Present: Samson Abramsky, Paul Anderson, Stuart Anderson, Julian Bradfield, Massimo Felici, Jane Hillston, Martin Hofmann, Roni Khardon, Dyane McGavin (Secretary), Gordon Plotkin, Don Sannella, Alex Simpson, Ian Stark (Chair), Perdita Stevens, Colin Stirling, Kostas Tourlas.
Apologies for absence were received from Rod Burstall and Monika Lekuse.
Postgraduate training Under item 4, Perdita Stevens recommended replacing "formal methods" with "formal techniques".
LFCS mailing lists The ones within the dcs
domain, managed by Monika, now work fine. The Divisional ones are not yet
entirely satisfactory.
LFCS Directorate This has been replaced by the smaller Director's Meeting, which first met on 7 February.
Research Committee This has representatives of postgraduates and research staff, being Massimo Felici and Kostas Tourlas respectively.
Poly/ML The LFCS web site now carries a distribution of the Poly/ML compiler. David Matthews is carrying out the update to Standard ML '97.
2.2 Grant Portfolio LFCS currently holds grants to the value of £2.5 million, running at approximately £830 thousand a year; this has increased slightly since the last meeting. Stuart Anderson reported that if the Interdisciplinary Research Centre (IRC) on Dependability was successful, as seemed likely, that would provide a significant amount: perhaps enough money to pay 3 people over six years.
There are three other applications pending for grants to employ research staff. Ian Stark mentioned a European scheme for Marie Curie training sites, which we might apply to join.
2.3 Milner Lecture This has been arranged for 24 May 2000. Joseph Halpern is giving the lecture and it will take place in the Law Lecture Theatre in the Central Area. He will give two other talks as part of the Informatics Jamboree.
2.4 Studentships In addition to the current LFCS studentships, we have a second to offer for next year. This is open to any student, in particular those from outside the UK.
2.5 Research Reports LFCS reports have finally appeared in Informatics Research Report Series. The form of these will be discussed at next Informatics Policy Committee Meeting, and Ian Stark asked whether there was still a need for paper copies of research reports and theses now that these were being made available electronically. Don Sannella said that having a room with a supply of reports was useful, and well used by visitors to LFCS. There was interest in producing a CD, but only as a supplement to existing publication channels.
Even if the Division decides not to produce hard-copy reports, we could do so ourselves. Of those present, six were in favour of continuing to supply printed versions, and two did not not mind if they were stopped.
Stuart Anderson proposed that we should continue to publish theses in hard copy. Everyone agreed on this, and thought that it would a loss if this was not done.
Colin Stirling announced the current procedure for electronic publication of theses: once a thesis is approved the student should give an electronic copy to Eleanor Kerse, who will add its details to the Informatics database.
2.6 Rod Burstall's retirement There will be an Informatics reception on the afternoon of 23 March, with a presentation by Alan Bundy. LFCS will host a dinner that evening for Rod's past colleagues and students.
2.7 New Frontiers in Sciences This is the Royal Society summer exhibition, which will be held in Edinburgh this year. LFCS has submitted three proposals to the "Inside Information" exhibit.
2.8 Completing PhD students Monika Lekuse is concerned that there is no mechanism for passing on information about when PhD students leave. It was decided that supervisors should be responsible for notifying Monika of this, and also informing her when thesis are submitted for examination.
The Graduate School is preparing a standard checklist for students to complete before departing; however, this wouldn't necessarily help in knowing when a student has submitted.
There was some discussion of the how this decrease has come about. Paul suggested rearrangements in finance as the Division was formed. Stuart Anderson emphasised that this is a particularly tight year for budgets, and suggested that the figures might not be strictly comparable.
Paul reported a significant imbalance in costs between KB and other Informatics sites: putting a single machine on a desk costs only half as much here as elsewhere. Much of this is can be attributed to our move to Linux.
3.2 Infrastructure Most infrastructure spending is currently directed to network rewiring, for a faster ethernet. The amount of personal filespace required continues to rise: this is no problem in itself, but there are beginning to be difficulties in providing appropriate backup store.
Other areas for development are: support of portable machines; a Division-wide TeX installation; more broadly, the new Divisional computing environment. There is no general funding for portable computers yet, but there is now some support for standard machines bought on individual grants.
3.3 Staffing There have been a few changes, chiefly to coordinate activities across the Division. Paul remains official liaison for LFCS; Jeremy Olsen is now responsible for computing support of research across the Division.
Some computing staff will be fully employed on building the new Divisional computing infrastructure. Although we have funding for an additional person to help cover for this, Faculty will not allow further hiring. Schemes are being investigated to arrange this through EUCS instead.
Paul reported that the computing executive group had audited the available computing staff effort, and determined that there is no possibility for direct support of research, nor any prospect of it in the near future. Martin Hofmann expressed incredulity that the 20% of a Computing Officer charged to grant applications for each member of research staff could be required just to support commodity computing. Paul confirmed that this was indeed the necessary baseline.
3.4 Other matters Stuart Anderson described the current bid for a Beowulf-class distributed machine, which is being promoted by the Division.
Don Sannella enquired about facilities for videoconferencing and seminar broadcasts over the net. Paul said that this would require entirely separate facilities, and could not presently be supported. (This was revisited later at item 8)
Ian Stark had contacted the Staff Development Section of Personnel for further information. They are substantially revising the University Staff Development Plan, which should lead to a lighter and more effective scheme for staff appraisal. This might begin some time in the next academic year. In the meantime, they have circulated a simplified appraisal form. Stuart Anderson confirmed that he had used this simpler form, although it seems that some of the older paperwork is still in circulation.
There was agreement that the task of carrying out the appraisals should be spread across all teaching staff. Most LFCS lecturers would need to go on the relevant training course. Ian reported that in addition to the timetabled presentation of this course, Staff Development will run it on request for groups of at least ten people. Several people were keen on a Divisional course; there was very little interest in arranging one just for LFCS.
The meeting reached the following decisions.
Jane asked that book orders for this year should be placed within the next 6 weeks.
The IEEE electronic library offer mentioned at the last meeting had now lapsed, without funds being found to take it up. Several people said that electronic subscription to journals was an excellent thing. Unfortunately these presently tend to cost more, not less, than paper subscriptions as most publishers only offer them in addition to paper copies.
Samson Abramsky complained that books often take several months to appear on the shelves after ordering. Jane thought that a backlog had arisen due to a new cataloguing system, but that this was being cleared.
Don Sannella highlighted the overlap in content and timing with the University's mock Research Assessment Exercise. While there was going to be some effort saved by this, he apologised in advance that the mechanism of the RAE meant that this information would need to be gathered again at least twice in the coming year.
The question arose of whether the Laboratory should broaden its remit to the "Foundations of Informatics". No-one wanted an formal research plan for this, but it would for example be sensible to take the possibility into account when hiring new staff. Samson pointed out that this need not mean changing the nature of our research, but rather looking to new areas of application. He gave some tentative examples: calculi for describing gene expression; use of semi-structured databases in the life sciences; probabilistic methods from Artificial Intelligence. While this would not lead to anything as specific as change in title for the Laboratory, it was important to have some ideas on future direction, and to be seen as reasonably open-minded.
There was general agreement that what distinguished the work of LFCS was not a particular domain of application, but a common approach to the development of mathematical foundations. This could certainly extend to topics outside traditional Computer Science; although Perdita Stevens pointed out that the variety of subjects within Informatics meant that mathematics would remain just one of several forms of necessary foundational work.
Colin Stirling encouraged this kind of survey of LFCS research interests, as a help in recruiting PhD applicants and targeting studentships.
The central piece of advice from the Development Office is that we should not ask for "a new building", but instead focus on a particular thing we wish to do ... for which the obvious enabling step would be a single Informatics building.
Samson expressed concern that the Development Office seemed keen to promote "interdisciplinary centres" that would stretch outside Informatics, when our first priority should be to get our own research together; particularly as one of the motivations behind the Division is that it is already highly interdisciplinary.
There is a certain tension over making development plans to match with University approval, when that is itself somewhat shifting and uncertain. Gordon Plotkin pointed out that the University and Faculty had no objection to a single Informatics site on the King's Buildings.
Colin Stirling asked whether a single site necessarily meant funding a new building. John responded that this was not necessary, although refurbishing an existing building would not be any cheaper.
Don Sannella enquired about plans for video-conferencing. John confirmed that this was essential for any multiple-site development. He has written a requirements analysis for distributed research seminars, and passed this to the computing service to assess costs.