School of CS newsletter

The annual School Research Student Prizes were awarded at the research symposium last week.

The best paper prize was awarded to Fan-Lin Meng for "A Pro_t Maximization Approach to Demand Response Management with Customers Behavior Learning in Smart Grid", Fan-Lin Meng and Xiao-Jun Zeng, accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid 2015.

Runner up for the paper prize was Viachaslau Sazonau for "General Terminology Induction in OWL", Viachaslau Sazonau, Uli Sattler, and Gavin Brown, published in the 14th International Semantic Web Conference, 2015.

The best thesis prize was awarded to Georgios Kontonatsios for his thesis "Automatic Compilation of Bilingual Terminologies from Comparable Corpora", 2015. The thesis resulted in nine peer-reviewed publications, the main supervisor was Professor Sophia Ananiadou.

December Graduation will be at 10:00 on Wednesday 16th December with a reception for Graduates, friends and family afterwards. The School's annual Christmas Party will be at 3pm on Wednesday 16th December.

ORCID reference numbers are becoming increasingly important. You can sign up for your own ORCID very quickly through https://orcid.org/register

ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between you and your professional activities ensuring that your work is recognized.

• Thursday 12^th November 2015, 1-4pm in Room 1, Staff Training & Development Unit (STDU), Humanities Bridgeford Street Building
• Friday 27^th November 2015, 10am-1pm in the Seminar Room, STDU, Humanities Bridgeford Street Building
• Friday 4^th December 2015, 10am-1pm in Room 1, STDU, Humanities Bridgeford Street Building
• Thursday 10^th December 2015, 1-4pm in Room 1, STDU, Humanities Bridgeford Street Building

Anybody mentoring probationary staff is invited to attend these training sessions - please  register for one of the sessions with Kadie (Kadie.Ratchford@manchester.ac.uk).

Event: 14-15 Jan 2016, Brussels (Albert Borschette Congress Center)

http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/big-data-information-and-networking-days-horizon-2020-topics

Big Data Information and Networking Days, organised by the Unit Data Value Chain (CNECT G3), will inform and guide prospective proposers preparing project proposals, to facilitate sharing of ideas and experiences. It will give participants the chance to network and to find partners for their projects.

The event will focus on call for proposals H2020-ICT-2016-2017 addressing the following topics:

• ICT-14: Big Data PPP: Cross-sectorial and cross-lingual data integration and experimentation (also know as "Innovation Spaces")
• ICT-15: Big Data PPP: Large Scale Pilot actions in sectors best benefitting from data-driven innovation (also known as "Lighthouse Projects")

                IMPORTANT: If this is your main interest, please join us on the 1^st December in Brussels for the Info Day specialy dedicated to H2020 ICT-15. The registration for that event is already open.

• ICT-17: Big data PPP: Support, industrial skills, benchmarking and evaluation
• ICT-18: Big data PPP: Privacy-preserving big data technologies

Due to a big interest and limited number of places the participation will possible only upon confirmed online registration.

Contact: CNECT-G3-EVENTS@ec.europa.eu

Remember... the School has funding to cover attendance at EU events if you feedback knowledge to the School afterwards. Contact rizos@manchester.ac.uk for more information.

Expressions of Interest for Briefing Event: 17:00 13 Nov 2015
Event: 03 Dec 2015, London
Outline Submission deadline: 16:00 05 Jan 2016

https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/itscc/

The EPSRC Information Communication Technology (ICT), Healthcare Technologies and Digital Economy Themes are inviting outline proposals which look towards the development of reliable and intelligent technologies to support collaborative care in the community. Proposals are invited which address the need for new technologies which can reliably and intelligently interpret multiple inputs from multiple sources and initiate actions as appropriate to support the self-management of chronic health conditions.

Through this call EPSRC wishes to support fundamental research, primarily relating to, although not limited to, reliable, intelligent software, to enable the development of such technologies. The development of feasible solutions may also require developments in other areas from across the ICT portfolio such as, but not limited to, low power microprocessors and signal processing systems, lightweight, portable, long life power supplies, HCI, pervasive and ubiquitous computing and minimally invasive sensors.

Funds of up to £10M are available, which is expected to support 5-7 research projects, subject to the quality of the proposals received.

This is a multi-disciplinary call. Proposals are expected to include relevant experience in both the healthcare and ICT domains.

Event:
The event will provide an opportunity for potential applicants to clarify the scope and requirements of the call and for networking with other potential applicants within both the health and ICT domains. There will be presentations by EPSRC on the call scope and the Healthcare Technologies Impact and Translation Toolkit. There will also be presentations by researchers and health professionals who have worked successfully at the interface. EPSRC welcomes attendees from across the ICT and healthcare domains but attendance at the event will not be a pre-requisite for submission to the call.

If you have any questions regarding the call or briefing event please contact: Lisa.coles@epsrc.ac.uk; Sarah.hobbs@epsrc.ac.uk; Tracy.keys@epsrc.ac.uk

Deadline: 02 Dec 2015 5pm

http://www.britac.ac.uk/funding/guide/skills_innovator.cfm

The British Academy has announced a call for a revised scheme of research funding support within the Languages and Quantitative Skills Programme. The revised scheme, called British Academy Skills Innovator Awards, is intended to extend the Academy's support to promote innovative research methods using languages and quantitative skills, through skills development, acquisition, collaboration or dissemination.

The scheme is intended for researchers who wish to experiment with new quantitative methods through a variety of means, or to experiment with methods and vehicles for teaching languages in higher education. The awards (up to £15k;up to 20 awards expected) will be valuable to researchers wishing to pilot new methods and approaches in order to apply for larger grants in the longer term.

By enabling academics with outstanding ideas for the development of skills in others to have support for a wide range of activities that demonstrate innovation in the use, acquisition and teaching of languages and quantitative skills, the Academy aims to raise the quality of quantitative skills used in research and therefore the quality of research; and to promote language learning and the transferable skills that language learning provides.

Applications are invited from applicants who will normally be within 15 years of the award of their doctorate with a current academic appointment in the UK.

The Manchester Doctoral College (MDC) has granted the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences a small amount of funding to support Postgraduate Researchers attending national or international research conferences. This fund enables PhD researchers in their 2nd year or later to apply for support to attend a conference where they have been accepted to present a talk or a poster. 

• The Fund can assist with the costs of travel (standard class), conference registration fees and accommodation expenses (not subsistence), and are intended to supplement funds from other sources.

• Maximum funds available are £250 for UK conferences and £500 for EU/international conferences. Maximum funding will only be available if there are no funds awarded from external sources.

• Applicants must have made an external application for conference support and be able to provide evidence of this. If complete funding is received from the external application, MDC funding will be adjusted accordingly. Alternative sources of funding can be found in the Alternative Guide to PG Funding.

• Preference will be given to postgraduates who have no sponsored research support (e.g. self-funded) and who have no grant allocation for conference attendance as part of their PhD research support. Preference will also be given to those who are giving a talk (as opposed to a poster).

Decisions will be made at the monthly EPS Graduate Committee meetings up until 31 July 2016 or until the Fund is fully allocated. Recipients of an award will be required to complete a short expenses claim form and submit original receipts in order to receive their award. Awards will only be available after the date of the conference. Successful applicants are required to submit a short report of 500 words no more than 1 month after attending.

• Guidance
• Application form
• Send the completed form to: eps-grads@manchester.ac.uk

If you have any queries about the form or the travel conference fund contact: Alex.Hinchliffe@manchester.ac.uk

The #BritainBreathing project organised the "Platform for Investigation: Allergy Busters" event within the Manchester Science Festival on Saturday 24th October 2015. A giant nose with germs and demonstrations of how allergies and lungs work (with real lungs!) engaged more than 600 individuals. 

Dr Markel Vigo demoed the #BritainBreathing mobile application, which not only allows citizen scientists to report their symptoms, but also provides mechanisms to keep them engaged in order to ensure the reliability of the collected data. The ultimate goal of the project is to map allergy incidence in the UK and, at this stage, the School of Computer Science is leading the design of the mentioned mobile application.

Our school is involved in #BritainBreathing along with two other faculties (FLS and MHS), the British Society of Immunology and the Royal Society of Biology. More info at http://britainbreathing.org/