School of CS newsletter

Clive Agnew, Vice President Teaching,Learning & Students, has sent the following message regarding requests from students wishing to make announcements about their campaign against the TEF:

“You may be aware that UCU have recommended to staff that they should make an announcement at the start of their classes including showing a 2 minute video clip from the University of Manchester Student's Union as part of UMSU's campaign against the Teaching Excellence Framework. I have drafted the following advice in case you are asked about the University's position."

Clive Agnew

"From time to time the University uses the start of classes to make official announcements to convey information relating to student’s education. On occasion, students seeking election to UMSU or involved in promoting other events or campaigns may request permission to make an announcement before or after a lecture. The decision whether to allow such announcements is at the discretion of the member of staff teaching the class and we expect students to ask permission. We do not believe time allocated to student learning should be disrupted. Some staff may wish to alert students to the UMSU TEF campaign in other ways, but teaching time should be devoted to teaching."

A reminder to all staff and research students that we have an equipment library packed with interesting things. This is available for research, for projects (including UG and PG projects) and for individual experimentation. The library is run by Stephen Rhodes (rhodes@cs.man.ac.uk). Either contact Stephen directly (he can give you a tour of the equipment) or see http://studentnet.cs.manchester.ac.uk/ugt/hardware.

We have recently added new EEG equipment (http://www.neuroelectrics.com/products/enobio/enobio-8), many new robots (including Nao robots https://www.ald.softbankrobotics.com/en/cool-robots/nao), the latest Oculus Rift VR headsets, and the latest Parrot drones, Myo neurosensing armbands (https://www.myo.com), Spheros (http://www.sphero.com/sphero), 3D printers, and much, much more. If there is equipment that could usefully be added to the library, please let us know. The equipment is a vital part of our outreach to schools, enabling us to bring exciting Computer Science into schools. - David Rydeheard

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.

Contact me for a detailed programme (thomas.wise@manchester.ac.uk)

There are currently a number of calls and events being advertised by the Royal Academy of Engineering. Please circulate these to anyone you think may be interested. 

Industry Academia Partnerships Programme
Under its remit as a delivery partner of the Newton Fund, the Academy is implementing the Industry Academia Partnership Programme which aims to support partner country universities in improving their engineering education, research and innovation output through partnership with industry and UK stakeholders. The scheme is currently open and invites proposals for collaboration with universities and industry in Colombia, Indonesia, South Africa and Thailand.

Award Value - £50,000
Deadline - Monday 19 December 2016.
Contact - Shaarad Sharma

Engineering Leaders Scholarship
We are now accepting applications from engineering undergraduates at UK universities who have the potential to become leaders in engineering and act as role models for future engineers. Please share with any students, friends and family that may be interested.

Award Value - £5,000
Deadline - Monday 9 January 2017
Contact - Jacqueline Clay

APEX Awards
Provides established and proven engineering academics the opportunity to pursue genuine interdisciplinary and curiosity-driven research to benefit wider society.

Award Value - £100,000
Deadline - Friday 13 January 2017
Contact - Neeshé Khan

If you wish to apply to the Apex Award, please contact the Research Support Office (researchsupportcsm@manchester.ac.uk)

RAEng is also launching a new UK Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Programme on Friday 9 December. Contact – Lucy Wheeler

Sophia Ananiadou, John McNaught, Piotr Przybyla and Matthew Shardlow of the NaCTeM group, have contributed to a paper recently published in 'Database: The Journal of Biological Databases and Curation':

http://database.oxfordjournals.org/content/2016/baw145

Text mining resources for the life sciences, Przybyla, P., Shardlow, M., Aubin, S., Bossy, R., Eckart de Castillo, R., Piperidis, S., McNaught, J. and S. Ananiadou

Here are some brief notes from the first meeting of the new Research IT Club.

Around 600 researchers have signed up for Dropbox Business so far. IT seem to think this is good: I'm a little surprised how low this number is, but I am sure it will grow. One consequence is that any applications from postgraduate research students are just being accepted currently; this could change as numbers approach some licence limit, so PGRs apply now!

Like the CSF (Computational Shared Facility) there is now also a DPSF (Data Processing Shared Facility). This is for Big Data processing. Please contact Simon Hood in Research IT for details. The CSF itself is growing by some 500 cores that could be made freely available to occasional users. Again, contact Simon if this is of interest.

For security reasons the campus network will likely be zoned at some time in the future, with 2-Factor Authentication used for Restricted and Highly Restricted data. The CSF and DPSF will likely have to be in the restricted zone. Details have yet to be worked out.