Department of CS newsletter

Firstly, thank you to Joe Tomlinson for all of his hard work supporting CS Research Finance. Joe is moving to Physics in his role as Research Finance Officer and Yusuf Kothia will be the Research Finance Officer for CS, supporting Manny Singh, there will be a handover period between Joe and Yusuf from now until 1st October. Both Manny and Yusuf are now located in Sackville Street Building with the other Research Finance staff from the School of Engineering. Research Finance will now be organising regular meetings with PIs on their grants but can also still be contacted via the usual email address of CompSciresearchfinance@manchester.ac.uk .

Research Support Officers Natalia Stefanovic and Laura Nolan will be moving to the Schuster Building on the 11^th October to join the rest of the south campus Research Support Officers. We will continue to support CS academics with their research applications through the normal researchsupportcsm@manchester.ac.uk email address, via telephone and meetings with staff in the Kilburn Building.

Sarah Chatwin will remain in the Kilburn Building in KB2.119 (from 11^th October).

Welcome to the  new academic year and it is the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. This is the first Newsletter from the Department of computer Science. I hope that people managed to have some kind of break during the summer and that everyone is bright eyed and bushy tailed for the new session.

Robert.

While the Kilburn Building courtyard has been in use over the summer, we are still waiting for the planters etc that should make it look a little more appealing. Since we re-gained use of the courtyard more leaks have been found and some work continues. Three years and two months.

Congratulations!

A CDCL-Style Calculus for Solving Non-linear Constraints

Franz Brausse, Konstantin Korovin, Margarita Korovina and Norbert Mueller

Link to a preprint: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1905.09227.pdf

10.30-11.30am in the Staff & PGR common room

Come and get a brew and a cake!

Computer Science Atlas Talk on Wednesday 23rd October 2019 at 2pm in Kilburn L.T. 1.5

Title: Accelerating streaming applications with reconfigurable accelerators: two examples from the bioinformatics and data summarization domains

Speaker: Dionisios Pnevmatikatos, School of ECE, Technical University of Crete

Host: Rizos Sakellariou

The Commission has decided to delay the deadline for submission of proposals for topics FETPROACT-EIC-05-2019 and FETPROACT-EIC-06-2019 until 13 November 2019.

Deadline: 02 December 2019

STEM For Britain is an annual poster competition, open to early career researchers (MSc, PhD, Post Docs, Research Assistants or Fellows, recently-appointed lecturers). The annual event is run by the House of Commons Parliamentary Scientific Committee and the Engineering session is supported by the Academy. The competition provides an opportunity for early career researchers to present their posters and winners receive Gold (£2000), Silver (£1200) or Bronze (£750) Awards. The overall aim is to encourage, support and promote Britain’s early career researcher.

Deadline: 03-Nov-19

There are 3 schemes available to academic staff, post-docs, PS staff and postgraduate students (PhD and PGT) from every faculty. Cross-faculty and interdisciplinary working is strongly supported:

• Emerging Engagement: if you are new to public engagement – you can apply for up to £500
• Established Engagement: if you already have experience of public engagement - you can apply for up to £3000 (match funding required)
• Professional Development: if you want to develop your skills in public engagement - you can apply for up to £2000 

The purpose of this funding is to facilitate imaginative, high quality and inclusive public engagement which reaches new and diverse audiences.  

Note: the requirement for the lead applicant to be from FBMH has changed. Any member of staff, PS and postgraduate students (PhD and PGT) from all faculties can be the lead applicant.

Overview

The Grace Murray Hopper Award recognizes the outstanding young computer professional of the year, selected on the basis of a single recent major technical or service contribution. The candidate must have been 35 years of age or less at the time the qualifying contribution was made. The award is presented each June at the ACM Awards Banquet and is accompanied by a prize of $35,000 plus travel expenses to the banquet. Financial support for the award is provided by Microsoft.

Next Deadline

January 15, 2020 - End of Day, Anywhere on Earth (AoE), UTC -12

Selection Criteria

Nominations will be evaluated for the significance, depth, and originality of the technical contribution or – in the case of a service contribution – the scope of the effort involved and its impact on the computing community and/or society as a whole. When the contribution results from a joint effort, the candidate’s role should be clearly identified.

Submissions

1. for the Grace Murray Hopper Award should be submitted using the online nomination form. Submitted materials should explain the contribution in terms understandable to a non-specialist. Each nomination involves several components:

• Name, address, phone number, and email address of nominator (person making the nomination). The most appropriate person to submit a nomination would be a recognized member of the community who is not from the same organization as the candidate and who can address the candidate’s impact on the broader community.
• Name, address, and email address of the candidate (person being nominated). It is ACM’s policy not to tell candidates who has nominated or endorsed them.
• Suggested citation if the candidate is selected. This should be a concise statement (maximum of 25 words) describing the key technical or professional accomplishment for which the candidate merits this award. Note that the final wording for awardees will be at the discretion of the Award Committee.
• Nomination statement (200-500 words in length) addressing why the candidate should receive this award. This may describe the candidate’s work in general, but should draw particular attention to the contributions that merit the award. It should also indicate the candidate’s age when the contributions were made.
• Copy of the candidate’s CV, listing publications, patents, honors, service contributions, etc.
• Supporting letters from at least 3, and not more than 5, endorsers. Endorsers should be chosen to represent a range of perspectives and institutions and provide additional insights or evidence of the candidate’s impact. Each letter must include the name, address, and telephone number of the endorser, and should focus on the accomplishments which that endorser can attest to and place in context. The nominator should collect the letters and bundle them for submission.

For questions on the above, please contact us at acm-awards@acm.org, or Jade Morris, ACM Awards Committee Liaison. ACM's conflict-of-interest guidelines apply to all award nominations.