School of CS newsletter

On 21 June 1948 the Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine was turned on and worked for the first time - the first digital stored programme computer. "The Baby" was a landmark event and last year we had the first Memory Day to have a little get together to celebrate both the past and future of the School. This Friday is the second Memory Day and I'd like to use it to formally open the Turing Lounge (the newly incorporated walkway next the courtyard. We can also take the opportunity of the undoubtedly fine weather to use the courtyard.

 

We'll gather together at 4 p.m. on Friday 21 June in the Turing Lounge. there will be some drinks and nibbles. As a second enticer, Jim Miles has organised a "show and tell" as follows.

 

In October 1951 Alan Turing purchased a Britannic Duo calculating machine – a hand operated double mechanical calculator that integrates two calculators into one machine. This machine was developed for the British Army in the 2^nd world war for artillery calculations but was not widely used commercially so it would now be quite rare even if it hadn’t been owned by Turing.

 

After Turing’s death the machine was kept by the University. It was loaned to the Museum of Science and Industry for a few years and also to an exhibition at the 2017 Knutsford Promenades but otherwise it has been in store – currently the University store in the Zochonis Building. It is hoped that we can liberate it for a day and bring it to the opening of the Turing Lounge, along with copies of Turing’s correspondence relating to its purchase.

 

Do come along and have a bit of a hurrah and a look at this calculator.

 

Robert.

Community Festival 2019 took place on last Saturday (15.06) in the Manchester Museum.

We had three types of activities under the theme "Computer Programming and Artificial Intelligence":

- Cognitive robotics

- Drones programming

- CS games

The following CS volunteers participated:

Undergraduate students

Nedas Matulevicius, Weilue Luo, Marcel Moran Calderon, Yecheng Chu, Lenin Cruz Quishpe, Salvador Trujillo Calderon, Jaebin Yang

PhD students

Ioanna Giorgi, Martina Ruocco, Samiah Alghamdi, Omar Alhawi ‎

Staff

Martin Reiner, Suzanne Embury, Lucas Cordeiro

 

New Frontiers in Cloud and Edge/Fog Computing for Big Data & Internet-of-Things Applications

 

Prof. Rajkumar Buyya
Director, Cloud Computing and Distributed Systems (CLOUDS) Lab,
The University of Melbourne, Australia

CEO, Manjrasoft Pvt Ltd, Melbourne, Australia

 

 

ABSTRACT

 

Computing is being transformed to a model consisting of services that are commoditised and delivered in a manner similar to utilities such as water, electricity, gas, and telephony. Several computing paradigms have promised to deliver this utility computing vision. Cloud computing
paradigm has turned this vision of "computing utilities" into a reality. It offers infrastructure, platform, and software (application) as services, which are made available as subscription-based services in a pay-as-you-go model to consumers. Cloud application platforms need to offer (1) APIs and tools for rapid creation of elastic applications and (2) a runtime system for deployment of applications on geographically distributed computing infrastructure in a seamless manner.

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm enables seamless integration of cyber-and-physical worlds and opening up opportunities for creating new class of applications for domains such as smart cities. The emerging Fog computing paradigm is extends Cloud computing model to edge resources for latency sensitive IoT applications.

This presentation will cover (a) 21st century vision of computing and identifies various IT paradigms promising to deliver the vision of computing utilities; (b) innovative architecture
for creating elastic Clouds integrating edge resources and managed Clouds, (c) Aneka, a Cloud Application Platform, for rapid development of Cloud/Big Data applications and their deployment on private/public Clouds with resource provisioning driven by SLAs, (d) a novel FogBus software framework with Blockchain-based data-integrity management for facilitating end-to-end IoT-Fog(Edge)-Cloud integration for execution of sensitive IoT applications, (e) experimental results on deploying Cloud and Big Data/Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications in engineering, and health care, satellite image processing, and smart cities on elastic Clouds; and (f) directions for delivering our 21st century vision along with pathways for future research in Cloud and Fog computing.

 

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Rajkumar Buyya is a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor and Director of the Cloud Computing and Distributed Systems (CLOUDS) Laboratory at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is also serving as the founding CEO of Manjrasoft, a spin-off company of the University, commercializing its innovations in Cloud Computing. He has authored over
650 publications and seven text books including "Mastering Cloud Computing" published by McGraw Hill, China Machine Press, and Morgan Kaufmann for Indian, Chinese and international markets respectively. Dr. Buyya is one of the highly cited authors in computer science and software engineering worldwide (h-index=127, g-index=275, 82,600+ citations). "A Scientometric Analysis of Cloud Computing Literature" by German scientists ranked Dr. Buyya as the World's Top-Cited (#1) Author and the World's Most-Productive (#1) Author in Cloud Computing. He is named in the recent Clarivate Analytics’ (formerly Thomson Reuters) Highly Cited Researchers and “World's Most Influential Scientific Minds” for three consecutive years since 2016. Dr. Buyya is recognized as Scopus Researcher of the Year 2017 with Excellence in Innovative Research Award by Elsevier and recently received "Lifetime Achievement Awards" from two Indian universities for his outstanding contributions to Cloud computing and distributed systems.

Software technologies for Grid, Cloud, and Fog computing developed under Dr.Buyya's leadership have gained rapid acceptance and are in use at several academic institutions and commercial enterprises in 40 countries around the world. Dr. Buyya has led the establishment and development of key community activities, including serving as foundation Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Scalable Computing and five IEEE/ACM conferences. These contributions and international research leadership of Dr. Buyya are recognized through the award of "2009 IEEE Medal for Excellence in Scalable Computing" from the IEEE Computer Society TCSC. Manjrasoft's Aneka Cloud technology developed under his leadership has received "Frost & Sullivan New Product Innovation Award". He served as founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing. He is currently serving as Editor-in-Chief of Software: Practice and Experience, a long standing journal in the field established ~50 years ago. For further information on Dr.Buyya, please visit his cyberhome: www.buyya.com

RE: Talk and Reception for Professor Jack Dongarra 10am -11am Friday 28^th June 2019

To celebrate the election of Professor Jack Dongarra, who holds an appointment in the School of Mathematics, as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society, there will be a 30 minute talk by Professor Dongarra followed by a reception.

Date: Friday June 28, 10am – 11am

Location: Frank Adams (1), 1^st Floor, Alan Turing Building, School of Mathematics

Title: With Extreme Scale Computing the Rules Have Changed

Abstract: In this talk we will look at the current state of high performance computing and look at the next stage of extreme computing. With extreme computing there will be fundamental changes in the character of floating point arithmetic and data movement. In this talk we will look at how extreme scale computing has caused algorithm and software developers to changed their way of thinking on how to implement and program certain applications.

If you could confirm your attendance by completing the below Eventbrite weblink for the catering.

Your event URL is https://www.eventbrite.com/e/talk-and-reception-professor-jack-dongarra-tickets-62985208454

The Postgraduate Summer Research Showcase (PSRS) is an annual event put on by the Manchester Doctoral College. In addition to the MDC Excellence awards, there is a university wide poster exhibition and "research photo" competition (for both PGR and PGT).

Overall, the School had 24 posters with 4 members of staff amongst the judges. Nuno Nobre was selected for his "10 second summary" of his research for the PSRS twitter feed.

There were two PGR and one PGT submission to the photo competitions. Computer Science entries too the "On The Day People's Choice" awards for both PGR and PGT. Congratulations to Nuno Nobre (PGR) and Mohammad Mohib Khan (PGT)!

Lastly, Bijan Parsia was award the MDC's "Supervisor of the Year" award for FSE which honours "an individual who has created the most supportive, stimulating and inspirational research environment for doctoral students."

 

A couple of UKRI calls to flag up with deadlines over the summer:

 

EPSRC Stephen Hawking Fellowships        Deadline: Letters of intent due by 4pm, 20 June 2019; full applications due by 4pm, 24 July 2019 

Tenable for up to four years

These support postdoctoral researchers in the field of theoretical physics or fundamental mathematical and computer sciences that underpin them. The objectives are to fund new high quality research and support the development and training of early-career researchers in the field of theoretical physics and train a cohort of researchers with the skills to continue a legacy of public engagement in the field of theoretical physics. Proposals are welcomed from all areas of theoretical physics and areas of mathematics and computer sciences which underpin and contribute to the development of theoretical physics. Proposals are also welcome from across the fundamental mathematical and computer sciences where the applicant can demonstrate that the research will underpin these approaches and can directly build capability in the area of theoretical physics, such as quantum computing.

Applicants must hold a PhD by the start date of the fellowship or have equivalent research experience. Applicants who have taken a non-standard career path after their primary degree and those who wish to reestablish themselves after a career break or a period of absence from active research may also apply.Applicants must not currently hold a permanent academic post or equivalent.

More details: https://www.ukri.org/funding/funding-opportunities/stephen-hawking-fellowships/

Please contact Gavin Brown if you are interested in applying to this call

 

UKRI-JST  Joint call on artificial intelligence and society      Deadline: 17th July 19     Available funding: £288K - £400K

Proposals are welcomed on the following thematic areas: impacts on humans and society; economic implications, skills, work and education; transparency, responsibility, governance and ethics. Proposals are encouraged to use the following approaches to explore the themes:

•interdisciplinary approach exploring how to co-design the research with different disciplines within and beyond the social sciences, arts and humanities;

•collaboration with non-academic stakeholders such as policy makers, public, third sector and business;

•comparative research looking at key similarities and differences in the context of Japan and the UK;

•use of innovative research design and methods.

Proposals must have a lead partner from each country. The lead partner from the UK should be listed as the PI on the UK submission and must be based at an eligible research organisation for UKRI funding.

More details: https://esrc.ukri.org/funding/funding-opportunities/ukri-jst-joint-call-on-artificial-intelligence-and-society/

 

EPSRC Healthcare Technologies Discipline Hopping awards     Deadline: 27th June 2019         Available funding:  3-12 months PI salary plus travel and non staff resources

These awards are to enable researchers to visit a different research or user environment to understand the impact of and need for research in STEM or ICT in addressing health challenges.

Academic employees of an eligible organisation who are resident in the UK may apply. The following researchers are prioritised:

•engineering, physical sciences, mathematical sciences or ICT researchers, who wish address key healthcare challenges and need to widen their expertise, or want to spend time in a non-academic environment, such as an NHS trust;

•researchers in other relevant disciplines, including clinicians with academic appointments, who want to spend time in an academic engineering, physical sciences, mathematical sciences or ICT research environment.

 

More details: https://epsrc.ukri.org/funding/calls/htdisciplinehopping/