EPSRC held a regional meeting at Bristol on September 22nd at which Liam Blackwell explained what the “shaping capability” policy meant for ICT. The ICT Shaping Capability Summer 2011 slides contain most of what was said.
Contact
RDSO Computer Science Workshop Day, March 10th 2011
On March 10th 2011 the RDSO is putting on a day of events specifically for the department. The morning consists of a number of open sessions, and the afternoon is devoted to application surgeries.
The morning schedule is as follows. All events in WH3.9
10.15-10.30 What research support does RDSO offer?
10.30-11.05 Impact – what do the research councils want to see on an application?
11.05-11.15 BREAK (refreshments provided)
11.15-12.15 Interactive Application Surgery – RDSO staff will take us through their “surgery” process with a case study from this department.
12.15-12.25 Knowledge Transfer opportunities (Did you know that the department has a £10,000 budget to support KT activity over the next year?)
12.25-12.40 Training on Research Professional, the web-based tool for finding funding opportunities.
Hope to see lots of you there!
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Academic Interchange Programme 2009/10 Reports
The AIP
Over the last year, the Department funded several visits to and from Bath in support of collaborative research efforts via our Academic Interchange Programme. The activities and outcomes of these visits are summarized below. Seven visits have been funded, five incoming and two outgoing. Two further proposals were approved but the visits have not taken place.
Concrete outcomes to date include one joint paper accepted for publication in December 2010, a two-year international research project funded in December 2010, an LMS Scheme 4 travel grant, and an EU FP7 bid due to be submitted in January 2011.
Martijn Warnier visiting Julian Padget
Details of visit
Martijn Warnier, Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, TU Delft, visited for one week in September 2010.
Activities
Discussed FP7 ICT work programme 2011-2012 for potentially relevant calls
Discussed small-scale research projects about to be undertaken by final year students (Bath and Delft) and their relationship to the larger programme for the development and application of the Agentscape platform. Padget has three final year students doing AS related projects.
Identified new small-scale projects for the future.
Warnier discussed computer security (this is the area of his PhD) with PhD student Gideon Bibu and provided some helpful direction.
Warnier also discussed PhD student Tina Balke’s research with her and provided some useful direction.
Revised a paper that had been presented at a workshop last May (no proceedings) for submission to a conference; see below.
Made plans for next visit.
Outcomes
Joint paper An Agent-Based Infrastructure for Energy Profile Capture and Management accepted for publication in 2011 IEEE International Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control (ICNSC 2011).
Have started putting together consortium for EU bid for call on smart grids. Deadline is January 2012. A further visit from Warnier took place in December 2010.
John Power visiting Martin Hyland
Details of visit
Power visited Hyland in Cambridge for four days in April 2010.
Activities
Discussed joint research, also involving Richard Garner (Macquarie), about a generalisation of Lawvere theories.
Outcomes
Ongoing discussions concerning a joint grant proposal in the area of game semantics.
Giuseppe Rosolini visiting Guy McCusker
Details of visit
Rosolini visited Bath for one week in July 2010.
Activities
Held research discussions with McCusker and Power, and attended the Wessex Theory Seminar on July 13th, including giving a talk. McCusker, Power and Rosolini used the discussion time to develop International Joint Project proposal, which was submitted to the Royal Society at the end of July 2010.
Outcomes
International Joint Project application was successful, providing £11950 of travel funding to be used to support joint research over the next two years.
Alessandra Mileo visiting Marina De Vos
Details of visit
Mileo visited Bath for five days in April 2010.
Activities
Discussing in detail the basic building blocks of a general policy language. Spoke with colleagues in management about their work in the health-care sector and talking about possible joint interest. Discussed the various ways of obtaining funding for international research collaborations.
Outcomes
The discussion on policy languages in the context of assisted/independent living and Mileo’s move to DERI, Galway, Ireland made it possible to start considering a European Framework 7 application. The team has identified an appropriate call (FP-7 ICT-5.4 and STREP) and are currently writing the proposal and finalising the consortium. Currently have four academic partners and two SME’s signed up. Bath will be the coordinator and expect the budget be between 3 and 4 million euro. The deadline is 18 January 2011.
Once the EU proposal has been submitted, work will begin on a more technical proposal on policy languages.
Boris Shapiro visiting Nicolai Vorobjov
Details of visit
Shapiro visited Bath for one week in August 2010
Activities
During the visit, Shapiro and Vorobjov started to research a topic which had been discussed before by email. It is the study of real zeroes of the solutions of linear ordinary differential equations of order k (with
complex coefficients). Some preliminary findings were summed up in a preliminary report. In the months after the visit a narrower problem emerged. This is the proof of a possible upper bound on the number of zeroes in terms of just k for the equations in which this number is finite. Since the solutions of differential equations in question are exponential sums, Prof Boris Zilber (Mathematical Institute, Oxford) was invited to participate in the project; he is the world authority in exponentiation.
Outcomes
A joint paper of Shapiro, Vorobjov and Zilber is in preparation.
As a follow-up, Vorobjov visited Prof Shapiro in Stockholm on 25-28 October 2010 and continued the work on the project, funded by Stockholm. Vorobjov has obtained LMS Scheme 4 funding for a further visit in March 2011.
Frank Van Reeth visiting the MTRC group
Details of visit
Van Reeth (Hasselt, Belgium) visited Bath for two days in June 2010.
Activities
Van Reeth gave two seminars and two demonstrations to the MTRC group and held informal research discussions with them.
Outcomes
Further exchanges are planned between the MTRC group and Van Reeth, and Van Reeth may be included in a future FP7 bid coming from Bath.
Darren Cosker visiting Weta Digital
Details of visit
Cosker’s travel to New Zealand was funded by the Academic Interchange Programme to enable him to combine a conference presentation at the Asian Conference for Computer Vision with a research visit to Weta in November 2010.
Activities
In addition to presenting a paper at ACCV, Cosker fostered relationships with Weta, a world leading and 5 time Oscar winning visual effects studio. He gave a talk there outlining his research achievements and current projects including facial segmentation maps and dense correspondence of facial data. He met with several of the R&D team at Weta, including J P Lewis, Peter Hillman, Abhijeet Ghosh, Mark Sagar and Sebastian Sylwan.
Meetings with Mark Sagar, head of special projects at Weta, helped Cosker to clarify several research directions and problems of mutual interest.
Outcomes
Cosker hopes for future collaborations with Weta on the projects identified as being of interest both to academia and industry. His own Research Fellowship will be able to fund a future visit should such collaborations become more concrete.
Cyril Brom visiting Joanna Bryson
Details of visit
Cyril Brom and Jan Havlíček of Charles University Prague visited Bath from 5-9th May 2010. The Department paid for Prof. Brom’s travel; Brom & Bryson split the costs for Havlíček.
Activities
On the afternoon of 6th of May, Brom lead a course on AI for games which was attended by about twenty under- and post-graduate students. On the afternoon of 7th May, Havlíček lead a session of game development with Prague’s Pogamut system. Pogamut (among other things) extends the work Bath has conducted on constructing and analysing dynamic plans for game agents. In addition to this, Bryson & Brom met on the morning of 7th May and all day the 8th of May, exchanging the current state of the art of our action selection projects and making plans for future research and grant applications.
Outcomes
Bryson is involved in a five-year funded project held at Prague as a “foreign expert”. This visit clarified her role and the fact that she will be co-author on at least one paper coming from the project.
Brom’s team agreed to be part of an EU project in development.
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Good Practice Code for Research
The University has adopted a Good Practice Code for Research, which includes statements about conflicts of interest, ethical considerations, and data management. The parts on data management in particular are something new. Please take a look!
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Academic Interchange Programme
The Department has funds available to support short research visits that are likely to lead to longer-term collaborations and grant applications. If you would like to bring someone to Bath for a week or so to develop some joint work, or if you would like to visit a researcher or group elsewhere, this fund could support you. We envisage typical awards paying for travel and accommodation for around one week, though anything is possible given the right case.
To request funding under this scheme, please prepare a short document (no more than one page) detailing what you would like to do, how much it will cost, what you expect it to lead to, and why this is a good thing for you and the department. Applications should be sent to Guy McCusker, and will be considered by the research committee on a rolling basis.
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RDSO Best Practice and Guidelines for preparing research proposals
The RDSO has developed a set of guidelines aimed at helping us all produce the best research proposals we can. The top-ten tips might be of some use.
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International Strategic Fund for Research
Jane Millar, pro-vice-chancellor for research, has today announced a new funding source: the International Strategic Fund for Research.
Members of the Computer Science department who wish to request support from this fund are asked to contact Guy McCusker in the first instance.
The memo describing the fund includes the following guidelines:
- The University has established a strategic fund to support international activity in relation to research, including research impact and knowledge transfer.
- The fund is available to contribute to the costs of establishing and maintaining international research links and activities.
- These might include: developing responses to specific research initiatives (eg UKIERI); activities and visits (overseas or incoming) to explore partnerships and networks; activities to establish or develop existing international research and KT networks.
- Cross-Faculty and cross-Department initiatives are particularly encouraged.
- The fund cannot be used for attendance at conferences, for individual student bursaries or scholarships, for prizes, or as donations to international organisations.
- Applicants need to provide a short summary (no more than two pages), setting out aims and objectives, type of proposed activity, and anticipated outcomes. Applications should be endorsed by the Head of Department
- The fund is intended to support activities with a clear benefit to the University and where other sources of income are not available.
- The fund is allocated by the Pro-Vice-Chancellors and Deputy Vice Chancellor.
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Impact plans
EPSRC has circulated some feedback on the first batch of Impact Plans they have received in support of grant applications. The information is reproduced on this site for your convenience.
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EPSRC amends the “cooling off period” policy
As previously reported, EPSRC is introducing measures to reduce the number of grant applications submitted for peer review, and in particular to reduce the burden they perceive is generated by repeatedly unsuccessful applicants.
On May 7th 2009, changes to the policy were announced. In brief:
- the introduction of the “cooling-off period” for repeatedly unsuccessful applicants will not now be introduced until April 2010, rather than April 2009 as previously announced;
- any researcher who is subjected to the 12 month cooling-off period will now be allowed to make one grant submission during that time, rather than zero as previously announced.
The criteria for being subjected to a cooling-off period remain the same: if you make more than three applications which fall in the lower half of their panel’s rank ordered list in a two-year period, and if you have a success rate of less than 25% in that time, you will enter a cooling-off period.
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Changes to EPSRC funding
The following information was gleaned from the EPSRC Regional Meeting at Bristol University on April 2nd 2009. Much of the formal information can be found on the EPSRC web site.
The main points are: cooling-off periods for repeatedly unsuccessful applicants; new rules on resubmissions; impact plans; caps on the First Grant scheme; and new referee forms.
“Safeguarding the Peer Review Process”
In response to an RCUK report which, among other things, indicated that low application success rates are demoralizing to the research community , EPSRC is taking steps to increase success rates by “managing demand”, i.e. reducing the number of grant applications which go to peer review. It is claimed that around 20% of submissions are in fact resubmissions of old, failed proposals, and that a small minority of applicants generates a disproportionate number of failed proposals. The background is described further in this presentation from EPSRC.
Two steps have been taken to tackle these perceived problems.
Cooling-Off Periods
From April 2009, researchers who are repeatedly unsuccessful in applying to EPSRC for funding will be subjected to a 12 month “cooling-off period” during which they are not eligible to make further submissions, as Principal or Co-Investigator.
The 12-month exclusion will apply to applicants who
- have had three or more proposals ranked in the lower half of a panel’s rank-ordered list, or rejected before going to panel in a two year period; and in addition
- have a success rate of under 25% over the same two year period.
The above criteria apply only to proposals entered as Principal Investigator, but the 12-month exclusion applies to applications both as PI and co-I. The calculations of who is affected by the rules will be made monthly. Affected individuals will be contacted in writing, and the University’s research support will also be notified.
Note that under these rules, if you submit a successful bid in January 2008 (say), followed by three unsuccessful bids ranked in the lower half of their panel’s lists in July 2008, January 2009 and April 2009, for instance, you will qualify for exclusion in February 2010 when your successful bid falls out of the two-year window.
The rules are to be applied in April 2009 for the period April 2007 — March 2009. Those affected will be notified during April 2009 and their cooling-off periods will commence in June 2009. EPSRC say that around 5% of the pool of 5500 applicants will be affected in the first pass, with up to a further 2.5% falling foul of the new rules over the next 12 months. The impact of the change will be assessed in a year’s time.
Resubmissions
From April 2009, no resubmissions will be allowed unless explicitly invited by EPSRC. Proposals will be scrutinized by Portfolio Managers, with the help of some software of undisclosed nature, to determine which are resubmissions. EPSRC will not give advice to PIs before submission to help decide whether a proposal has been revised sufficiently to avoid exclusion under this rule. However, my understanding is that proposals rejected as being resubmissions will not count against the applicant with respect to the cooling-off rule, because such propsals are not placing a burden on the peer-review process.
The mechanism of “financial deferral”, by which near-miss proposals at a particular panel are entered to the next panel for another attempt, will be retained. In practice, this means that the highest-ranked unfunded proposal at each panel meeting is considered again.
Other news
Impact plans
From April 21st 2009, all proposals must include an “impact plan” of up to two pages. There was a lot of emphasis on the words “up to”: David Delpy was adamant that there was no attempt to shift the research base towards applied research, and that in cases where the only direct impact is to the academic community, a short paragraph explaining that impact and how it will be achieved will suffice. The phrase “economic impact” is to be interpreted liberally, including advancement of knowledge, training of people, as well as the more obvious economic impact of wealth creation, product development etcetera.
Dissemination activity should form part of the impact plan. Proposals can now include time and money for attending conferences after the research phase is complete.
Cap on First Grants
It was news to me, at least: the First Grant Scheme now carries a funding cap of £125,000 FEC, of which EPSRC will contribute their usual 80%; that is, you can ask for only £100,000. First Grants can have a maximum duration of two years. The intention is to achieve a success rate of around 50%; in the uncapped scheme, success rates had dropped to under 20%.
New Peer-Review Forms
The questions on the referee forms for proposals have been changed to be more in line with the criteria by which submissions are supposed to be ranked, including impact. The new questions are available online now and new forms will come into use on April 21st 2009.
There was a hint that at panels, proposals will first be ranked by research quality, which remains the primary criterion, before secondary criteria including impact are used to separate proposals of similar research quality.
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