MANCHESTER

           1824

School of Computer Science

Weekly Newsletter

3rd September 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 the Head of School

Employability Tutor

I am delighted to announce that Dr Duncan Hull has been appointed as the School’s Employability Tutor. Duncan will start work on the 10th September, although he has already been working in the School in another capacity and so will be known to many people.

Duncan will work with us, with our students and with potential employers to improve the chance that our graduates can secure the jobs that they would like to have. 

Defibrillator

As you may know, there is now a Automated External Defibrillator (AED) located in the porters’ lodge of the Kilburn Building. It is designed to be safe for use by anybody without training. There is information on defibrillator use here:

http://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/services/occupational-health/first-aid/defibs/use/

and locations of defibrillators here:

http://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/services/occupational-health/first-aid/defibs/

I have spoken to Janet Makin (Unversity First Aid co-ordinator) about the possibility of providing a short ‘what to do if’ introduction to first aid – not to provide a first aid training or to create designated first-aiders, but simply to provide some basic guidance to anyone for whom it would be useful. This would be helpful for anyone who regularly teaches or supervises large groups of students or visitors.

Changes to CS web pages

(From Simon Harper)

As you may know, some of the external facing pages are moving onto a faculty run Content Management System with a swanky new design. As part of this migration the front page for CS will contain news and events etc. We will drive this by some direct machinery as well as aggregating RSS feeds. So if your research group / Lab / microsite (like AnimationNN) / office / institute (Mi) etc manage news and events by RSS / News feeds - or would like to - please let me (Simon Harper) know. I can then arrange for them to be aggregated on the new CS front page.

 

Featured publications this week (by Robert Stevens)

This is a regular section in the weekly newsletter.  This is a small step to help us all to know what research is happening in the School and what is being published. Please continue to add all of your new publications to eScholar, but also send ones that you wish to advertise in the newsletter to Robert.Stevens@manchester.ac.uk.

 

Kent E, Hoops S, Mendes P (2012) Condor-COPASI: High-Throughput Computing for Biochemical Networks. BMC Systems Biology 6:91

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1752-0509/6/91

 

Pahle J, Challenger JD, Mendes P and McKane AJ (2012) Biochemical Fluctuations, Optimisation and the Linear Noise Approximation. BMC Systems Biology 6:86

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1752-0509/6/86

 

Events

Seminar: The NAO humanoid robot for Research and Education                    

Monday 10 September, Room 2.15, 2pm-3pm.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNbj2G3GmAo

There are today over 2000 NAO humanoid robots in more than 350 of the most prestigious research institutes and universities. NAO is popular with  Computer Science researchers and students because for the first time, a humanoid robot platform provides ease of access to high level interaction and behaviour control.  NAO with its iconic figure and humanized motion range is also the preferred platform in research of human robot interaction.

During this session you will discover how the NAO State-of the-Art Robotics platform is used in Research and  Higher Education. We will show  the NAO platform  software and hardware architecture, visual programming  object-oriented environment used to create high level
behaviours, practicing NAO behaviours in 3D simulation and presenting several magical interactive demos. We’ll highlight various applications in which the NAO is being used as a research platform.

Funding Opportunities

School Research Office

There is information about support for grant writing and submission at http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/reso/

 

Research and Grant Awards

ERC Eligibility Criteria Q&A factsheet

If you are planning to apply for the ERC Starting Grant or ERC Consolidator grants, then you may find this Q&A sheet regarding eligibility criteria for Starting and Consolidator Grants ( ERC-2013-StG and ERC-2013-CoG Calls) helpful.