Yearly Archives / 2012

New EC Justice website and funding

EU

DG Justice has a new and improved websitewhich now has two particularly useful new pages: one containing an oversight of its 6 funding programmes, and one summarising open calls for grant proposals.

There are also separate web pages giving details of each of the funding programmes, including Daphne III, the Civil Justice Programme, the Criminal Justice Programme and the Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Programme. Currently open calls with forthcoming deadlines are:

Linked to Horizon 2020 changes, the 6 Programmes within DG Justice will be condensed to just two:

  • Justice Programme: concerned with judicial co-operation in civil and criminal matters (€472m budget)
  • Rights & Citizenship Programme  concerned with the development of an area of freedom, security and justice, by promoting and supporting the effective implementation of a Europe of rights (€439m budget)

To complement this, DG Home Affairs are replacing their current schemes with an Asylum & Migration Fund (worth €3.9b) and a Internal Security Fund  (worth €4.65b).

 DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion are launching a Programme for Social Change and Innovation . This contains three Programmes:   Programme for Employment and Social Solidarity (worth €574m),  European Employment Services (worth €143.7m) and European Progress Microfinance Facility (worth €191.6m).

Why not take a few minutes to have a peek…?

Calls related to Health Policy released & InfoDay live online!

EU

The Executive Agency for Health and Consumers (EAHC) has issued calls for proposals, based upon the Directorate for Public Health and Consumers (DG Sanco) Work Programme for 2012. This Programme supports the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing, and the calls cover a wide area of public health issues. The deadline for these proposals is 09.03.12. Funds are available for projects, conferences, operating grants and joint actions, available through calls under the following headings:

      • 3.1.1. Protect citizens against health threats – Develop risk management capacity and procedures, improve preparedness and planning for health emergencies;
      • 3.1.2. Protect citizens against health threats – Develop strategies and mechanisms for preventing, exchanging information on and responding to health threats from communicable and non-communicable diseases and health threats from physical, chemical or biological sources, including deliberate release acts;
      • 3.1.3. Improve citizens’ safety – Scientific advice;
      • 3.1.4. Improve citizens’ safety – Safety and quality of organs and substances of human origin, blood, and blood derivatives;
      • 3.2.1. Increasing healthy life years and promoting healthy ageing;
      • 3.2.2. Identifying the causes of, addressing and reducing health inequalities within and between Member States in order to contribute to prosperity and cohesion; supporting co-operation on issues of cross-border care and patient and health professional mobility;
      • 3.2.3. Addressing health determinants to promote and improve physical and mental health and taking action on key factors such as nutrition and physical activity, and on addiction-related determinants such as tobacco and alcohol;
      • 3.2.4. Prevention of major and rare diseases;
      • 3.3.1. European Health Information System;
      • 3.3.2. Dissemination, analysis and application of health information; provision of information to citizens, stakeholders and policy makers; and
      • 3.3.3. Analysis and reporting.

Take a look at the DG Sanco web page for more information on the calls.

There is also an Information Day in Brussels on 11.01.12 where you will be offered the opportunity to clarify queries concerning the administrative procedure and the technical contents of the call, as well as network with others in the same field. The deadline for registration for this event is 09.01.12 January 2012 but don’t worry if you can’t make it as the Infoday will also be web-streamed, and the link to this will be available on the EAHC website in advance.

Research into public health and tourism strategies

BU research

Watch this excellent short video from BU’s Dr Heather Hartwell (School of Tourism and School of Health and Social Care) who describes unique research facilitating strategic direction for public health, in alignment with tourism strategies, aimed at creating conversation and collaboration

To see other BU videos on YouTube go to the BU YouTube page.

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv8DM9zKU1c

Workshop on Evolving Predictive Systems

BU research, Research news

Workshop on Evolving Predictive Systems

co-located with the 12th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving From Nature (PPSN-2012)

September 1-5, 2012

Taormina, Italy

In recent years, the data mining scientific community witnessed a very strong demand for predictive systems that will be able to evolve and adapt. The range of tasks fulfilled by evolving predictive systems is very broad and covering many different application areas. Despite the high number of publications dealing with applications, there are still unaddressed pressing issues of evolving predictive systems design and development, such as complexity analysis, ensemble architectures and meta-learning. This workshop is devoted to the discussion of robust, context aware and easy-to-use evolving predictive systems, which improve, adapt and possibly maintain themselves within their respective environments and constraints.  Contributions presenting recent work on ensemble systems, complexity analysis and meta-learning are particularly welcome.

The workshop addresses people from the scientific IT community who are active in the research domain of data-driven systems capable to adapt to changing situations and environments. The considered approaches can include evolutionary algorithms, other nature-inspired methods or heuristic approaches. Special focus will be put on research dealing with ensemble architectures, as well as with complexity issues (size, form and interpretation of the solution formula, time and algorithm complexity) and meta-learning incorporation.

Researchers are invited to submit original work as papers of not more than 10 pages. Authors are encouraged to submit their papers in LaTeX. Papers must be submitted in Springer Verlag’s LNCS style.

Topics of interest

Topics that are in the area of interest of the workshop include, but are not limited to:

•             Advanced Modelling Techniques for Evolving Predictive Systems
•             Evolving Predictive Ensembles
•             Complexity Analysis for Evolving Predictive Systems
•             Advanced Adaptation Mechanisms
•             Meta-learning
•             Applications

Important Dates

Submission of Papers: 2 April 2012

Notification of Acceptance: 1 June 2012

Camera-Ready submission of Papers: 20 June 2012

Early Registration Deadline: 25 June 2012

Conference: 1-5 September 2012

Papers are submitted by direct email to mailto:atsakonas@bournemouth.ac.uk

Organization Committee

Bogdan Gabrys, Bournemouth University, UK, bgabrys@bournemouth.ac.uk

Athanasios Tsakonas, Bournemouth University, UK, atsakonas@bournemouth.ac.uk

Mailing address: Bournemouth University, Poole House, Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow, Poole, Dorset, BH12 5BB, UK

Insight into FP7 Environment next round of funding & Info Day next month

EU

We have managed to obtain information related to the FP7 Environment funding theme for 2013. This information indicates what areas may be funded, so gives you a real head start to make contacts and develop a cohort of researchers for a submission. This is highly sensitive information and not to be circulated outside of BU, which is why I have placed this info on the I drive: I:\R&KEO\Public\RDU\Draft Work Programmes for 2012-13

 

The UK National Contact Point (NCP) for the Intelligent Energy Europe is holding an information day on the 2012 call on 1st Feb in London. Places are limited and in order to ensure that as many key market actors (the Commission’s target audience for the IEE II Programme) as possible can attend the NCP will review the registration requests on January 20th prior to sending out confirmations the following week. You can register for the event here.

Science and Technology Committee – new inquiry – Bridging the “valley of death”: improving the commercialisation of research

Research news

This is a fantastic opportunity to have a say in improving the future commercialisation and application of research and influence policy, and fits in with the thought-leadership strand of BU’s new Vision & Values strategy.

Growth is at the heart of the Government’s economic agenda, and it has made clear the importance of the UK becoming a leader in sectors such as the life sciences and advanced manufacturing. The Government recently published an Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth, setting out how it will work with business and the knowledge base to underpin private sector led growth. In the same week, the Government published its strategy for the life sciences, outlining how the Government will take action to make the UK a world-leading place for life sciences investment.

A key recurring issue that has been raised in the Science and Technology Committee’s previous inquiries is the difficulty of translating research into commercial application, particularly the lack of funding—the so-called “valley of death”. The Committee has therefore agreed to conduct an inquiry into how the Government and other organisations can improve the commercialisation of research.

Terms of Reference – The Committee invites written submissions on the following questions:

1. What are the difficulties of funding the commercialisation of research, and how can they be overcome?

2. Are there specific science and engineering sectors where it is particularly difficult to commercialise research? Are there common difficulties and common solutions across sectors?

3. What, if any, examples are there of UK-based research having to be transferred outside the UK for commercialisation? Why did this occur?

4. What evidence is there that Government and Technology Strategy Board initiatives to date have improved the commercialisation of research?

5. What impact will the Government’s innovation, research and growth strategies have on bridging the valley of death?

6. Should the UK seek to encourage more private equity investment (including venture capital and angel investment) into science and engineering sectors and if so, how can this be achieved?

7. What other types of investment or support should the Government develop?

 

Submitting written evidence – The Committee invites written submissions on these issues by noon on Wednesday 8 February 2012.

Each submission should:

a) be no more than 3,000 words in length;

b) be in Word format with as little use of colour or logos as possible;

c) have numbered paragraphs; and

d) include a declaration of interests.

 

A copy of the submission should be sent by e-mail to scitechcom@parliament.uk and marked “Bridging the “valley of death””. An additional paper copy should be sent in due course (not required by the deadline) to:

The Clerk

Science and Technology Committee

House of Commons

7 Millbank

London SW1P 3JA

 

Please note that:

• Material already published elsewhere should not form the basis of a submission, but may be referred to within a proposed memorandum, in which case a hard copy of the published work should be included.

• Memoranda submitted must be kept confidential until published by the Committee, unless publication by the person or organisation submitting it is specifically authorised.

• Once submitted, evidence is the property of the Committee. The Committee normally, though not always, chooses to make public the written evidence it receives, by publishing it on the internet (where it will be searchable), by printing it or by making it available through the Parliamentary Archives. If there is any information you believe to be sensitive you should highlight it and explain what harm you believe would result from its disclosure. The Committee will take this into account in deciding whether to publish or further disclose the evidence.

• Select Committees are unable to investigate individual cases.

More information on submitting evidence to Select Committees may be found on the parliamentary website at: http://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/have-your-say/take-part-in-committee-inquiries/witness/

Sign up to the BU Challenges now!

BU research

The BU Challenges (previously the Research Themes) were launched in December at the first of the BU-wide Fusion events. The Challenges are societally-led, encourage cross-School working and collaboration, and will be the main vehicle through which our research is presented externally in future.

We’re now encouraging all academic staff to sign up to one or more of the Challenges!

It is hoped that we will soon be able to automate membership via the University’s soon-to-be-launched research management system BRIAN, but in the meantime I need your help to ensure the membership lists are as up to date as possible 🙂

If you registered for the Fusion event on 14 December then your name and chosen Challenge affiliations should be on this spreadsheet – Membership of BU Challenges. Please could you check your details are correct and let me know by email of any changes (jnortham@bournemouth.ac.uk).

If you were unable to attend the event on 14 December but would like to join one or more of the Challenges, then complete the form below and I will add you to the list.

    Your Name (required)

    Your Email (required)

    Your School / Professional Service (required)

    Staff or PGR student? (required)

    StaffPGR

    Please select the themes that you are interested in (required)

    EC funding for anti-corruption network

    EU

    The Directorate-General for Home Affairs invites proposals for the provision of technical assistance and support for establishing and coordinating a network of local research correspondents on corruption. The tenderer will coordinate the collection and processing of up-to-date, objective and reliable relevant information within the network and the analyses regarding the state of play of anti-corruption policies in EU member states. Funding is worth approximately €4 million over 48 months. For more info see their website.

    Fusion Seminar 18 January – Creating!

    Fusion

    Welcome back from the Christmas break! Following hot on the heels of the Fusion event on 14 December, the second event in the Fusion Seminar and Conference Series is on Wednesday 18 January and will focus on the Creating aspect of the BU2018 strategy.

    The January Seminar will take place between 12:00-1:30pm. Registration will open at 11:45 and the sessions will begin at 12:00. There will be one hour of short and focused presentations followed by 30 minutes of networking opportunities over lunch. The Seminar will be hosted by a member of UET who will open the seminar with a 10 minute presentation. This will be followed by five brief and succinct presentations by invited speakers, with each presentation lasting no more than ten minutes including questions.

    The programme is available here: Fusion seminar programme – Creating!

    The Seminar will be held in the EBC (7th floor) and will start promptly at 12pm. Please arrive for registration from 11:45am, ready for the 12pm start.

    You can use the form below to register your place.

      Your Name (required)

      Your Email (required)

      Your School / Professional Service (required)

      ApSciBSDECHSCMSSTProfessional Service