Applicants should have a PhD or equivalent research track-record, good computing skills and must have expertise in one or more of the following areas: asynchronous circuit design; low-power digital design; microprocessor architecture; CAD tools for VLSI. Applicants will be considered for both of the above posts.
For further particulars and application forms please contact the Director of Personnel, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, England (tel: +44 161 275 2028; fax: +44 161 275 2221) quoting reference 627/97.
Informal inquiries to Prof. S.B.Furber (email: sfurber@cs.man.ac.uk URL: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/amulet/index.html).
Closing date for applications: 21st November, 1997.
As an equal opportunities employer, the University of Manchester welcomes applications from suitably qualified people from all sections of the community regardless of race, religion, gender or disability.
Faculty of Science and Engineering
General Information
The Department of Computer Science within the Faculty of Science and
Engineering at the University of Manchester was founded in 1965 growing
from the computer and computing research within the Departments of
Electrical Engineering and Mathematics (1946 - 1965). The Department's
original research reputation was formed by a series of machine-oriented
projects each leading to world-wide commercial exploitation of many of the
developed concepts. In more recent times, the Department has broadened its
interests with internationally recognised research groups in the areas of
CAD for computer systems, Artificial Intelligence and Formal Methods as
well as maintaining leading edge research in the original areas of digital
technology, hardware systems engineering, computer architecture and systems
software. The Department's teaching and research activities have thus
significantly expanded in breadth and depth, and yield, today, a most
comprehensive world-class computer science centre of excellence. The
Department has achieved grade 5 in all four UFC (now HEFCE) research
assessment exercises (1985, 1989, 1992 and 1996), and reflects the
sustained international standing of its research activities.
The Department currently has an academic establishment of fifty including ten professors; Professor Ian Watson (Computer Science - Computer Architecture), Professor Brian C. Warboys (Software Engineering) currently Head of Department, Professor Frank H. Sumner (Computer Science - Computer Architecture), Professor John R. Gurd (Computer Science - Computer Architecture), Professor Stephen B. Furber (Computer Engineering), Professor Hilary J. Kahn (Computer Science - CAD), Professor David S. Bree (Artificial Intelligence), Professor Howard Barringer (Computer Science - Formal Methods), Professor Peter H.G. Aczel (Mathematical Logic and Computing Science), Professor Alan L. Rector (Medical Informatics). The Department is further supported by 46 HEFCE-funded ancillary staff and a complement of around 50 contract research staff.
Research Profile
The research activities of the Department are organised under four major
headings, each briefly described below. A fuller account, however, can be
accessed through the World Wide Web pages for the Department:
The principal focus of the CNC is to study the application of novel parallel computer architectures to the solution of real user problems and thereby gain insight into the needs of future parallel computers. The work, well funded through EPSRC, EC and Industrial sources, is currently centred around the 64-processor KSR1 virtual shared memory machine mentioned above.
The UFO project aims to unite the benefits of declarative functional programming and parallel Object Oriented programming in a framework which provides the simplicity of implicit parallelism combined with the ability to describe state and procedural aspects of practical computation using the encapsulation provided by the OO approach to isolate any detrimental effects of the latter. The UFO language is currently being implemented on the KSR machine and there are plans to extend this to a highly parallel experimental machine that is under development in Japan.
The DELTA project is studying the use of decoupling techniques to perform pre-fetching in distributed memory parallel machine structures and hence overcome the problems of the significant latencies which occur across the networks of highly extensible parallel architectures.
There are also a number of activities in the areas of lightweight process operating systems, compiler technology and language implementation which are complementary to the other projects. New interests are emerging in areas such as hardware support for Neural Networks and the architecture of very wide area distributed information systems. The architecture activities are closely linked to those of the Computer Engineering area and one major aspect of the work at Manchester, in line with our historical traditions, is to see architectural work, both hardware and software, carried through to practical implementation.
Computer Engineering
The Department's current research activity in the Computer Engineering area
is based around two major research groups. The AMULET group, led by Professor
Furber, has funding from UK and European sources for research into
asynchronous and low-power VLSI technologies, and in particular has
pioneered the design and implementation of asynchronous versions of the
ARM6 RISC microprocessors. The CAD
group, led by Professor Kahn, has funding from international sources
for research into design automation and runs the Technical Centre for EDIF,
an international design interchange standard. There are also research
activities in the areas of signal processing and optical computing, and
increasing collaboration with the Computing Science side of the Department
in hardware specification, synthesis and verification.
Future plans include establishing activities in analogue VLSI for neural networks, with the potential for developing collaboration with the AI group, and in hardware for the 'information superhighway', such as real-time video compression/decompression and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networking.
Computing Science
This research area relates to the theoretical underpinnings of computing.
Large computer systems, whether embodied in hardware or software, require
meticulous and methodological specification and design. The dangers of
errors in software are all too obvious from reports in the press and for
safety critical systems are becoming a cause of wide-spread concern. A
number of Computing Science projects are working on the application of
mathematical concepts to design methods. Formal methods attempt to
provide mathematical underpinning for the design of computer systems
(hardware or software). A formal method should provide a specification
language which has a firm mathematical semantics and a development notion
which has a clear concept of what needs to be proved for a design
(ultimately implementation) to satisfy its specification. Activities in
this area include specification languages and development methods for
concurrent systems (earlier work in the department contributed to VDM which
is a specification language and development method for sequential systems),
temporal logic and its use in specification and design and specification
languages specifically aimed at hardware. The METATEM project is
constructing an extensible programming environment for temporal logic
programming. Hardware Verification projects are developing application
specific theories and verification tools to provide embedded formal support
for, in particular, asynchronous digital systems design covering aspects
from architecture to gate level. Other projects are working on specifying
formal methods and tools for the development of real time systems; on
investigating the process of program development using mathematics drawn
from symbolic logic and category theory; and on proving and justifying
tractable development methods for such parallel systems.
Information Systems and AI
There are four large research groups in the Information Systems (IS) area:
the Advanced Interfaces Group (AIG), the Informatics Process Group (IPG),
the Medical Informatics Group (MIG), & the Information Management Group (IMG).
The AIG group, led by Dr. Hubbold, conducts research into the use of advanced human-computer interfaces such as Virtual Reality and stereo displays, for the solution of real-world problems. Recently the Department has invested heavily in setting up an Advanced Interfaces Laboratory equipped with stereoscopic and 3-D projection facilities as well as virtual reality gloves, head displays, etc.
The IPG, led by Professor Warboys, and well funded through EPSRC, EC and Industry, researches the engineering of organisational processes and their effective support through process-knowledgeable technologies. It has installed a number of state of the art process definition and enactment tools which support the work on both process-theory and its application to the real-world problems of people and software tool co-ordination.
The MIG group, led by Professor Rector, with principal funding through UK and European sources, is concerned with the application of IT to Medical problems. It is well known for its development of the Pen&Pad Expert System and seeks to exploit and integrate technologies in the areas of AI, HCI and Multi-Media Databases.
The Information Management Group (IMG), led by Carole Goble and Dr Norman Paton, carries out research in different aspects of data intensive application development. Current research seeks to extend the functionality of database systems, to exploit description logics in advanced applications, and to make advanced information management systems easier to use. Research is funded by grants from the EPSRC, BBSRC and industry.
The Artificial Intelligence area, led by Professor Bree, is interdisciplinary, with strong links to other departments in the University, e.g. Medicine, Psychology, Linguistics and Modern Languages, and with groups in the Department, e.g. Informatics Process, Advanced Interfaces and Computing Science.
The thrust of the Medical Informatics projects, which are carried out together with staff in the Information Systems area, is to combine AI methods with Data Base techniques for the development of an information system for entering and maintaining medical records. The main AI results of this project will be the development of a new form of knowledge representation suitable for domains in which the basic concepts refer to objects with complex relationships, e.g. where parts can be broken without the whole being broken, or where data need to be time and author stamped. How such concepts should be represented in a lexicon suitable for a natural language interface to such a system is also being undertaken. Research in Categorial Grammar has also been an active area and current research on the acquisition of such grammars from children's story books is underway.
The semantics of natural language, in particular temporal and spatialterms, is also the concern of the AI group and a prototype system for translating from English to a representation into an appropriate temporal logic (being developed for the purpose - with help from staff in the Computing Science area), is currently being built. Empirical research into these terms in other languages is being studied in collaboration with the Department of German.
Research in Neural Networks has EPSRC funding: one project is concerned with the development of new algorithms for unsupervised learning in neural nets, another for the modelling of aspects of the mind, in particular short-term verbal memory. Neural nets are also used for experiments into mobile robots, in particular a large (64 Kilo) Nomad robot. Research is aimed at developing an architecture within which robots can learn to navigate in any environment and learn to perform simple tasks requiring locomotion. The Department is investing in this area as a potential growth domain.
Research Funding
Considerable support for the Department's research arises through projects
funded by EPSRC, the DTI, the European Community (ESPRIT) and industry.
However, the Department is fortunate enough to be able to pump-prime
research initiatives, sometimes to a considerable extent. For example, a
KSR1-32 virtual shared memory parallel supercomputer was funded in a major
way by the Department to support the activities of the Centre for Novel
Computing and of other research projects (internal and joint
interdisciplinary). Industrial collaboration has always been a strong
feature of the Department's activity; in recent times there have been major
involvements in a number of Alvey, IED and DTI funded projects including
the two largest (Flagship and IPSE 2.5). Many of these collaborations have
continued under the EC's Third Framework programme. The department is
active in the EC's Fourth Framework programme.
Research Students
Research students are an essential part of the Department's research
community.
Research students are accepted into the research school when they have demonstrated their capability to conduct good quality research work. This may be demonstrated by transfer from MPhil (submitting an acceptable transfer report), by graduating with an MPhil or other appropriate masters degree elsewhere or by obtaining experience as a research associate).
Each research student who is admitted to the research school becomes a member of a research group. It is the role of the research school and the research group to support and monitor students as they conduct their research towards a PhD. Each research student has a supervisor (who is directly responsible for supervising the research) and an advisor (who is responsible for supporting both student and supervisor, helping to identify and resolve any problems and monitoring progress towards submission of the PhD thesis).
The Manchester School of Informatics
The department has been prominent in developing within the University The
Manchester School of Informatics. The school will be the focus of
interdisciplinary research in Informatics, bringing together research and
teaching in the Informatics area from many departments within the
University, e.g. Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Psychology,
Mathematics, Linguistics, Philosophy, to name a few. The school aims to be
an international centre of excellence in research and teaching in
Informatics, fostering new intra- and interdisciplinary collaboration among
its constituent disciplines, developing a comprehensive portfolio of
applicable fundamental research second to none, and developing a
broad-based imaginative modular portfolio of course to attract and maintain
high quality national and international undergraduate and postgraduate
students.
General Departmental Organisation
For administrative purposes, the Department is divided into four major
functional areas, each reporting directly to the Head of Department, as
follows:
Undergraduate Studies
The Department offers a number of three-year single honours programmes
leading to the degree of BSc, e.g. Computer Science, Computer Engineering,
Computing and Information Systems and Artificial Intelligence (all of these
courses are also available as a four-year course with a year spent in
industry); a four-year single honours sponsored programme in Computer
Science leading to BSc, MEng is also available.
A three year joint honours programme is offered with the Department of Mathematics: Computer Science and Mathematics. Programmes in Computer Science with a foreign language, and Computer Science with Business and Management are also offered.
Currently, the Department admits around 220 (single and joint honours) undergraduate students per year.
The Department was rated excellent in the HEFCE's recent Teaching Quality Assessment exercise.
Postgraduate Studies
The Postgraduate School is responsible for the first year of research
training for students undertaking a research degree leading to an MPhil or
PhD and for all taught MSc programmes and the MRes programme
Most research students are initially accepted into the postgraduate school, and are registered for an MPhil in the first instance. It is the role of the postgraduate school to help students obtain basic research skills, so that all students entering the research school can be expected to contribute to the research of the Department. The MPhil is designed to give formal training in research methods and training in "transferrable skills" (such as group work and communication skills) as well as the experience of conducting research.
All taught MSc programmes consist of a six month taught and six month research element. The MSc in Advanced Computer Science is offered covering topics related to hardware and software system design. The programme covers computer architecture, communications, VLSI, parallelism in software, programming language concepts, graphics and image processing, human-computer interfaces and AI. The conversion course (MSc in Computer Science) is an enhancement course designed for students with science and engineering but non computing backgrounds. There are also joint MScs in Cognitive Science and Numerical Analysis with other departments and a joint masters' programme with the Business School which leads to the degree of MBIS.
The MRes in Informatics is an interdisciplinary programme, which gives formal training in research methods, training in "transferable skills" (group work, communication skills) and the opportunity to study specialist topics to an advanced level, as well as a six month research element.
Currently, the Department admits about 65 taught MSc students (FTEs) per year, about fifteen MRes students and has around 51 students (FTEs) pursuing research leading to the degree of MSc or PhD.
The Department has sought to extend its collaboration with industry by the
establishment of a Post Experience Vocational Education (PEVE) unit with
five full-time staff who, together with expertise from the Department's
full-time academics, mount courses for industry over a wide range of topics
and technical levels.
Resources
Most of the computing requirements of the staff are fulfilled internally: the Department operates around 400 Sun workstations and an Auspex fileserver for most teaching and research work. In addition there are a number of PC clusters, and 2 ICL EDS (ICL Goldrush prototype) machines. A 100Mb FDDI local network is installed, which together with additional ATM capability will provide excellent networking infrastructure for the next five year period. The Department's internal computer network is used very heavily to support teaching, research and administrative facilities, and has excellent connections to the rest of the campus, to other UK organisations, both academic and industrial, and to world-wide networks.
The Department has a robotics laboratory, an advanced interfaces laboratory and also houses excellent engineering laboratories and facilities to support computer engineering research and teaching, including, CAD and VLSI design laboratories, and mechanical workshop facilities.
Personnel Management
The Department operates a line-management system, under which each academic
and academic related member of staff reports (directly or indirectly)
through a Professor to the Head of Department. Staff are managed by senior
members of the academic staff. It is departmental policy to promote the
best use of its staff by allowing them to realise their full potential
through the provision of appropriate training and development activities.
The departmental line-management scheme requires annual Appraisal and
Development interviews for staff.
The AMULET group has strong industrial connections through its many
collaborative research projects and expects to bring asynchronous design
techniques to commercial fruition within the next five years.
Applicants should have a PhD or equivalent research track-record, good
computing skills and must have expertise in one or more of the following
areas: asynchronous circuit design; microprocessor architecture; embedded
system design; CAD tools for VLSI. It is unlikely that any candidate will
have skills in all of these areas, and perhaps the most important will be a
broad ability to cope fluently with complex VLSI design.
The successful applicants will be expected to work independently and
enthusiastically to an agreed workplan, to seek and accept input from
within and outside the AMULET group, to produce work of publishable quality
and to write it up and present it at international conferences and in
journals.
Annexe A
The Posts
The post holders will work in the AMULET research
group under Professor S.B. Furber. The AMULET group has established an
international reputation for its work in asynchronous circuit design. The
AMULET1 microprocessor is a fully
self-timed implementation of the ARM RISC architecture, and is the first
fully asynchronous VLSI implementation of a commercial microprocessor
architecture. In 1995 the group gained a British Computer Society Award for
AMULET1 and the 'Computing' IT Gold Award for Technology Transfer jointly
with Advanced RISC Machines Limited who
have acquired rights to the AMULET processor technology from the
University. More recently first samples of the
AMULET2e asynchronous embedded
microcontroller have been obtained and these are being used as the basis of
a number of low-power system design experiments.
Research Post in Asynchronous Design
This post is for a research associate on an EC-funded project to develop an
asynchronous processing subsystem for a telecommunications chip. The
project is developing the next generation of the AMULET asynchronous
microprocessor. The post is tenable to 31 December 1998 on the RA1A scale
at a starting salary of between £15,159 and £22,785 or on the RAII
scale at a starting salary of between £21,016 and £27,985, depending
on age and experience. Research Post in Low-Power Asynchronous Design
This post is for a research associate on an EC-funded project to develop
low-power self-timed VLSI circuits within the AMULET research group. This
new project is to investigate further the low-power potential of
asynchronous design within an industrial collaborative project. The post is
tenable to 31 October 1999 on a the RA1A scale at a starting salary of
between £15,159 and £22,785 or on the RAII scale at a starting salary of
between £21,016 and £27,985, depending on age and experience.
Application
Informal enquiries may be made to:
Professor S. B. Furber
Application forms are available from:
Department of Computer Science
The University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester, M13 9PL
(tel: +44 161 275 6129
FAX: +44 161 275 6202
email: sfurber@cs.man.ac.uk)
The Director of Personnel (Academic Staffing)
Applications, including the names of two referees and a curriculum vitae,
should be returned to Professor S. B. Furber, Department of Computer
Science, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL by 21st
November 1997 quoting reference 627/97. Interviews for shortlisted
candidates will take place shortly thereafter.
The University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester, M13 9PL
(tel: +44 161 275 2028 FAX: +44 161 275 2221)