School of CS newsletter

Welcome to Stewart Blakeway, who joined the School on 21 January as a teaching focused lecturer in Data Management. Dr Stewart Blakeway was awarded his first two degrees by The University of Liverpool. He completed his PhD in Computer Science in 2015 at Liverpool John Moore’s University, investigating Adaptive Self-Learning Mobile Ad hoc Networks with cognition incorporated. Stewart’s research interests are in the optimization and analysis of mobile networks, the optimization of resource allocation and energy efficient networks. Stewart is currently collaborating with researchers in the UK, Russia and France.  Stewart has over 20 years’ experience in Higher Education and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). Currently, his teaching is focused on Distributed Databases and Programming.

Stewart  can be found in Kilburn 2.72

 

On 28th February Ian cottam is leaving us to take up a role in the Research Software Engineering part of IT Services. By way of a thank-you and congratulations for Ian, we'll be having a do in the Common Room on Thursday 28 February at 3 p.m. It has been splendid having Ian here in the School again and I wish him well in his new role. Do come along for drinks and nibbles and a big hurrah.

Robert.

Dear All,

Many thanks for participating in the coffee morning held last Thursday14th February in aid of the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity. We raised an amazing £100. Well done everyone!

See response from Howard below:

"Thank you very much for your donation. It really means a lot to me and to The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity.

Howard Barringer"

As you know, IT Services have implemented a VPN service called Global Protect and intend to decommission the old Cisco and Shrewsoft VPN services. [Ed. Note that some Linux users run OpenVPN where Global Protect is not available.]

We are aware that there may be applications, used off-campus, which need to talk to a licence server – users may still be using Cisco or Shrewsoft to enable this. IT Services believe that, as long as the licence server is on-campus, Global Protect can be used to replace Cisco or Shrewsoft – as long as the licence server has been configured to allow the Global Protect IP ranges: 10.240.0.0/13 and 172.24.0.0/19.

Please contact Caroline Martin if you think this may not be the case for any application or if you need further information.

Thanks,

Caroline.

Caroline Martin l Directorate of IT Services | Kilburn Building - Office One | The University of Manchester | 0161 275 6033 |

www.itservices.manchester.ac.uk | Talk to us | @UoM_ITS | University of Manchester ITS

Sustainability Funding: this is intended to support activities that enhance environmental sustainability across the University, related to the 10,000 Actions, and available until Friday, 22 March 2019. The total fund value is £10,000, and up to £2,500 is available per activity, although it is expected that most awards will be under £1,000. Example activities funded include:

· Energy-efficient lab equipment: Elena Redondo-Castro, FBMH received funding to replace the sealing rubber bands on a -80 freezer, thus reducing energy wastage.

· Improvements to the living campus: Gary Burns, FSE received part-funding to refurbish existing furniture in the staff common room to prolong the life of wooden framed chairs.

· Development of a toolkit to reduce the need for business air travel: John Broderick, FSE developed ‘easyVC’, a remote participation pack which helps research groups to conduct seminars and collaborate on projects across sites, as well as broadcasting public lectures.

For more details visit http://www.sustainability.manchester.ac.uk/get-involved/staff/10000actions/fund