|
|
|
|
|
1824 |
School
of Computer Science |
|
|
Weekly
Newsletter |
24 November 2014 |
|
|
Contents |
News and announcements
Call for team members: MIB-based iGEM team for 2015 competition Any UG/Masters/PhD students that might be interested
should come to a meet-up on the 10th December 13:00 at Manchester Institute
of Biotechnology, room G.051. We are looking for team members across
all scientific disciplines (computing sciences, humanities, economy etc. are
welcome). The International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM) is the premiere undergraduate Synthetic Biology competition. Student teams are given a kit of biological parts at the beginning of the summer from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts. Working at their own schools over the summer, they use these parts and new parts of their own design to build biological systems and operate them in living cells. This project design and competition format is an exceptionally motivating and effective teaching method. For more information please visit http://igem.org/About. Please send Eriko Takano your CV with your course details. University of Manchester wins worldwide computing competition A team from the School of Computer Science has won the
first International Competition for Runtime Verification. The Manchester
entry won outright in 2 out of the 3 competition tracks against strong teams
from across Europe and North America.
John Keane in the News! John was quoted in The Independent on 18th November talking about courses in data and knowledge management at both postgraduate and undergraduate level, says. Professor John Keane, from the School of Computer Science, says: “Data science is very popular and it's a generic skillset that can be applied across many areas such as social sciences, business, science and engineering and medicine and life science.” Digital
Economy Programme Advisory Board (PAB) – call for new members Deadline: 05 December
2014 The recruitment process is completely open; individuals may nominate themselves for membership or they may be nominated by colleagues or other bodies (universities, companies, learned/professional societies etc.). Full details of members’ roles, vacancies, the recruitment process and the assessment criteria for selection can be found on the EPSRC website. EPSRC Photo
Competition 01
Dec 14 Deadline: 01 December 2014 For all EPSRC-supported researchers and
EPSRC-supported doctoral students to share their research using
images. Images must demonstrate research
in action. Win up to £500 worth of camera/photography equipment. Events
Digital Economy YES 2014 24-26 Nov 14 Event: 24-26 November 2014, Imperial War Museum in Manchester The rescheduled Digital Economy Young
Entrepreneurs Scheme (DE YES) is now open for entries either from individuals
or from teams of 4-5 people. A briefing session for participants will take
place on the 28th October in Nottingham. DE YES is designed to develop business awareness
and an understanding of entrepreneurship in UK postgraduate and
postdoctoral researchers. The three day event includes an expert speaker
programme and business mentoring opportunities, culminating in a competition
where teams of researchers work together to prepare a business plan which
will be pitched to a panel of judges. School seminar: EPSRC ICT Theme: Strategy, Priorities and Update26 Nov 1414:00, lecture theatre 1.4, Kilburn
building. Dr Liam Blackwell, EPSRC. Horizon 2020 – ICT 30 Community Networking day 27 Nov 14 Held in London The Horizon
2020 ICT 2015 ICT 30 call opened on 15 October with €51M available for large
projects in 'Internet of Things and Platforms for Connected Smart
Objects'. This is potentially a great opportunity but what's required,
how does the process work and how do you connect with the European actors?
The KTN is pleased to host a Community Networking day in London on 27th
November where you can get details of the call, learn how H2020 works and
decide if it’s for you, meet representatives of the EU Public Private
Partnerships (that set the Strategic Research Agenda) and have the
opportunity to flag your interest by presenting your credentials and/or
outline project proposals. Event: 3-5 Dec
2014, Imperial College London. Biosensing for Health - a HTC-KTN event 28 Nov 14 Event to be held in Leeds. The development of clinically useful biosensors presents many challenges to both the academic and medical fields. Initially it is vitally important to identify appropriate targets for the conditions to be tested. Only then can work on a recognition system, a signal transducer and a signal processing component commence. At this meeting we will bring together, clinical, academic and commercial expertise in all of these areas to develop working consortia that can access appropriate funding to further research in this area. Although the HTC is focused on colorectal disease we wish to draw in expertise in this field from any clinical or academic specialty. RCUK’s fifth annual Digital Economy,
All Hands Meeting 03-5 Dec 14 Imperial College London. The event will be opened by Imperial College London's incoming president, Professor Alice Gast, and Ed Vaizey MP, Minister of State for Culture and the Digital Economy. DE/2014 is a unique multidisciplinary environment on global digital economy, exploring concepts from the cutting edge in digital economy research, technical challenges, and user engagement, through to latest thinking on privacy and data sharing to exploring how to create value from digital data. These issues will be explored through a mixture of curated activities, submitted papers, posters, videos and technical demonstrations. Register now. DE/2014 for Students! DE/2014
and the Digital Economy Network are offering student bursaries of up to £200
to attend. To apply for this, simply contact de2014@imperial.ac.uk High Performance Computing & Big Data Conference 03 Feb 15 The day will centre on the latest developments of HPC and big data and exploring the innovative ways in which it is being utilised across both academia and industry. Please take a minute to look over the agenda here. There are a number of discounts offered to academics in addition to the current early bird discounts. Please contact Tom Naughton to discuss this further (or 0161 211 3447). 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 EU funding-related documents are placed by
the University's EU team at: A great resource
recommended by the ICT National Contact Point is http://www.ictic.org/, which also provides handy overview
documents. Royal
Academy of Engineering’s 2015 ERA Foundation Award 01 Dec 14 Deadline: 01 December 2014 The RAEng-ERA
Foundation Award encourages and rewards entrepreneurial engineering
researchers working in UK universities, in the field of electro-technology.
The winner receives a personal prize of £10k with an additional £30k to
invest in the development of the winning idea. Winners are
invited to become members of the Enterprise Hub where they receive ongoing
support and business mentoring from the Academy’s Fellowship, which includes
some of the UK’s most successful technology entrepreneurs and business
leaders. The Academy is committed to diversity and we welcome applications
from minority and under-represented groups in engineering, and especially
women. If you have any queries, please do get in touch with the programme
manager Catherine
Lawrence / 020 7766 0615. REMINDER: EPSRC
Making sense from data 06
Jan 15 Closing date:
16:00, 06 January 2015 The EPSRC Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
Theme is inviting outline proposals that explore how to extract meaning from
data. Funds of up to £5 million
are available, which is expected to support 4-6 research projects, subject to
the quality of the proposals received. This call is being issued as part of
the "Towards an Intelligent Information
Infrastructure"
cross-ICT priority. Collaboration with industry and other users is
encouraged. ICT research and proposals that
lie at the interface with ICT research and are relevant to the scope of this
call, such as mathematics and other relevant disciplines, are welcome.
Specifically, the EPSRC are looking for projects that explore how to make
sense from data, by addressing high impact challenges such as how to: · convert the vast amounts of data produced into understandable, actionable information · efficiently and intelligently extract knowledge from heterogeneous, distributed data while retaining the context necessary for its interpretation · ensure new techniques are realistic, compatible and scalable with real-world services and hardware systems REMINDER: User
interaction with ICT 06
Jan 15 Closing date: 16:00, 06 January 2015 EPSRC is inviting outline proposals encouraging
researchers to look at opportunities for how humans will interact with ICT
technology in the future. Funds
of up to £5 million are available, which is expected to support 4-6 research
projects, subject to the quality of the proposals received. This call is
being issued as part of the "Towards an Intelligent Information
Infrastructure"
cross-ICT priority. Collaboration is encouraged. The scope of the call includes (but not limited to): ·
Extending interaction. The development and evaluation of new techniques of interaction
and use, including new modalities of input and output, and new sensors and
devices. · Building. The development and evaluation of platforms, architectures or component technologies that underpin the interaction between humans and ICT systems. · Understanding users. Studies of different target groups and settings to inform the invention and design of new technologies. · Evaluation. The use of experiments, studies, envisionment workshops and other forms of user engagement to understand or evaluate proposed designs or prototype technologies. Remember: ICT portfolio manager Lisa Coles and Miriam
Dowle will be visiting the School on 26 November. User
Experience; better interactions between people and machines: KTPs Apr
15 Deadline: April 2015 Innovate UK (previously TSB) is to invest up to £1m in Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) in the area of user experience (UX), the aim is to encourage new, enhanced forms of interaction between computing systems and the people who use them. This competition will support up to 10 KTP projects of between 6 and 36 months, for greater knowledge and skills transfer relating to user experience from the cutting edge research base into industry. The University KE Team are available to discuss potential projects and there is support available for the scoping, development and submission of applications. Coming-up:
RAEng Engineering Leadership Advanced Awards Due to open: November 2014 This programme
aims to provide support and motivation to some of the most exceptional
engineering undergraduates in UK universities. These awards help
ambitious and inspiring engineering undergraduates, who want to become
leadership role models for the next generation of engineers, to undertake an
accelerated personal development programme. Recipients will get the
opportunity to acquire the skills needed to fulfil their potential, helping
them to move into engineering leadership positions in UK industry soon after
graduation. For further queries, please email Ms Jacqueline Clay. Featured
Research Outcomes
Did you know…papers featured in the newsletter also go on display in the
Kilburn Building (outside finance: 2.03)? Send your new publications to Robert
Stevens so that more
people get to know about your research. ECO2Clouds
project assessed as EXCELLENT as its final review The EU-funded FP7
project involved SCS and MBS with Usman Wajid as the RA and lead at
Manchester. Other staff
involved were: John Keane, Cesar Marin, Nikolay Mehandjiev, Pedro
Sampaio and Xiaojun Zeng. Congratulations to all involved. The project aimed
to reduce the environmental impact of cloud computing; results show that the
eco-aware application deployment strategies devised at Manchester yield up to
80% reduction in CO2 footprint of cloud applications. RETHINK big initial working group meeting With the aim of harnessing the expertise of key stakeholders in hardware, networking and algorithms for the processing of big data, the RETHINK big project organized an initial working group meeting, hosted by the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (Madrid Polytechnic University) on 18 and 19 September 2014. The objectives were to identify challenges across European big-data sectors, to develop a shared language to discuss these and to identify key strategists within each organization. Manchester were well represented at the event with Mikel Lujan, Dirk Koch, Dave Lester, John Goodacre, Andy Nisbet, Christos Kotseldis and Sarah Chatwin. The event attracted project partners and many industrial contacts. Awarded grant: Tim Cootes ‘Bonefinder’ software expanded to knees and hands Funder: EPSRC Amount: £300k (Institute of Population Health) Research into disorders such as arthritis is to be helped by new software that automatically outlines bones – saving thousands of hours of manual work. The system can already identify hips, but it will now be adapted to map out knees and hands and to be able to learn to identify other bones and structures within the body. Professor of Computer Vision, Tim Cootes said: “Mapping the outlines of bones from radiographs is hard work that takes time and skill. When researchers into conditions like arthritis are working with hundreds of images, it’s a very inefficient way of obtaining data. The idea of this software is to take the routine tasks out of human hands, so scientists can focus on drawing conclusions and developing treatments.” Have we missed something? If you have some award news that you would
like us to know about please contact Sarah Chatwin. |
|
|
|
|
|
Helena
