Understanding and Nurturing an Integrated Vision for Education in RSE and HPC (UNIVERSE-HPC) will define a training curriculum framework - spanning undergraduate to continuing professional development - for Research Software Engineers (RSEs) specialising in high performance computing (HPC). It will develop the curriculum and necessary course materials to underpin a professional Masters programme in RSE and HPC, supported by cohort- and community-building activities, acting as a knowledge integration hub for those with a stake in education and training for RSEs, including those funded by this call and existing and future initiatives in this area. This will provide clear routes to enable more people from a wide diversity of disciplines and backgrounds to obtain the skills and experience they require to have a successful RSE career: working within centres of excellence, RSE groups, and embedded in research groups. Together this will provide the skilled workforce required by the UK to harness large-scale computing as the UK prepares to exploit exascale.

Computer Science is facing an international crisis. For many reasons, the number of students applying to University to study the subject has been dropping for several years. There are too few Computer Scientists to meet the country's future needs. This problem was singled out as the most significant risk to the UK computing industry in the recent EPSRC International Review. The possible harmful impact to the UK economy is great. To overcome this requires urgent and major, long-term effort.A critical part of the problem is that many children and teachers do not fully understand what Computer Science is. Many do not see either the intellectual challenge or the relevance of computer science to the world around them and are largely unaware of the many subjects computer science touches on. To choose it as a career, students need not only to understand what it involves but must also be enthused. This kind of problem cannot be solved in a short project, but only through consolidated effort over a long period.The ongoing cs4fn project, that this proposal supports, combines a website, magazine and live shows on computer science research using a special off-beat style. We have already shown that cs4fn enthuses school children and helps them understand.This can be seen by the many positive comments of students and teachers we have received as well as, for example, from the numbers of people visiting the website and asking for the magazine. cs4fn has also helped successfully increased University applications locally.cs4fn tackles the significant problems in motivating school students to choose computer science as a subject to study, demonstrating for example the difference between school ICT and Computer Science. It also provides an effective link between school and university study, introducing university level topics through fun activities.cs4fn introduces its readers to the virtues of computational thinking. This is a key part of a computer science education, and many have argued it is the key intellectual skill for the 21st century, preparing students for a wide range of computing and non-computing careers. cs4fn makes readers think about ethical issues and the way new technology shapes society. It also provides a resource to excite students about science and engineering more generally, helping to deal with similar issues in other subjects.This proposal seeks funds to both continue and expand cs4fn to help solve these strategically significant national issues by creating a national marketing campaign around it. We believe that by providing this national resource the general level of applications can be improved across the UK just as we have already achieved locally.To have a wide and lasting impact it is vitally important that the project lasts at least 5 years, not only to reach successive years of school children, but also to reinforce the message both to those children and the teachers who advise them. This extended time is also needed to help other Universities build up skills in communicating the excitement of Computer Science to the public.The effect of the project over the 5 years will be independently evaluated and the lessons learned as to what works, and how, will be shared with others. A business plan for its continued stability will also be developed.

The global Information Technology (IT) sector is characterised by low participation of women and the UK is no exception. In response, UK organizations (e.g. Women in Technology), committees (e.g. BCS Women) and campaigns (e.g. Computer Clubs for Girls) have been set up to address the problem and increase the small and falling number of women in IT education, training and employment. To complement and provide an evidence base for future interventions this project will adopt a new approach, differentiated from existing research by considering the problem from two unexplored angles simultaneously. First, India, in comparison with most OECD countries, has a much higher proportion of women working as IT specialists; the project will compare the experiences of IT workers in India and the UK to see what the UK can learn from the Indian case. Secondly, the research will explore the insights of migrant women and men who move between UK and India and have experience of both work cultures in order to obtain new insights into gender norms in each country as well as best practice. Through this multidisciplinary, comparative analysis across the two countries, and of the experiences of migrants, 2 significant but separate fields of academic research will be brought together: 1) gender issues in IT, and 2) gender and skilled migration. The questions the research seeks to answer are: a) What are the patterns of gender differences in the labour market among migrant and non-migrant workers in the IT sector in India and the UK? This aims to identify differences in occupational roles, wages, and whether size of firms or other demographic variables matter; b) What processes have led to different gendered patterns of workplace experiences among migrant and non-migrant workers in the IT sector in India and the UK? This question's comparative approach will address a specific knowledge gap by exploring the perspectives of men as well as women, migrants as well as non-migrants, in both countries; c) is oriented around the concerns of businesses and policy-makers and asks, what is the role of firms, industry and national regulations and cultures in creating barriers and opportunities for migrant and non-migrant men and women's career entry and progression and labour markets? The answers will be sought from HR managers and policy makers in both countries; d) acknowledges that many firms are already trying to develop organisational cultures and career pathways to address the gender disparity in the IT sector; it asks, what are the best practices for integrating women into firms in each country and how does this differ by migration status? This question involves exploring the experiences of migrant men as well as migrant and non-migrant women, and establishes mechanisms for sharing best practice between firms and between the two countries. To ensure the research is timely, relevant and will generate useful information, it was developed through conversations with the Indian and UK IT sectors' key professional and trade associations, chartered bodies, IT education campaigners and advocates, and multinational IT companies. During the project, individual representatives from 5 of these organizations - a Professional Advisory Group (PAG) - will meet regularly with the researchers, to discuss the findings and offer advice. The IT companies will facilitate the research by introducing the researchers to voluntary cohorts of men and women IT employees in each country. Because of the urgency of the issue the firms and PAG have asked for 3 best practice guides during the project. At the end of the project, the researchers will produce a targeted report for the PAG organisations and for firms. Through the PAG, this report will be disseminated to their corporate memberships, numbering in the thousands, and to UK and Indian policy makers through focused workshops. Other users of the research include the OECD and IOM with which the researchers have links.

Broad ThemesCrime and terrorism threaten States, businesses and individuals; they increasingly exploit technology, sometimes more effectively than the security forces that oppose them. Our proposed Security Science DTC aims to promote fundamental science and research but to do so in a training environment that will provide a broader understanding of these threats; the pace at which they evolve, and the extent to which holistic responses are increasingly required if we are to contain them or to recover more rapidly from attack. We aim to prepare a future generation of security scientists better able to face these rapidly emerging new threats in crime and security. To do so this DTC will catalyse a truly interdisciplinary research effort that brings together multiple domains in security science to focus on the physical and cyber security of the State (borders and critical infrastructures, broadly construed, including financial, transport, energy, health and communication), business and the individual. Need and impact on the research landscape Science and technology have been utilized to protect against the threats outlined above, yet it is now widely accepted that security must be integrated, with a much greater awareness of the environmental operating contexts. This need has been expressed by governments (through policy papers and the creation of new bodies with interorganisational mandates such as the Serious and Organised Crime Agency), industry (through their increasing engagement with academic institutions to develop a new generation of security technologies that take into account factors such as behavioral response and ethical sensitivity) and research councils (eg. through their new 'Global Uncertainties: Security for all in a changing world' programme which cuts across all research council remits). The EPSRC is in an ideal position to invest in a national DTC where a critical mass of researchers can foster innovation and encourage and nurture an integrated systems approach that recognizes the importance of environmental context, human factors, and public policy to security solutions. This vision is based on the observation that the benefits of introducing advanced technologies into the security arena are significantly enhanced by engagement with the broader social, political and economic contexts within which those technological solutions apply. It is clear that disciplines as far apart as psychology and electronic engineering should come together in new ways to combat security threats in a holistic manner. This enhanced sensitivity to interconnectedness and multidisciplinary will lead to more effective science and encourage synergies to develop, increase knowledge transfer and facilitate engagement with end-users. Security is a challenging domain that drives adventurous research in a wide range of disciplines represented in this proposal (e.g. cryptography, radiation physics, nanotechnology). A DTC that helps secure the future supply of researchers with strong links to and appreciation of problems in the security context will help support the long term vigour of these disciplines. The DTC will also provide the UK with a hub to spark synergistic collaboration with other centres working in these areas such as the US Centres for Excellence (eg. National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), University of Maryland). We further believe that this DTC in integrated security science will act as a prototype for future similar activities around the world. Ultimately, research associated with this DTC will help to position the UK as the international leader in the development of a uniquely equipped generation of security scientists, delivering innovative research to meet one of society's greatest challenges.