School of CS newsletter

I advertised the link to where the report recommending the School structure for FSE may be found post the next Senate meeting on 28 June. The report may be found in the Senate papers for 28 June via http://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/senate/meetings/. Whether or not it was deliberate, the link was made public at the end of last week and I am sure that many of you have read the report. In brief, the recommendation is for four schools:
A. EEE and MACE.
B. Physics and Astronomy and Earth and Environmental Sciences.
C. Chemistry, CEAS and Materials.
D. Maths and Computer Science

My personal view is that the opportunities described in the document, should Schools and Faculty desire them, can be achieved without merging Schools. I have been pushing back against these mergers and, as yet, no decisions have been made.

Here are a few thoughts and stuff that I know or believe:
- The review is a recommendation. I don't think the status quo is a likely result, though it is what I'd prefer. It may, however, be that some other version of what is recommended may be the outcome - we simply don't know.
- Discipline identities would be maintained (probably as departments within schools). 
- Whatever happens, the date I've heard attached to any changes  is the academic year 2019/2020.
- There is very little detail about how such a merged School would be implemented.
- My understanding is that there will be a consultation process and an email address provided by which views may be expressed.

If you wish to email me with views, questions,  etc, then  please do.

Robert

Places have recently become available on the Child Protection Policy & Guidance training session, which is aimed at staff whose work may bring them into contact with young people under 18. Further details are below. To book a place please visit: https://app.manchester.ac.uk/TMS60

Aims and Objectives:

To provide a general overview of the University’s Child Protection Policy and the responsibilities of those involved in taking part in, or leading, University activities involving young people.

Specific objectives and outcomes:

By the end of the session those taking part will:

• Be aware of the possible forms and indications of child abuse
• Take appropriate action if they become aware of possible cases of child abuse
• Have a good general overview of the University’s policy and know where to go for further information and advice
• Have an understanding of the Disclosure and Barring Service process and appropriate checks required when working with children and/or adults

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new article in IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. The work is on how to generate low-dimensional representations that not only identify the local neighbourhood structure of individual patterns, but also establish a global view of the relative positioning and separation between the underlying data cohorts.

T. Mu, J. Y. Goulermas and S. Ananiadou, Visualizing local sample and global cohort neighbouring structure, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, In press, 2017.

Preprint can be downloaded from http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/tingting.mu/Site/Publications_files/cova_preprint_full.pdf

Immediately after the publication of last week's newsletter, IT Services announced that they were delaying the introduction of a 2 Factor Authentication system for all staff and PGRs until "after Start Of Year 2017-18".

http://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/news/display/?id=18512