It has been widely known for some time that several academics have applied for ERVS, and there has been some information circulating on names. While the full process has not yet been completed by everyone involved, the following staff are expected to leave the school under ERVS before the end of September: Howard Barringer, Doug Edwards, Chris Kirkham, Junichi Tsujii and Ian Watson. Clearly these people have made very substantial and important contributions to the life of the school through their research, teaching, administration and management, in some cases over many years. We will be sure to arrange events to commemorate these contributions nearer the times of the departures of these staff and the others who will be going during the year.

To summarise the overall position, the following academic staff departures are anticipated for 2010 and 2011:

Year	Name	Grade	Context
2010	Roger Hubbold	Professor	Retirement
2010	Chris Harrison	Lecturer	ERVS
2010	Magnus Rattray	Senior Lecturer	Promotion Elsewhere
2010	Neil Lawrence	Senior Lecturer	Promotion Elsewhere
2011	Linda Brackenberry	Senior Lecturer	ERVS
2011	Len Freeman	Senior Lecturer	ERVS
2011	Doug Edwards	Reader	ERVS
2011	Chris Kirkham	Senior Lecturer	ERVS
2011	Junichi Tsujii	Professor	ERVS
2011	Ian Watson	Professor	ERVS
2011	Howard Barringer	Professor	ERVS
2011	Alan Rector	Professor	Retirement

The following arrivals are anticipated during the same period:

Year	Name	Grade	Context	Research Area
2010	Aravind Vijayaraghavan	Lecturer	Science & Innovation Award	Nanotechnology
2011	TBC	Lecturer	Science & Innovation Award	Nanotechnology
2011	TBC	Lecturer		Computer Architecture
2011	TBC	Lecturer/Senior Lecturer		Computer Engineering

The last of these posts has been approved in principle by the Dean but not formally signed off; it has been discussed by the Profs but not more widely because negotiations have had to take place with the Dean in a context where we could not announce more widely who had applied for ERVS. We also anticipate appointing a Chair in Machine Learning during the forthcoming financial year. With Konstantin Korovin moving from a Royal Society Fellowship to a Lectureship in 2012, we anticipate a net increase in academic staff numbers during 2012.

Overall, however, we have a significant reduction in our academic staff complement, although one that is broadly in line with our planned reduction of 5 academics for the period from 2010 to 2014. There are clearly implications for workloads of reducing academic staff numbers during a period when student numbers are on the rise. I will seek to provide some reassurance on this in the next newsletter.

Faculty PhD Scholarships 1 April 2011

New PhD funding opportunity for excellent UK, EU and international students (Deadline 1 April 2011)

10 fully-funded PhD Studentships within the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences were announced by the Dean on March 2. Each studentship is open to UK/EU or International students, and provides full fees plus living expenses of £14,000 per annum. Details of the Faculty award are available here.

Up to five PhD applicants to the School of Computer Science will be submitted for this competition, and the deadline is 1 April 2011.

We have informed all our current PGT and final year UG students about these studentships and emphasised that ALL students, not just home/EU, are eligible for this full funding. We are also looking at our current applicants for suitable candidates.

The funding is for 3-years only and is therefore matched to a traditional 3-year PhD programme rather than the CDT programme. It is new funding, not connected to previously announced CDT or School funding.

Now we need everybody's help to ensure that we submit, in due time, the best possible candidates. Therefore:

Please inform us of any candidate (home, EU or overseas) that you believe may be suitable. If the candidate has applied already, let us know, and if not, encourage the candidate to apply ASAP.
Inform any potential applicants that you are in touch with (or have been recently), especially overseas ones, of this opportunity. We have previously not been able to offer more than 'fees waiver' funding to overseas applicants and your contacts may have been discouraged by this.
Since the publicity on our web-site will hopefully attract a batch of enquiries and applications, please deal with any you receive urgently so that we have a chance of meeting the very tight deadline.

Together with the CDT development, this is a very good opportunity for our School not only to gain more excellent PGR students, but also to raise our profile in the UK, Europe and world-wide.

Barry Cheetham

Sophia Lewis-Martyr maternity leave

Sophia will be on maternity leave from Tuesday 15 March until 24 January 2012. In her absence please contact either Jez Lloyd or Chris Farrington for any undergraduate enquiries.

Events

Infrastructure at Google 15 Mar 11

Dr Peter Dickman, Engineering Manager in Google's Zurich Office

12.30, Q&A: 13.30 – 14:00, Theatre A, University Place

Event is free of charge and no registration is required.

Further information

School Board meeting 16 Mar 11

15:30, IT building room 407.

Board homepage

R&D Grant Opportunity for Microelectronics & Nanoelectronics – ENIAC 2011 Information Day 17 Mar 11

17 March, University of the West of England, Bristol

EPSRC Contribution: £1 Million: TSB Contribution 1.5M Euros
+ EU Contributions

Speakers from: ENIAC JU, Technology Strategy Board, University of Sheffield, Philips BV.

In association with NMI and the South West Microelectronics iNET.

Registration fee: £15 + VAT (Members)

£30 + VAT (Non Members)

Royal Society Computing in Schools Project 24 Mar 11

Please note the School will pay travelling expenses for people who want to attend the relevant event.

In summer 2010, the Royal Society announced the start of a project investigating the way that computing is taught in schools. The project is supported by 24 organisations from across the computing community including learned societies, professional bodies, universities and industry, and represents an unprecedented drawing together of common interests in this area.

Following a call for evidence in late 2010 which attracted over 120 responses, there will be a series of stakeholder engagement events which will enable participants to contribute further to the project, and to explore the major themes and issues emerging from the evidence received.

Audience: Higher Education Institutions.

Date and location: 24 March, Queens Hotel, Leeds.

Timings: 10:30-16:30.

Further info

ICT Event ICT Challenge 1 Call 8 31 Mar 11

Department for Business Innovation and Skills Conference Centre, London.

09:30 to 16:30

A major networking and learning opportunity enabling research leaders from business and academe to share and compare their strategic research and innovation aims in the three important and related areas of Future Networking, Cloud Computing and software and Trustworthy ICT.

Further information

Symposium on the benefits of eLearning technologies in Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics 13 April 11

On Wednesday 13th April 2011, The University of Manchester is holding a symposium that focuses on the benefits of eLearning technologies in teaching and learning, in conjunction with the Higher Education Academy Subject Centres in Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics disciplines.

Lecturers and Learning Technologists from the North of England and Scotland will come together to share their knowledge on how we are using online technologies in the field of teaching and learning. Several of our own colleagues at the University of Manchester will be showcasing best practices in e-Technologies.

The symposium will consist of an opening plenary, 4 parallel workshop sessions with a variety of topics and presenters, and a closing plenary. The symposium will be an excellent opportunity to connect with peers from other Higher Education Institutions, and to learn how they are using eLearning to benefit student learning or improve teaching efficiency.

This event is offered without charge however it is necessary to book your place.

Book/find out more

IMI eHealth week 9-15 May 11

The second Stakeholder Forum of the Innovative Medicines Initative (IMI) will be held in Budapest during the eHealth Week.

The eHealth Week is jointly organised by the European Commission’s High Level Ministerial Conference and the World of Health IT Conference & Exhibition and will address healthcare issues from the home to the hospital. A number of side events and an exhibition will be organised including a workshop on "Active and Healthy Ageing – from Hospital to Home" in the framework of the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) on Active and Healthy Ageing.

The IMI Stakeholder Forum will take place on 11 and 12 May during eHealth Week. The Forum was organised for the first time in 2010 in Brussels, and aims bringing together industry representatives, regulators, policy makers, scientific experts, patient representatives and science leaders together to discuss about IMI projects, the IMI Research Agenda and IMI calls for proposals.

Further information

EGUK Chapter Conference 7-9 Sept 11

The 29th Conference organised by the UK chapter of the Eurographics

Association will be the ninth Theory and Practice of Computer Graphics

2011 Conference (TP.CG.11). It will take place at the University of Warwick on the 7-9 September 2011, with a paper deadline of May 9th, 2011. All accepted papers will be published by Eurographics and held on the Digital Library, and will be available at the conference.

The aim of the conference is to focus on theoretical and practical aspects of Computer Graphics and to bring together top practitioners, users and researchers, which will hopefully inspire further collaboration between participants particularly between academia and industry.

Further information

Research Awards

Scalable Preservation Environments SCAPE

PI: Sean Bechhofer

CI: Carole Goble, Norman Paton
Funder: EC
Amount: €794080

Development of a New Dynamical Core for the Unified Model: Portable, Scalable Performance

PI: Graham Riley

CI: Rupert Ford

Funder: NERC

Amount: £99967