News from Head of School
Opportunity to
obtain Funded PhD Students: Proposals Required
The Faculty is in the process of negotiating an agreement
with CONACTY, the Mexican National Council on Science and Technology, which
it is hoped will lead to significant numbers of Mexican PhD students studying
in Manchester (up 10 per year in relevant schools). The scheme has been in
operation for a year in Mechanical and Civil Engineering, and there will
shortly be a visit by the Dean to Mexico that it is hoped will finalise
agreements in other technical areas. All accepted students go through normal
school entry processes, and in addition are interviewed by university representatives
who travel to Mexico.
This seems like an important initiative at a time when research funding,
including school funds for studentships, is likely to be increasingly
difficult to come by.
We are being asked to provide brief project descriptions
(1 Page) plus CVs (1 Page) for supervisors for at least 10, and preferably
more, PhD projects. The following are
priority areas identified by CONACTY that seem relevant to the school; a
fuller list is available from the following presentation:
- Information
technology:
- Development
of a semantic search engine
- Autonomous
vehicles
- Electronic
libraries/document management
- Knowledge
management in global collaborative networks
- Quantum
optical information
- IT
for health support of the elderly
- Intelligent
video surveillance systems
- Distance
learning support
- Context
driven decision making for collaborative engineering
- Integration
of information from diverse sources
- Electronics
and materials:
- Nano
materials development (polymers/ carbon) and uses (e.g. to produce low
priced housing materials)
- Non
– nuclear energy:
- Nano
materials for application in photovoltaic devices
- Aeronautical
and space research:
- Automated
control of aerial vehicles using computer controlled vision.
As such, if you have research interests in (or relevant
to) the above areas, please feel encouraged to follow up this opportunity.
For each project description, please state the topic that it relates to most
directly. Please provide the project descriptions and CVs to Bernard (bernard.strutt@manchester.ac.uk)
and Ros (rosalyn.cooper@cs.man.ac.uk)
by 3rd March.
Events
Open Faculty Meeting slides available
The slides from the previous open faculty meeting are now
available here. You will need your central University
user-name and password.
Machine Learning seminar series 22
Feb 10
Mean-field and Monte Carlo Musical Scene Analysis
Charles Fox, University
of Sheffield
14:00, 2.19 Kilburn
Building
ML seminar
website
Conjunctive Query Answering in Description Logics 24 Feb 10
Prof Carsten Lutz. University of Bremen
14:15, Lecture Theatre 1.4, Kilburn Building
Open meeting – Insight in to the Higher Education
Academy 10 Mar 10
John Pritchard, Assistant Director (Institutions) will be
holding an open meeting for Manchester
staff from 10.30 – 11.30 am on 10th March, 2010. He will be giving
an overview of the role of the Academy, its mission, and the role of the
subject centres, and taking questions. This is a great opportunity to find
out how you can get involved in the work of the Academy, how you can receive
accreditation for your teaching and learning practice, and how the Academy
can help you in your professional development.
If you would like to attend please register your interest
with Emma Stonier in the
Teaching and Learning Support Office and you’ll be sent more information when
the details are confirmed.
Royal Academy
of Engineering Regional
Lecture 11
Mar 10
18:00, Lecture Theatre C9 Renold Building followed by a
Reception at 19.00
Keith Ridgway OBE FREng, Research Director and HEFCE
Business Fellow, Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre with Boeing at Sheffield University.
The talk will examine the challenges facing manufacturing
engineers when producing high-value products and components. The
presentation will demonstrate how technology can be used to address these
challenges and produce these items better, cheaper, faster and greener.
Admission free. Email Sue Neesham for further
information.
NaCTeM seminar: Text Mining in the Biograph Project 17 Mar 10
Professor Walter Daelemans, University of Antwerp
12:00, LG.010, MIB building
NaCTeM page
Funding Opportunities
Reminder: European Research Council (ERC) Advanced
Investigators Grant Call for Applications 24
Feb 10
Applicants for the prestigious ERC Advanced Grant are
expected to be active researchers who have a track-record of significant
research achievements in the last 10 years. Although there are no
restrictions regarding age, nationality, or current place of residence, the
Principal Investigators should be exceptional leaders in terms of originality
and significance of their research contributions. Principal Investigators of
Advanced Grant proposals will be expected to demonstrate a record of
achievements appropriate to their field(s) of research. Potential Principal
Investigators may include leading scientists in Europe and those of the
European community overseas or non-Europeans wishing to establish themselves
in Europe to pursue ground-breaking,
high-risk research that opens new directions in their respective research
fields or other domains.
ERC Advanced Grants allow exceptional established research leaders in any
field of science, engineering and scholarship to pursue frontier research of
their choice.
More
information
Google PhD Fellowships extended School deadline: 19
Mar 10
The Google
European Doctoral Fellowship Programme has a new deadline of 1 April
2010. The School will need time to
decide on its nominations therefore the internal deadline is 19 March 2010.
Reminder: NWDA Innovation Vouchers Funding
Opportunities
Innovation Vouchers are designed to help Northwest
businesses owners, entrepreneurs and social enterprises to purchase a
knowledge provider's expertise to develop innovation and enhance business.
The scheme provides a voucher up to £8,000 to growing businesses and social
enterprises and was set up to encourage and make it easier for more people to
engage with the knowledge base; in particular universities and further
education colleges.
The way the scheme works is that companies apply for an NWDA voucher (see here)
that can be spent on one of a number of knowledge providers registered with
the scheme. The University is registered. In the voucher application, a
company briefly describes the problem they wish to have addressed. Knowledge providers can submit an
expression of interest to do some work under the voucher. The company then
chooses a knowledge provider to work with.
The scheme is managed on behalf of the University by UMIC. If anyone is
interested in following up this call, they should contact Laura Etchells at UMIC.
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