MANCHESTER

           1824

School of Computer Science

Weekly Newsletter

20 February 2012

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

Royal Visit

Prince Andrew visited the School on Tuesday 14th February. Prince Andrew was given a tour of the graphene laboratories by Andre Geim, and made a sample of graphene himself, which he viewed under the microscope.

Members of the graphene research team told the Prince about future applications of graphene, which is the world’s thinnest, strongest and most conductive material.

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=7977

The visit in connection with the announcement of the new £45M graphene building:

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=7930

Turing Centenary Conference

Andrei Voronkov has announced the Turing Centenary Conference, to be held in Manchester, June 22-25, 2012:

http://www.turing100.manchester.ac.uk/

Andrei has secured Ten Turing Award winners, a Templeton Award winner and Garry Kasparov as invited speakers:

 

Confirmed invited speakers:

- Fred Brooks (University of North Carolina)

- Rodney Brooks (MIT)

- Vint Cerf (Google)

- Ed Clarke (Carnegie Mellon University)

- Jack Copeland (University of Canterbury, New Zealand)

- George Francis Rayner Ellis (University of Cape Town)

- David Ferrucci (IBM)

- Tony Hoare (Microsoft Research)

- Garry Kasparov (Kasparov Chess Foundation)

- Don Knuth (Stanford University)

- Yuri Matiyasevich (Institute of Mathematics, St. Petersburg)

- Roger Penrose (Oxford)

- Adi Shamir (Weizmann Institute of Science)

- Michael Rabin (Harvard)

- Leslie Valiant (Harvard)

- Manuela M. Veloso (Carnegie Mellon University)

- Andrew Yao (Tsinghua University)

Confirmed panel speakers:

- Ron Brachman (Yahoo Labs)

- Steve Furber (The University of Manchester)

- Carole Goble (The University of Manchester)

- Pat Hayes (Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Pensacola)

- Bertrand Meyer (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)

- Moshe Vardi (Rice University)

Senate Vacancies

The School has no members of Senate, and there are elections coming up. Further information about the vacancies and eligibility for election, together with a nomination form, can be found at the Senate web pages on the University website at:

http://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/senate/elections

Nominations must be returned as described in the web page by 12 noon on Tuesday 6th March 2012.

Call for membership of the Neuroscience Research Institute (NRI)                  

The NRI brings together researchers from different backgrounds to produce high-quality research in the area of neuroscience. Such research already takes place across all university Faculties and the role of the Institute is to enhance this by facilitating collaborative work.

 

There are many additional benefits to membership of the NRI:

·         Small pilot grants

·         Funding for two studentships each year

·         Support for neuroscience based events, including public engagement

 

To be kept informed of these and other NRI related activities, you will need to register and details will be sent by email. 

Please follow this link to register (it will only take a few minutes to enter your details and confirm your area of interest).

 

There will be a prize of an NRI ‘goody bag’ for five lucky applicants, who sign up to join the mailing list.

Prize won                                                                                                                          

The Kidney and Urinary Pathway Knowledgebase (KUPKB) (http://www.kupkb.org) has won first prize in the Ontologies Come of Age in the semantic Web Challenge (http://ocas.mywikipaper.org/?q=node/8). The prize has a $2k cash part and a technical funding opportunity with Protech Solutions Inc. The KUPKB work is a collaboration between Toulouse and Manchester; especially that of Simon Jupp (formerly of this parish) and Julie Klein (newly of this parish). I've written a blog about the KUPKB and OCAS at http://robertdavidstevens.wordpress.com.

Robert Stevens

 

Events

Call for Participants in a five-day Sandpit focused on Innovative Solutions to Flood Risk                                                                                                   20 Feb 12

Expression of interest: EPSRC announces a Statement of Intent to hold a research sandpit to support transformative, multidisciplinary, novel research projects in response to the LWEC Flooding and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Research Strategy.

 

Closing Date: 20 February 2012

 

http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/open/Pages/floodingsandpit.aspx

On the Complexity of Computing Probabilistic Bisimilarity               22 Feb 12                                                          

Professor Franck van Breugel. York University Toronto

14:15, Lecture Theatre 1.4, Kilburn Building

http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/research/seminars/school/

Modelling Crowd Movement: Computer Science Meets Social Sciences                                                                                                                                           23 Feb 12

The following talk takes place in Psychology, but may be of interest to some computer scientists.

School of Psychological Sciences seminar series

Coupland 1 (43 on Campus map):

16:00, Turing seminar room (1st floor)

Modelling Crowd Movement: Computer Science Meets Social Sciences

Professor Gerta Köster

Department of Computer Science and Mathematics

Munich University of Applied Science

Annual Regional Public Lecture                                                                  5 Mar 12

Nature and Nano - It’s all going on at Engineering Surfaces

18:00, 5 March 2012

Professor Anne Neville FREng FRSE

The Royal Academy of Engineering Chair of Emerging Technologies

and Professor of Tribology and Surface Engineering at the University of

Leeds

 

The lecture will be followed at 7.15pm by a reception and poster competition, kindly hosted by the University. The poster competition is for early career university staff and researchers from Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds.

 

Admission to the lecture and reception is free of charge.

Registration is not required.

All engineering students particularly welcome.

 

Venue:

University of Leeds, Department of Electrical Engineering, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, LS2 9JT.

 

Prize and Award Opportunities

Cancer Research UK Prizes 2012                                                              11 Apr 12

Nominations for the 2012 Cancer Research UK Prizes are now open, and we would like to invite you to participate by nominating your colleagues. These prestigious awards are an excellent opportunity to gain international recognition for the achievements made by cancer researchers at your institution or elsewhere in the UK. The Prizes are awarded in three categories:

 

- Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research

- Future Leaders in Cancer Research

- Translational Cancer Research

Winners are selected by an international panel of cancer experts, and the awards are presented at the annual NCRI Cancer Conference.

The deadline for nominations  is 11th April 2012. More information on the Prizes and nomination process can be found here.  For any queries please email.

 

Funding Opportunities

Underpinning Power Electronics 2012                                                    15 Mar 12

Expression of interest: EPSRC is making up to £18million available to fund a new multi-site virtual centre in Power Electronics. Expressions of interest are invited to form the core leadership team to develop a single full proposal to EPSRC.

Closing Date: 15 March 2012

 

More information