The North West Partnership for Security and Trust

The North West Partnership for Security and Trust is a partnership between GCHQ and four universities based in the north-west of England

The unique partnership, between Lancaster University, Manchester Metropolitan University, The University of Manchester and the University of Salford, is a vehicle for collaboration between disciplines, institutions, and sectors, focused on the most difficult technology and security problems.

The North West Partnership for Security and Trust (NWPST) fosters collaboration across research, innovation, skills development, and public engagement, to produce new knowledge to benefit national prosperity and societal understanding of issues relevant to national security. Greater Manchester, and the broader North West corridor, is one of the most diverse areas of the UK, and home to some of the country’s most diverse universities. The NWPST engages our varied communities to bring together talented people from different backgrounds to help solve the most difficult national security challenges.

The purposes and guiding principles of the NWPST were developed jointly through discussions between GCHQ Manchester and the four Universities.

The vision of the NWPST is:

  1. To facilitate high-quality and impactful research in and across a wide range of disciplines relevant to UK national security challenges.
  2. To build relationships with stakeholders across the North West and throughout the region, including government, industry, and civil society, to identify opportunities to develop new products and services, and enhance the productivity and security of existing provision.
  3. To develop and deliver accessible and inclusive skills and apprenticeship provision, to support access to opportunities within the digital and data security sectors for citizens in the North West.
  4. To engage with communities, stakeholders and the wider public to inform, explain and educate on issues of trust and security.

Collaborative research to date has focused on:

  • Digital sustainability: including balancing machine learning with energy consumption for a secure sustainable future, and improving the resilience of communities in the face of risks to digital infrastructure.
  • Security of Artificial Intelligence: including understanding the vulnerabilities in AI technologies throughout their life cycle, and working towards a solution that automatically finds and repairs errors in AI code.
  • The Future of Interlinked Computing: forecasting the future implications of ubiquitous connectivity, AI, mixed reality, low and no code solutions and digital ownership over the next 15 years.

The NWPST also organises events at our partner universities for students and researchers, which aim to increase awareness of GCHQ in the North-West, and promote valuable skills. Topics have included:

  • Government Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence
  • Using Your Language Skills in Government

The NWPST has also successfully delivered two expert seminar series for GCHQ staff, covering cutting edge research in topics such as:

  • Quantum Computing
  • Disinformation
  • Ethical Machine Reasoning

 

Links