The faculty was over-represented in Lancaster's Certificate in Academic Practice (CAP) programme this year. Of the seven who graduated at a ceremony at the Centre for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching on the 6th July, four were from Science and Technology. Many congratulations to Plamen Angelov (Communication Systems), Lenny Baer (Geography), Corina Sas (Computing) and Denis Sindic (Psychology).
There should be more next year too. Of the seventeen people who completed the first CAP module this year, seven were from Science and Technology: James Faulconbridge (Geography), Peter Hopkins (Geography), Mark Hounslow (Geography), Sue England (Biological Sciences), Andreas Mauthe (Computing), Elizabeth Olson (Geography) and Francois Taiaini (Computing).
In addition, Mohamed Bakari (Engineering) and Jill Thurman (Biological Sciences) completed the Associate Teacher Programme and were awarded certificates of achievement.
CAP is the equivalent of 60 M-level credits - a significant achievement for a busy academic. Sci-Tech's over-representation on the programmes demonstrates that our staff and postgraduates are committed to providing the best teaching and learning we can for our students.
Fittingly, the awards were presented in a convivial ceremony by Professor Amanda Chetwynd. Mandy is a former winner of a National Teaching Fellowship herself as well as a member of Maths and Statistics and the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Colleges and the Student Experience.
Minutes for the last Faculty Plenary as well as other committees are now available on the website. Committee meeting dates and times for next year will follow shortly.
Following recent discussions with HODs and Department Officers, two documents have been created to provide guidance for those involved in personnel issues within departments. The first document explains the process for recruitment and selection where the Dean is the Chair of the interview panel, and the second concerns the process of fixed-term review from a departmental perspective.
Any queries relating to these documents should be sent to Andrew Whitehead in the Faculty Office.
The Computing department's second annual Headstart course took place successfully last week. The residential course introduced a group of year 12 students to courses and life at university, with seminars and workshops on topics ranging from programming robots to creating mobile applications.
Headstart 2006 diary: pictures and movies of the week's activities
Selected awards for June 2006:
David Hutchinson - Computing, Telekom Austria, £215,088
Overlay networks are a compelling way of deploying services (e.g., Skype); the opportunities and threats posed by overlays will be investigated. For instance, it is important to determine the scalability of emerging overlay-based service provisioning platforms.
In the longer-term, architectures will be explored that enable cross-layer interaction between the underlying network and overlays, leading to potential new sources of revenue and service provisioning strategies for Telekom Austria.
Awais Rashid - Computing, EPSRC, £19,452
The overall aim of the VERA project is to develop a modelling framework for verifiable composition of aspect models pertaining to middleware families. The framework will use aspect-orientated techniques to separate common features in a middleware product family from variable features. This separation facilitates flexible creation of product family members by composing aspect models describing variable features with a base model describing common features. The framework will also support evaluation of alternative forms of variable features to support trade-off decision making.
Katie Alcock - Psychology, Allen Foundation, £30,049
Poor dietary quality among pregnant women and children is a pressing concern in underprivileged populations throughout the world. Undernutrition during foetal development, infancy, and childhood is associated with many detrimental outcomes, including poor development of motor, cognitive, and language skills. However, we do not know enough about exactly which interventions can effectively improve child development outcomes in undernourished populations. We propose to assess the effect of prenatal nutritional supplementation on subsequent child development. This research will be coupled with nutritional education and capacity building.
Viktor Tsepelin - Physics, EPSRC, £334,063
The objectives of this EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship application are:
George Pickett - Physics, EPSRC, £673,886
The prime objective is to extend the study of superfluid 3HE at the lowest achievable temperatures, as well as:
Plamen Angelov - Comms Systems, DTI, £75,000
The aims of the Lancaster University element of work within the T4 theme are:
Plamen Angelov - Comms Systems, DTI, £150,000
Within the T5 Theme Lancaster University will undertake work in order to:
Lancaster City Council and Lancaster University have drafted out a 'Memorandum of Understanding' which sets out their respective roles in delivering a science park
http://domino.lancs.ac.uk/info/lunews.nsf/r/4186
A new course from InfoLab21's ICT Focus means that Lancaster University has become the first educational institution in the UK to offer the EC-Council Certified Ethical Hacker qualification
http://domino.lancs.ac.uk/info/lunews.nsf/r/416e
A funding award for Computing makes Lancaster University the only academic institution in the UK to have received a grant from US giant Xerox