School of CS newsletter

Last week the death of Mary Lee Berners-Lee was announced. Mary Lee was a programmer, using the Manchester Mark 1 computer developed here at the UoM, originally working from the programming manual written by Alan Turing. Following her work at Feranti, she became, wat we’d call today, a free-lance programmer. She also campaigned for and achieved equal pay for female and male computer programmers at Feranti. There is an obituary in the Guardian and there was also an obituary on “Last Word” on BBC Radio 4 last week. You can also find some interviews with Mary Lee Berners-Lee in the British Library’s Voices of Science series.

The faculty deadline for submitting timetable requests for teaching in the 2018/19 academic year is Friday 16th February.

We therefore need two actions please from our academic colleagues:

* If you are a course unit leader please inform us no later than Friday 9th February if your course unit structure is to be different in the academic year 2018/19.

* If you are involved with delivering a course unit and wish to apply for flexible working please do so no later than Friday 16th February.

The full details were sent out by email to acstaff on Friday 2 Feb 2018. If for any reason you are involved in teaching a course unit and didn’t get this email, then please email compsci-timetable@listserv.manchester.ac.uk to request the details.

Date: Tuesday 13th February 2018

Time: 12.15-13.15

Venue: IT 407, Kilburn Building

Professor Tom Rodden (Deputy CEO) will discuss EPSRC’s plans and the opportunities emerging in the rapidly evolving research landscape. Topics will include the transition to UK Research and Innovation, the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund and EPSRC’s Delivery Plan (including Centres for Doctoral Training). His talk will be followed by a Q&A session.

To reserve a place, please complete your details on the booking link

Innovate UK recently announced a significant increase to the funding available for Knowledge Transfer Partnerships; further details on the announcement can be found here. This means that there is sufficient funding to double the size of the national KTP portfolio.

What does this mean for Manchester?

The University of Manchester currently has 30 live KTPs and is ranked 2nd in the UK for the number and value of KTPs – we are therefore well placed to take advantage of the additional funding available for new projects.

KTP projects provide an excellent framework to support a collaborative partnership with a UK company (large or small), whereby projects are focused on either the development of new products, processes or services or improvements to existing products, processes or services using new technologies, knowledge or research outputs.

KTPs give academics opportunities to observe and influence the practical application of their research, which supports the increasing demand to provide evidence of the impact of research investment, while informing the pathway of ongoing and future research. Projects can last from 12-36 months, typical project value is ~ £200k which is R coded income. Further details can be found here.

There are a number of upcoming opportunities for submission of projects:

• 28th February “OPEN”
• 28th March “EMERGING and ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES” and “HEALTH and LIFE SCIENCES”
• 25th April “OPEN”

There is support available from the Knowledge Exchange Team to discuss, scope and develop project submissions – please contact us to discuss further.

ke@manchester.ac.uk

0161 306 6815

Save the date - 7th March

Caroline Stanton, Knowledge Exchange Manager, will be visiting the School to deliver a brief presentation and Q&A session at 2pm. An invite will follow shortly with further details.

The Leadership in Education Awards Programme (LEAP) is accredited by the Higher Education Academy and leads to the award of Associate, Fellowship, Senior or Principal HEA Fellowships. Staff who register with LEAP will be able to attend workshops and be assigned a peer support group and a mentor to help them with their fellowship application. The programme is available to academic and PSS staff who are involved in teaching , learning and student support.

Applications for LEAP open twice a year. The next round will open on 5^th February.

For more information go to http://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/bmh/pss-activities/training/education/leadership-in-education-awards-programme/

Apply for the 2018 L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science UK & Ireland Fellowship Awards Programme.

The fellowship awards are open to female early-career researchers working in the field of life and physical sciences, engineering, mathematics and computer sciences.

Five outstanding female early-career scientists will be awarded a bursary of £15,000.

Applicants should apply online at www.womeninscience.co.uk by the deadline of 16th February 2018.

Eligibility criteria and FAQs are available here:www.womeninscience.co.uk/faq

This unique award is designed to provide practical help to aid female researchers in continuing their cutting-edge research. The fellowship can be spent as the fellow wishes; it could buy a piece of scientific equipment, help to cover child care costs or be used to fund conference travel.

If you have any questions or feedback, please do not hesitate to contact us atForWomeninScienceUK@loreal.com

Thanks to Tim Furmston for this one: when attempting to mount file store via smb on a Mac, if you are running the Global Protect VPN, the short form – e.g. "staffc" – will not resolve. You must use staffc.cs.man.ac.uk.

The University of Manchester is committed to addressing racial inequalities and creating an inclusive culture and environment where individuals are able to thrive, irrespective of their race or ethnicity. To help facilitate progress, we are currently working towards renewing our ECU’s Race Equality Charter Bronze Award, and this survey forms an important part of this work. It will be open for another week, takes about 10 minutes to complete, and you can win one of five £20 Amazon vouchers.

More information is available on StaffNet http://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/equality-and-diversity/race-charter-mark/ 

and the survey can be accessed here:

https://apps.mhs.manchester.ac.uk/surveys/TakeSurvey.aspx?SurveyID=REC2017 

The next FSE Green Network will be taking place on Wednesday 21^st February, 12.00-1.30pm (apologies for the previous confusion around the date). If there are any items you would like to add to the agenda for this meeting, either for the group to discuss or for you to update the Network on, please let me know by Wednesday 14^th February. It would be great to have your input on the agenda so that the Network is as useful for us all as possible.

10,000 Actions fund – apologies for any cross-posting:

After two successful rounds of the 10,000 Actions fund, a further £10,000 has been released for environmental sustainability projects. Previous successful applications include sustainable lab equipment, improvements to the living campus, research into air pollution and development of a toolkit to reduce the need to fly. More details of funded projects to date can be found on: 10,000 Actions fund.

10,000 Actions is part of the University’s Environmental Sustainability Strategy.

To access this fund, you must have made your own action plan by visiting: 10,000 Actions

The application form can be downloaded from: 10,000 Actions fund and the deadline for applications is 4pm on Thursday 8^th February.