School of CS newsletter

The School Leadership Team (SLT) is beginning to act upon issues raised in the surveys run by the Staff Development Committee (SDC). One issue raised is on the transparency around what the SLT is doing. As a result, the SLT has decided to make the agenda and minutes of the SLT meetings available. I hope this increased transparency enables people in the School to gain more insight into some of the issues under discussion. For future SLT meetings I’ll attempt to make the agenda available in the Newsletter prior to the SLT meeting. I’ll make the minutes available as soon as practically possible thereafter.

While we get the website set up, here’s the agenda for the SLT meeting held on Wednesday 9 November 2016 and announced in the last Newsletter:

1. Apologies for absence
2. Minutes of the last meeting (5 mins)
3. Matters arising from the minutes RDS (10 mins)
4. AOB
5. Health and Safety - TMcD (15 mins)
   1. Report from TMcD
   2. Matters arising from other committees
   3. Out of hours access.
6. Progress on School Plan – RDS (5 mins)
7. Report from staff Development Committee – UMS (15 mins)
8. P and DR RDS (5 mins)
9. Degree attainment SRP/TLJH   (20 mins)
10. Programme Review – SRP (10 mins)
11. Dean’s visit – RDS (5 mins)
12. Consulting staff on workload – RDS (10 mins)

The topic of degree attainment will be discussed during the Dean’s visit this week (Wednesday 10 a.m. in the Atlas rooms). There is something about consulting staff about workload below.

The School’s Profs and the academic members of the School Leadership Team are discussing appointments of academic staff. There may be the possibility of more recruitment (note the emphasis). I’d appreciate input from staff in the School as to which areas we should recruit to. A brief (less than one page of A4) describing the following will do:

• The research area.
• What appointments are needed, including capabilities.
• Why it will be strategically important.
• How it may generate wider activity in the School and wider University.

Do put more than one name to a proposal if appropriate. Please send proposals to me by the end of November. We will look at proposals; make some decisions and then feedback on what we propose and, eventually, what we get back from faculty.

Last Thursday saw the launch of 10,000 Actions, the staff engagement programme for Environmental Sustainability, see http://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/news/display/?id=17395 On the 10th November you should have received an email with details of how you can access this programme - in a nutshell, we are after actions plans to improve Environmental Sustainability and for every action plan produced, £1 will be provided to support the planting of an oak woodland in Manchester.

The School’s next Graduation ceremony is scheduled for Thursday 15^th December 2016 commencing at 4.45 p.m.  There will be a reception in the School beforehand.  Academic staff will be receiving invitations from Ede and Ravenscroft to sign up for the event and order gowns.  If you have not received one yet, please email the University’s Graduation Team in the Student Services Centre mwwssxg2@ds.man.ac.uk to request a user account.

I am giving a talk about the importance of statistics in research on 16/11, 2-3 pm in room B8 of the George Begg Building. This is part of a seminar series in MACE. It will not be a technical presentation and I will even give some famous examples of people misusing Statistics (some are horrible and some are funny). If you are interested please join us.

Horizon 2020 Information Day University of Manchester Tuesday 13 December 9.30-16.30, Manchester Institute of Biotechnology Lecture Theatre, John Garside Building

The University of Manchester is hosting a Horizon 2020 Information Day on Tuesday 13 December. The day will be of interest to researchers who are planning to participate in or lead a H2020 project and would like to know about the 2017 calls. The speakers are all national contact points for the different areas of Horizon 2020 and there will be an opportunity for one to one meetings with them. Participants can register for all or parts of the day here.

Deadline for outline applications: 9th December 2016, full applications: 9th February 2017

ERC Consolidator Grants are designed to support excellent Principal Investigators at the career stage at which they may still be consolidating their own independent research team or programme. Applicant Principal Investigators must demonstrate the ground-breaking nature, ambition and feasibility of their scientific proposal.

An award maximum €2M is available for a period of 5 years.

The Principal Investigator shall have been awarded their first PhD (or equivalent doctoral degree) at least 7 and up to 12 years prior to 1^st January 2017. The PhD award date should be between 1^st January 2005 and 31^st December 2009. Extensions to this eligibility period can be accepted in certain properly documented circumstances.

Please contact me asap if you wish to apply (thomas.wise@manchester.ac.uk).

As with all ERC applications, outline proposals will need to be reviewed by the the Vice President for Research and Innovation, Professor Luke Georghiou.  

Your outline proposal should include:

• 2 page CV – as detailed in ERC Consolidator Grant template available via the submission system of the Participant Portal
• 2 page Track Record - as detailed in ERC Consolidator Grant template available via the submission system of the Participant Portal
• 1 page project summary

Outline applications will need to be sent to me by the 9th December.

Full information is provided in the ERC Work Programme 2017.

ERC-2017-COG Participant Portal

The tricky case for setting up UoM's Dropbox Business is when you want to run it alongside your current Dropbox Personal account (Basic/free or Pro). Most existing Dropbox users will want to do this, so that they can conveniently start the process of getting UoM business folders into their Business a/c from their Personal one. A HOWTO is here http://staffnet.cs.manchester.ac.uk/techso/dropbox.php. Once done on one of your computers, it is then straightforward on any others you have. Thanks to Paul Nutter, Toby Howard and Steve Pettifer for being early adopters.

At the end of the HOWTO is some further information about the issues surrounding moving shared folders from Personal to Business.

I note that the University now believes there is no reason to store University files in a personal dropbox.

Meeting room 2.33 now has wifi projection capability – it is much the same as is found in other rooms with such. Full instructions are in the room, but you can contact Ian Cottam for help or further information. The normal two types of cable still exist. The only change is that, as wifi projection uses HDMI, there is a little HDMI switch box on top of the cupboard. Its default input channel 1 is for the wired HDMI cable. Switch it to 2 for Apple TV based wifi projection. Thanks to Stephen Rhodes for doing the hard work setting this up.