School of CS newsletter

The Guardian league tables are out, the School has moved up slightly from 9th to 8th (out of 102 universities with scores, plus a further 17 universities that teach CS but aren't assigned scores). Overall the University has dropped slightly from 29th to 31st. Within the Faculty Electrical and Electronic Engineering have done very well, at 2nd out of 63.

The latest tables are here, with the CS rankings here.

The most obvious improvement in our scores is the score for employability, so thanks to Duncan, Mabel and to everyone else that has worked to help our students be in a position to start the careers that they want. This includes a very wide range of activity from vacation and wIE placements to careers advice, out of hours clubs, hackathons and other competitions and the very wide range of guest speakers from industry that come to speak within a wide range of course units.

An Interview with NaCTeM Director Sophia Ananiadou has recently appeared on the website Pharma Technology Focus. 

We had a very eventful Annual Bake Off on Friday with 15 varied and excellent entries.  Liz, our Head of School Administration, and Jim our Head of School, had their work cut out judging what turned out to be the best Bake Off ever!  Competition was tight but the judges finally made their decisions, giving Bijan the coveted title of Star Baker for the second year running!  Bijan will retain the Crown and Sceptre until next year - well done Bijan!  The Show Stopper award for Best Presentation went to Paul Nutter.  Also a very well done to all the runners up and to everyone who attended or took part, your efforts and kind donations raised a whopping £125 for the NSPCC!!!

Fellowships application deadline: 30th September 2016

A Fellowship is a personal award, designed to provide the recipient with the necessary support to establish or further develop themselves as a leader of the future. A fellowship aims to position the fellow and their research topic within the wider research community, to develop their leadership by establishing or extending their research group, links and collaborations, and to act as an advocate for science and engineering in general.

The RCUK Digital Economy Theme is actively looking to recruit and support fellows across the four DE priority areas:

• Trust, Identity, Privacy and Security (TIPS) - Early and Established Career fellowships
• Social Computing - Early Career fellowships only
• Business and Economic Models - Early Career fellowships only
• Advancing the Understanding and Development of the Internet of Things for the Digital Economy (IoT) - Early and Established Career fellowships

Further details can be found here.

In the ICT theme, five priorities have been identified (Early Career and Established Career fellowships only.) These are:

• Many-Core Architectures and Concurrency in Distributed and Embedded Systems
• Towards an Intelligent Information Infrastructure (TI3)
• Photonics for Future Systems
• New and emerging areas in ICT
• Working Together

Details of the ICT fellowships can be found here.

If you wish to apply for an RCUK fellowship, please contact the Research Office: researchsupportcsm@manchester.ac.uk 

Deadline for applications: 19th June 2016

Message from Dr. Andrea Kells, Programme Administrator, Researcher in Residence Programme, University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory:

Digital Catapult Researcher in Residence Programme

Funding for applied or strategic projects relevant to the digital economy:

• Applied projects will generally be user-centred and focused on impact generation in the short to medium term.
• Strategic projects will help shape current Catapult projects, and drive the creation of new activities. The focus should be impact generation in the broadest sense.
• Eligibility: Open to those with a contract of employment at a UK university or RCUK Research Institute, or PhD students who have submitted their thesis by the closing date
• Funding: Up to £25K to cover expenses, including travel and accommodation

www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/resinresjune2016/

www.digitalcatapultcentre.org.uk/open-calls/researcher-in-residence-programme/

For further information, please contact Dr. Kells directly at ark20@hermes.cam.ac.uk.

The #BritainBreathing App, a citizen science project run in part by the academics in the School of Computer Science, was featured on BBC Click this week.

The project is a joint venture between the University of Manchester, British Society for Immunology and Royal Society for Biology.

Mercury now has the better quality projector fitted that we also hope to supply to some of our other meeting rooms before next academic year.

Joining Atlas 1 and IT401, the projection facilities can also be accessed wirelessly. To make such the same across Macs, Windows, iOS and Android, please always select the wifi channel "IDC" on your mobile device. The password and further details are on paper copies in the rooms.