News from Head of
School
School Charity Sale and Auction
The charity sale in aid of Children in Need and
the Christie
Hospital has become
established as an annual event, but this year surpassed
expectations. Toby and Lynn did a great job with the
organisation, and donations were numerous. The second floor landing
was packed with staff and students looking for a bargain, and several
generously donated larger items were auctioned by Toby and his lovely
assistants. Toby has clearly missed his vocation and expects a call
from the Shopping Channel any day. The auction alone raised
£160. Proceedings were rounded off with refreshments organised by
Gill and Alex, including some exceedingly good cakes. A huge thank
you to everyone who helped in any way – to those who donated time or items
for sale, and to those who dug their hands into their pockets to raise
money for two very worthwhile causes. Overall we raised in excess of
£1000, and a lot of fun was had by all!
HPC Analytics Challenge
Award
Congratulations to the Manchester members of the EPSRC-funded RealityGrid
team who shared the prestigious HPC Analytics Challenge Award at SC-05 –
the annual ACM/IEEE Supercomputing Conference which was held in Seattle last
week. The award recognises achievements in “the development of
technical and commercial applications for rigorous and sophisticated
methods of data analysis and visualization using high performance
computing”. The winning project, SPICE, which is a collaboration
between RealityGrid and an NSF-funded team from Tufts, TeraGrid,
Pittsburgh, and Argonne National Laboratory, uses haptic and visualisation
technologies to simulate DNA passing through a cell membrane. The Reality
Grid team included Stephen Pickles and Robin Pinning from Manchester
Computing, together with members from UCL, Nottingham, Edinburgh, and CLRC
Daresbury. The Manchester RealityGrid team is led by John Brooke and
John Gurd.
Closure of Wilton Street
Although it involves some inconvenience, I am
pleased that our representations regarding the unacceptable level of risk
posed by the demolition of the Maths tower led to the closure of
Wilton
Street and the imposition of a no-go area
around the site. Hopefully, this will be sufficient to ensure the
safety of our staff and students.
CS-Informatics Review
Hopefully you will all have seen the report of the
External Review Panel, which I circulated at the end of last week. I
will be attending the School Board on Wednesday, and will try to answer
any questions you may have.
Biomedical Literature, Databases and Ontologies
New
Fri 25 Nov
Bringing together biomedical
literature, databases and ontological resources: Approaches and
Obstacles
Dr Dietrich Rebholz-Schuhmann, European
Bioinformatics Institute
1400-1500, Lecture Theatre E7, Renold Building
Air Pumps, Cyclotrons and Black Boxes New
Tues 29 Nov
Professor John Heilbron, UC
Berkerley
1800-1900, Lecture Theatre C2, Renold Building
History of Science, Technology and Medicine
series. More
Information
Six
speakers – introduction to Grid and
middleware
Merrison
Lecture Theatre, CCLRC Daresbury
Laboratory
Registration
Regular Seminar Series
See links in contents
bar for School of CS, E-Science North West and
National Centre for Text Mining seminars.
Internal Meetings and
Events
top
School Board
Wed 23 Nov
UG report, CS-Informatics
Review.
Additional agenda items to Iain Hart: iain@cs.man.ac.uk
1530-1630, IT407
BCS Roger Needham
Lecture
7 Dec 05
Ian Horrocks will be receiving his BCS Roger
Needham award and presenting the eponymous lecture at the Royal Society,
London.
Manchester Turing
Lecture
25 Jan 06
More
Information
EPSRC Public Engagement
Workshops
8 Feb & 9 Mar 06
Introducing PE to ‘virgins’ and passing on best
practice. Space limited.
More information and
registration.
Funding
Opportunities
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University of Manchester-IBM Partners
Programme
12 Dec 05
Partners will be working in areas of
overlapping strategic importance to both organisations and through
partnership will work together to achieve organisational goals. They will
be supported to spend time interacting with each other and developing and
promulgating an understanding of each organisation thereby identifying
substantive areas of activity. The programme will also act as an enabler
in developing the IBM-UoM relationship and the understanding between the
organisations and will contribute to the Partners’ personal
development. The 2005-2006 application process is competitive
and will appoint four to six Partners who will be in post for 3 years
subject to satisfactory annual review. IBM have “pump primed” the
process at their end by “volunteering” 4 key IBM consultants who are
already working with our academics i.e. IBM Jonathan Adams, IBM Henry Law,
IBM Paul Verschueren and IBM Trevor Hopkins. Hence it is highly likely
that most of our initial academics will be working with them already, or
will know them. The process is open to those who know others in IBM whom
they would like to work with and we would be delighted for such academics
to apply. Selection will be undertaken by a small joint Panel drawn
from the two organisations w/c December 12th. Candidates are
required to submit CVs and supporting statements detailing who they wish
to partner with, current activities with IBM, work with other companies,
their personal objectives, and how they foresee their contribution to both
organisations.
It is likely that 2006-2007
applications will hopefully be in areas where there is no current
collaboration.
BBSRC International Scientific Interchange Scheme
(ISIS)
BBSRC's International Scientific Interchange
Scheme (ISIS) provides support to help scientists make and establish new
contacts with their international counterparts. Funding is available to
BBSRC grantholders, and researchers working on BBSRC-supported projects at
BBSRC-sponsored Institutes for travel and subsistence for three main types
of visit. The scheme is open to bids at any time (at least 6 weeks before
travel) with payments being made in advance of any visits. Please note
BBSRC-supported students are not eligible to travel under ISIS support.
Research Councils Follow-on
Fund
14 Dec 05
"Follow-on-funds" provide financial support
for projects with a clear commercial concept to accelerate their progress
towards commercialisation. EPSRC funding will be limited to a total of
£285k for UoM, with a maximum for individual projects of £110k under fEC.
There are no restrictions on applications to BBSRC, NERC and PPARC.
Applications will be coordinated by UMIP with Richard Price the primary EPS contact.
More
information
Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research
Fellowships 14 Dec 05
The Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research
Fellowships were established through the generosity of the Leverhulme
Trust and seek to provide opportunities for academic researchers to be
relieved of all their teaching and administrative duties. These
appointments enable academic researchers to concentrate on full-time
research for up to one year.
Applicants must be of postdoctoral status
or equivalent, hold a permanent post in a UK University and be at a stage
in their career when they would particularly benefit from a period of
full-time research.
More Information
Toshiba Fellowship
Programme
2006
15 Dec
05
Toshiba, supported by the EPSRC (Engineering and
Physical Sciences Research Council) is offering outstanding European
scientists the opportunity to join one of its high-technology research
teams in Japan for up to two years.
The Toshiba Fellowship Programme is open to PhD level researchers of
EU nationality currently working in a UK academic institution. The
research areas vary broadly from year to year in the field of science and
engineering. The Programme offers the successful Fellow a generous package
including a fixed salary and travel to and from Japan.
More
Information
BBSRC Industry Interchange
Programme
16 Dec 05
The movement of people is considered one of the
best forms of knowledge transfer and there is potentially great benefit to
the UK economy and society from
supporting such opportunities. BBSRC is piloting the Industry Interchange
Programme to support the short-term exchange, in either direction, of
researchers between the science base and industry. The objective of the
Programme is to support Interchanges that provide strategic advantage to
the UK science base and industry
arising from reciprocal access to facilities, expertise and/or knowledge,
and an increased understanding of scientific issues of common
concern.
More
Information
Bridging the Gaps Between Mathematical Sciences,
ICT and Engineering
Workshop and Call for Proposals. EPSRC
wishes to promote interdisciplinary working, within institutions, across
the broad research areas of the mathematical sciences, information and
communications technology (ICT), and engineering. Funding is available to
support institutions in the development of collaborative research
programmes. Institutions are invited to submit a bid for funding to
establish an environment that nurtures interdisciplinary
working.
The University has been allocated just 2 places
for the workshop on the 16-17th January 2006. If you wish to go please
would you email your expression of interest to Adrian.Jarvis@manchester.ac.uk
by Tuesday 22nd November. Colleagues who attend will be requested to
produce a written feedback after the event.
More
Information
Prize and
Award
Opportunities
top
We have acknowledged the need to raise the profile
of the School both nationally and internationally. Nominating
individuals for awards, and working actively with others to ensure that
deserving individuals are nominated is one way of doing
that.
Roger Needham
Award
21 Dec 05
The Roger Needham Award, sponsored by Microsoft
Research, and established in memory of the late Roger Needham, is for a
distinguished research contribution in computer science by a UK based researcher within ten
years of their PhD. It consists of a £5000 prize together with an
opportunity to give a public lecture on their work.
More
information
IEEE Internet
Award
31 Jan 06
The IEEE Internet Award was established by the
IEEE Board of Directors in June of 1999. It is presented annually for
exceptional contributions to the advancement of Internet technology for
network architecture, mobility and/or end-use applications. This award can
be given to an individual or team of up to three.
More
Information
The IEEE Koji Kobayashi
Award
31 Jan 06
The IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and
Communications Award was established by the IEEE Board of Directors in
1986 for outstanding contributions to the integration of computers and
communications. This award can be given to an individual, multiple
recipients, or a team.
More
Information
The IEEE Emanuel R Piore
Award
31 Jan 06
The IEEE Emanuel R. Piore award is presented
annually to an individual, or team of two individuals, for outstanding
contributions in the field of information processing, in relation to
computer science, deemed to have contributed significantly to the
advancement of science and to the betterment of society.
More
Information
None this week
Awards and Promotions
None this week
Academic Arrivals
None this week
Academic Departures
None this week
Research Arrivals
None this week
Research Departures
None this week
Administrative Arrivals
None this week
Administrative Departures
None this week
Sabbatical Leave
Andrei
Voronkov: Microsoft Research, Redmond USA
Aug 05 – Aug
06.
Ian
Horrocks: University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bell Labs, and Stanford University
Feb 06 – Sep
06.
Peter
Aczel: Nijmegen University, and Maths Institute at the
University
of Munich
Jan 06 –
Sep 06.
Alasdair
Rawsthorne: 80% secondment to
Transitive Technologies
Oct 05 – Sep 06.
Alvaro
Fernandes: IBM Almaden Research Centre
US
Jul – Dec 06.
Academic Staff
None
Research Staff
None
Administrative Staff
None |