Friday 22 June 2001
Room 2511, JCMB, King's Buildings
The meeting opened at 10.00am.
Present: Stuart Anderson, David Aspinall, Julian Bradfield, Javier Esparza, Massimo Felici, Martin Grohe, Paul Jackson, Monika Lekuse, Bill Orrok (minute secretary), Gordon Plotkin, Don Sannella, Ian Stark (chair), Perdita Stevens, Colin Stirling, Kostas Tourlas.
Ian Stark welcomed everyone to the meeting.
Apologies: John Longley. Apologies were also presented on behalf of Perdita Stevens who would arrive late due to another commitment.
Martin Grohe had attended the previous meeting on the 16th March but was not listed in the minutes.
1.1 Milner Lecture This took place and was very well attended. There is a video available, and we have been promised a digital version that we can put on the web for viewing online. We are now looking for someone to do the next lecture. There is a list of previous suggestions and we are looking for new ones to add to the list.
ACTION: Ian to arrange selection meeting
1.2 PhD Studentships Paul Jackson had carried out his action to assign studentship, by holding a meeting of potential supervisors.
1.3 TPG There was an action on John Longley to re-present proposals with some modifications on the TPG course at this meeting, but he has not carried this any further forward nor is he here. He proposes to make the smaller changes agreed at the last meeting, such as seeing supervisors and their PhD students at the beginning of the year to arrange what courses they do. This should fit in with a better first week for students.
ACTION: John to bring back the more substantial review proposals at the next meeting.
1.4 Lectureships Colin spoke about the teaching positions to say the situation was very complicated. Two adverts were drawn up ages ago but have been delayed because of University financial considerations. A long discussion ensued on the financial aspects, the positions needing to be filled, quality of candidates required, the priority list within the division and the need for adherence to the priority list. There is a necessity for superb applicants for the posts.
Monika listed some people who have arrived: Javier Esparza, Martin Grohe, Monika Maidl, Stefan Schwoon, Claus Schröter and Alin Stefanescu. Javier briefly elaborated on their areas of interest.
Martin Hofmann has left, Alex Rabinovitch is leaving in July, Masahito Hasegawa is leaving at the end of June and Eric Vigoda has also left. Arnaud Carayol is a visitor, Hiroshi Watanaba is arriving as a visitor for about a year, and two other visitors are due to arrive in August. Matias Menni will stay for another 6 months.
We have around £2.9M in grants currently. There are only two grants about to run out, and there are several in the pipeline. Javier's fast track grant is to pay for Alin, and his European grant is in the process of coming here. Julian Bradfield mentioned the DEGAS project, and Don Sannella spoke on MRG. These are substantive projects employing staff, not just networks. MRG will employ 2 people here and two in Darmstadt and it will start in January.
John could not attend, and so sent a paper which was circulated. Mentioned in the first paragraph is Ulrich Schoepp. Ulrich is an MSc Student who turned up at the TPG course and was recommended by Daniele who said he would make a very good PhD student. He is starting next year as a PhD student next year.
John is not taking forward the controversial proposals to start next year but will re-visit them. Javier expressed concern about only having four first year PhD students in a year. Ian pointed out we don't normally have a great deal more than that and the numbers are made up with visitors etc. He also said it is much easier to get overseas PhD students than it is to get UK ones.
David raised the question from previous minutes about TA posts and a complaint about overloading. He described the work assigned to this PhD student, and did not feel that he was overloaded. A short discussion ensued on the actual hours worked by TA's, and the merits of registering PhD students as part-time.
Paul Jackson presented a report on PhD admissions and graduate school issues.
We had 23 applications for PhD places this year, made 9 offers, and all were accepted. Eight students will be starting their PhD this year at LFCS, with one (Brotherston) beginning in 2002. The Division as a whole had received 132 applications and made 31 offers with 19 acceptances.
The LFCS studentship for this year is going to Fedor Fomenko.
James Brotherston wishes to take a few months out first but from January onwards he would be interested in any part time research opportunities, with or without funding.
Gordon pointed out that none of these students came with their own funding, which used to be quite common. There was a discussion about which countries the applications were coming from, with no applications from USA and few from the UK. It was mentioned there was a similar situation all over the UK.
Colin reported that from next year the EPSRC doctoral training account ("quota") studentships will operate under the same rules as project studentships, so we can offer them to EU students not just UK ones.
Ian presented a paper on this, carried forward from the last meeting. He proposed that we extend membership of the committee to senior research staff: those classified as "independent researchers" who may write research grants and assist in supervising PhD students.
In discussion it was suggested the committee be further extended to include all RAs. This was rejected. Don suggested that we include research staff on the promoted AR2 scale and above, and Perdita suggested we also keep a representative of other RAs. These points were agreed by consensus.
ACTION: Ian to rewrite web page and notify new members
Colin reported on a proposal by Javier to have a "Logic Day". Javier agreed to organise this but disagreed on the title. He asked if anyone objected to the 2nd week in July. During discussion Javier said he did not want to make it too formal, it shouldn't be over complicated and it was said it was better to be held sooner rather than later. He suggested calling it "Automatic Verification". This was fixed for the 2nd week in July.
ACTION: Javier to organise a verification day
Ian opened by saying last year James Brotherstone worked for us over the summer and is now to start as a PhD student at the end of next year. At the time it was agreed that this was a good thing to do but it should be broadened and the advertising opened up. This year Ian advertised to our 3rd going into 4th year students with three suggested projects. So far we have a student interested in one. He will be working with Paul Jackson for 8 weeks over the summer.
Students start enquiring if there are any summer project places available early in the academic year, so Ian asked if anyone had any projects for next summer. He needs new suggestions, as it is not necessarily sensible to carry them over automatically from year to year.
Ian circulated descriptions of three postgraduate assistants positions. For a year now we have had PhD students doing these fairly modest jobs, well within the size that their funding body allows them to do. We have two during 2001/2002:
http://www.lfcs.informatics.ed.ac.ukA lively discussion developed over the merits of technical reports, alternative and as to whether there was a need for two posts covering Reports and Web.
Monika raised the point that Roni Khardon's grant is still around and still has roughly £20k
The matter was raised about computer user names for PhDs and visitors. New PhD students are given only numeric user names, and visitor user names now include the data of leaving. There was concern about this downgrading of PhD status, at a time when we are asking students to do more and more teaching and support work.
ACTION: David Aspinall to raise this at Computing Committee and bring a report to the next meeting
The meeting closed at 12 noon.
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