MANCHESTER

           1824

School of Computer Science

Weekly Newsletter

10 November 2008

Contents

News from HoS

This Week

 

Documents

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

Newsletter Documents

The newsletter circulated by email each week will contain News from the Head of School, Events for this week and new announcements for Research Awards and Funding & Award Opportunities.  The document links in the side bar on the left now link to the all other relevant information should you wish to access it.

Academic Management Tree

Please follow this link to see the current School Academic Management Tree. I am aware from meetings with staff that not everyone knows who their line manager is, so here is an opportunity to find out! We will shortly be reviewing this structure, in part to incorporate the changes that follow from the change of HoS, so if you have any requests you would like us to take into account (in terms of who you manage or who your manager is), please feed these back to Ursula and myself for consideration by the end of November.

2008 Best PhD Paper Prizes

The Research School received eleven nominations for the 2008 Best Research Student Paper Prize. Their excellent quality made the task of the panel a difficult one, a historical trend that we hope will continue. The winner of the 2008 Best PhD Paper Prize is Richard Pearson (supervised by Magnus Rattray) for his paper: A Comprehensive Re-Analysis of the Golden Spike Data: Towards a Benchmark for Differential Expression Methods, Richard Pearson, BMC Bioinformatics 2008, 9:164 doi:10.1186/1471-2105-9-164. The two runners-up (in alphabetical order of surname) are: Matthew Horridge (supervised by Bijan Parsia, and Ulrike Sattler) for his paper: Laconic and Precise Justifications in OWL, Matthew Horridge, Bijan Parsia, and Ulrike Sattler, Proc. 7th International Semantic Web Conference, 2008 and Jisheng Zhao (supervised by Chris Kirkham) for his paper: Adaptive Loop Tiling for a Multi-Cluster CMP, Jisheng Zhao, Matthew Horsnell, Mikel Lujan, Ian Rogers, Chris Kirkham, and Ian Watson, Proc. 8th International Conference on Algorithms and Architectures, LNCS 5022, pp. 220–232, 2008.

 

Congratulations to Richard, as well as Matthew and Jisheng, for their achievements. The quality of the competition this year is reflected in the fact that the papers by Matthew and Jisheng also won best paper prizes at their respective conferences.

The Baby at The Printworks

Last Saturday, 1 November, visitors to The Printworks in Manchester City  Centre were surprised to find the "Photo-Baby", the School's full-size  photographic replica of the original 1948 machine, complete with working simulator.

We were there as part of the Manchester Science Festival,  and an intrepid team - Mandi Banks, Graham Gough, Toby Howard, Alex  Walker, and Alan Williams - engaged with the public as they flowed  through The Printworks (mainly on their way to see James Bond).  Almost 200 people entered our prize draw to win a laptop (kindly sponsored by the BCS). It was certainly an experience the team won't forget! The Photo-Baby's next public outing is likely to be for the  Schools Day at the Manchester Histories Festival, to be held at  Manchester Town Hall in March 2009. If you would be interested in  getting involved with the School's Public Engagement activities, please contact Toby Howard.

EPSRC ICT Team Visit

This is just early warning that the ESPRC ICT Team will be visiting the University on Monday 8th and Tuesday 9th December 2008. There will be an open session which everyone is invited to attend from 13.00 to 14.00 on Monday 8th December. Location TBA.

Postgraduate Open Day

The PG Open Day is taking place on Wednesday Nov 26th - a preliminary
schedule is available Here.  Mashhuda Glencross has kindly agreed to give a demo on the Daedelus Project, so we just need to find one more demo for the second 30 minute slot. We are also looking for volunteers for the meet and greet session with prospective students.  If you're able to help out any of these activities please contact Sue Wolfenden.

Facts and Figures

This section will periodically recur in the newsletter. The university collects large numbers of figures (at least some of which are hopefully facts) about different aspects of its performance. This section will be used to pass on some figures that are hopefully of interest. 

 

Here are some recent student-staff ratio (SSR) measures, not including research students:

Year

Computer Science

Faculty

 

Academic FTE

Student FTE

SSR

Avg SSR

2007/2008

70.3

655

9.3

11.7

2006/2007

58.6

483

8.2

10.4

 

 

Events this Week                                                              top

Children in Need                                                                                            14 Nov 08

We will once again be running our annual Children in Need Booksale and online auction.  Further details will be sent round in due course.  Books and auction items gratefully received in ACSO.  We especially need Auction items please, by Tuesday 11 November if possible please!

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.

 

New Funding and Award Opportunities

Nominations for BCS Needham Award and Lovelace Medal          19 Dec 08

These are highly prestigious awards, and represent an opportunity, not only for the winners themselves, but also to raise the profile of UK computer science. It is therefore extremely important that the awards go to individuals of outstanding merit.

More Information

Newton International Fellowships                                                      12 Jan 09

The Fellowships cover the broad range of natural and social sciences, engineering and the humanities. They provide grants of £24,000 per annum to cover subsistence and £8,000 to cover research expenses, plus a one-off relocation allowance of £2,000.  As part of the scheme, all Newton Fellows who remain in research will be granted a 10 year follow-up funding package worth £6,000 per annum.

More Information