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Recruiting in informatics & computer science
SICSA/SGA Newsletter 1 - November 2008
The Scottish Graduate Academy in Informatics and Computer Science
The SGA is funded by the Scottish Funding Council as part of the SICSA pooling initiative (www.sicsa.ac.uk), whose aim is to encourage research collaboration between the departments of computer science and informatics in Scottish universities and to improve the quality of computer science and informatics research in Scotland. We believe that postgraduate research students have a key part to play in this and the SGA bit of SICSA is concerned with supporting postgraduate education at PhD level in Scotland. All PhD students working in Scottish universities automatically become members of the SGA - you don't have to pay anything or fill in forms. We do hope, however, that you will participate in SGA activities.What does the SGA do
We provide prize studentships, support summer schools and distinguished visitors, and organise postgraduate training and events and a postgraduate conference for Scottish PhD students.Prize studentships
Each year, SICSA funds a number of prize studentships to bring excellent students from all parts of the world to work in Scotland. In our first year, we have funded 15 PhD studentships with students in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt, Robert Gordon, Stirling, and St Andrews universities. We'll shortly be opening applications for students to start in 2009.Summer schools
We have funding to support the attendance of Scottish PhD students at summer schools and sponsor summer schools to be held at Scottish universities. In 2009, we are sponsoring 3 summer schools:- Pervasive Adaptation (organised by Napier University)
- Home Care Systems (organised by Stirling University)
- Advances in Programming Languages: Concurrency, Distribution and Multicore (organised by Heriot-Watt University)
Distinguished visitors
We sponsor distinguished visitors from abroad to visit Scottish universities. We are currently considering applications and I hope that we will approve sponsorship for visitors to Edinburgh and Strathclyde universities. Proposals are considered several times per year and we would like more proposals for 2009 visitors.Postgraduate training
This is just getting started but we have had some comments from PhD students that they don't much like the generic skills courses that are arranged by universities and that they would prefer these courses to be tailored specifically for computer science and informatics e.g. not 'how to write a paper' but 'how to write a computer science conference paper'. We also hope to arrange courses in business skills and specific technical courses. More information on this in early 2009.Events
Induction event for SICSA students. This will be exclusively for students funded by SICSA and will discuss how they can get involved with SICSA activities (a condition of the studentship). All SICSA-sponsored students are expected to attend and to give this top priority. This will probably be in Glasgow in February 2009.
Postgraduate conference 2009. This will be a 1-day conference for Scottish PhD students to be held in St Andrews. We will have invited speakers, posters and SICSA discussions. Sometime in June 2009.
Postgraduate conference 2010 . This will be a 3 day conference, held in Edinburgh. Dates are 10th-12th June 2010. We will be looking for volunteer helpers, programme committee members and will be inviting papers from postgraduate students.
