News from Head of
School
Gas Leak
As you all know, the Kilburn and IT Buildings
(along with the Precinct, Waterloo Place and Crawford House)
had to be evacuated on Friday afternoon, due to a major gas leak caused by
one of the contractors fracturing a gas main outside our goods
entrance. I know that this was inconvenient for many of you, so I am
grateful that the vast majority of staff and students behaved responsibly
and left the premises as quickly as possible. I gather, however,
that a few individuals chose to continue working for around an hour after
the start of the evacuation, necessitating a second search of the
building, which put others at risk. We will speak to the individuals
concerned, but I want to take this opportunity to remind you all that,
when the full alarm sounds, it is VITAL that you leave the building(s)
immediately. You may be endangering others as well as yourself if you
remain on the premises.
AUT Action
I am sure you are all also aware of the AUT action
planned to begin with a strike on Tuesday, continuing with action short of
a strike for an indeterminate period. I recognise the legitimacy of
this action but I am concerned to ensure that we minimise the
consequential damage to innocent parties. Students are the obvious
at-risk group, though I suspect that the AUT itself will wish to stop
short of damaging their prospects. I am more concerned about the
potential effect on administrative and support staff – many of whom are
themselves members of AUT. Even under normal circumstances, these
staff are under a great deal of pressure to get marks in and processed in
time for exam boards, with virtually no slack in the system. I know
that, following similar AUT action a couple of years ago, incredible and
quite unfair pressure fell on this group of staff to complete the
necessary work on an even more compressed timescale, in order that
students should not be disadvantaged. I will do all I can to protect
these members of staff, but I would urge those of you who are members of
AUT, and wish to support the action, to organise matters so as to avoid a
similar situation arising on this occasion. Ii would be
inappropriate for me to suggest how this might be achieved, though I would
be happy to discuss the problem with interested parties if that would be
helpful.
Presidents
Visit
The President will be making one of his regular
visits to the School on Monday, 27th March 2006. He has
said that he is ‘keen to find out about the priorities and work of the
School and to learn for himself how we are responding to the ambitious
goals for the University set out in the 'Manchester 2015 Agenda'. He is
also extremely keen to meet a cross-section of staff in their normal
working environment. A programme is being prepared which will allow us to
raise some of our key issues and concerns with the President and to give
him the opportunity to meet as varied a cross section of staff as possible
within the constraints of a two hour visit.
Research
Event
Following on from the successful event in 2003, we
are planning a research ‘retreat’ for all academic staff, senior research
staff and administrators. We have booked the Palace Hotel, Buxton
for 29th-30th June 06. Detailed plans will be
put together over the next few weeks, but please set aside the time in
your diary, if you possibly can, and pass on ideas for how you would like
to see the event organised to Ursula.
Towards Query Answering for Expressive Description
Logics New 8 Mar 06
Birte Glimm (change to advertised
seminar)
13:00-14:00, Kilburn Building, Atlas 1
The ONDEX
Framework
17 Mar 06
Uniting Concept-based Data
Integration, Biological Homology Searches & Data
Analysis. Dr Jacob Koehler,
Rothamsted
Research
1400-1500, E7 lecture theatre,
Renold
Building
More
Information
Regular Seminar Series
See links in
contents bar for information on seminar series organised by the School of
CS, E-Science North
West and National Centre for Text Mining.
Internal Meetings and
Events
top
North
West Grid
Workshop: Bioinformatics and the Grid
20 Mar 06
E-Science North West (ESNW)
& NW Institute for Bio-Health Informatics (NIBHI)
0930-1615,
Atlas 1&2.
Registration:
email name and organisation to castreos@manchester.ac.uk
More
Information
Enabling a Business Process Revolution-IBM
Lecture
21 Mar 06
Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM Vice
President, Technical Strategy and Innovation.
A digital revolution, led
by continuing advances in IT, and an Internet revolution, born of open
standards, are begetting a business process revolution. It, in turn, is
creating conditions for a “perfect storm” of collaborative innovation with
the potential to restructure individual enterprises and entire industries,
perhaps even entire economies.
To find out
more and to register to attend the lecture please visit
Website
President’s Visit New
27 April 06
An opportunity for the President to meet
informally with a cross-section of staff in their natural
habitat.
Grantsmanship Training
sessions
6 & 7 April 06
Grantsmanship courses are organised by Faculty,
but run by EPSRC. The last set of these were attended by some of our staff
who found them very useful - especially the mock panel sessions. The
courses are also very popular, so if you would like to attend I would
suggest you put your name forward asap to avoid disappointment. The
courses are aimed at new staff (young as well as recent appointments who
are new to the UK) and established members of
staff who have not had any recent interaction with the EPSRC, either as
applicants, grant holders or referees/panel members. Please forward
me the details of any members of staff you wish to nominate to attend:
louise.rogers@manchester.ac.uk
Research Retreat New
29 & 30 June 06
Palace Hotel, Buxton
EPSRC Public Engagement
Workshops
9 Mar 06
Introducing PE to ‘virgins’ and passing on best
practice. Space limited.
More information and
registration.
Manchester Inter Varsity Debating
Tournament
12 Mar 06
Grand final of the Inter Varsity
Debating Tounament. An opportunity to enjoy stimulating debate and
support Sivaraja Sivanesan, one of our students who has acted as convenor
for the competition this year. If you wish to attend email iv@mdu.manchester.ac.uk for
tickets.
1330 – 1600, Lecture Theatre A, Roscoe Building
Genomes to Systems
Conference
22-24 Mar 06
An important conference concerning the
latest concepts and breakthroughs in genomics and systems biology.
Discounted registration before 31 Dec 05.
More
Information
eProtein Scientific Meeting and
Workshop
24-26 April 06
The EMBL-EBI, together with Imperial College
London (IC) and University
College London (UCL), are delighted to
invite you to attend a one-day scientific meeting on Protein and Genome
Annotations on 24th April. The meeting will be held on the Wellcome
Trust Genome Campus at Hinxton and is funded by the UK Department of Trade
and Industry, BBSRC and the BioSapiens EU Project. The aim of the meeting
is to describe the current approaches, both technical and scientific,
which will allow contributions and access to annotations from many
different laboratories, based on GRID DAS technologies. The meeting
will be followed by a two-day practical workshop addressing the use and
implementation of the systems designed by the eProtein partners. All
of the systems and results of the project are freely available for the
academic community to access and use, or implement within your own
lab.
More Information
and Registration
BCS/IEE Accreditation
Visit
18-19 May 06
Those who will definitely need to be
involved should already know and have these dates in their diaries, but
could all staff involved in teaching please note the dates and try to
ensure they will be available if required.
Funding
Opportunities
top
BBSRC International Scientific Interchange Scheme
(ISIS)
Open
BBSRC's International Scientific Interchange
Scheme (ISIS) provides support to help scientists make and establish new
contacts with their international counterparts. Funding is available to
BBSRC grantholders, and researchers working on BBSRC-supported projects at
BBSRC-sponsored Institutes for travel and subsistence for three main types
of visit. The scheme is open to bids at any time (at least 6 weeks before
travel) with payments being made in advance of any visits. Please note
BBSRC-supported students are not eligible to travel under ISIS support.
More
Information
Royal Society Research
Grants
4 April 06
The Research grants scheme
provides seed-corn funding for new projects of timeliness and promise
initiated by research scientists at an early stage of their career or by
established scientists wishing to change the direction of their
research. The objectives of the scheme are to increase the
availability of equipment and consumables for high quality
research.
More
Information
Royal
Society Wolfson Research Merit
Awards
27 April 06
Jointly funded by the Wolfson Foundation and the
Office of Science and Technology, this scheme aims to give universities
additional support to attract key researchers, with great potential or
outstanding achievement, to this country or to retain those who might seek
to gain higher salaries elsewhere. The focus of the award is salary
enhancement. Research expenses are also considered for research costs not
suitable for Research Councils research grants applications and for
overseas applicants to support integration into theUK research and funding
environment.
More
Information
RAEng
Industrial Secondment
Scheme
Open
The Industrial Secondment Scheme provides an
invaluable opportunity for university lecturers in engineering to gain
state-of-the-art industrial experience.
Applicable to engineers of all
disciplines, the Scheme's objective is to enable the secondees to impart
the fruits of this experience to their students through teaching, through
case studies using up-to-date material and, in the longer term, through
course design. The benefits also accrue to the host organisation which
gains a temporary but highly qualified member of staff, and to the
university which has the opportunity of strengthening its links with
industry. The Scheme provides funding for the university to employ a
temporary replacement for the secondee. In this way it minimises the
effects on the normal flow of teaching, and makes it easier for
universities to release members of staff for secondment. The Scheme has
also been well received by industry, and many organisations have indicated
a willingness to offer places to engineering academics: where possible The
Royal Academy of Engineering helps in the 'matchmaking
process'.
More
Information
Royal Academy of Engineering Global
Research Awards
Global Research Awards provide an opportunity for
engineers currently engaged in research and development to undertake
projects in centres of excellence overseas. Projects should focus on
activities which could help stimulate wealth creation and improvements in
the quality of life, supporting the international development of research
networks and encouraging the uptake of globally competitive technology in
the UK.
More
Information
Prize and
Award
Opportunities
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We have acknowledged the need to raise the profile
of the School both nationally and internationally. Nominating
individuals for awards, and working actively with others to ensure that
deserving individuals are nominated is one way of doing
that.
BCS Distinguished
Dissertations
10 April 06
The Conference of Professors and Heads of
Computing (CPHC), in conjunction with the British Computer Society (BCS),
annually selects for publication the best British PhD/DPhil dissertations
in computer science. The scheme aims to make more visible the
significant contribution made by Britain - in particular by
post-graduate students - to computer science.
More
Information
René
Descartes Prizes
2006
4 May 06
The European Commission is inviting proposals
under its framework 6 science and society programme for Rene Descartes
prizes. These are to recognise excellence in research and science
communication. Prizes for research will be at least 200000 euros each, and
projects must include legal entities from 2 different member or associated
states, and include at least one member state or associated candidate
country.
More
Information
None this week
Awards and Promotions
None this week
Academic Arrivals
None this week
Academic Departures
None this week
Research Arrivals
David Willmor - IPG
Research Departures
None this week
Administrative Arrivals
None this week
Administrative Departures
None this week
Sabbatical Leave
Andrei
Voronkov: Microsoft Research, Redmond USA
Aug 05 – Aug
06.
Ian
Horrocks: University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bell Labs, and Stanford University
Feb 06 – Sep
06.
Peter
Aczel: Nijmegen University, and Maths Institute at the
University
of Munich
Jan 06 –
Sep 06.
Alasdair
Rawsthorne: 80% secondment to
Transitive Technologies
Oct 05 – Sep 06.
Alvaro
Fernandes: IBM Almaden Research Centre
US
Jul – Dec 06.
Academic Staff
None
Research Staff
None
Administrative Staff
None |