MANCHESTER

           1824

School of Computer Science

Weekly Newsletter

 8 April 2013

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

Outreach Award for Aravind Vijayaraghavan

Aravind has won this year’s Joshua Phillips Award for Innovation in Science Engagement (Josh Award) at MOSI (Museum of Science & Industry, Manchester) for introducing over 20,000 people to the wonders of graphene. As part of the award he will be this year’s Science Communicator in Residence at the Manchester Science Festival. More details can be found here:

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=9801

Steve Furber in the news

‘Docs to build a £1bn bionic brain’ The Sun, Mar 28 p.4.

Computer science expert Steve Furber of the University of Manchester has been working on the bionic brain project since 2005. He says, “A better understanding of how the brain works should allow us to design drugs with a lot more confidence in their effectiveness”.

Carole wins best visionary idea at BeyondPDF

Congratulations to Carole for winning best Vision for the Future at

Beyond the PDF, with her vision "Don't publish. Release!".

 

University Announcements

 

Changes in HR from Tuesday 2 April

Tuesday 2 April saw the launch of a new way of delivering Human Resources services across the University with the aim of offering an improved HR service. 

 

For EPS, the main change to happen is that day-to-day HR and payroll enquiries will no longer be handled by your HR staff team in Sackville Street Building; instead, these kinds of queries will be dealt with by a new team called HR Services, which will be located in the Simon Building.  The local HR team will begin to relocate from 25 April, which means that there will be no reception service in Sackville Street Building after 22 March.

Another feature is the role of HR Partners – current HR Managers - who will work more closely than ever with leaders and managers to plan and deliver longer term HR needs.

 

The new Directorate of Human Resources structure looks like this:

  • HR Services – a newly created team of HR professionals handling all day-to-day HR enquiries. 
  • HR Partners – Heads of HR and their management teams, working more closely and strategically with the Faculty. 
  • Centres of Expertise –Staff Training and Development Unit, Pensions and Equality and Diversity teams. 

HR staff have been working closely with senior leadership teams across the University to ensure that the new-look Directorate of HR meets their needs, and that staff understand the structure and services on offer.

 

How to get in touch with HR from Tuesday 2 April:

 

HR Services – for day to day HR enquiries including HR Systems (Resourcelink, HESA, management information, post management); Recruitment and Resourcing (advertising, pre-employment checks, redeployment); and Employment Services (payroll, fess and expenses, sickness recording, absence and changes to current employment).

 

To make contact with HR Services:

 

·         askHR –  this is a new online resource accessed via StaffNet where you can find the majority of answers to basic HR questions and should be your first port of call for HR enquiries

 

·         HR Helpline: 0161 27 54499

 

·         Email: HRServices@manchester.ac.uk

 

What will happen when you make contact:

 

·         A member of the HR Services team will log your query

·         Your query will be allocated to a member of the HR Services team

·         An email will be sent to advise that the task is underway and to inform you who is dealing with it

·         An Email will be sent to advise that the task is complete

 

HR Partners: (Phillip Ashcroft, Louise Jordan, Anne O’Neill) will remain based in their existing offices in Sackville Street Building and can be contacted on their existing phone numbers and email addresses. 

 

Louise Jordan is the HR Partner for Computer Science

 

Centres of Expertise:

·         Pensions: pensions@manchester.ac.uk

·         Equality and Diversity: equalityanddiversity@manchester.ac.uk 

 

Featured Research Outcomes

Prof. Sophia Ananiadou gave a keynote speech at the 14th International Conference on Intelligent Text Processing and Computational Linguistics (CICLing 2013). The speech was entitled "Enhancing Search: Events and their Discourse Context". The conference took place on the island of Samos in Greece, from 24th - 30th March 2013.

http://www.cicling.org/2013/