Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science

Research Committee Meeting
Deputy Director's report

Ian Stark
Friday 25 June 1999

EPSRC

In March Mark Wilkins, IT&CS programme manager, invited comments on a draft revision of the programme structure. I sent an LFCS response to this, gathering contributions from various members of the Laboratory.

In April I participated in a meeting on Long-term Research Goals for IT&CS . In June Monika Lekuse and I attended the EPSRC regional seminar in Edinburgh; here is my report on this.

Equipment

In April LFCS purchased five new Linux desktop machines. These have been distributed, and following some rearrangement we are now able to provide each LFCS Phd student with their own machine. It is the stated aim of the Division to achieve this level of support anyway; we expect to maintain it with our own resources until Divisional provision becomes a reality.

LFCS has also bought a new Sun file server, mor. This will serve home directories, and should keep up with the load placed by these faster desktop machines.

Milner lecture

This year's Milner lecture was given by Butler Lampson on Computer Security in the Real World. A videotape of the talk is available.

Please send any suggestions for next year's speaker to me; here you can find the aims of the Milner lecture series.

PhD studentships

The last Directors meeting put aside money for an LFCS studentship. All applicants for PhD places in the Laboratory were automatically considered for partial or total support under this.

This year the studentship has been awarded as follows.

• Martin Lange (supervisor Colin Stirling). Three years of full maintenance and fees.
• Massimo Felici (supervisor Stuart Anderson). One year of fees only.

LFCS won the following support from the Divisional studentship.

• Jan Jurjens (supervisor Samson Abramsky). Three years of fees only. Jan has a scholarship from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes to pay his maintenance.

The Division has been assigned six EPSRC quota awards. LFCS holds one so far.

• Stephen Thomas (supervisor Gordon Plotkin).

Research travel

The departmental budget for research travel died with the department. Responsibility for this now falls on individual institutes, and LFCS money is available to fund attendance at conferences and workshops. Anyone interested should talk to me in the first instance.

Guidelines are essentially as before: while no-one should be prevented from presenting their work at a meeting dues to lack of funds, we are all expected to apply for grant and other funding in preference to general institute money. PhD students in particular can request some support from the graduate school for up to one trip per year.