News

01 June 2020

The majority of our project news are now disseminated via our twitter at
https://twitter.com/EidFonte

 

12 May 2020

Another FONTE Paper accepted.
Congrats to Stenio for giving an Invited Presention at ICTON2020 later this year (COVID-19 permitting)

 

01 May 2020

Thinking of your next steps after FONTE?
If you are considering MSCA Individual Fellowship (you should!), then these webinars might be useful

1. MSCA IF: Process for Submission and Evaluation
Time: May 5, 2020 14:30 in Brussels
https://ukri.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_3CBRxFwWTDagSy9fTcFaxA

2. MSCA IF: Practical Matters
Time: Apr 27, 2020 14:30 in Brussels3. Process for Submission and Evaluation
https://ukri.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Pxc87Tp_QLSpl_sWg36OWg

3. MSCA IF: Process for Submission and Evaluation
Time: May 5, 2020 14:30 in Brussels
https://ukri.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_u5y6uQc6TyiuiGAjAKNGCw

 

23 March 2020

Unprecedented times!
From today, the UK  – as most of Europe – is in total lockdown in order to prevent the spread of the deadly COVID-19 virus. We will all have to learn new ways and technological solutions for working from home. The office is deserted, but the work goes on.

09 Mar 2020

Some of the FONTE team are at OFC20 in San Diego this week, though COVID-19 has trown a spanner in the wheels for some presentations and short courses, such as ‘Machine Learning in Optical Networks’ by FONTE’s own Darko Zibar, WP leader and supervisor at DTU, now unfortunately cancelled.

 

06 Mar 2020

There is no hiding anywhere – now even the Aston Executive is talking about our hugely successful Transferable Skills Workshop at Aston last week. Hope everyone had a great time networking across 4 ITNs.

 

27-28 Feb 2020

Intense 2-day training workshop in Transferable Skills at Partner Aston University. High calibre and engaging speakers include Dr Annmarie Hanlon (Digital marketing) on Engaging with social media, Stephen Harris (Editor of The Conversation) on Writing for media, Dr Rachel Won (Editor NaturePhotonics) on Writing a great paper, Dr Srikanth Sugavanam (MULTIPLY Programme Manager) on Academic writing, as well as additional presentation on Interlectual Property, Patenting and Open Access. Day 2 was handed over entirely to Richard Fallon (The Marketing Engineer) on infuencing, marketing yourself, creating perfect presentations, networking and teamworking.

Finishing the event with a fun and tasty evening at the Harborne Food School, cooking and eating an entire 4-course indian meal in good company.

 

24 Feb 2020

Christiane, Project Manager of FONTE, has herself lead an Outreach Activity to ERASMUS Students in AiPT’s SMARTNET and PIXNET Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters Degree, explaining MSCA PhDs, how the differ from ‘ordinary’ PhDs and how they can be found on EURAXESS. Attended by students of both EMJMD Programmes, the talk has also been made available to students not currently at Aston University, thus reaching (once the cohorts are complete) about 150 Masters students.

 

19 Feb 2020

Get ready for an intensive 2 days at Aston!
FONTE, together with it’s sister projects WON, REAL-NET and MOCCA, will run a 2-day Transferable Skills Workshop at Aston University 27-28 Feb, finishing off with an evening at the Harborne Food School, where our ESRs will learn to cook (and enjoy!) a full indian meal under the watchfull eye of chef Steven Heap.

 

14 Feb 2020

Today, Aston’s ESR1 Vad Neskorniuk is spending a day at a Birmingham Primary School with children aged 10-11 years. During their ‘Career’s Fair‘ he will be running simple optics demos and be chatting to them about Physics, Technology and Engeneering and that working in these subjects is not boring at all!

 

11 Feb 2020

FONTE’s WP Leader Darko is visiting colleagues in South Africa, where he is also running an invited workshop and Seminar at Nelson Mandela University entitled ‘Machine Learning Techniques‘.

10 Feb 2020

Congrats to Francesco Da Ros, who has received one of only 15 coveted Villum Young Investigators grants for his OPTIC-AI proposal!  Worth 10 mill DKK the award will allow him to form his own research team at DTU. Read teh  full post here

 

4 Feb 2020

Our 2-day NFT-Workshop at TUDelft is in full swing. 37 attendees from 14 European institutions learning and discussing all things Nonlinear Fourier Transfom.

SONY DSC

 

20 Jan 2020

Tweeting and followers.

Slowly progressing – but it’s hard work!

 

 

 

17 Jan 2020 – Newsletter!

 

16 Jan 2020

CityFest is coming and FONTE will be participating in the planing and delivery of this major Outreach Event across the entire city of Birmingham on 8th July 2020

 

15 Jan 2020

Got some time? Thinking about our upcoming Transferable Skills Training on ‘Communicationg with the Media and Social Media‘ here at Birmingham? In the meantime, why not read this short piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled ‘10 Questions Every Academic Should Ask Before Writing for the Public

 

14 Jan 2020

FONTE’s social media presence is growing with ESRs blogging and tweeting about their research.

 

12 Jan 2020

Stenio has started his 18 month secondment at Nokia Bell Labs . Both Vinod and Stenio are now on site and apart from progressing with their research they are also improving their German rapidly by attending tutored language sessions in Stuttgart.

 

10 Jan 2020

Vinod will be presenting his work on  ‘Exact NFDM Transmission in the Presence of Fiber-Loss‘ during the Open-to-all workshop on Nonlinear Fourier Transform at TU Delft (4-5 Feb 2020)


9 Jan 2020

New Year, New resolutions.

Before you go off to the next conference to present your research in a dreadded anonymous poster session, do read the tale and advice published in November’s addition of the
‘Science’ magazine

 

7 Jan 2020

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks and Machine Learning by Marc Mezard, Director of the École Normale Supérieure, given today at ICTS, Bangalore.  Watch his Turing Lecture:

 

1 Jan 2020

New Year and I am excited our twitter account @EIDFONTE now has followers on social media spanning 3 continents. And among them: not a single bot!

 

31 Dec 2019

In FONTE we have come from many different places in the world and our languages span the globe in this truly international project.  At the end of 2019 and the start of 2020 we wish everyone:

Happy New Year!
Ein gutes neues Jahr
Godt nytår
Gelukkig nieuwjaar!
Bonne année
С Новым Годом!
щасливого Нового року
Feliz Ano Novo!
سال نو مبارک
سنة سعيدة
শুভ নব বর্ষ

 

24 Dec 2019

18 Dec 2019

Vlad is now a proud new member of SPIE

 

15 Dec 2019

Stenio has submitted a paper to the ‘Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics’.  His co-author is Francesco. Good luck to both of them!

09 Dec 2019

Abtin has arrived in Vancouver for NIPS 2019. There are 13,000 scientists expected to attend this year!

 

05 Dec 2019
AiPT is having its  Annual Research Conference where academics present their groups and current research projects. FONTE is represented by Coordinator Prof Sergei Turitsyn.

04 Dec 2019

Today Vladislav Neskornik is giving a seminar at the Aston Student Chapter of SPIE, summarizing his FONTE resarch so far and looking forward to his next steps to achieve his research goals.

 

27 Nov 2019

Our Open-To-All NFT workshop at TU Delft [4-5 Feb 2020] has started to take registrations. Please share the website and share the registration link with colleagues.The workshop will feature an exciting mix of theory/computational aspects of NFT with a hands-on session trying out the latest NFT software.
Spread the word – Tweet and blog!

 

25 Nov 2019

Vinod has participated in the 2-day event ‘2019 Innovation Day‘ at Nokia. Practicing his growing German language skills Vinod presented a poster and spoke about his resarch to High School pupils at this well-attended local event.

Also today, Stenio has participated the 2-day PhD Workshop on Next-Generation Cloud Infrastructure organised by Microsoft Research Cambridge. This workshop is by invitation only and participation is fully paid for by the organisers. It looks like FONTE ESRs are already becoming a sought-after commodity ? Fonte eagerly awaits some photos and summary of the event.

 

Left to right: Pratim Hazarika (WON), Aleksandr Donodin (WON), Vladislav Neskorniuk (FONTE) and Victor Vassiliev (MOCCA)

20 Nov 2019

ESRs in AiPT’s initial training Networks FONTE, WON and MOCCA are completing a three-day training course  in soft skills organised locally by the Aston Graduate School.

 

 

 

 

13 Nov 2019

Christiane [FONTE Project Manager] and the project  Coordinator Sergei Turitsyn have participated in an event celebrating the extraordinary success of AiPT.

 

12 Nov 2019

AiPT has just been awarded the ITN project POST-DIGITAL (total award €3,9m) to develop new technology concepts for the post-digital era, when digital computational and communication technologies will reach their power limits. Alongside FONTE AiPT will be coordinating a total of 7 ITNs with a total of 60 ESRs!

 

04 Nov 2019

Vinod has arrived for his 18 months industrial secondment at Nokia Bell Labs, in Stuttgart, Germany. Good luck, Vinod, and please do find out what are ‘Maultaschen’.  🙂

 

 

31 Oct 2019

At AiPT Sergei has finally released the funds for our new staff uniform, to match the AiPT colour scheme.

Happy Haloween, FONTE!

 

 

25 Oct 2019

Another Outreach Activity completed!

Stenio participated in the DTU Project Day (https://www.fotonik.dtu.dk/english/education-ny/dtu-project-day-2019), representing the Machine Learning in Photonics Systems group. Speaking to a mixed audience of mainly to high school student from different backgrounds, Stenio was able to explain his research to an interested audience. The event at the DTU Fotonicks Department was well attended (and the free pizza and soft drinks had nothing to do with this!). Read full post here.

 

11 Oct 2019

Stenio, barely back from the States and IPC 2019,  has been involved in a major public outreach event at DTU and Copenhagen. ‘Cultural Night‘ (https://www.kulturnatten.dk/en/Culture-night) is one of Copenhagen’s most attended cultural events. This year’s numbers are not yet known, but in 2018 a total of 240 organizations participated in the event, with 94.000 cultural passes being sold. More than 250 museums, theatres, libraries, churches, ministries, and parks throughout the city welcome the public during Copenhagen’s biggest annual one-day event.

Stenio present an overview of optical communication to the general public, a topic closely related to his PhD research,. He attended the event as part of DTU’s SPOC group (http://www.spoc.dtu.dk/ . It was an busy and stimulating night with a lot of people interested in the basic concept of optical communication to understand how all the information is connected in our world. Read full post here.

 

10 Oct 2019

Congratulations to Stenio, who has been invited to the 2-day PhD Workshop on Next-Generation Cloud Infrastructure organised by Microsoft Research Cambridge. This workshop is by invitation only and participation is fully paid for by the organisers. It looks like FONTE ESRs are already becoming a sought-after commodity 🙂

 

9 Oct 2019

Vladislav is reaching out to industry today as part of the team representing AiPT at the 2-day event
Photonex2019 in Coventry, UK. He has already spoken at length to industry, such as the representative from IPG Photonics (photo on right). Read full post here

 

2 Oct 2019

Ever wondered what A day Without Photonics would be like?

 

Stenio with his Mentor Prof Dan Marrom of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel at IPC 2019

2 Oct 2019

Stenio is at IPC 2019 in San Antonio (TX, USA) this week to present his research ‘Joint low-complexity opto-electronic chromatic dispersion compensation for short-reach transmission‘.

Alongside the conference social events such as The ‘Pesident’s Reception (IEEE Photonics Society)‘ and the ‘Photonics Pro Luncheon: Researchers Round Table‘  present ample opportunity for connecting students with top researchers and fellows.

 

27 Sept 2019

FONTE’s all important Mid-Term Check with our Project Officer is taking place in Dublin today. It’s all going smoothly thanks to lots of preparation. The talks form our ESRs are exciting and demonstrate that everyone is producing results and is planing their next dissemination and outreach activities.

Thank you to our PO for a very constructive meeting  and to everyone else for the hard work getting us here.

 

22 Sept 2019

FONTE ESRs Vladislav, Vinod and Stenio are at ECOC 2019 in Dublin this week, where Vinod BAJAJ is our first ESR to present his research findings in a  presentation entitled ‘Exact nonlinear frequency division multiplexing in lossy fibers’ Congratulations, Vinod!

 

20 Sept 2019

Check out this video about Branding Yourself, as well as others from the Marie Curie Alumni Association video chanel.  The Marie Curie Alumni Association Membership is free of charge and provides a variety of benefits, including microgrants for travel, but also other activities. Register here.

 

18 Sept 2019

FONTE’s Coordinator Prof Sergei Turitsyn is an invited speaker at today’s Optical Solitons and Frequency Comb Generation at Weierstrass Institute September, Berlin. Also disseminating FONTE project to colleagues.

ESR1 Vladislav Neskorniuk is making the best of the conference season, going back-to-back to both the TRANSNET Conference celebrating the achievements of the Optical Networks Group at University College London (UCL) and ECOC 2019 (Dublin).

 

11 Sept 2019

The Aston OSA SPIE student chapter has organised an interactive workshop delivered to early stage researchers and PhD students at AiPT . Delivered by our AiPT reseacher Olelsandr Kotlyar the tutorial was devoted to the most popular MachineLearning algorithm: neural networks!

10 Sept 2019

The new events calendar of the Marie Curie Alumni Association is out with intersting Webinars such as ‘Mobile Researchers and the Challenge of the Network: How to maintain Professional Connections over Time and Space?’ (tomorrow, 18.00h – 20.00h CET). register here

Register with the MCAA to receive reminders of upcoming events.

 

2 Sept 2019

Local seminars with high calibre speakers continue to run smoothly at our FONTE consortium members. In a packed seminar room today at AiPT/Aston a highly entertaining and stimulating talk by the eminent Prof John Dudley ending in the memorable words of the 2009 Nobel Prize winner Elisabeth Blackburn, upon finding out her latest research proposal had been rejected outright the very same day she was awarded the Nobel Prize that ‘even on the day you are awarded a Nobel Prize you still have those who doubt the validity of your research‘.

 

26-27 Aug 2019

Prof Turitsyn opened FONTE’s OTAW ML-Photonica today in the impressive venue of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Follow our tweets at
@photonica2019

Second day of our OTLW ML-Photonica. Some more great speakers today – as well as excellent food.

1 Aug 2019

ML-Photonica is almost upon us. FONTE’s Open-To-All Workshop (OTAW) in beautiful Belgrade will take place 26-27 August. Abstracts of talks are becoming availabe. Read Darko Ziba’s abstract here. talks are being recorded and will be made available to FONTE members via the private area in due course.

 

16 Jul 2019  Congratulations!

Stenio M. Ranzini, our ESR at DTU, has been awarded a competative Travel Grant from IEEE. The substantial award of $2500 will allow him to attend this year’s IEEE Photonics Conference (IPC 2019) in San Antonio, TX USA and present his FONTE research.

3 Porsches on stilts’ – seen near NBL

1 Jul 2019  First Year Network Meeting and Workshop

38oC in Stuttgart today, but it didn’t preventing us from having a hugely productive First Year Network Meeting and Workshop at FONTE’s Industrial Partner Nokia Bell Labs. All ESRs were able to hone their presentation skills and  improve on their public speaking competency. Their presentations detailing scientific progress, communication activities and publications since starting in FONTE led to group discussions about data, approaches and methodology. Throughout the day ESRs had ample opportunity for individual and small group sessions with their industrial and academic supervisors.to discuss their results and plan the near /  medium-term research strategies. (Additional images in Members Area)

Industrial & academic supervision in action at the FONTE 1st Year Network Meeting and Workshop at NBL

10 June 2019

FONTE will be represented at CLEO 2019 in Munich, where AiPT has a dedicated booth  with information about research and educational programmes at AiPT/Aston University..

20 May 2019

Great news: Aston has recruited! Vladislav Neskorniuk from the Russian Federation will join us in August 2019. He will be the final ESR to join FONTE.

16 May 2019

Happy International Day of Light to everyone!

5 May 2019

A warm welcome to Abtin Shakarami, our third ESR, who has just arrived at Telecom ParisTech. Abtin Shahkarami holds both a Bachelor and an Masters from the University of Tehran and has recently had a paper accepted in the prestigious Springer Nature JournalA stream-sensitive distributed approach for coniguring cascaded classiier topologies in real-time large-scale stream mining systems‘.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s42452-019-0565-6. Abtin is first author on this publication!

 

30 Apr 2019

Anoither first! Stenio submitted FONTE’s first publication ‘Joint low-complexity opto-electronic chromatic dispersion compensation for short-reach transmission‘ to IPC. Cross fingers for acceptance!

 

16 Apr 2019

New date for your diary: The FONTE 1st Year Workshop will take place in Stuttgart/Germany on Friday 28th June 2019. Entire consortium will be in attendance.

 

2 April 2019

FONTE is co-organising the symposium Machine Learning with  Photonics’, to be held in Belgrade as part of  PHOTONICA2019 (University of Belgrade, Serbia, 26-30 Aug 2019). Among the speakers is FONTE’s own Darko Zibar (DTU).

The Machine Learning symposium will be on 26 and 27 Aug.

 

8 Mar 2019

FONTE is co-organising the Workshop ‘Machine Learning for Optical Communications (MALOC)to coincide with the 21th International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks ICTON2019 http://www.icton2019.com  at Angers, France, July 9th-13th, 2019

Read more here

1 March 2019

Going to OFC!

This week FONTE is represented at Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC; San Diego 3-7 March 2019), together with our sister projects WON and REAL-NET.

 

18-19 Feb 2019

Serious scientific training was completed by FONTE ESRs this week when attending the 2-day Winterschool at Nokia Bell Labs in Stuttgart. Thank you to the organisers! The training material is now available for FONTE consortium members in the members-only area of the website.

1 Feb 2019

ONE final FONTE position is available for a high-achieving Early Stage Researcher at Aston University, UK.  BREXIT may be just around the corner but do not let that put you off – the UK is open for business as usual. Apply here or by email to S.K.Turitsyn@aston.ac.uk

29 Jan 2019

FONTE‘s sister projects WON ETN and REAL-NET EID kicked off in snowy Munich this week. Attendees were treated to home-made Italian tiramiso. Thank you, Antonio!

WON and REAL-NET websites coming soon!

4 Jan 2019

Check out Darko’s (WP Leader) video on ‘Machine Learning Concepts in Optical Communication Systems‘, the perfect introduction to the field!

11 Dec 2018

The Mid-Term Check with the EC/REA has been confirmed for Fri 27 Sept 2019 in Dublin, co-located wit ECOC2019. Everyone is expected to attend…. Participation of ESRs is mandatory. Check the  Members only  webpages for full details.

 

3 Dec 2018

Welcome to Vinod Bajaj, FONTE’s newest ESR, who has started this week at TU Delft!

 

19 Nov 2018

The FONTE position at Telecom ParisTech has been readvertised in EURAXESS. The position will remain open until a suitable candidate has been found.

 

1 Nov 2018

The FONTE position at Aston University has been readvertised in EURAXESS and the Aston University Recruitment Site  The deadline for application in 10 Dec 2018 or until the position has been filled.

25 Sept 2018

The FONTE consortium held a management catch-up meeting during the ECOC 2018 conference in Rome.

 

15 Sept 2018

Recruitment Update: FONTE is still looking to recruit 2 ESRs (at Aston and TelecomParis Tech). Get in touch with us if you are interested.

 

11 Sept 2018

Vinod Bajaj has accepted the FONTE position at TU Delft, where he will arrive in November. Congratulations to both Sander and Vinod! More details to follow soon.

 

4 Sept 2018

Say hello to Stenio Magalhães Ranzini, our new ESR at DTU, who started earlier this week! Congratulation to DTU who wins the chocolates for recruiting FONTE’s first ESR.

20 June 2018

FONTE recruitment stives to avoid ‘unconcious bias‘ during it’s recruitment process. Watch the Royal Society’s video about unconcious bias and how to avoid it

 

15 June 2018

  

FONTE had it’s first network-wide gathering during the Kick-off Meeting at Aston University (15 Jun 2018; Birmingham, UK). The meeting also included a tour of AiPT’s brand new photonics facilities in the basement of Aston University. Still a small group we are looking forward to recruiting our Early Stage Researches (ESRs) very soon. Chocolates for the winner that manages to recruit first!

(Additional images in Members Area)

 

1 June 2018

Hello World! FONTE has officially started today and will run until May 2022! Happy and fruitfull reseach to everyone!

 

8 March 2018

FONTE is  recruiting! Full details of the 4 positions available can be found here.

If this advert has expired please get in touch with the Project Coordinator Prof Sergei Turitsyn [s.k.turitsyn@aston.ac.uk] for a discussion about positions in FONTE (and other projects) currently available.