MANCHESTER 1824	School of Computer Science
Weekly Newsletter	19 Oct 2009
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 Receives DSc Congratulations to Steve Furber on his selection for award of a DSc from the University of Edinburgh for, among other things, “…pioneering computer hardware design”. This comes hot on the heels of his depiction in Micro Men on BBC Four; the actor playing Steve can be seen sporting a cool tank top and holding an Acorn Atom (the first computer I owned) at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n5b92, where the complete programme is available on iPlayer for a few more days). Careers Fair and MEng Presentations The school hosted a Careers Fair last week: http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/careers/CF2009/ Both undergraduate and postgraduate students from SCS were welcome to attend the fair on Thursday 15th, attended among others by Schlumberger, Informed Solutions, UBS, Morgan Stanley, Erikson, Barclays Capital, Citi Group, Bloomberg, NCC, Lamp Digital and Deutsche Bank all looking to recruit students from the school as Graduate or Placement employees. The event was a lively affair, with plenty of free gifts for the student visitors and many initial contacts made by the students with future employers, receiving advice and encouragement about the recruitment processes they face in their career search and giving them a chance to ask questions about the companies. Several of the industrial visitors to the fair also attended the MEng Presentations, where final year MEng students, as part of their assessed final placement,  make a presentation about their summer  project work  to an audience of academics and industrial visitors.  This is the fourth year of the event and it now seems to be a fixture in our careers calendar. Our grateful thanks go to Ona for her hard work in making this happen so successfully and to Sophia who was there to lend a helping hand and experience from previous years. Abu Dhabi Trip A team from the School (Ursula Hayes, Uli Sattler, Jon Shapiro, Alex Walker) visited Abu Dhabi the week before last and made a number of potentially useful contacts, which will be followed up in the near future and will hopefully result in some future collaborative ventures. The areas discussed covered PGR, PGT and distance learning, as well as the current research agenda in the region. Jeans for Genes Day Many thanks to those of you who supported Jeans for Genes day this year. The School raised a total of £297 for this charity. Events School Board (Resources Report) 21 Oct 09 15:30, IT building room 407. School Board website for agenda and minutes from last meeting. SIGGRAPH seminar 23 Oct 09 Matt Mahon, CAVA JISC Project 14:00, Room 1.10, Kilburn building SIGGRAPH Funding Opportunities EPSRC Grant Eligibility Changes EPSRC is changing its eligibility criteria for grant applicants from April 2010. From April it will bring in an application limit for repeatedly unsuccessful applicants. Further details of the criteria to be applied are available here and this months Connect newsletter outlines the changes in more detail here. Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowships Scheme Call for Applications 23 Oct 09 These Fellowships provide an opportunity for mid-career academics based in UK universities to be relieved of their administrative and teaching responsibilities, for between one academic term and a year, to concentrate on full-time research in any engineering discipline. The Fellowship covers the cost of a replacement academic, expected to be at a junior level, providing them an opportunity to gain teaching experience. The junior academic will relieve the Fellow of all teaching and administrative duties during the duration of the Fellowship. A support fund of up to £2,500 is also available as part of the Fellowship. More information Royal Academy of Engineering Distinguished Visiting Fellowship Scheme Call for Applications 31 Oct 09 Share expertise and harness world-class research capability by collaborating with international experts through the Distinguished Visiting Fellowship Scheme. The scheme provides funding to enable an academic engineering department in a United Kingdom (UK) university to be a host for up to a month to a Distinguished Visiting Fellow from an overseas academic centre of excellence. Deadline: 31st October 2009 More information Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award 6 Nov 09 Jointly funded by the Wolfson Foundation and BIS, this scheme aims to provide universities with additional support to enable them to attract to this country, or retain, respected scientists of outstanding achievement and potential. Awards are made to the university and as such researchers must remain at the university named on the application.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 the UK research and funding environment. More information