Weeknote #33 (w/e 27/2/11)

I've been very bad at updating my weeknotes over the past few...umm...weeks, so here's a quick run-down of what's happened since the last one.

At the start of February I sat on my first EPSRC panel. I can't go into too much detail, as I'm not sure the results have been released yet, but we basically had a day-and-a-half, locked in a hotel in Swindon, to rank a load of funding proposals. It was quite an exhausting experience, but very useful, in that it was my first insight into the process as a reviewer (as opposed to proposer). Top tip: drive, don't take the train. That way, you get to take along the several KG of paperwork, instead of relying on the summary you've prepared, and avoid embarrassment when you have to repeatedly ask to use the copies brought along by your far more experienced colleague. Lesson learned for next time.

Last week I had a nice couple of days near Paris, visiting the group of Alfonso Jaramillo. Alfonso is the technical lead on our BACTOCOM project, and I believe he currently has an open post-doc position. On the subject of European projects, I was pleased that our COBRA project managed to secure the organization of special sessions at both FET11 in Budapest this May, and the European Conference on Artificial Life, in Paris this August. Busy times ahead.

In terms of papers, Matthew and I finally had the "zombie paper" accepted, and there's a preprint version available here. Matthew spent most of last week at MOSI, participating in their half-term Turing test. By all accounts, it was a huge success, so well done to him.

Weeknote #26 (w/e 14/11/10)

Bit tardy again this week. Yesterday afternoon I spoke to Frank Swain, after he tracked me down via Twitter. He wanted to chat about the recent Tokyo iGEM work on bacterial sudoku solvers, and the resulting piece appeared today. It was good to see BACTOCOM getting another plug.

Speaking of BACTOCOM, we're currently working on the definitive design document for our system, which will be submitted as a position paper shortly. It's taken a while to get going, what with delays in appointing staff, and so on, but I think the project's in good shape now. We're expecting to be able to announce further good news on the project support front any day now, so stay tuned.

In other news, Pete, Steve and I finally submitted the journal version of our paper on mutual information for crush detection. This work forms the core of Pete's Ph.D. thesis, which he's currently in the process of writing up. I think it's a solid paper, which has actually been improved due to an earlier draft being picked up by the MIT Technology Review blog. We did some extra work in response to criticisms made in the article, and I think it's much stronger as a result.

The only other thing of note to report is that I'm now officially a member of the EPSRC College. This is made up of around 4,000 individuals, whose job it is to evaluate research proposals and serve on prioritisation panels. Given the turbulent state of research funding right now, I guess it's an interesting time to become involved.