MANCHESTER

           1824

School of Computer Science

Weekly Newsletter

17 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

School Planning Process

Having evolved incrementally over a number of years, it is anticipated that the school plan will be substantially rewritten over the next few months, with a view to revisiting and making more concrete the goals and activities of different functions within the school. The hope is that the review process will directly engage the people who in practice will have responsibility for implementing the plan, and that all staff will have the opportunity to influence both the contents of the plan and the setting of priorities. The following process is being followed:

  1. Various functions within the school, namely UG (Graham), PGT (Roger), PGR (Jon), Research (John Gurd), Estates (Roger), External Affairs (Bernard) and Resources (Tom) have participated in initial briefing meetings, and have been asked to complete a template stating goals, activities and risks by 21st November. The intention is that the people named above will consult relevant staff in the construction of these preliminary plans.
  2. The preliminary plans will be reviewed both by the Profs and by senior staff from the Faculty (the Dean and Associated Deans), and feedback will be conveyed to the functions.
  3. The functions will revise the preliminary plans, consulting within the school, with a view to producing revised proposals by 23rd December 2008.
  4. The independently developed function level plans will be integrated to produce a preliminary school plan early in January, which will be reviewed in parallel within the school and by senior staff from Faculty. This part of the process will involve a meeting open to all staff with a view to discussing the proposed plan and refining priorities. The final plan will be submitted to Faculty at the end of January, and will, among other things, inform the Duties Allocation processes in 2009 and 2010.

I don’t propose to impose consultation mechanisms on individual functions, but interested staff who would like to contribute to specific aspects of the process who do not find themselves within relevant loops may choose to interact with the token holders named above.

Reviews of Function

In parallel with the planning process, which is largely strategic, a series of more operational reviews of function are underway. The principal objective of these half-day reviews is to encourage staff with managerial or administrative responsibilities to take a step back from day-to-day activities with a view to identifying opportunities for improving the way things are done. These reviews of function may inform the planning process, but are principally expected to generate shorter-term actions.

REMINDER - EPSRC Follow on Fund Competition 2008/09

"Follow-on-funds" provide financial support for projects with a clear commercial concept to accelerate their progress towards commercialisation.   Funding is available for up to 12 months for typically over £100k based on research from ongoing or completed EPSRC supported projects.  Proposals need to be submitted via the University’s technology transfer company (UMIP). The University has been successful in 8 out of 11 proposals submitted during the past three years which has generated nearly £1 million of research income.  Grantholders interested in applying for this funding should complete should complete this form and send it to Ian Proctor before Friday December 5th 2008 (4pm). More information.

Graduation ceremony                                                                                  17 Dec 08

The CS graduation ceremony is being held on Wednesday 17th December at 10am.  If you have supervised an MSc dissertation for the 07/08 cohort or a PhD student who has been awarded their degree since July 08, you are very welcome to attend the ceremony as part of the platform party.   Please can you let Susie Hildreth know by Friday 21st November if you wish to be involved and if so, whether you would like me to order a gown for you.  There will be a post-graduation reception in School for the Graduands from 11am-12:30pm in the common room.

Children in Need

Once again the School has excelled itself with fundraising for Children in Need – the grand total was £1060! Very many thanks to all those who contributed both to the organisation of the event, as well as to the fundraising itself.

 

Events this Week                                                              top

NAG Toolbox for MATLAB Seminar                                                         19 Nov 08

Craig Lucas (the Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG))

1400-1600, Alan Turing G108

More information

Missing Bricks and Dead Pixels                                                                20 Nov 08

Keith Merkham, MBDA Systems

The aim of this talk is to give an overview of the image processing work at MBDA and show how image processing links with other system elements.

1300-1400 GMT Room 1.10, Kilburn 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.

 

New Funding and Award Opportunities

None this week