MANCHESTER

           1824

School of Computer Science

Weekly Newsletter

10 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

Atlas 50th anniversary December 5th

On December 5th 2012 the School will host a 50th anniversary of the Atlas computer. Full details can be found here: http://elearn.cs.man.ac.uk/~atlas/ 

There will be various ways in which staff can help out, specific requests will follow. We will be looking for volunteers to capture information about the School’s history and particularly the various physical artifacts that we have while we have the opportunity to speak to people who designed and/or used them. There remains an unfilled School Duty of History Co-ordinator that I will be filling shortly, anyone who would find that an interesting job to do, please get in touch.

Staff campus tours

Campus tours for staff are taking place on the 11th, 12th and 13th September. They will last no longer than an hour and in addition to broadening your knowledge of the University, the tour will also be a good opportunity for some light exercise! The tours will go ahead rain or shine so it may be worth bringing your umbrella!

 

This tour will show you around the main buildings at the University and give you some general information on the history of the buildings and which schools are based in them. Whether you have worked at the University for 2 weeks or 10 years, if you would like to feel more confident about directing students around the University then this tour will be helpful to you.

 

The tours are in response to staff reports that at last year's welcome week, the majority of queries from students involved asking for directions. However not all staff were able to do this as they had not visited the buildings in question. As the University is dedicated to improving the students' experience, this tour will be invaluable to staff who would like to be involved in this process.

 

To book a place on the tour please visit

http://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/supporting-students/campus-tours-for-staff or email Kelly Rowe for further details.

Participants required to take part in a study looking at the impact of mood on task performance

From Jane Owens:

We are looking for volunteers to take part in a Psychology study that involves completing 6 short self-report questionnaires, a visualisation task and a computerised puzzle task.

 

If you decide to take part of the study then it will take place in the Zochonis building on the University of Manchester Campus.

 

The study will last approximately 45-60mins. First and second year Psychology students will be given 4 credits (subject to availability) or £5 in return for taking part. Non Psychology students will receive £5 for taking part.

 

The current study excludes anybody who has experienced Psychosis and/or have received a diagnosis of any psychotic illness e.g. Schizophrenia

 

This project has been approved by the University of Manchester, research ethics committee:

 

Reference number:  11323

 

Study title:  Study investigating the effect of mood on task performance

Contact details

 

For details and to take part or for further information, please contact Jane Owens (jane.owens-2@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk).

 

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.

 

H. Barringer, D. M. Gabbay & J. Woods, “Temporal, numerical and meta-level dynamics in argumentation networks”, Argument & Computation, 3:2-3, 143-202, July 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19462166.2012.704397

 

H. Barringer, D. M. Gabbay & J. Woods, “Modal and temporal argumentation networks”, Argument & Computation, 3:2-3, 203-227, July 2012.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19462166.2012.704399

 

H. Barringer, Y. Falcone, K. Havelund, G. Reger and D. Rydeheard, “Quantified Event Automata: Towards Expressive and Efficient Runtime Monitors”, Proceedings of FM 2012: Formal Methods, LNCS, volume 7436, pages 68-84,

August 2012.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32759-9_9

Events

Robot seminar                                                                                              10 Sept 12

Talk & demonstration of the the NAO humanoid robot for Research and Education. They took part in our Animation12 hands-on activities and are interesting and fun.

 
This is a non-technical talk that should be of interest to many, so please do come.


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

 

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

ICO Alan Turing Centenary Lecture                                                        11 Sept 12

The ICO celebrates the life of Alan Turing with inaugural lecture.

 

2012 is the 100 year anniversary of the birth of mathematician, code breaker, logician and computer scientist Alan Turing. Alan Turing is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.

 
To mark this anniversary, the ICO is also pleased to announce that the first ICO Alan Turing Lecture will be held at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester on Tuesday 11 September.


The inaugural lecture will be delivered by distinguished Cambridge historian Professor Christopher Andrew, the official historian of MI5, who will be discussing the life and work of Turing.


If you would be interested in attending you are invited to send your expressions of interest to
dpc@ico.gsi.gov.uk. While places are limited we will be doing our best to accommodate those wishing to attend.

 

We hope to arrange similar lectures in the future to highlight important issues connected to the Information Commissioner’s Office’s work.

 

Funding Opportunities

School Research Office

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

Computational Science and Engineering: Software for the Future   4 Dec 12

Closing date: 16:00 on 04 December 2012

Issue date: 22 August 2012

Category: Invitation for proposals 

Related themes: ICT, Research infrastructure

 

This call is being issued in support of EPSRC’s Software as an Infrastructure strategy.  Up to £7M will be committed to this call, subject to the quality of proposals received.

 

Funding is available for projects focused on the development of software that is used in computational science and engineering. This covers the development of novel code, the development of new functionality for existing codes, and the development and re-engineering of existing codes. Strategic drivers are: developing code that is future-proof; a focus on software sustainability; community building and networking; and skills acquisition.

 

In order to allow maximum time for selection of appropriate reviewers and panel members, all applicants must email EPSRCsoftware@epsrc.ac.uk by 16:00 1 October 2012, indicating their intention to submit. This email should contain a list of potential investigators and their institutions, and a one-paragraph summary of the potential research proposal.

 

Please note: holders of Stage 1 projects from the HPC Software Development Call should apply for their Stage 2 project under this call.

More information