Steve

 

MANCHESTER

           1824

School of Computer Science

Weekly Newsletter

10 March 2014

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

Steve Furber: Distinguished Fellow of the BCS

Steve Furber was made a Distinguished Fellow of the BCS at the 2014 IET/ BCS Turing Lecture hosted at The University of Manchester last month.

 

As a Distinguished Fellow, Prof. Furber joins some of the top names in the history of the industry including Bill Gates, Sir Tim Berners Lee, Vint Cerf and Tom Kilburn (1974).

 

For more information see:

http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/people/news/full-article/?articleid=721

or the BCS press release:

http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/52206

Great Uni Hackathon Success

The Great Uni Hackathon, organised by CSSoc, Coding Dojo & 1Up and sponsored by six companies was held in the Kilburn Building on Saturday. It was a great success with over 80 attendees and 20 teams.

 

Winners included: Best Overall: Joe Forshaw with Convinced of the Hex territory game; Best Game: Audrey Leow, Sarah Kelso, Daniel Underwood and Ryszard Rowinski with Kinect Flappy Nerds; Most Useful: Paul Pistea, Nenu Adrian, Eduard Bunduc and Horia-Danut Stanciu with a text-based wiki and timetable API; Most Quirky: Ignas Bolsakovas, Struan McDonough, Arjun Mistry, Hugh Williams with a cat fact SMS service; Best use of ClockWork API: Fran Popescu, Adrian Culea, Vlad Berianu; and Radu Ghitescu with a dating service for CS students.

 

There are plenty of photos of the event and the winners at: http://deskand.co/greatunihack/

President’s visit time changes                                                31 March 2014

The times of meetings have changed slightly. The programme is now:

10.30 – 11.00 – Student meeting in 2.19

11.00 – 11.30 – SLT meeting in 2.15

11.30 – 12.00 – Staff meeting in 2.15

Staff are not invited to the student meeting. All staff are invited to the staff meeting and Nancy will take questions as usual.

 

News and announcements

Messages from the Green Impact Team

The School has recently formed a Green Impact Team, in a bid to make our School a more sustainable, environmentally friendly place. We are currently working towards our Bronze award, looking at the way the School deals with waste & recycling, energy use, travel, procurement and “green” communications. You will soon see a Green Impact noticeboard appearing in the building with key messages, along with regular items in this newsletter. If you would like to join our Green Impact Team, please contact Cassie Barlow for more information.

Sustainability across the University

The Green Impact Scheme is a national scheme which the University has signed up to. There are Green Impact teams across the University in Schools, Faculties and central directorates. The University’s 2020 strategic plan lists Environmental Sustainability as an enabling strategy – “To embed environmental sustainability as a key priority across the full range of our activities”. Background on the University’s policy on environmental sustainability can be found in the University Environmental Sustainability Plan.

 

Some recent University developments involving staff and students include:

·       The University Living Lab – a platform for collaboration between researchers, students, external stakeholders and Estates around sustainability and low carbon.

·       The University has signed up to NETpositive to encourage students to take small steps in changing their lifestyles to become more environmentally friendly.

 

If you would like to know more about the work of the University’s sustainability team, you can visit the Sustainability website, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

Research Data Management – compulsory for all new research applications

As of early March, the Research Data Management system is ‘live’ in CS. This means that all new research applications must have a Data Management Plan (DMP) reference number prior to submission. More information here:

http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/ourservices/research-services/rdm/

 

At proposal stage there are 5 simple questions that you will need to answer in order to generate the DMP number, which takes only a few minutes.

 

The University’s Research Data Management policy is currently being rolled out across the Faculties, beginning with requirements relating to data management planning, storage of data and inclusion of metadata.

 

The new policy will help you manage your data more efficiently and effectively.

The benefits to you are:

·       Less duplication of effort as project and data information is stored centrally

·       Reduced risk of data loss as data is securely backed up centrally

·       Easier discovery of research data through use of metadata, tagging, linking and search functionalities

·       Control over who can access your data store

·       Compliance with data protection, funder policies, ethical codes and journal requirements

 

To find out the launch date for your Faculty/School/Research Institute visit the Implementation timetable.

For more information contact the Research Data Management team at The University of Manchester Library:

Phone: 0161 275 7853

Email: researchdata@manchester.ac.uk

Website: www.manchester.ac.uk/researchdata

Why you should manage your data

How to manage your data

What do I need to do?

UMIP ‘Click 2 go’ software repository

UMIP’s ‘Click2go’ is an electronic repository offering online licensing of software developed at The University of Manchester via one accessible platform.

 

What can I expect to find on Click2Go?

Click2Go currently contains software but in the future we hope to make available clinical questionnaires, images and other copyright materials as well as handling MTA requests for research reagents.

 

What are the advantages of Click2Go?

A few of the many advantages of using Click2Go are:

·       Accessing a single portal to browse a wide variety of The University of Manchester software

·       Clear and simple licensing terms

·       Automated online approval process

·       Electronic download of software products

·       Access to supplementary information (journal articles, manuals etc)

 

I am a scientist. Can I promote my products on Click2Go?

If you are a scientist at The University of Manchester, use the Contact us form to approach us about including your product.

We do not promote products originating from non- The University of Manchester scientists unless your institution/company has an arrangement with us. Please enquire within your own institution/company first.

 

Contact Dr Ed Maughfling for more details.

 

Events

School Board meeting                                                                    12 Mar 14

External Affairs Report, Web strategy report

15:00, IT building room 407.

Board home page

Temporalizing Ontology-Based Data Access                                  13 Mar 14

14:00, 2.19, Kilburn building.

Franz Baader, TU Dresden.

http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/our-research/seminars/

Research workshop at the School of Mathematics                         19 Mar 14 

New Directions in Nonlinear Optimization, Wednesday 19 March 2014, at the Alan Turing Building.

The workshop aims to highlight recent advances in nonlinear optimization and indicate future research directions.

It is an activity of the EPSRC Network Numerical Algorithms and High Performance Computing which is providing financial support.

Further information

Registration

 

Funding Opportunities

Research Support Office

Please contact us through researchsupportcsm@manchester.ac.uk.

There is information about support for grant writing, submission and successful examples at http://staffnet.cs.manchester.ac.uk/reso/ and through EPS. The EPS blog The Word contains features News, Events and comment relevant to Postgraduate Researchers, Research Staff and Supervisors or PIs.

 

Important: Changes in EU Funding Opportunities

More detailed information is available now that for Horizon2020 has started (the successor of FP7 EU programme). EU research funding is important for the School and it’s important to understand what’s available http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/index.html

 

Reminder - H2020 information available

EU funding-related documents are placed by the University's EU team at:
http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/search.aspx
The easiest way to find these documents is to search using the keyword: 'Horizon 2020'

A great resource recommended by the ICT National Contact Point is http://www.ictic.org/, which also provides handy overview documents.

 

External Horizon 2020 events                                                            Various

Details on upcoming events are available, including focuses on graphene, HBP and FET.

FAPESP: Collaborate with Researchers in the State of Sao Paulo                  

                                                                                                   24 Mar 2014

A Call has been launched by the Fundaco de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Sao Paulo (FAPESP) and The University of Manchester to provide funding for academic staff who are currently collaborating with /or wish to collaborate with, researchers in the State of Sao Paulo. Funding of up to £20k per year for two years is available for travel costs: air tickets, per diem, travel in Brazil, insurance costs.

 

REMINDER - Manchester-Melbourne Mobility Fund                    31 Mar 2014

Closing date: 17:00 31 March 2014

 

The University has up to 10 grants available in 2014 to support short-term staff visits to the University of Melbourne to develop and strengthen ties in teaching and learning and research. Open to both academic and professional staff. Similar visits to Manchester will be undertaken by staff from Melbourne.

Prof. Dame Nancy Rothwell will be delivering the 2014 Menzies Oration at the University of Melbourne. In light of this announcement, and to strengthen collaboration between the two universities, the Vice-Chancellors of the two universities have together agreed to establish a staff exchange programme.

 

Applications should be submitted by email by 5pm on Monday, 31 March 2014 to:

·       Student Recruitment and International Development at international.relations@manchester.ac.uk (Attn: Tanya Luff, Head of International Relations)

Questions should be directed to the same email address.

 

Royal Society-DFID Africa Capacity Building Initiative                 9 April 2013

Closing date: 9 April 2013

 

The Royal Society and the UK’s Department for International Development are looking to strengthen the research capacity of universities and research institutions in sub-Saharan Africa by developing multidisciplinary, collaborative research consortia with researchers in the UK.

 

The 3 research priority areas are:

·       Water & sanitation

·       Renewable energy

·       Soil-related research

 

Programme Grants provide up to £1,243k over a 5 year period (5 available), to support Research Consortia, consisting of three African groups and one UK-based laboratory.

NSF/BIO- BBSRC Lead Agency Pilot Opportunity                       30 May 2014

·       Intention to submit: 16:00 30 May 2014

·       Closing date: 16:00 24 September 2014

 

Good for bio-informatics… UK-US collaborative projects are being invited in the areas of intersection between the USA’s NSF Directorate for Biological Sciences (NSF/BIO) and BBSRC as follows:

BBSRC Strategic Research Priorities, Responsive Mode 

·       Data Driven Bioscience

·       Systems Approaches to the Biosciences

·       Synthetic Biology (September 2015 submissions only)

NSF/BIO Solicitations

       Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences Solicitation NSF 13-510

       Division of Biological Infrastructure Solicitation NSF 12-567

The pilot will be open for Autumn 2014 and Autumn 2015 submissions.

 

Featured Research Outcomes

 

Did you know… papers featured in the newsletter also go on display in the Kilburn Building (outside 2.7)? Send your new publications to Robert Stevens so that more people get to know about your research.

 

 

Have we missed something? If you have some award news that you would like us to know about please contact Sarah Chatwin.