DSAIL - Newsletter June 2026
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Newsletter – June 2026
News and Announcements
Welcome to the June edition of the DSAIL newsletter. As the academic year draws to a close, we are pleased to share a number of recent highlights, opportunities and community updates from across the Institute. Our thanks go to our recent Data Dialogues speakers: Dr Nithin Sivadas (NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre and Catholic University of America), who joined us on 20th May to discuss regression to the mean as a fundamental property of the relation between truth and measurement; and Ellie Ball (Psychology), whose session “QR Code Security: Ignorance is Bliss” on 3rd June will examine user behaviour and the rapid rise of QR code fraud. Please do attend Ellie’s talk if you can (details below).
New PhD Representatives. We are delighted to welcome Rory Yeung (Lancaster Environment Centre & UKCEH) and Sahar Rameez (AI, Health Data & Mental Health Systems) as DSAIL’s PhD Representatives. We look forward to working with them to strengthen the student voice within the Institute and to build closer links with our postgraduate taught (PGT) community.
Helping London Marathon runners pick the right shoes. A Lancaster University project led by sports scientist Dr Hannah Jarvis (DSAIL Health Deputy) is using state-of-the-art motion capture technology to help marathon runners choose footwear that best supports their performance. Working in partnership with Sports Shoes and Qualisys AB, the team uses an array of motion-capture cameras to produce an AI-driven 3D gait analysis of runners on an instrumented treadmill – a powerful example of how AI and data science are being applied to real-world sports and health applications. Read the full story here.
New UK–Ukraine research partnerships. We are pleased to highlight new collaborations between Lancaster, Dnipro University of Technology and Kharkiv National Medical University. Dr Hannah Jarvis has recently secured funding from Cormack Consultancy Baltic to develop an adaptable prosthetic socket designed to improve comfort and gait function for military personnel from Ukraine injured in the ongoing conflict. Further details are available here.
A global view of Earth’s ‘magnetic shield’. A newly launched satellite, the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE), promises to deliver the first global view of how the Sun’s solar wind interacts with Earth’s magnetic environment. Dr Maria Walach (Department of Physics, Lancaster) is contributing to the scientific analysis of the mission data; her research on the coupling between the solar wind, the magnetosphere and the upper atmosphere underpins efforts to predict space weather and to protect the infrastructure it threatens. Read the full story here.
HackaCon – August–September 2026. Can AI convincingly synthesise a natural, spontaneous-sounding conversation between two specific speakers? This summer’s conversation hackathon invites participants to push the state of the art in AI-generated dialogue. Whilst speech synthesis and conversational AI are now familiar, generating credible, free-flowing interaction between identifiable speakers remains a remarkably difficult problem. Register to take part, with prizes awarded to those topping the leaderboard. Full background, motivation and rules are available on the HackaCon website, including The Challenge.
MARS: Call for Early Career Visiting Fellows 2026–2027. MARS: Mathematics for AI in Real-world Systems is offering three funded visiting fellowships, lasting four weeks each, to PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. Successful candidates will collaborate with MARS staff on either mathematical machine learning and AI methods, or applied mathematics aimed at real-world problems; further information about MARS’ research is available online. Fellowships may be taken up between 1st October 2026 and 31st July 2027, with travel and accommodation expenses reimbursed up to £4,000. The deadline is 17:00 BST on Friday 31st July 2026. Eligibility criteria and application details are available on the MARS visiting fellows page.
New members. We are pleased to welcome Megan Dewar (Linguistics), Xinyi Wu (Mathematical Sciences) and Clio Johnson (Mathematical Sciences) to the Institute.
Current DSAIL members are warmly encouraged to invite new Lancaster colleagues and students to join the Data Science & AI Institute. Interested candidates can reach out via dsail@lancaster.ac.uk or sign up here.
Events
Data Dialogues – 12 o’clock in Sky Lounge
Wednesday 3rd June - Ellie Ball (PhD Student - Psychology) - QR Code Security: Ignorance is Bliss
Ellie Ball is a final year PhD psychology student at Lancaster University, where she studies QR code engagement, looking specifically at QR code security and QR code scam susceptibility. Her work focuses on understanding how users, young and old, are interacting and behaving with QR codes in the domains of attitude, cognition, and behaviour to develop a deeper understanding of the factors that could make individuals vulnerable to QR code scams. QR codes have become an integral part of our digital environments but with that, the prevalence of QR code scams has increased, with Action Fraud reporting that between April 2024 and April 2025, £3.5 million was lost to fraudulent QR codes in the UK alone. Through her research, she aims to improve the efficacy and specificity of future scam intervention plans, to reduce the number of individuals falling victim to malicious QR codes.
Data Dialogues - Daniel Ronen Co-Founder, UAVAid - From Drones to QR Codes: Building Data Infrastructure for Large-Scale Community Reforestation
Wednesday 10th June - 12 o’clock in Sky Lounge
Large-scale reforestation programmes operating in infrastructure-constrained environments face major challenges of coordination, visibility, and verification. This talk examines the data systems and operational architecture developed through Project Sapling in Sierra Leone, and how these experiences are now informing the planned 30BY30 reforestation programme surrounding the Loma Mountains National Park. The presentation will explore how drones, QR-coded sapling identification, smartphone-based
Data Dialogues - Lena Podoletz (Security Protection Science) - The quantified home and investigative narratives
Wednesday 17th June - 12 o’clock in Sky Lounge
The quantified home and investigative narratives Summary: Smart home devices are becoming increasingly prevalent in today’s homes bringing with them issues around privacy and consent but also new uses in policing and criminal justice, including for investigations and evidence processes. This talk will introduce the concept of the ‘quantified home’ and raise key questions related to constructing investigative narratives from smart home data.
Bring your lunch - drinks and cakes will be provided at all these talks!
Friday Forecasting Talk is back!
Smooth forecasting with the smooth package in Python
Date: Friday, 5th June 2026
Time: 2:00 PM (UK)
We're excited to invite you to our next webinar, dedicated to the forecasting software development in Python.
The smooth package for Python was released in April 2026, bringing the ADAM framework (Augmented Dynamic Adaptive Model) to the Python ecosystem. ADAM unifies ETS, ARIMA, and regression in a single state-space framework, providing support for multiple seasonalities, non-normal distributions, intermittent demand modelling, and more.
In short: the package delivers flexibility in dynamic models you won’t find combined in any other Python forecasting package.
In this session, the core development team, Ivan Svetunkov, Filotas Theodosiou, and Leonidas Tsaprounis will walk you through the philosophy behind smooth, how it was ported from R to Python, what's already working, and what's coming next. The majority of the translation of the code was done using LLMs, and the speakers will explain how this was done.
Resul Akay from Quantrics.io — kicking off the dialogue and asking the hard questions
Whether you're a forecasting practitioner, a data scientist, or just curious about what state-of-the-art time series modelling with dynamic models looks like in Python, this talk is for you.
Full release post and benchmark results: https://openforecast.org/2026/04/09/smooth-forecasting-with-the-smooth-package-in-python/
For further information, please contact Kandrika Pritularga (k.pritularga@lancaster.ac.uk).
We invite you to the AI in Teaching and Assessment Summit funded by the Data Science & AI Institute on the 9thJune 2026 in LT03 in the Management School.
Teaching staff are very much on the front line when dealing with AI integrity issues. So far though, it seems institutions and even departments have wildly varying approaches to AI. Some might have a traffic light system for when students can use or not use AI, some have deep integration with technology companies and AI is embedded across their workflows. Others have neither and choose to ignore the integrity issues when grading AI written submissions. Staff members too have very polarising views on the use of AI. Moreover, less forward-looking or less resourced universities are simply leaving it to staff to experiment in the labyrinth of AI models available. Consistency therefore is clearly a problem and is only set to worsen through varying levels of institutional policy and provision. There is an urgent need for open discussion about how some departments are dealing with AI (or not). This workshop is a space for those of different faculties to share their experiences.
The AI in Teaching and Assessment summit brings together speakers and panelists from across Lancaster university to discuss AI in Assessments, AI in Assessing and AI in Teaching. We invite you to come with your experiences (warts and all), your savvy workarounds, your questions and your concerns.
Our schedule for the day can be found here (link to website)
The event is only open to registered attendees, and spaces are limited, so please register here. Lunch will be provided.
DSAIL Health - Seminar and Networking event with Lunch
25th June at 13:30 to 14:30 - InfoLab, Sky Lounge
Please sign up here
Please come and join for a DSAIL Health seminar, discussion and networking event with Lunch provided.
We have two speakers from the Biomedical and Life Sciences area:
Dr. Stefanie Menzies:
Title: Applying de novo protein design tools to discover new therapeutics for tropical diseases
Summary: Dr Stefanie Menzies will discuss her early experiences using AI-enabled de novo protein design tools, including BindCraft and AWS BioDiscovery, to explore new therapeutic approaches for neglected tropical diseases such as snakebite and viral haemorrhagic fevers. The talk will cover the practical workflow from AI-assisted design through to protein production and preliminary experimental testing. As this is an early-stage project, the seminar will focus on the workflow, current progress and limitations.
Dr. Barbara Shih
Title: Use of single-cell RNA-sequencing to understand Atlantic salmon wound healing
Summary: Dr Barbara Shih will discuss her experience with machine-learning-based bioinformatic tools used in single-cell RNA-sequencing analysis. Single-cell RNA sequencing is a technique that allows researchers to study how genes are used in individual cells. While it is a powerful method for understanding cellular dynamics, data interpretation is technically challenging. The talk will focus on data processing considerations and the existing tools that are commonly used in single-cell RNA sequencing analysis, and how they are used to study wound healing in Atlantic salmon.
The Leipzig Symposium on Intelligent Systems (LEISYS) is delighted to celebrate its fifth anniversary with an exciting week of research-focused events taking place from 6th –10th July 2026. We warmly invite you to join us either in person on campus in Leipzig, Germany, or, for selected events, online via Microsoft Teams.
This special anniversary edition will bring together researchers, students, and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines to exchange ideas, foster new collaborations, and explore the latest developments in intelligent systems, artificial intelligence, and data science.
The programme will include:
• Research talks on machine learning, artificial intelligence, and intelligent systems
• A two-day interdisciplinary workshop on data narratives (funded by the Data Science and AI Institute, DSAIL)
• An interdisciplinary “AI4Science” match-making event in elevator-pitch format (in collaboration with the Leipzig Science Network, LSN)
• An interdisciplinary poster session
• A student workshop on “Generative AI for Software Engineering”
• Social events and networking opportunities
Participation is free of charge; however, registration is required.
For registration details and the full programme schedule, please visit the LEISYS webpage
The LEISYS organising team very much looks forward to welcoming you to Leipzig this July!
Reminders
Welcome to the annual FACTOR Summer School, running 0930-1445 on both Thu 11th and Fri 12th June 2026.
Last chance to Book your place
Prob_AI Winter School - 5th to 8th January 2027
Applications
Places are limited and we strongly encourage early application to have the best likelihood of getting a place.
Applications must be received by Friday 19th June.
For full details and to register, please see: https://www.probai.ac.uk/events/event/?id=407a03e5-a96f-4e78-99a9-2bc6ed3ae5f0
Turing News and Events
Dr George Williamson CMG has been appointed as the CEO of the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national AI and data science institute, to lead a new phase in the organisation’s evolution.
He will join the Turing from HMGCC (His Majesty’s Government Communications Centre), where as CEO he led the organisation’s work to create tools and technologies for the national security community.
George Williamson joins the Turing at a crucial time, with the Institute embarking on a new programme of work to build sovereign capability for national resilience in domains such as defence, security, critical infrastructure, environment and sustainability. Find out more here
Building and procuring sustainable Defence AI will boost force resilience
New research reveals that considering sustainability measures will increase the resilience of Defence AI systems.Read more here.
New project to build trust in AI for air traffic control
The Alan Turing Institute is set to build the first open-source toolkit for continuously assuring the trustworthiness of digital twins used in safety-critical settings, starting with air traffic control, as part of a new research grant. Read more here.
Turing Internship Network – applications now open
The Turing Internship Network has opened applications for its next round of 3–12 month paid internships for PhD candidates
- 4 opportunities in the justice, financial, AI safety sectors and NLP/information retrieval
- Flexible options for part-time or full-time working
- Deadline to apply: 16th June 2026
Through a paid Turing Internship Network (TIN) placement, doctoral students have the opportunity to apply research to real-world challenges, collaborate with innovative teams and gain invaluable experience.
This round of internships includes placements in key development areas of data science and AI. Our available internships are:
- Ministry of Justice UK – BOLD Prevention Advanced Analytics
- HSBC – Data Scientist
- The Alan Turing Institute, AICD (Defence & National Security) – Autonomous Systems Hardening using Agents
- The Alan Turing Institute, TIRE (Defence & National Security) – Advancing Multimodal and Multilingual Information Retrieval Across Languages and Modalities
Find out more and apply here.
Phi-ML meets Engineering: Flexible and Resource-efficient Foundation Models for Scientific Applications, 4th June 2026, 13:00 - 14:00
Part of the Phi-ML meets Engineering seminar series.
This talk will present recent advances in the field that render the foundation-model paradigm practical for scientific applications. Foundation models hold significant promise for addressing the data scarcity problem inherent to scientific AI applications: fine-tuning is serving as the key mechanism to overcome this limitation.
Fine-tuning a pretrained model typically requires only a fraction of the original training data while still producing accurate and generalizable models. Specifically, I will discuss strategies to mitigate the substantial data requirements associated with pre-training foundation models, alongside a flexible architecture for fine-tuning task-specific models.
In order to attend, subscribe to the mailing list.
Find out more here.
Calls for Papers
Reminders
Call for Papers: Societal Impact of Digital Twins – Special Collection with Cambridge University Press
If you are planning on submitting a paper, it would be very helpful if you could fill in this form: Special Collection: Perspectives on the Societal Impact of Digital Twins – Fill in form
This does not commit you but will help us with planning and looking for reviewers.
Details on how to submit: Call for Papers: Perspectives on the Societal Impact of Digital Twins
Accepted manuscripts will be published in Cambridge University Press journals:
Submission Deadline: 30th June 2026
Funding
Video games and gambling-related harms
We’re welcoming applications from any discipline for funding to explore the relationship between gambling and video games and produce evidence-based insights to:
· inform strategies and interventions to prevent, treat or reduce gambling-related harms
· shape policy, regulation and best practice
· promote safe and responsible video games
This opportunity is part of the UKRI Research Programme on Gambling. Apply by 23rd July.
Mathematical Sciences Early Independence Fellowship
Apply for an early independence fellowship if your research focus is within EPSRC Mathematical Sciences remit. You must have:
- a PhD
- evidence of career consolidation and past productivity
- plans for establishing your own research niche that enables a step-change towards independence
Reminders
Prob AI Funding for Discipline Hopping Awards for researchers to support a move into the area of probabilistic AI research. The maximum project value is £50k (Prob_AI will contribute 80% FEC to this).
The deadline for completed applications is Tuesday 1st September 2026. Decisions are expected by the end of October 2026.
For more details see:https://www.probai.ac.uk/funding/
ADR UK is inviting applications from existing Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTPs) to host a cohort of PhD studentships using ADR UK linked administrative data.
This funding opportunity is for PhD Supervisors. The successful studentships will be announced in January 2027, and following recruitment, the PhD students will start in October 2027.
The DTP deadline for applications is 16:00 on 15th September 2026.
Current Job/PhD Opportunities
The Alan Turing Institute
Theme Lead – AI for Climate Resilience (Principal Research Scientist)
Apply hereby 7th June
In an era of increasing environmental volatility, weather and climate prediction are crucial for national security and global resilience. These capabilities provide the early warning systems required to protect infrastructure and ensure the security of food, water, and energy. This field is being fundamentally re-engineered by Artificial Intelligence; global weather forecasting AI models are now thousands of times faster than traditional numerical prediction and frequently outperform conventional models in both accuracy and efficiency. Developing sovereign AI capabilities in this space is essential to ensure the UK possesses the independent and trusted tools to manage risk and accelerate decision-making.
Lancaster Medical School
NIHR Clinical Lectureship x2 - 0151-26
Linguistics and English Language
Research Associate - Statistician - 0333-26
School of Computing and Communications
Senior Research Associate in Medical Device Cyber Security - 0335-26
School of Mathematical Sciences
Research Associate x2 - 0376-26
Senior Research Associate - DASS - 0264-26
Related Blogs
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Ai and Trust: Teaching and Assessment Summit 9th June 2026
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Born into Care: international perspectives on the removal of babies at birth. Bristol University Policy Press, May 2026
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Q-Day: Quantum security apocalypse or crypto meltdown that won't ever happen?
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed by our bloggers and those providing comments are personal, and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of Lancaster University. Responsibility for the accuracy of any of the information contained within blog posts belongs to the blogger.
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