News

Keep up to date with the latest news from the Department of Computer Science.

• Artist Provenance expert and CTO of Massive Attack visits University for collaborative activities exploring AI, copyright and creative authorship

  21 May 2026

  Occurring at a pivotal moment in the debates around AI and intellectual property, the visit also highlights a number of timely developments in the artist provenance sphere. These include the appointment of Sir Robin Jacob, former Lord Justice of Appeal in Intellectual Property, to the Genotone Ltd. advisory board, a significant endorsement of artist provenance infrastructure.  Andrew Melchior is a British-German creative technologist with over 25 years at the intersection of music, technology, and art. As CTO of Massive Attack and founder of Genotone Ltd, he has spent his career building the infrastructure that connects creative practice to emerging technology, from pioneering work on one of the world's first artist websites with David Bowie in 1999 to encoding Massive Attack's Mezzanine into synthetic DNA with ETH Zürich.  Andrew advises the UK government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Working Groups on AI and copyright, representing coalitions of over 30,000 artists through the Music Managers Forum, Featured Artists Coalition, and AFEM. He is a leading voice on artist provenance, AI transparency, and the future of creative rights in the age of generative AI.  At the heart of the visit was the major public lecture Proof of Human: AI, Copyright, and the Fight for Creative Authorship, which took place at the heart of the Innovation District at SISTER.  In this special lecture and discussion, Andrew Melchior presented a compelling case for strengthening creative authorship in the era of generative AI.  Drawing on his experience advising UK government technical working groups on AI and copyright, Melchior explored how large-scale AI systems trained on vast datasets of copyrighted material, often without consent or compensation are disrupting established frameworks for protecting creative work. He argued that the challenge facing artists today is not only legal but infrastructural: without reliable systems to verify authorship and trace creative lineage, existing rights regimes cannot be effectively enforced.  Following the lecture, he was joined in conversation by John McGrath, Artistic Director and Chief Executive of Factory International, and responded to audience questions.  Earlier in the day, Melchior lead an interactive masterclass for undergraduate and postgraduate music and composition students.  The session focussed on practical workflows for producing and releasing music while maintaining provenance and control of intellectual property in a rapidly evolving AI landscape. Students engaged directly with Melchior and explored the real-world implications of emerging technologies on their creative practice.  The visit also included a roundtable discussion bringing together academic experts and policymakers. They examined the relationship between music, culture, technology, and Manchester’s creative heritage; the impact of AI and other technologies on the creative industries and mechanisms to protect the rights and livelihoods of creative practitioners.  This visit was part of Creative Manchester’s ongoing commitment to fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and critical debate at the intersection of culture, technology, and society.

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• Look Back: The Past, Present and Future of the Computer in Electronic Music

  30 Apr 2026

  On 25 March, Creative Manchester hosted a research café exploring Manchester’s role in the development of electronic music, from the earliest computers through to present advances in human-machine collaboration. Organised with help from the Department of Computer Science, ‘Music and Manchester: The Past, Present and Future of the Computer in Electronic Music’ addressed the city’s contributions to electronic music from an interdisciplinary perspective. The event explored the themes in computer science, musical composition and history, and asked what Manchester’s past can tell us about the future of machine‑assisted creativity.  Manchester’s influence on popular music has long been celebrated, with bands such as Oasis, The Smiths and Joy Division/New Order cementing the city’s reputation. Furthermore, Manchester’s contributions to computing are well known, with the University of Manchester celebrating 75 years since the development of the Turing Test this academic year. However, far less attention has been afforded to the intersection of these two histories, the city’s contributions to electronic music.   The event addressed three main components of this musical relationship: the early development of electronic music and Turing's work in Manchester; electronic music facilities and research at The University of Manchester throughout the years; and contemporary human-machine collaborations shaping the future of electronic music.   The event began with a welcome address by Creative Manchester Director, Professor John McAuliffe, before Dr Riza Batista-Navarro (Senior Lecturer in Text Mining and Creative Manchester Theme Lead for Creative Industries and Innovation/CreaTech) introduced the aims and speakers for the day.   The first lightning talk was delivered by Dr Jonathan Swinton, a former mathematical biologist and author of Alan Turing’s Manchester. Dr Swinton highlighted that Turing himself was not especially interested in musical composition. Instead, it was the need to market computers that encouraged early experiments in using machines for entertainment. While Turing did not compose electronic music, contemporaries such as Christopher Strachey were instrumental in developing some of the earliest computer-generated works.  Dr Iain Emsley (Research Software Engineer, Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick) then turned to the representation of sound in computing, drawing on the archive of Eric Sunderland, a maintenance engineer on Manchester’s Atlas machine who created polyphonic music using the computer. Dr Emsley highlighted the challenges of researching such archives, which are often incomplete: while numerical data survives, the sounds and voices those numbers once represented are frequently lost.  Manchester’s electroacoustic heritage was explored further by Professor David Berezan (Professor of Electroacoustic Music Composition and Director of the Electroacoustic Music Studios and MANTIS). Professor Berezan traced the history of the University’s electroacoustic studios, founded in 1967, from sparse archival records in the 1980s through a period of rebirth from the early 1990s to the present. These developments led to the founding of the MANTIS Festival and the NOVARS Research Centre in 2007, with a strong emphasis on taking electronic music out of the studio and into live performance.  Subsequently, Professor Frank Boons (Professor of Innovation and Sustainability, The University of Manchester; Professor of Political Economy of Sustainability, Maastricht University) reflected on his personal journey with electronic music. Drawing on Zen Buddhist teachings from Shunryū Suzuki, he described a ‘second beginning’ with music later in life. Professor Boons considered the concept of the ‘musical centaur’, a human musician assisted by a machine, alongside the risk of ‘reverse musical centaurs’, where humans become appendages of uncaring machines.  The final lightning talk was delivered by Dr Alexandra Huang-Kokina (Bicentenary Fellow in Music), who offered a glimpse into the future of machine involvement in music. Discussing her research project OperAI, an immersive opera with live audience interaction, Dr Huang-Kokina explored the artistic and technical challenges of integrating AI into performance. She also previewed her forthcoming project, ‘Emotion Engine’, which creates a real-time feedback loop between audience response and stage design, concluding with the question: “If the stage can finally listen, what will audiences say?” Dr Huang-Kokina’s work will be further discussed at the forthcoming research café, Future of Opera: Human-AI Improvisation, on 19 May 2026. Following the lightning talks, a panel discussion featuring Dr Alexandra Huang-Kokina, Dr Iain Emsley, Professor Chenghua Lin (Professor of Natural Language Processing) and Dr Jemily Rime (Professor of Electronic and Produced Music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama) and chaired by Professor Sean Bechhofer (Professor, Department of Computer Science). The panellists discussed what the role of machines should be in music production.   Following the event, attendees were invited to view Turing – Machine, a sound installation by Professor Frank Boons that articulates the evolving ways in which humans and computers interact, and an interactive two-player musical Turing test by PhD student Harry O’Brien.  To stay informed about Creative Manchester’s work in the Creative Industries and Innovation/CreaTech theme, as well as our other events and activities, please sign up to our mailing list.

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• University of Manchester academics contribute to the toughest AI benchmark

  09 Feb 2026

  Researchers from The University of Manchester have contributed to a new global benchmark designed to measure the limits of today’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

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• University of Manchester to support major new AI science initiative

  17 Dec 2025

  The University of Manchester is a partner in a major new European Commission initiative designed to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence across scientific research.

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• The world’s most precise nuclear clock ticks closer to reality

  10 Dec 2025

  In a study published today in Nature, the team demonstrate a completely new way of probing the tiny “ticking” of the thorium-229 nucleus without needing a specialised transparent crystal – a breakthrough that could underpin a new class of timekeeping so precise it could transform navigation, communications, earthquake and volcano prediction, and deep-space exploration.

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• Manchester chemists create molecular magnet that could boost data storage by 100 times

  25 Jun 2025

  Scientists at The University of Manchester have designed a molecule that can remember magnetic information at the highest temperature ever recorded for this kind of material.

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• The University of Manchester to collaborate with leading innovator in AI-driven automation and robotics

  10 Apr 2025

  The University of Manchester is to collaborate with leading innovator in AI-driven automation and robotics, InGen Dynamics, to create a dynamic ecosystem where academia and industry work hand-in-hand to develop AI-powered solutions that redefine the future of automation and robotics.  

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• New £6.2 million programme to build and test new capabilities for sensitive data research

  13 Mar 2025

  The University of Manchester will collaborate on a new £6.2 million programme, TREvolution, to advance the development of key technical requirements and capabilities for UK Trusted Research Environments (TREs).

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• The UK Metascience Unit funds new research at The University of Manchester

  10 Mar 2025

  The University of Manchester is amongst the first recipients of a grant from UK Research & Innovation’s new Metascience Unit, which was launched 'to find better ways to conduct, distribute and fund research'. 

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• Bees can help map pollution

  19 Nov 2024

  New research from the University of Manchester uses local beekeepers as \\\"citizen scientists\\\" as part of a proposal to use honey as a window into the chemical make-up of a local area.

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