The meeting opened at 10.05am
Present: John Longley (Chair), Colin Stirling, Jane Hillston, Monika Lekuse, Konstantinos Tourlas, Gordon Plotkin, Ian Stark, Perdita Stevens, Massimo Felici, Paul Jackson, Don Sannella, Stephen Gilmore, Bill Orrok (minute secretary).
Apologies: Martin Grohe, Peter Buneman, Kousha Etessami, Stuart Anderson, Julian Bradfield, Alex Simpson.
Milner Lecture: We have appointed a Milner Lecturer for 2003: Frank Kelly from Cambridge. The Milner lecture will happen on Wednesday 21st May at 5.15pm. This is the usual time in relation to the Jamboree. We have booked a bigger lecture theatre this time, the George Square lecture theatre. It was pointed out that it is very big with 500 seats and it will look empty unless we get a good turn out. It should be widely advertised as a public lecture. We don't yet have a title for the lecture.
In reference to the Theory Chair, Colin said it was progressing and should be advertised quite shortly.
South Bridge: Due to the fire at South Bridge the proposed LFCS move to South Bridge is no longer an option. The likelihood is for us to stay in JCMB until the new building becomes a reality. In response to a question about IPAB moving to JCMB Colin said he assumed that would still go ahead. The funding had been allocated and the area in JCMB they were moving to, around the wind tunnel area, was still available.
Colin said the new building for Informatics is now top priority for the University and the aim is to put in a bid of about 20 million. Matching funding is required. It is not certain whether it is 20 million plus matching funding or inclusive of matching funding. The new building should still be located in Crichton Street. As a temporary arrangement Gordon Duckett will be working full time on the new building. His present duties will be split between Fiona McGregor for finance and Ken Baird for personnel related matters. This should be for about 6 to 9 months but will be reviewed again at the end of January.
In the aftermath of the fire we are trying to disseminate as much publicity as possible about the School of Informatics.
Computing Support: This was the other major topic we had a discussion on at the previous meeting. Various people felt quite strongly that research matters were not treated as a priority by Computer support. Monika raised the point that it all ties in with the infrastructure charges and said that she, Colin and Gordon had a discussion about these. Last year it was decided to put all the infrastructure charges into a central fund and they would be allocated carefully back into the institutes for dedicated research support. For the last academic year LFCS gave about 12 or 13k to the central fund for research here.
A general discussion took place as to the problems we are having getting laptop support. It was mentioned we can't even get our own three laptops back from support. Don said he is not getting an answer as to where our three laptops actually are. It was expressed that as a result of the fire Support are extremely busy and we should not press them too hard for the return of the laptops right now. It was also said that since the last meeting and up until the fire there has been no progress as to supported laptops. Dissatisfaction was expressed as to the fact that information comes in little bits and deadlines are not only not met but are months overdue for things being done.
A worry was expressed that DICE was too complicated for laptops. New models of laptops are brought out on a regular basis. The installation of DICE on to laptops appears to be difficult and therefore the problem is going to be an ongoing one.
Don said there were two things, investigating putting DICE on laptops and then actually installing it once they have worked out how to do it. He was told a fortnight ago that everything was perfect except for modem dial up and another trivial matter. Even when they have it the CSO's have got to do the installing. This is not a big job but needs to be scheduled into their work load. He had been promised a date for this happening. The date given happened to be two days after the fire which is obviously now not viable.
Jane was asked if her mailing list problem had been attended to. She said it was moved a couple of days after the previous meeting.
It was suggested that there should be an on line list people could look at to confirm their request to support was on it, keep track of it and see what sort of priority it had. If you were about to report a fault you could also check to see if it had already been reported and its status.
Jane said that in regard to Teaching Support, it seemed to work well that a particular person (Carwyn Edwards) was designated as responsible for certain tasks, since she knew whom to approach and likewise he knew that what he was being asked to do came within his brief. It was agreed that it would be helpful if similarly there were certain COs designated as responsible for Research Support and for Laptop Support. It was also felt that separating out the duties of maintaining existing infrastructure from those of building new infrastructure would be valuable. Action on Colin to raise this with Mike.
One lecturer, Kousha Etessami, arrived in September.
RAs: Leila Kloul started in the summer. Christoph Koch arrived in July to work with Peter Buneman. Nicole Schweikardt arrrived in September and is working with Martin Grohe. Randy Pollack is a new RA as of yesterday. Michal Konecny who was supposed to leave in January will stay for another two years to work on MRG.
Departures: Stefan Schwoon has already departed. Konstantinos Tourlas and Markus Frick are both leaving in January. Alin Stefanescu will be leaving in February or March as will Claus Schroeter. Daniele Turi will be leaving probably about the end of January.
Paul Anderson will get a student/CO called Jim Patterson to work with him. Paolo Ballarini is still here as a visitor.
Monika distributed a sheet detailing LFCS grants current and pending and spoke about this.
Ian gave a report on the .net lab grant. The grant is now spent, the machines installed and up and running in 1501. Anyone who is interested in using the machines should speak to Ian or Archie.
While we were on a conference related matter Don at this point raised a matter he was going to raise under AOCB. He wanted to warn people he is planning to bid for ETAPS 2005 and will be looking for people to get involved in the organisational side of it. It will be very big. At last years conference about 650 attended so an estimate of up to 800 could attend in 2005.
Don pointed out section 3.1, especially the table on page 3 where LFCS looks very bad, and the consequences drawn from this in the paragraphs immediately following the table. Don said he found these very alarming and his response is at the top of page 5 of the paper. He pointed out that LFCS had higher staff-student ratios in the past but these have declined for several reasons. One of these is that the PhD load is not balanced against the teaching load. Another is that these supervisors often teach the large UG classes. He would be interested to see a table like the one in 3.1 for undergraduate load and thinks it may dramatically show a disproportionate heavy load of undergraduate teaching by LFCS staff.
A long discussion related to PG recruitment ensued during which a number of topics were touched on in greater or lesser depth. These included: attracting more PhD students; advertising; visitors; visitors to TPG course; the TPG course - pushing it - investing more in it - the greater range of courses within the TPG course in the past; summer and/or winter schools. Also included: funding for PhD studentships here and elsewhere; bench fees; course fees - the question of charging more and offering grants.
To encourage people to come here to do their PhD it was agreed to advertise the TPG to a far greater extent. Accept people for one or two terms. Have a course fee of £800 per term but have grants available.
It was also agreed that our policy of 3rd year internships/studentships has worked well in recruiting from our own undergraduate students and it is extremely advantageous to make firm offers to potential PhD students really early. It was suggested we open the offers we make for summer internships to outside students as well as our own and pointed out it should be for UK rather than European students. It would be much easier with UK students to know what they are like and if necessary could invite them for an interview. Those to whom it would be open would be 3rd year Scottish/2nd year English. The advantage of this is that someone who had been here for a summer internship here would be far more likely to come here to do their PhD, carrying on where they left off. It was agreed this should be looked into. Don mentioned Warsaw as being a possibility for good recruitment. I was agreed to also look into this.
It was also agreed that the TPG course should be spruced up.
There is a general feeling it would be nice if we all got to hear what they had done their thesis on before they left. It was suggested that we should make it a firm policy that they had to give a seminar on at the time of their VIVA or soon after. John also made the point that finishing a PhD is a big moment in ones life and it would be nice to commemorate it a bit more with a bubbly and cake celebration. Funds are available for this purpose.
Ian made a firm proposal that we invite all PhD students on graduation to give a seminar in the Theory Seminar series. Inviting them not because they were PhD students but because they are someone we actually want to hear. By specifically making the invite about the time of their graduation they will not be hassled about getting their thesis finished and the corrections done. Many of them do travel to get back here at that time. We'd be able to help them financially to get here as they would be doing a seminar.
After discussion the proposal was agreed. It was also agreed that it should be the duty of the internal examiner to put the successful examinee in touch with the seminar organiser so arrangements could be made. It was further agreed to have refreshments at the time of the seminar and to call these seminars Celebration Seminars.
During discussion it was said that perhaps people should be made more aware of when visitors are here and if they are going to do a seminar. This may help raise attendance at these seminars. It was also suggested that a notice should be pinned on the board in the kitchen informing of the coming Theory seminar. The notice to be removed when the seminar is over and the notice of the next one put up so there is never more than one notice on the board. The Chair said he would raise this with Martin Grohe. Ian spoke about the need to rename the seminars LFCS Seminars rather than Theory seminars as the name Theory Seminar is disliked by the people going to them. He said we had already agreed to do this but it had never happened.
As there was no other competent business the meeting was closed at 12.16pm.