News from Head of School
25% Cuts?!
It will not have escaped your attention that spending
departments seem to be on course for average cuts of around 25% over the next
4 years. Your guess is as good as mine
as to where these are likely to fall, and it seems possible that higher
education could be subject to cuts that are higher or lower than the headline
figure. My guess is that higher education will most likely have a higher
than average level of cut, but will be allowed to compensate in part for this by raising student
fees.
The school’s current plans in relation to the credit
crunch were summarised in the Newsletter of 10th May. To put these
into percentage terms, they represent a total movement (across income growth
and spending cuts) of around 17.5% of government income. Allowing for some
savings from less-than-inflation pay rounds and some movement from increased
fees, the plans (if implemented successfully – by no means a foregone
conclusion) seem to be of broadly the correct order. However, the percentage
being associated with government cuts is higher than we previously assumed,
and thus we will need to keep our focus on growing non-government income
(e.g. through higher overseas student numbers through PGT and M + N
agreements) with a view to avoiding the more drastic measures that would be
required to reduce expenditure significantly further or faster.
Undergraduate Exams, etc
The tight timescales associated with graduations in early
July create significant pressure on markers and administrators. As such, thanks are due to all those who
helped keep things on schedule. There was explicit praise from the externals
for the quality of the paperwork supporting undergraduate exams and the
organisation of the postgraduate exam boards, so credit is particularly due
to the relevant staff in the Student Support Office for giving a positive
impression and thereby enabling an effective process to be followed.
GM Workplace Cycle Challenge
The School logged the largest number of miles of all UoM
departments, and are looking to come second in the "200-499"
category. See:
http://www.gmworkplacechallenge.org.uk/home.
Events
City Innovation Lab: Manchester 30 June 10
Professor Chris Taylor
13.00 – 14.00, Atlas Rooms
We are all aware of the transformative potential of information and
communication technologies, and have observed the gathering pace at which
technology has become part of everyday life. Arguably, we have reached a
tipping point, where the power, ubiquity and low cost of technology is such
that we can contemplate tackling some of the major challenges facing
developed societies: sustainable transport infrastructure, the obesity
epidemic, affordable health and social care, security, social cohesion etc.
It is, however, characteristic of all these challenges that they are not just
about the technology - they involve people and the need to address questions
like how does the necessary cross-sectoral innovation happen, how will an
intervention play out in practice, what are the social and personal
psychology drivers, what new business models are needed? Realistically, such
questions can only be answered by doing real experiments - deploying new
technology at scale and measuring outcomes. The City Innovation Laboratory is
a joint initiative between the University and the City-Region that aims to
establish Manchester
as a place of choice to conduct such experiments, by establishing the
infrastructure to run large-scale trials, typically based around mobile
technology. This should create research opportunities across many of the
School's research areas including: information management, machine learning,
sensors and low-power devices, biohealth informatics, social networks etc. In
the (fairly short) talk, I will explain in more detail what is happening and
discuss the opportunities for CS.
Intro to Advanced Research Computing 30
June 10
Due to popular demand, Research Computing Services (part
of IT Services) is running its introductory course again on WEDS 30 JUNE. If
you are a researcher who knows Linux but would appreciate learning the basics
of how to get your model results quicker, whether by running 1000s of
simulations concurrently or by dividing up the problem over 100s of cores to
get the results back much sooner, then this course could help you. Booking is essential but there are a few
places left. Apply by emailing RCS
Training.
More
Information
New President and Vice-Chancellor's Open Meetings
Following her appointment as President and Vice-Chancellor
of The University of Manchester, Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell will be
holding two open meetings for all staff on 2 and 5 July. These will be an opportunity to hear Dame
Nancy speak about her priorities for the University as well as for staff to
ask questions.
The meetings will be held as follows:
Friday 2 July , Whitworth Hall, 1200-1300
Monday 5 July, Crawford House, Theatre 1, 1300-1400
Funding Opportunities
EPSRC Knowledge Transfer Account: 5th Call for Applications
EPSRC awarded £8.3m to The University of Manchester in
October 2009 for a Knowledge Transfer Account (KTA) to run over a period of
three years. The closing date for applications to this next call is 16 July 2010 at 12pm (noon).
This will be the last call in the first year of the KTA. Further calls for
the next academic year are to be announced in due course. Prior to submitting an application,
academics are strongly advised to contact a member of the KTA team for advice
and guidance immediately at: 0161 306 6815 or email.
More Information
Research Awards
Usability Evaluation for National Museums Liverpool
Funding Body: National
Museums Liverpool
PI: Simon Harper
Award Amount: £2000
Enhancing CIAS
Funding Body: EPSRC
PI: Rupert Ford
Award Amount: £10111
Ontogrator-exploring the requirements of information portals facetted
browsing of federated data resources using ontologies as a value added
service
Funding Body: EPSRC KTA
PI: Andy Brass/Norman Morrison
Award Amount: £29427
OurWikiBooks
Funding Body: JISC
PI: Alex Walker
Award Amount: £78989
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