MANCHESTER 1824	School of Computer Science
Weekly Newsletter	26 July 2010
Contents News from HoS This Week School Events External Events Funding Opps Prize & Award Opps Research Awards Staff News Vacancies Links News Submissions Newsletter Archive School Strategy School Intranet School Seminars ESNW Seminars NaCTeM Seminars	News from Head of School Academic Promotions The outcome of this year's academic promotions round has just been conformed, and congratulations are due to Robert Stevens on his promotion to Reader and to Simon Harper on his promotion to Senior Lecturer. Promotions are currently based on criteria across broad headings, and these cases both contained significant research success as well as wider contributions to the school and discipline. Overall the school did not have a great strike rate, and five other cases were not successful. Comings and Goings The University ERVS scheme has received several applications from the school, some of which are still in the system. However, two cases have now been accepted; Chris Harrison will leave the university from 31st July and Michael Evans from 31st October, and I would like to thank them for their contributions.  Chris has been with the university for over 20 years, covering a wide range of teaching and administrative roles, and contributing to research in areas such as object systems and computing education. Michael has worked as an Examinations Officer for four years, during which time we have had consistently positive feedback from external examiners on our practices and their implementation. Just arrived is Phil McDonald who has taken on the role of School Finance Manager, extending his previous reach into the school, having been School Accountant in the faculty, so welcome to him. Doctoral Training Centre Proposal You may have heard that the school is bidding for a Centre of Doctoral Training from EPSRC. This is to run 4 year PhDs. If we get it, it would pay for 5 PhD students per year for 5 years, and we will (at least) match that from school and University studentships. It will be very hard to get this, and I need your help in three ways. 1) We will need letters of support from industrialists and other end users (could be NHS, or SME or large companies, or non-commercial users). If you have contacts in such organizations, could you email Lynn (cc Howard and me) to let us know who they are and what company. Could you then contact them informally to warm them up for a formal request, and let us know when you have done this? Further details are in the attached briefing document. Deadline: We need to get the letters of support by the 16th of August, so we need you to approach your contacts now! 2) We want to be able to run exchanges with other institutions in the EU (or other places outside the UK). This could mean brief exchanges of students, or shared advanced courses. If you have contacts in outside UK institutions, or if you are part of an EU network which already has such exchanges, again let Lynn (cc Howard and me) know the name and please contact them. Deadline: As above. 3) We want to show that we have been running a successful PhD program. Thus, we want success stories: PhD students who have gone on to start companies, become important in companies, have become leading computer scientists, have won external prizes while students or later, etc. Please send those to me. Deadline: 25th of July, so I can incorporate this into the case. I both need and will greatly appreciate any help you can give. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me. Jon Shapiro Please note these documents are for internal consumption only and have been placed in a csonly directory. They will be removed from the web shortly so please download immediately. Briefing notes Letter EPSRC Workshop: ICT Research - The Next Decade The EPSRC is running a workshop that aims to draw together representatives from across the ICT community and involve them in the development of strategy for the ICT programme.  It is essential that people from the school participate in this workshop, and the school will fund participation for anyone who is accepted to attend.  Please feel encouraged to respond to the Expression of Interest (http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/open/Pages/ictnextdecade.aspx), and let Ursula know that you have done so. New Roles Following on from duties allocation, it is perhaps appropriate to highlight some new duties that have been created in the recent duties allocation round; a full list of administrative responsibilities is available from http://intranet.cs.man.ac.uk/ACSO/staffLoads/admintable.php. Research: EU Funding Champion (Rizos Sakellariou). This role will seek to ensure that the school makes the most of the available opportunities to support our activities by way of EU funding. Teaching Strategy: 2+2 China Link (Ke Chen, Liping Zhao). These roles will seek to explore opportunities and subsequently establish collaborative agreements with Chinese universities, for example following a model in which students join our undergraduate programmes in year 2. School: Sustainability Champion (Steve Furber). This role will involve identifying better understanding our environmental consequences and ways of making progress. New Computer Science Librarian The new subject Librarian for Computer Science at the John Rylands University Library is Neil Sprunt. If you have any queries or requests regarding information skills training, inductions, e-resources, reading lists, book purchasing or any other library related issues then please feel free to contact him at neil.sprunt@manchester.ac.uk or Tel: 0161 275 7358. Milan Mihailovic remains the academic with library responsibilities within the School. Knowledge Transfer Account The school has recently had several successes within the university's Knowledge Transfer Account (http://www.eps.manchester.ac.uk/business/kta/). There will be further calls in the autumn, so please feel encouraged to see this as a good opportunity to obtain additional support for exploitation of EPSRC funded research. The recent successes are: Title: Ontogrator-exploring the requirements of information portals facetted browsing of federated data resources using ontologies as a value added service Type: Exploration Secondment PI: Andy Brass CI: Norman Morrison Award Amount: £29427 Title: REUNITE: Refugee Assistance from Computational Intelligence Type: Concept and Feasibility Study PI: Gavin Brown Award Amount: £36123 Title: Utopia - a 21st century interface to biomedical literature &data management, facilitating knowledge discovery & hypothesis generation Type: Exploitation Secondment PI: Terri Attwood CI: Steve Pettifer Award Amount: £257464 Title: Eagle Taverna: enabling the provision of commercial support capacity for the Taverna Workflow Management System Type: Exploitation Secondment PI: Carole Goble Award Amount: £19007 PhD Plus applications now open 30 Sept 10 University of Manchester EPSRC PhD Plus Awards 2010. PhD Plus is a scheme to support the best PhD students for a few months of additional research after the submission of their PhD thesis. The aim of this funding is that projects can be completed and high profile publications prepared and submitted. It is a stepping stone for students between the end of their PhD and the beginning of a post-doctoral or research fellowships. Eligible candidates should either have submitted or be on the point of submitting their thesis. The PhD studies must have been funded by the EPSRC. What: Up top 12 months additional funding. Deadline: 30 September 2010. Requirements: Candidates must have been funded by the EPSRC during their PhD and have submitted their thesis by 30 September 2010. More information and applications: Contact Joanna Heaps, Research Office, 275 8790. Events SIGKDD Conference Streaming Keynote Speakers 25-28 July 10 The Manchester ACM SIGGRAPH branch has been invited to attend the following three ACM keynotes. As branch members will be at the main SIGGRAPH conference, at this time, this will not be coordinated in a specific University of Manchester room, but is available via your desktop. Note this is Washington DC time. The conference is planning to stream the keynote sessions from the conference site. The information for the 3 invited keynote speakers is below: 1. Monday Jul 26, 9-10 am: Dr. Qi Lu, head of Microsoft's Online division, "Online Services Division Strategy Overview " 2. Tuesday, Jul 27, 9-10 am: Prof David Jensen, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, "Computational Social Science" 3. Web, Jul 28, 9-10 am: Konrad Feldman, CEO of Quantcast, "The quantification of advertising and lessons from building a business based on large scale data mining" An insight into Research - Dinosaurs and Jet Engines 28 Jul 10 1-15.00, in room G107, Alan Turing Building. The event will consist of: 1. Dr. Kevin Tan talking on:  "3D journey through Jet engine". An innovation in Engineering education- 3D Jet Engine Design. The year's Royal Academy of Engineering prestigious award winner! (Brief intro: Students, using 3D glasses, can watch an exhilarating interactive video that takes them on a tour of a Rolls-Royce Trent 900 jet engine created by Dr. Kevin Tan. The video shows the research, modern materials and novel manufacturing techniques and testing needed to create environmentally friendly aircraft. The talk will give stimulating insight into the work of material scientists and engineer 2. Dinosaur models in 3D stereo equipments. (Animations in a virtual reality set up) 3. Zartasha Mustansar talking on: Advanced Engineering and Computer Methods in Palaeontology Strength of Tyrannosaurus rex Bones after Injury and Healing The talk will discuss the strength of the upper arm bone (humerus) of the largest known Tyrannosaurus rex, named Sue. In life, Sue’s humerus was damaged by a tendon avulsion and became infected with bacteria, eroding away healthy bone. X-ray tomography scans provide evidence that this injury was repaired through bone remodelling.  The aim of the study is to determine whether the healed humerus could support a compressive load of 400kg along its axis. This load is a ball park figure of what palaeontologists believe the bone would have experienced during normal usage. This talk also seeks to educate the audience in the use of computers and engineering techniques to test the mechanical strength of the fossil bones. This will help biologists design virtual reality experiments for better understanding of how materials like bone behaves. The event will be hosted by WiSET (Women in Science, Engineering and Technology) but everyone is welcome.  Refreshments will be provided. To reserve a place email your name and School to wiset-eps@manchester.ac.uk Research Awards REUNITE: Refugee Assistance from Computational Intelligence Funder: EPSRC KTA PI: Gavin Brown Award Amount: £36123 Utopia - a 21st century interface to biomedical literature &data management, facilitating knowledge discovery & hypothesis generation Funder: EPSRC KTA PI: Terri Attwood Award Amount: £257464 Eagle Taverna: enabling the provision of commercial support capacity for the Taverna Workflow Management System Funder: EPSRC KTA PI: Carole Goble Award Amount: £19007 FISH.Link Funder: JISC PI: Sean Bechhofer Award Amount: £149,682 DYVERSE: A New Kind of Control for Hybrid Systems Funder: EPSRC PI: Eva Navarro-Lopez Award Amount: £126964 Fishdelish Funder: JISC PI: Bijan Parsia Award Amount: £95395 Omics Data Sharing: the investigation/Study/Assay (ISA) Infrastructure Funder: BBSRC PI: Carole Goble Award Amount: £15669 Funding Opportunities EC calls for proposals There are several calls that may be of interest within Computer Science: http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/dc/index.cfm?fuseaction=UserSite.FP7CallsPage ERC Starting Grants Call issued: 20 July 2010. Deadlines: Physical Sciences & Engineering Domain (Panels PE1 - PE10) Deadline: 14 October 2010, 17.00 (Brussels local time) Life Sciences Domain (Panels LS1 - LS9) Deadline: 9 November 2010 17.00 (Brussels local time) Social Sciences & Humanities Domain (Panels SH1 - SH6) Deadline: 24 November 2010, 17.00 (Brussels local time) Call Identifier: ERC-2011-StG For relevant documents please refer to Cordis.