers to, and enablers of, trust in digital and cyber technologies and has more than 80 active researchers affiliated to the Centre.

The Centre prides itself on its strong interdisciplinary engagement across the University and supports six multi-disciplinary research clusters: Trusted Digital Systems, Digital Technologies and Crime, Workplace and Organisational Security, Democracy and Trust, Privacy and Trust and Advanced Mathematics.

Dr Mustafa, Senior Lecturer in Systems and Software Security at The University of Manchester, said: “While our cybersecurity research across the Department of Computer Science provides the fundamentals and foundations of our Centre’s research, our social science academics provide the societal relevance and context: secure cyber and digital systems are grounded in everyday human behaviours and interactions. It is for this reason that we coordinate our sociotechnical cybersecurity research activities ensuring the people and social factors remain central. We do this by engaging in cross-cluster and cross-disciplinary research activities, realising our sociotechnical work through internally and externally funded research.”

Over the next five years, researchers will work on a wide range of projects from cyber security controls, building secure and safe (AI) software to counter threats, through understanding offending and victimisation of cybercrimes, to the application of cyber security research in development and industry, as well as the cyber risks to political-economic systems and organisational workplaces, and the need for data privacy and security.

The ACE-CSR will continue to hold strong national and international links - in particular - to work with its partners in the Greater 91ֱ�� Cyber Ecosystem and the wider North West Cyber Corridor.

91ֱ�� made one of the largest and broadest REF submissions in the UK, entering 2,249 eligible researchers across 31 subject areas.

Overall, 93% of the University’s research activity was assessed as ‘world-leading’ (4*) or ‘internationally excellent’. We also ranked in 10th place in terms of grade point average², an improvement from 19^th in the previous exercise, REF 2014. 

The Times Higher Education places us even higher at 8^th on GPA (up from 17^th place), as their analysis excludes specialist HE institutions. This result was built upon a significant increase in research assessed as ‘world leading’ (4*) between REF 2014 and REF 2021.

Researchers from the University consistently make an important contribution to solving the world’s most urgent problems, with the University ranking 9th in the world for delivering against the UN Sustainable Development Goals in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings. 

Examples of this impact highlighted in the REF include improving cancer treatment, reducing carbon emissions from shipping and aviation and shaping international development policy to reduce poverty.

Many of these case studies are now published on the University website. They provide examples of how University of Manchester research has made a positive contribution to society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment, quality of life and the economy - with benefits felt beyond academia.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor of The University of Manchester, said: "These comprehensive and independent results confirm 91ֱ��'s place as a global powerhouse of research.

“We create an environment where researchers can thrive and exchange ideas. Most importantly, the quality and impact of our research is down to the incredible dedication and creativity of our colleagues who work every day to solve significant world problems, enrich our society and train the next generation of researchers.

“The fact that our REF results are accompanied by examples of the real difference we’ve made in the world, all driven from this city makes me very proud.”

Detailed results have now been published on the University website. The University came in the top three nationally for the following subjects (Unit of Assessment by grade point average or research power): 

• Allied Health Professions, Dentistry, Nursing and Pharmacy
• Business and Management Studies
• Chemistry
• Classics
• Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
• Development Studies
• Engineering
• Physics
• Sociology

The University had 19 subjects in the top ten overall by grade point average and 15 when measured by research power.

The REF exercise also evaluated the University’s work to provide a creative, ambitious and supportive research environment, in which researchers at every career stage can develop and thrive as leaders in their chosen field. In this category, the University achieved a result of 99% internationally excellent or world leading, making it one of the best places in the country to build a research career.

¹ Research Power is calculated by grade point average, multiplied by the number of FTE staff submitted (FTE - full-time equivalent head count) and gives a measure of scale and quality. Grade Point Average (GPA) measures overall or average quality of research, which takes no account of the FTE submitted.

² Grade point average is a measure of the overall or average quality of research calculated by multiplying the percentage of research in each grade by its rating, adding them all together and dividing by 100.

Two students from have won the highest award possible at this year’s prestigious  in Dublin, Ireland.

Aayush Chadha and Stefan Pricopie were the Global Winners in the Engineering and Economics categories, respectively. They took home the for their academic research and presentations, while fellow University student Samanyou Garg was the Regional Winner in the Computer Science category.

Aayush won his award for his final year project, “BL!NK: Detecting, Analysing and Storing Eye Blinks”. He developed a system to detect and track eye blinking, with applications in monitoring Parkinson’s disease.

His work brings together his background in computer science, with elements of physics, health, and engineering. The senor was built using graphene, because “it is very conductive and very sensitive”, says Aayush. It was then connected to a data storage device, where the data could be processed to identify blink characteristics such as frequency.

Speaking about his project, Aayush said; “While the project had elements that directly applied knowledge of Computer Science, most of the work required a good understanding of the physics involved, which was something I had to build up as I went along.”

He added; “Thankfully, I had great support from my supervisory team, Prof Thomas Thomson and Dr Gregory Auton!”

Samanyou won his award for a project on facial recognition in groups of people. “Automatic facial emotion recognition is a challenging task that had gained significant scientific interest,” Samanyou explains, “but the problem of emotion recognition for a group of people has been less extensively studied.”

Samanyou’s project aimed to overcome some of the problems faced in group recognition, such as head and body pose variations, variable lighting conditions, and variable image quality. He used a dataset of more than 10,000 images to train recognition models, using a hybrid machine learning system that incorporated deep neural networks and Bayesian classifiers.

Remarking on the significance of his achievement, Aayush said; “The Undergraduate Award means a much more widespread recognition of the idea’s merit, and its potential to be useful in the future. For a long time, eye blinking wasn’t looked at actively as a potential biomarker for tracking Parkinson’s disease, something which may now change.”

Similarly, Samanyou said; “Receiving the Undergraduate Award is an absolute honour for me. Being recognised by UA for the work that I put in is so very special to me, as it means that my work had some meaningful impact and motivates me to work even harder.”

The students attended a three-day summit in Dublin, where they were presented with their awards, as well as the opportunity to network with other winners and nominees. “I was able to meet people working on similar subjects,” said Aayush, adding; “Not only did that allow me to look at some of the problems I encountered from another perspective, but it also meant that I now have valuable contacts to reach out to in case I want to collaborate, or understand something about my research topic that doesn’t exactly fall in the purview of my project.”

Samanyou said; “It was an amazing experience at the 3-day summit where I had the opportunity to meet and share research with some highly motivated and passionate people from around the world. The future felt far less daunting after hearing solutions to real-world problems from a multi-disciplinary perspective.

“I would also like to thank The University of Manchester and my supervisor Prof Angelo Cangelosi for their support and for making this trip possible.”

The summit also gave the students the chance to explore Dublin, where they found themselves “drinking Guinness and Jameson’s, dancing to Irish folk music and composing limericks”, says Aayush.

The full list of Undergraduate Award winners from the University is;

· Global Winner – Aayush Chadha (Engineering)

· Global Winner – Stefan Pricopie (Economics)

· Regional Winner – Samanyou Garg (Computer Science)

· Highly Commended – Andrej Ivanon (Computer Science)

· Highly Commended – Igor Wodiany (Computer Science)

· Highly Commended – Matthew Caine (Politics and International Relations)

· Highly Commended – Otilia Vintu (Anthropology and Cultural Studies)

14 researchers from are some of the most highly cited in their field, in a new list from the released this week.

They include Prof Sir Andre Geim and Prof Sir Kostya Novoselov, the co-discovers of graphene at the University in 2004, for which they won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010. Also on the list is fellow graphene researcher, Prof Irina Grigorieva, as well as Prof Jorgen Vestbo, a researcher in respiratory medicine, and Prof Frank Geels, and expert in energy and sustainability.

The list identifies scientists and social scientists who produced multiple papers ranking in the top 1% by citations for their field and year of publication, demonstrating significant research influence among their peers.

The methodology that determines the who’s who of influential researchers draws on the data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts from the Institute for Scientific Information at the Web of Science Group.

The data are taken from 21 broad research fields within Essential Science Indicators, a component of . The fields are defined by sets of journals and exceptionally, in the case of multidisciplinary journals such as Nature and Science, by a paper-by-paper assignment to a field based on an analysis of the cited references in the papers. This percentile-based selection method removes the citation advantage of older papers relative to recently published ones, since papers are weighed against others in the same annual cohort.

Listed University researchers;

Prof Sir Andre Geim, Dr Artem Mischenko, Prof Christian Klingenberg, Prof David Denning, Dr Donald Ward, Prof Frank Geels, Prof Irina Grigorieva, Prof Jorgen Vestbo, Prof Judith Allen, Prof Sir Kostya Novoselov, Prof Rahul Nair, Prof Richard Bardgett, Dr Roman Gorbachev, and Prof Zhiguo Ding.

A team of students from have won an award for genetically modifying bacteria to produce kinder hair-dyes.

The eight students, with academic guidance from the , the , and the , genetically engineered E. coli bacteria to secrete proteins which could colour, repair, straighten, and fragrance hair.

For their work, they were awarded a gold medal in the (iGEM) competition. The focus of iGEM is to provide a synthetic biology-based solution to a real-world problem.

The project aimed to explore an alternative to current hair-dyes which use often harmful chemicals, leading to allergic reactions in users, as well as environmental damage if not disposed of properly. They can also cause bleaching and brittle hair, and have been tentatively suggested as a potential carcinogen.

“The initial idea,” said Elisa Barrow Molina, a third year biotechnology student, “came from an article we saw about how hair dyes could cause alarming reactions in some users.”

The students genetically modified a strain of E. coli which naturally adheres to hair to secrete a dye, replacing the use of potential pollutant and carcinogens.

After this initial idea, they also realised they could modify the bacteria to secrete other products, such as proteins to repair hair, and compounds to fragrance it. Through experiments, the students showed that their engineered bacteria were resilient when exposed to stresses such as chlorine or shampoo.

They encountered several challenges during the process, though the biggest one “depends on who you ask!”, as the division of labour meant they were all meeting and overcoming different headaches during their work.

Camilo Albornoz Carranza, a third year neuroscientist, says; “The synthetic biology was out of my comfort zone, but winning a gold medal vindicates all the work we put in.”

On this note, the students are all in agreement. “This shows we did something worthwhile,” they say, considering it justification for the three months of lab work they put in over the summer. The award from iGEM “closes the chapter”, says Elisa.

“That’s the thing about iGEM,” adds Sophie Guillemot, a third year chemist, “it’s about bringing ideas to the table and leaving them for the next team to develop further.”

While they are not currently planning to commercialise the bacteria, the students also carefully considered potential safety concerns should their product ever make it to market. To address these, the students designed and computationally modelled two genetic ‘kill-switches’, which would prevent the engineered bacteria either surviving away from hair, or developing pathogenicity.

“In ten or twenty years,” notes second year molecular biologist Thomas Harrison, “I think genetically modified bacteria will be part of our lives on a very intimate, primary level.”

The project was initially financed by the University, but the students also sought out sponsors and private donors. They also consulted with the public and hair care experts, which resulted in the introduction of a straightening protein to their final design, as well as the exploration of a large range of colours.

Going forward, the team plan to focus on their individual degrees. For some of them, the iGEM project has helped them to decide where they would like to work in the future. Mujtaba Ansari, a third year biotechnology student, says; “By participating, I’ve discovered that I really like research and lab work, and it’s definitely something I’d like to do in the future.”

Prof Eriko Takano, supervisor of the iGEM team says “We are now looking for enthusiastic students to join the next year’s team. This is a great opportunity, not just for biology students but for students from all faculties who want to explore the revolutionary impact of new technologies and push their skills to new limits”.