Newsletter Issue - 17-10-2025

CDT Weekly Newsletter


Welcome to this week’s issue of the newsletter.



Message from the Director

I am sure many of you have seen bad examples of using generative AI in research, paper reviewing, paper writing etc. I am equally sure that many of you have found ways to use GenAI in productive ways while steering clear of the edges of scientific propriety. If this is you then I want to hear from you. I am planning to organise an end-of-year CDT workshop on the use of GenAI in academic research: the good, the bad and the ugly. Please get in touch if you have ideas about possible discussion topics and sessions. 



AI Lunch and Learn Seminars

  1. Wei-Hong Li: Universal AI: Toward Balanced, Efficient, and 3D-Aware Learning 

Date: 22 October, pizza from 13:30 – 14:00 followed by the talk from 14:00 – 15:00 

Location: Room 1.07, Queen’s Building 

Abstract: Modern AI systems achieve remarkable performance on specialized tasks, yet they often struggle to generalize across domains, modalities, and supervision levels. Bridging these divides between tasks, data sources, and 2D/3D understanding is essential for building universal and fair intelligence that can adapt flexibly to real-world scenarios. Such capabilities would unlock broad applications spanning autonomous perception, multimodal generation, embodied AI, and scientific discovery.  

In this talk, I will present our recent efforts toward Universal AI, a research direction that aims to learn balanced, data-efficient, and geometrically grounded representations. I will first introduce methods for learn balanced and transferable representations through a single network that generalize to diverse tasks, domains, and in cross-domain few-shot scenarios and diffusion models. I will then discuss approaches for learning from partially annotated data, enabling effective supervision sharing across dense prediction tasks. Finally, I will highlight our latest work on 3D-aware understanding and compositional generation, where geometric priors and language guidance empower models to reason about space, structure, and semantics in a unified framework.  

Bio: Wei-Hong Li is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Bristol, and a faculty member of the MaVi group. He is also a member of ELLIS. He received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh, advised by Hakan Bilen and Timothy Hospedales, and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher there. He was also a postdoctoral fellow at the MultiMedia Lab (MMLab) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, working with Xiangyu Yue. His research focuses on universal representation learning, learning from limited supervision, and 3D-aware visual understanding. His work received several awards including Best Paper Award Finalist at CVPR 2022, BMVA Sullivan Doctoral Thesis Prize (Runner-Up), Best Paper Award at ICIG2017. 

 

  1. Upcoming seminars for this term (save the dates): 

19 Nov 2025, Kostas Sechidis (Novartis) 

26 Nov 2025, Xiyue Zhang (School of Computer Science, University of Bristol) 

10 Dec 2025, Michael Rule (School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology, University of Bristol) 

Titles and abstracts to follow.  
 



Conception X 2026 – applications are now open

Conception X is hosting an online Discovery Session on 30 October for PhD students, postdocs and early-career researchers interested in commercialising their research. 

Interested students can join a Discovery Session to learn more, or can apply via the Conception X website when ready. Deadline: 16 December 2025. 

 



Digital Health Seminar Series

  1. Darren Scott: Making the House a Home for Habits: Components and Characteristics for Home-Based Exercise Snacking 

Location: In Person AIMS Seminar Room 1 (University of Bristol only) & Online (Link coming shortly) 
Date: 28 October 2025 14:00-15:00  

Abstract: There is a societal crisis taking place around the limited exercise we fit into our daily lives. A potential solution to this is exercise snacking, the concept of fitting much smaller exercises into much smaller windows, typically within the home in flow of other duties. There is currently limited technical exploration of how to integrate these exercises, which we sought to resolve through a six-workshop series. The first three workshops looked at how to design for different groups and environments, and how these considerations may manifest in both new and evolving designs. The latter three workshops looked at low-fidelity prototypes, gaining some insights into preferred modalities as well as how they may work alongside necessary considerations such as existing routines and co-habitants. 



Turing Seminar Series

  1. Peter Tennant: Have DAGs fulfilled their promise in epidemiology and health research?  

Date: 22 October 13:00 – 14:00 

Location: Queens Building, 1.18LT 

Abstract: 
Causal directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) are among the most widely used causal diagrams. Developed in the 1980s and 1990s, with intellectual roots extending back to the 1920s, DAGs have become a core part of the modern data scientist’s toolkit for planning and interpreting causal analyses of observational data. Advocates argue that DAGs improve the quality of causal research by increasing transparency and clarifying common analytical pitfalls. Critics, however, question whether these benefits have truly materialized, pointing to a persistent gap between theoretical promise and real-world practice. 

At the 2024 World Congress of Epidemiology, Dr Peter Tennant (University of Leeds) and Prof Margarita Moreno Betancur (University of Melbourne) took part in a debate on whether DAGs have fulfilled their promise in epidemiology. In this talk, Dr Tennant will revisit the key arguments from that debate and share further reflections on how DAGs can be used more effectively in epidemiology and health research. 

 

  1. Giovanni Petri: Tracing the Cultural Fabric of Sperm Whale Societies  

Date: 5 November 13:00 – 14:00 

Location: Biomedical Building, C42 

Abstract: 

Sperm whales live in highly structured societies where communication and cooperation intertwine in complex ways.  
In this talk, I will explore how these two social dimensions —vocal culture and collective behaviour— interact within sperm whale societies.  By combining large-scale acoustic datasets from the Pacific and Atlantic with computational models of coda structure, we uncover evidence that sperm whales not only share clan-specific repertoires but also learn aspects of vocal style from neighbouring clans. This suggests that cultural boundaries are porous, maintained by identity but shaped by interaction, and calls for an expanded notion of vocal identity that includes both repertoire and stylistic nuance. I will then turn to the social context in which such learning occurs: the cooperative dynamics of sperm whale groups. Using high-resolution drone footage, we reconstructed the collective behaviour surrounding the first documented sperm whale birth in over forty years. The event revealed a tightly coordinated network of assistance across kinship lines, where all members participated in protecting and lifting the negatively buoyant new-born. Together, these results suggest that sperm whale societies sustain a form of collective intelligence rooted in shared learning and cooperative care—one where communication and cooperation co-evolve as coupled substrates of culture. 

 



Bristol Doctoral College (BDC) Events and Opportunities

  1. BDC’s November and December Personal & Professional Development (PPD) workshops are now open for bookings!  

Why Join?  Whether you’re just starting out or preparing to share your work with the world, these sessions are designed to support you in making real progress in your research and career.  Just choose the sessions that fit your goals and schedule. More information can be found on the BDC webpage.  

  • Recommended for Early-Stage PGRs 

Build strong, collaborative relationships with strategies that support clear communication and shared expectations. 

Learn practical techniques to boost your writing productivity and reduce the stress of getting started. 

  • Work Smarter not Harder: File Management, Open Access & Copyright (Hybrid) 
    26 November, 13:00 to 16:00 
    Online 
    In-person 

Set up systems that save time and support good research practice from the start. 

  • Recommended for Mid to Late Stage PGRs 

  • Perfect Posters (Hybrid) 
    3 November, 14:00 to 16:00 
    Online 
    In-person 

Design posters that communicate your research clearly and attract attention at conferences. 

Strengthen your presentation skills and learn how to engage different audiences with confidence. [Recommended if you plan to take part in next year’s 3MT competition!] 

Explore inclusive research practices that enhance the quality and relevance of your work. 

 



Reference management: EndNote Online – organiser: Library - Subject Support

Date: 20 October 14:00 – 15:00 (Online) 

EndNote Online is a reference management software package that lets you gather and organise references, then cite them in various word processors whilst automatically creating a bibliography. 

By the end of this introductory workshop you will be able to: 

  • import references to EndNote 

  • manually enter references 

  • search your EndNote library for specific references and organise them with groups 

  • cite and edit references in MS Word. 

Book your place here.  



Around Bristol

  1. Helios at Bristol Cathedral 

Date: 06 October – 02 November 

Location: Bristol Cathedral, College Green, BS1 5TJ 

Helios is a seven-metre internally illuminated sphere that brings the sun’s intricate details into view. Created at a scale of 1:200 million, each centimetre of the sculpture represents 2,000 km of the sun’s surface. Visitors can explore sunspots, filaments, and solar flares—features that are usually millions of miles away—safely and up close. Read more.  

Admission: Entry by donation | No booking required 

 

  1. Black Beauty at The Island Gallery 

Date: 24 October 19:00 – 22:00, 25 October 12:00 – 17:00 

Location: The Island Gallery, Bridewell Street, Bristol. BS1 2QD 
Local legend Jennie Cave presents a collection of new photo montages celebrating black beauty, culture and community. Through retro-surreal collage, Cave reimagines Black identity, joy and cultural heritage using bold visuals drawn from vintage photography and ephemera.  



Forthcoming Calendar of Events



Reference management: EndNote Online – organiser: Library - Subject Support - 2025-10-20
Digital Health Seminar Series - 2025-10-28
Conception X 2026 – applications are now open - 2025-10-30