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Department of CS newsletter
Published: Wednesday, 27 July 2022Weekly newsletter for the Department of CS
Department Newsletter - Contents
[ top ]News from Head of Department
IEEE Milestone Awards
There was a splendid event organised by Jim Miles and co to celebrate the award of two IEEE Milestone Awards, one for the first digital stored programme computer and one for the Atlas computer and virtual memory. A wider group of people worked to get the awards themselves; there are now 19 Milestones in the UK and Republic of Ireland out of over 200 worldwide spanning electrical, electronic, communication and computer engineering, so these are significant awards. There was an all day event on 21 June, at MoSI and in the Kilburn Building, recordings of the talks may be found on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfqYCVUqXfQ. Among the great talks there was a photograph taken by Tom Kilburn of a CRT tube that displays the first known record of a pixel.
Looking locally, Jim led a big effort to do up the displays around the first floor foyer area. There's lots of new displays and they are lovely - do go and have a look, the objects on display now include pieces of all the components of the world's first virtual memory system and Alan Turing's mechanical calculator, which he may have used to calculate some of the results of his famous paper on morphogenesis.
it wasn't only Jim Miles that made it all happen; thanks also go to
- Christine Bowers and the House Services Team
- Steve Rhodes
- CS Ops whose existence makes so many things possible
- Andrew York and the Media Services teamRobert.
Marion Morris
Summer break
This is the last Departmental Newsletter before the usual summer hiatus. It has been another hard year, especially so on the teaching front; lots of students, dual mode teaching and so on. It's also been good to see so much research work - applications for grants going in; grants being awarded; new PGRs arriving and PGRs receiving their Ph.D.s. I'll take this opportunity to thank everyone in the Department for all their hard work over the year.
The latter portions of this academic year have been much more typical of the before times and it's nice to see the Kilburn building come back to life, together with a proper graduation ceremony this year. It was also great to have a Summer bash for the first time since 2019 with so many people turning up, and I especially enjoyed having some of the "pandemic leavers" come to see us and the string duet, courtesy of Christina Galatta and her colleague Georgie from the RNCM: they were splendid.
Do enjoy whatever kind of break you manage to have over the summer and I'm hoping and expecting a calmer, typical year to follow.
Robert
[ top ]News and announcements
Ongoing Kilburn Improvement Projects
Just a quick update on a couple of projects happening in Kilburn in the next couple of weeks.
Byte Cafe - this area is being repurposed to be a student refreshment area - the counter will be removed and all the services removed and the floor and walls made good. The vending machines will then be moved down once the work is complete and there will be a microwave and kettle for the students to use. We hope this will encourage the Kilburn community atmosphere for the students and generally better the facilities we have.
Drinking water dispensers - we have identified a space in the IT Building and on the Kilburn first and second floors for a drinking water machine to be installed. This has been a request from staff for a while and we're very pleased these are finally being installed. Eventually this will remove the need for the portable water coolers so the Ops team will begin the task of removing the portable coolers in due course.
Courtyard Planters - these were installed this week and they look fantastic - adding some much needed colour to break up the grey of the courtyard. Many thanks to Uli for her vision with these!
Ruth Maddocks
[ top ]PGR News
PGR Summer Slowdown
Just a note to remind you that the Summer is with us. In this case, many Professional Services, Academic Staff, Mentors and GTAs will be taking holidays or having meeting-free weeks as the University, School, and Department encourage. Most of the PGR committees and panels in the Department and Faculty will not reconvene until September. And one holiday may very well have knock-on delays as different people in the pipeline have consecutive holidays etc.
In this case, get anything important to us in the next week and after this please expect a reduced throughput from the PGR crew over the summer.
Please make sure you take some time to relax as well!
Simon Harper
[ top ]Research Funding Opportunities
EPSRC Research aligned with cybersecurity research institutes
Deadline: 11 October 2022
Apply for funding to establish research projects aligned with the four EPSRC-National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) research institutes. You should address national security challenges of strategic importance.
The full economic cost of your project can be up to £875k.
Sarah Chatwin
[ top ]Social Responsibility
Join the Outreach and Public Engagement Network
Join the Outreach and Public Engagement Network – OPEN to everybody
Thanks are expressed to the 100+ staff and students from all across the Faculty who got involved in the Community Festival, plus various primary and secondary school events this summer. If you would like to hear about getting involved in upcoming school, family and public events, join the Outreach and Public Engagement Network mailing list
