LFCS Research Committee Meeting Tuesday 18 March 2008 JCMB Room 2511 1400-1600 hrs The meeting opened at 14.10 Present: Julian Bradfield, David Aspinall, Amin Coja-Oghlan, Mary Cryan, Adam Duguid, Paul Jackson, Monika Lekuse, Leonid Libkin, John Longley, Kenneth MacKenzie, Alex Simpson, Colin Stirling, Philip Wadler, Jane Teplechuk (minute secretary). Apologies: Don Sannella, Jane Hillston, Stephen Gilmore, Kousha Etessami, Ian Stark. 1. Previous Minutes were discussed. Lab Lunch Current arrangement of organisation of Lab Lunches, that are being passed from one organiser to next organiser, results in successful running of Lab Lunches. TPG Julian carried out his action to propose for longer TPG courses to be recognised in the allocation of teaching duties, but it was not accepted. LFCS Budget We have managed not to overspend last year. Governance Directors Advisory Group was abolished by Julian Bradfield. Deputy Director will be losing PG Selector role next year. Amin Coja-Oghlan will be taking on the PG selector role. Action on Advisory Board to be taken by next LFCS director after the move to the new building. 2. Financial updates (Monika Lekuse). Budgets Monika reported with budget figures from the last 2 years and current year. For the last 2 years we had budgets, based on factors such as cut in staff and PGs, this year there is a non-existent budget, which is problematic as we have financial commitments. For the last two years we spent 12K of PG budget on studentships. There is a dramatic increase in the income budget: 2 years ago - 23K, last year - 37K and this - nearly 50K, but our student commitment is also going up continually. Two years ago we were heavily overcommitted, but the graduate school was able to help. Similarly, this year we are still receiving help from outside. Various things are done to reduce the expenditure. It was noted that this year our normal budget targets can be hit with no problems foreseen, as there are also reserves with the School if we overspend. It was noticed that income figures ranging from last year to two years time show an increase. A general discussion followed about possibly increasing our budget for future years. But Monika noted that on the whole we are trying to reduce our financial outgoings, as the School is overspent, which is related to RAE rather than the building of Forum, as might be thought by many. Future commitments Monika listed students we are going to shed over the next two years; after that we will be shedding existing students; next year we are already committed with £32,000 and the year after £27,000, not considering taking on any new students. Reserves The School acquired a reserve, caused by a change in the University's banking system, but it's not big enough to pay studentships. We have other reserves, which are the two accounts in LFCS: Business account (the end of the year leftovers on this account are returned to the school) Savings account (mainly consists of consultancy money). An overspend with studentships can be drawn from this reserve. There is a total of 75K in the account, 45K of which is earmarked for personal and PG expenditure and 20K is allocated for general expenditure. Monika asked for donations of any excess from personal research grants to go into LFCS budget. When David Aspinall enquired about studentship funds, Monika drew a figure of 60K. Julian pointed out that University is obliged to find means of funding students in whatever case. Milner Lecture Endowment has risen from 12K to 24K, which means the lecture series will continue. Research grants A discussion about total grant income evoked positive feedback. LFCS has £7.5 million in research grants (£4.5M of which is DBG, including their recent platform grant). It was highly encouraged by Julian that people charge their own time to grants. Julian also reported that College desires for large proportion of salaries to be covered by research grants. 3. Strategic Planning and Priorities for Appointments (Julian Bradfield). No appointments are planned for the next two years, except under SICSA programme. Generally, LFCS have done quite well with new appointments over the last year - Amin Coja-Oghlan, Rahul Santhanam, Richard Mayr, Vincent Danos and Elham Kashefi. A question was raised: does LFCS have strategic appointments priority? Julian brought up the Software Engineering area. SE courses exist within Informatics, but there is a definite lack of teaching staff. LFCS as such is concerned with theoretical SE, but a mainstream software engineer is needed for teaching, and there are problems getting software engineers, partly because of the competition both from industry and from much stronger SE departments such as CMU. Different points of view over areas of LFCS future appointments were voiced - performance modelling, concurrency, networks, etc. At the end, Colin Stirling suggested that there is no reason to exclude any particular areas of Informatics for appointments, and the others agreed. 4. PG Admissions. ORS ranking. Date for LFCS admissions (David Aspinall) David updated us on current numbers of applications - around 16 this year so far, which is a noticeable decrease from last year. A School-wide reduction of about a 3rd of received applications is recorded, the reason is unknown. All four accepted applications to date are entered in the ORS competition. A concern was raised about a very short period of just 2 days between the School deadline for submitting application forms and the ranking deadline given by College. Often, dissatisfaction in ranking results was expressed by supervisors, therefore it was agreed that a joint discussion amongst supervisors, ranking our applicants, should take place at institute level. It is hard to convene a meeting to define ranking in such a short period of time, but David, who ranks LFCS applications, does all possible to make it successful. Next year the ranking will be done by Amin. School-wide applications are ranked by Don. Julian quoted an e-mail from Don, mentioning recent figures and pointing out the competitiveness of the ORS competition and the insignificance of a chance of local applicants winning the competition (even 1 is good), and that School's funding has dried up. Solution suggested: putting studentships on grants. David said that attracting more students is important. Information for potential students Our existing list of suggested study areas was discussed. Leonid suggested abandoning the list altogether, as it restricts the choice rather than helps, and it's hard to keep it up-to-date, and the others agreed. Creating a separate LFCS web page specifically for PG applicants was also suggested, a simple and clear list (or database) of LFCS member names, research interests and Ph.D projects, available for potential students to view. Aiming for a general list, not restricted to any areas/projects. Loss of students to US A tendency in US offering more scholarships was noted, which could be resulting in Informatics losing students to funding. Applicants receive studentships elsewhere before results for our awards are known. This might be caused by absence of deadline for submission for applications in the institutes. Setting a strict deadline at least on the Institute level was suggested as a solution. Action - David Aspinall Julian mentioned that there is a separate LFCS meeting on PG applications/scholarships in May, where all such issues can be discussed. Julian asked to nominate students for distinguished dissertations. 5. The next LFCS Director (Julian Bradfield). Julian said he will continue directorship during the transition to the new building, before going on sabbatical on the 1st of August. As there were no responses to a question of presenting nominees for directorship, Julian suggested his own candidate - Philip Wadler. Phil left the room, and the meeting considered this suggestion. The meeting was content with the proposal, but felt that we should go through the formal process of holding an election for our nomination to the Head of School for the next LFCS Director. Should there be more than one nomination, an election will be held by single transferable vote. As there was some disagreement as to the constituency, Julian made an executive decision that the constituency is the same as that for Head of School elections, restricted to LFCS: i.e. all salaried staff who are full members of LFCS. Research Committee will remain the governing body. Julian to send out an e-mail with election instructions. Action: Julian 6. Internal Seminars Series (Alex Simpson). Alex started with saying that there are not as many active clubs in LFCS now, and that the visiting speakers have taken over. He proposed introducing seminar series for local, internal speakers; a forum for more formal talks than Lab Lunches. This would include attracting people from other parts of Informatics. Other internal events were mentioned, like the database group seminar, PEPA club and semantics club. There was some discussion about the fact that some clubs seem to be closed to the general public, even if unintentionally. Philip suggested encouraging paper presenters to give a seminar locally, which should provide enough talks for LFCS. A question was raised whether we should incorporate this local forum into our LFCS seminar series, or make it stand-alone. Having ½ hour slots for internal speakers within LFCS seminars could be an option. Integrating seminar series in the Forum between local groups/other institutes (rather than just LFCS) was suggested, because of close proximity of institutes. Julian reminded the research committee about the Interdisciplinary Tea talks, aimed at research students, that are now taking place, which however are focused towards Buccleuch Place/Forrest Hill people. There is a possibility for us to give more general interest talks. Action: Alex Simpson (after the end of this academic year's seminar series). 7. The future of the Milner Lecture. The main concern was expressed about the future date of the event. Traditionally, a link is kept between the Milner Lecture and the Informatics Jamboree. The Jamboree this year will be run purely by IGS and will happen in October. The question is whether we want to keep a link with the Jamboree or to hold it in the summer. Various points were voiced and timeline issues that might cause potential difficulties were discussed, such as exam time/student attendance in May, speaker commitments/teaching during term-time, and summer holidays. Philip said having it detached from the Jamboree sends a certain message, i.e. we believe that the Milner Lecture is a School-wide event. He added that we have done fairly well in attracting people from across the School. If we make a change, we have to make sure we maintain the same property. This was agreed on, adding that separating Milner Lecture and avoiding mixing it with a different event makes it more prominent. An appraisal of the pros and cons led to the conclusion that the main preference is for the event to happen in May, aiming to make the Milner Lecture a stand-alone LFCS event, maintaining its well-recognised status. Kenneth MacKenzie suggested planning the timetable ahead until at least 2010. 8. Hosting BCTCS 2010 (Julian Bradfield). Julian was asked to consider hosting of British Colloquium for Theoretical Computer Science in 2010, an event mainly aimed for PG students, their training and presenting their work. Julian asked for moral support of committee members for this event in 2010. BCTCS runs for 3 days, has 6 invited speakers and 60-100 attenders; 20-30 contributed talks (not published) are given by attenders, Ph.D. students being especially encouraged to present. It is funded by EPSRC grant with the main funding coming from the central organisation. Monika mentioned there might be a dedicated conference crew down in the centre, as we are trying to take conference organisation away from research grants administration. A clash with other conferences will have to be checked. She also raised a question of involvement of LFCS admin team. Julian said that a small level of LFCS admin support is needed, as the central BCTCS organising committee will take care of most things. The involvement of Edinburgh will be small. Monika said we are willing to provide support, but reminded that our admin team is also small and no promises can be made at this point, as the administration system will be re- organised with the move, making it hard to predict the resources we will have. Julian asked if Committee members will be willing to make a contribution towards his attending the 24th BCTCS in Durham University this April. Support was found amongst members of committee. 9. Any other business A vote of thanks was expressed to Julian for his service as a director. As there was no other competent business, the meeting was closed at 3.45pm.