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1824 |
School
of Computer Science |
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Weekly Newsletter |
4 February 2013 |
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Contents |
News from the Head of SchoolMatthew
Harrison: new PGR Admissions Officer Matthew Harrison has taken up post as PGR Admissions Officer, covering Chris Farrington until November 2013.
Matthew has recently relocated to Manchester having worked for the last three years for the School of Social Sciences at The University of Edinburgh. In his most recent role at Edinburgh he had a variety of responsibilities supporting PGR students, both on their traditional PhD programme and on their CDT. He also co-ordinated the allocation of PhD studentships. FET
Flagships The first phase of the EU’s FET flagship programmes have been announced. The FET Flagship programme is a 10-year, €10B programme to undertake grand challenges. Two projects have been funded, and the School is participating in both – staff from NEST are involved in the Graphene flagship and staff from APT are involved in the Human Brain Project (HBP). The mission of the Graphene Flagship is to take graphene and related layered materials from academic laboratories to society, revolutionize multiple industries and create economic growth and new jobs in Europe. The HBP Flagship aspires to gain profound insights into what makes us human, to develop new treatments for brain diseases and to build revolutionary new computing technologies. If the project succeeds it will create a paradigm shift for computing as a whole, moving away from current models of “bit precise” computing towards new techniques that exploit the stochastic behaviour of simple, very fast, low-power computing devices embedded in intensely recursive architectures. The economic and industrial impact of such a shift is potentially enormous. The APT group expects to form a major part of the project, especially during the second phase during which APT will be building a revolutionary new computer. Government
funding for Computer Science On 24th January David Willets announced an additional £600M of research funding: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/600-million-investment-in-the-eight-great-technologies The funding includes £189 million for big data and energy efficient computing for analysing big data sets. Computer
Science to form part of new EBacc The Royal Society’s 2012 report chaired by Steve Furber called for the inclusion of Computer Science in the new English Baccalaureate. On 30th January 2013 Michael Gove announced that Computer Science will be a part of the EBacc: http://education.gov.uk/inthenews/inthenews/a00221085/ebacccompsci The rapid shift from IT to CS teaching in schools that is taking place should make a substantial change to public understanding of Computer Science and change the nature of recruitment to Computer Science degrees. Where
Manchester leads, Google follow The School will be issuing a free Raspberry Pi to each 1st year undergraduate student in September 2013. On 29th January Google announced a similar scheme: http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/free-raspberry-pis-for-aspiring-young.html Byte Cafe
refurbishment £20k has been obtained from the Dean’s strategic fund for improvements to the Byte Cafe. The specific changes will be decided after consultation with students and Food on Campus, but it is expected that the money will be mainly spent on new furniture and coffee making facilities. This adds to the funding obtained for the refurbishment of IT407 announced in January. AnnouncementsCopyright
Guidance Service The Library’s Copyright Guidance Service supports academic staff, students and researchers with regards to copyright issues affecting their day-to-day work. The practice of good Copyright awareness is becoming evermore important, especially in the creative atmosphere of Higher Education institutions. Increased use of online resources and developing technologies mean there is more scope for copyright infringements. It is crucial that whilst creativeness is fostered and rewarded we at the same time ensure the protection of your own work and that of others.
Our online copyright guide answers common queries and outlines the practical measures that you can take both to protect your own work and to avoid infringing copyright law. The guide also provides useful web resources highlighting sources of digital media you can use in developing your teaching materials.
For more information visit our web pages or contact us via email. Francoise
Sullivan EventsSchool seminar 12 Feb 13 Dr Sebastian Rudolph. 14:00, Lecture Theatre 1.5, Kilburn Building School seminar 13 Feb 13 Optimising fixed point arithmetic with Meta IP cores Dr Matthew Fortune. Imagination Technologies. 14:00, Lecture Theatre 1.4, Kilburn Building. Faculty of EPS Open Meeting 13 Feb 13 All members of staff in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences are invited to attend a Faculty Open Meeting with Professor Colin Bailey, the Vice-President & Dean on Wednesday 13 February, 1.30 -2.30pm in the Rutherford Lecture Theatre, Schuster Building. At the meeting Colin will give an update on the Faculty’s current position followed by an open question and answer session on any matters of interest. There is no need to submit questions in advance of the meeting. A more detailed agenda will follow shortly. All are welcome. Seats will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. The 9th Annual Turing Lecture 2013 19 Feb 2013 The University of Manchester, in partnership with the BCS, IET and Oxford University Press, is delighted to announce Suranga Chandratillake FREng as the speaker for the 9th annual Turing Lecture on 19th February 2013: “What they didn't teach me: building a technology company and taking it to market” http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/events/Turing/13-Suranga-Chandratillake/ The Royal Academy of Engineering - 13th Annual Regional Lecture 5 Mar 13 Guest speaker: Professor Philip Withers FREng, University of Manchester 5 March 18:00, lecture theatre C9, Renold Building, University of Manchester The lecture will be followed by a reception and poster session. For further information about the lecture and poster session please contact Sue Neesham. Admission is free and registration is not required. Horizon 2020 – call for advisory group
members 6
Mar 13 Closing date: 4pm 6 March 2013 The EC is currently asking for experts for their advisory
groups for setting up Horizon 2020 (FP7’s successor). Registered experts will
also potentially be asked to act as reviewers throughout the course of H2020
- the call
for expressions of interest will stay open for the lifetime of the
Programme and experts can register at any time - however only those having
expressed their interest no later than 6 March 2013 at 17.00, Brussels
local time (CET) will be taken into account for the setting up of the
first advisory groups. Expressions of interest received after this date will
be taken into account for the renewal of groups at the end of each mandate. Funding OpportunitiesSchool Research Office Please contact us through researchsupportcsm@manchester.ac.uk. There is information about support for grant writing and submission at http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/reso/ ACM-Women Scholarships for Attendance at Research Conferences - 4 calls coming ACM-W provides support for women undergraduate and graduate students in Computer Science and related programs to attend research conferences. This exposure to the CS research world can encourage a student to continue on to the next level (Undergraduate to Graduate, Masters to Ph.D., Ph.D. to an industry or academic position). The student does not have to present a paper at the conference she attends. For other information related to ACM-W, contact Eva Navarro (ACM-W Europe Committee Member). LWEC Initiative in Tree Health and Plant Biosecurity - Town Meeting 7
Feb 13 · Closing date: 4pm 7 Feb 2013 The BBSRC’s Living With Environmental Change (LWEC) is calling for researchers with expertise in areas of sensors, remote sensing, diagnostics, computer modelling, bioinformatics and other areas that might be applied to problems in tree health and associated plant biosecurity. A new initiative, with at least £6.5M available for research projects, will soon be announced to fund research into tree pests and pathogens, and associated plant biosecurity. More information will be available at the Town Meeting in London on 14 February (free of charge). Reserve a place by emailing tree.health@bbsrc.ac.uk Future perspectives in Synthetic Biology –
joint academia/ industry discussion meeting 8
Feb 2013 ·
8 Feb 2013 10am –
3.15pm in MIB Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB) submitted a
broad expression of interest to bid for an IKC in Synthetic Biology in 2012
(approx £10M). MIB are inviting participants from across the University
to attend a one day meeting on 8 Feb to explore interests in synthetic
biology and its application and to link with industrialists. There will be
discussions on what the IKC should look like and the core resource it should
provide – there is only one national IKC likely to be funded and
understanding what industry wants will be key. Prof. Ralf Wagner (Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene,
University Regensburg) is the keynote speaker and Prof. Eriko Takano (new FLS
chair in SynBio) will introduce Industry Perspectives of SynBio. Contact Sarah Chatwin for a copy of the programme. Please
register through the registration link. Posters are
welcome. Featured PublicationsPlease send any research publications to Robert Stevens. Firczuk H, Kannambath S, Pahle
J, Claydon A, Beynon R, Duncan J, Westerhoff H, Mendes P, McCarthy JEG (2013)
An in vivo control map for the eukaryotic Eleni Mikroyannidi, Robert
Stevens, Luigi Iannone, and Alan Rector. Research and Grant AwardsCongratulations to all those involved in the following successful awards! ECO2Clouds –
Experimental Awareness of CO2 in Federated Cloud Sourcing (SCS): John Keane, Usman Wajid, Xiao-jun Zeng; (MBS) Nikolay Mehandjiev, Pedro Sampaio Funding body: EC Award amount: (SCS) £86.6k ECO2Clouds is a two year research project joint between SCS and MBS funded by the European Commission’s FP7 programme. ECO2Clouds will provide a challenging and innovative approach to Cloud computing service by developing strategies that can ensure effective application deployment on the Cloud infrastructure while reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Have we missed something? If you have some award news
that you would like us to know about please contact Sarah Chatwin. |
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