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1824 |
School
of Computer Science |
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Weekly Newsletter |
31 March 2014 |
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Contents |
News from Head of School
Chris Connolly Retires Today Today is Chris’s last day at work after 35 years working for the School. Chris joined the School on 17th June 1979. On his first morning he went to the Establishment Unit (HR these days) for a familiarisation course for new starters, but nobody else turned up and was sent back to the school, so on his first day he arrived at 09.30am (late). He started as an electronics technician and became part of the technician pool for a number of years, until he joined the school signal processing/simulated environments group, "I never really understood what all that meant", where he remained until 1996 when he was invited to join the Environment Group. He stayed there for a couple of years until joining the 'duty office' (CSIS). He says "I've had a very happy time here at the university and would always advise anyone to apply here for work before looking elsewhere, there are many benefits to be gained through working here". After retirement, during moments of sobriety he intends to further his interest in calligraphy and to avoid any possible involvement with decorating, DIY and home improvements of all kinds. "Calligraphy is an occupation you can enjoy using the minimum of effort, whilst sitting in comfort!" Animation 14 is bigger than ever! Animation14, the 7th annual UK Schools Computer Animation Competition, closed for entries last Friday. We received a record-breaking 1,337 entries from 182 schools across the UK, from 1,765 students. The next job is for the Animation Team to watch them all, and shortlist for the panel of external judges who visit in late April. Awards will be presented at the annual Animation Festival and Inspirational Computer Science Day at the Martin Harris Centre, on 11 July. Accreditation Following the joint BCS/IET accreditation visit in November 2011 we have finally had confirmation of BCS accreditation for all of our UG and PGT programmes and IET accreditation for all of our Masters programmes (including MEng). This has been a long haul, requiring heroic perseverance from the whole team. There will now be a brief interlude of a few months before preparations start for the next accreditation visit. President’s Award Scholarships Three PhD applicants have secured President’s Award Scholarships in the latest round. Congratulations to the applicants, and thanks to Xiaojun Zeng, Ke Chen and Matthew Harrison for their efforts in preparing and presenting the cases. Code First Girls Last weekend the School hosted Code First Girls, organised by Entrepreneur First and Ciprian Tomoiaga (Y2, CSwIE). 22 attendees spent two days learning HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Bootstrap. This fabulous event was possible thanks to the hard work and commitment of students Neha Agrawal (Y3, CSE), David Buckley (PhD), Marios Katsakioris (Y1, CSwIE), Alexandru Mihailescu (Y1, CS), Francesca Popescu (Y1, SEwIE), Teo Taylor (Y1, CS) and PGT students Moss Abdelkhalik, Soldier Dey, Hamizah Badrul Hisham, Mamatha, and Vivek Vijayan. Well done all, and thanks to Duncan Hull, Mabel Yau, Tony McDonald and David Rydeheard for their support.
Raspberry Jam ...and at the same time in a busy weekend the
School hosted the monthly North-West Raspberry Jam meeting. Lots of people --
young and not-so-young! -- had great fun with their Pis in LF31.
Events
President’s visit (note time changes) 31 Mar 2014 The times of today’s meetings are: 10.30 – 11.00 – Student meeting in 2.19 11.00 – 11.30 – SLT meeting in 2.15 11.30 – 12.00 – Staff meeting in 2.15 Staff are not invited to the student meeting. All staff are invited to the staff meeting and Nancy will take questions as usual. Westminster
Health Forum Keynote Seminar 1
Apr 14 Central London Timed to follow the release of NHS England’s 10
year technology strategy Unleashing the Power of People, due in March 2014,
this seminar will provide an opportunity to consider
next steps for IT in the NHS. The government and NHS organisations will
invest £1 billion in IT over the next 3 years as part of the ‘Safer
Hospitals, Safer Wards’ Technology
Fund, so the
role of new technologies in providing
improved patient care will be considered, including utilising informatics in the delivery of health
and social care services. Planned sessions focus on challenges in
increasing access to electronic patient records, and supporting the workforce
in engaging with information systems towards the delivery of a paperless NHS
by 2018. Many high-level NHS individuals will be in attendance. Registration
required (£190 plus VAT) –
remember funding support from the School may be available. Contact Sarah Chatwin or Robert Stevens for more details. Magnetism
and spintronics in nano-scale materials 2
Apr 14 Christopher
Morrison – University of Warwick 11:00, Atlas 1,
Kilburn building Magnetic and
spintronic phenomena are already utilised in several key technologies, and
exciting future applications have been proposed and explored in recent years.
Spintronics is a branch of electronics in which both the charge and the spin
of the electron are used to carry information. The field of spintronics
research was launched in the late 1980s with the discovery of giant
magnetoresistance (GMR), for which Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg were
awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2007.
The GMR effect can be used to make very sensitive magnetic field
sensors, and was implemented into hard disk drive read heads to dramatically
improve storage density. All-metallic
spin transport and magnetic devices at the nanoscale 2 Apr 14 Liam O’Brien –
University of Cambridge & University of Minnesota 15:00, Atlas 1,
Kilburn building The field of spintronics— where not only the charge, but the spin of an electron is manipulated—is one of the most rapidly developing and exciting areas of nanoscience. Through the giant magneto-resistance effect, the discipline previously revolutionised the data storage industry and, in conjunction with the field of nanomagnetism, offers promising new technological applications from data storage to microwave field generation. Despite this promise, much remains to be understood in the interaction between nanoscale magnetism and spin polarised currents. Digitisation, you and the University Library 2 Apr 14 Benefits for research and teaching Lunch: 12:30-13:00, Classics foyer, Samuel Alexander building Event: 13-15:00, A101 theatre, Samuel Alexander building Digitisation provides valuable opportunities to improve the range and reach of your research and teaching. Specifically created for those involved in teaching and research, this event highlights the experience of academic colleagues who have already engaged in the digitisation process, illustrating the processes and demonstrating the benefits of doing so. Participants will learn how to: • promote their specialist area of work; • increase the range and depth of materials available for teaching; • improve resource access for students; • make specialist materials more easily available; • associate their work, and the University, with international provision of unique resources; • achieve better integration of the teaching process with Library provision.
Speakers: Mary Begley – SALC Laurence Brown - SAHC Carol Burrows – The University of Manchester Library Martin Dodge – SEED David Denison – SALC Martin Snelling – The University of Manchester Library Booking required. Click here to register. Spintronic oscillators trends and challenges 3 Apr 14 Giovanni Finocchio – University of Messina 10:00, 2.19, Kilburn building Oscillators are the basic components of many communication, navigation, and measurement systems. There is a strong interest, driven by cost and performance, to develop improved microwave oscillators for on-chip integration, and the spintronic oscillators are promising candidate for this due to their combination of characteristics such as frequency tunability, nanoscale size, broad range of working temperature, and relatively easy integration with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. This seminary will discuss about the "state of the art" of spintronic oscillators. In detail, recent advances and remaining challenges of spin-transfer torque oscillators and spin-Hall oscillators will be discussed. Funding Opportunities
Research Support Office Please contact us through researchsupportcsm@manchester.ac.uk. There is information about support for grant writing, submission and successful examples at http://staffnet.cs.manchester.ac.uk/reso/ and through EPS. The EPS blog The Word contains features News, Events and comment relevant to Postgraduate Researchers, Research Staff and Supervisors or PIs. Important: Changes in EU Funding Opportunities More detailed information is available now that for Horizon2020 has
started (the successor of FP7 EU programme). EU research funding is important
for the School and it’s important to understand what’s available http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/index.html Reminder - H2020 information available EU funding-related documents are placed by the University's EU team
at: A great resource recommended by the ICT
National Contact Point is http://www.ictic.org/,
which also provides handy overview documents. Details on upcoming events are available,
including focuses on graphene, HBP
and FET. Featured Research Outcomes
Did you know… papers featured in the newsletter also go on display in the Kilburn Building (outside 2.7)? Send your new publications to Robert Stevens so that more people get to know about your research. A statistical
analysis of murine incisional and excisional acute wound models. Ansell DM,
Campbell L, Thomason HA, Brass A, Hardman MJ. Wound Repair Regen. 2014 Mar; 22(2):281-7. doi:
10.1111/wrr.12148. The SpiNNaker
Project. Furber, S.B.; Galluppi, F.; Temple, S.; Plana, L.A. IEEE Xplore:
Proceedings of the IEEE Issue 99 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isnumber=4357935 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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