Gmail - [csprofs] CORE Report, November 2017 https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=e8...

Lin Padgham <lin.padgham@gmail.com>

[csprofs] CORE Report, November 2017

2 November 2017 at
Alistair Moffat <ammoffat@unimelb.edu.au>
16:45
Reply-To: csprofs+managers@core.edu.au
To: cshods@core.edu.au, csprofs@core.edu.au, members@core.edu.au

Hello everyone, I'm sure that you have all been [not] wondering when
you are going to see a report and update from CORE. Well, here it is.

Summary of items:

1. CORE Award Winners for 2018 Announced

2. ACSW 2018 in Brisbane
3. Conference and Journal Rankings Activity
4. Remembering Two Computing Pioneers
5. Submission in Regard to Research Funding
6. Thanks to Professor Lin Padgham
7. Nominations for CORE Executive in 2018

1. CORE Award Winners for 2018 Announced

----------------------------------------

I'm pleased to announce the three 2018 CORE Award winners:

2018 John Makepeace Bennett Award:

Dr Junhao Gan, University of Queensland

Junhao's thesis presented an exceptional body of work and was very

well
written, solving several fundamental problems for the complexity of
the
DBSCAN algorithm, work for which he won the 2015 SIGMOD best

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paper award.
As one of his examiners put it "The thesis exemplifies the perfect
combination
of theory and practice, and how one can complement the other to
obtain new
breakthroughs to a decades-old problem."

In addition, two other recent graduates will be given Honorary

Mentions:
Dr Steve Kieffer, Monash Dr Paul Scott, ANU

2018 CORE Teaching Award:

Dr Antonette Mendoza, University of Melbourne.

Antonette's excellence in teaching and development of scholarly

pedagogical
practices have inspired and motivated students. She has adopted
active
learning techniques, developed assessment tools and practices, and
connected
industry and research practices into the classroom. She has also
promoted
teaching communities, through the creation of effective programs that
support
mentoring of new academics, and strengthening of pedagogical skills
in a
supported environment.

2018 Chris Wallace Award for Research Excellence:

Associate Professor Lexing Xie, ANU and Data61.

Lexing's award is for her work on the science and practice of

understanding
social media popularity, including mathematical models of the
interaction
between an online video's popularity and the tweeting or sharing it
receives
(published at WWW'17 and ICWSM'17) and measurement of online

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video popularity
(published at ICWSM'15). Nominees described her research
accomplishments as
"remarkable achievements for a young academic, marking her out as
a rising
star having real and sustained impact in her field."

The three winners will make presentations at ACSW 2018 in Brisbane,

January 31 to February 2.

Thanks to Rachel Cardell-Oliver, Katrina Faulkner, and Andy

Cockburn,
who chaired the three committees.

2. ACSW 2018 in Brisbane

------------------------

ACSW has served us well for many years as a forum to meet and
exchange
information; as a place to publish research (especially for PhD
students);
and an opportunity to form networks. Having grown out of the
Australasian
Computer Science Conference, ACSC, ACSW has matured into a
federated group
of events, each with its own distinctive flavor.

Earlier this year a decision was taken -- not without a degree of

nostalgia
and regret (like probably many of you, I gave my first paper
presentation
at an ACSC event, in Sydney in 1983) -- to stop running ACSC as a
separate
named conference, and to focus instead on providing a distinctive
"glue"
to the ACSW week, by inserting a more careful emphasis on the
things that we

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can share and benefit from, regardless of our particular research

areas.

Under the stewardship and initiative of David Abramson, ACSW at the

University
of Queensland in early 2018 promises a broad range of both research
and
non-research activities, with a renewed emphasis on professional
development
for PhD students, for ECRs and postdocs, and for those who are
building
their teaching and research skills in our Universities -- in other words,
the research and teaching leaders of tomorrow.

Please take a few minutes to browse the ACSW website at

http://www.acsw.org.au,
and note the dates in your diary. Options that are being considered
include:

-- A panel on how to apply for an ARC DECRA, led by former

members of
the ARC College of Experts.
-- A panel on how to build an run industry collaborations, with
successful members of the CS community.
-- A panel/workshop on how to apply for a successful promotion, with
former and current heads of school.
-- An academic integrity workshop, led by UQ's integrity team.
-- A grant writing workshop, led by ARC external reviewers.
-- A curriculum workshop, given by top CS educators.
-- A panel on how to prepare for ACS and IEAust accreditation, led
by teams who have been successful.
-- A set of lightning talks and posters, given by both senior and
early career academics.

We hope that you'll appreciate the efforts that are being put into these
initiatives, and will support the new format by sending just as many
junior
staff and ECRs as you possibly can, and that (if you are dubious) you

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will
accept that sometimes the "no paper, no travel" approach is not the
best
decision. And if you are an ECR or new staff member, now is the time
to be
asking in your Department about being supported to attend, we all
know that
in the last couple of months of the financial year every Head has a pot
of
money that needs to be spent by December 31.

Early-bird registration for ACSW closes in 1 December. Act now, and

get one
of the worms.

3. Conference and Journal Rankings Activity

-------------------------------------------

A round of nominations for conference re-rankings and additions

closed in
September, and several FoR-based committees have been meeting
over the last few
weeks. Around 70 submissions were received across the various
categories, half
of them involving requests for ranking decisions. As a result
approximately
90 conferences are being evaluated (nominee, plus comparators, with
some
doubling up). Proposed changes will be announced within a few more
weeks,
with a brief "objections" period allowed after that before the changes
are
finalized and added to the Conference Rankings Portal as the CORE
2018 list.

We have also recently extended the timeline for the journal ranking
survey

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activity, see http://portal.core.edu.au/core-survey/, and are continuing

to collect data. We'll publicize the outcomes in early 2018, and where
appropriate add scores to the journal records accessible via the portal.
In the meantime, if you haven't yet taken a look and spent 10 or 15
minutes
providing opinions, please do so (before your exam bundles get
delivered).

4. Remembering Two Computing Pioneers

-------------------------------------

Professor Frank Hirst passed away earlier this year, age 98. Frank
was
notable for having overseen the relocation of Pearcey's CSIR Mark 1
computer
from Sydney to Melbourne in 1955 (at which time it was renamed
CSIRAC), and
then serving as Head of the University of Melbourne's Computation
Laboratory
and Computation Department through until 1972. After then taking up
a chair
at the University of Adelaide, Frank retired in 1984. CSIRAC, the
pioneering
computer, has been preserved for more than five decades, and is on
display
at the Melbourne Museum.

Professor Peter C. Poole completed a PhD at the University of

Sydney in
1957, including working with SILLIAC, the second computer in
Australia.
After fifteen years in the UK and USA, Peter returned to Australia,
taking
up a Chair at the University of Melbourne in 1975, and serving as
Head of
the Department of Computer Science. Peter remained until 1992,
including a

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term as Assistant Vice Chancellor (Information Technology), at which

time
he moved to Bond University as Dean of Information Technology,
where he
remained until retiring in 1997. Peter passed away in August, aged
85.

5. Submission in Regard to Research Funding

-------------------------------------------

John Grundy and Stephen Macdonell recently undertook a detailed

evaluation
of research funding outcomes from the ARC DP schemes, the
Marsden Fund,
and the MBIE Science Board, comparing the 08 Information and
Computing
Sciences success rates and dollar amounts with those of the
Engineering
discipline group, and those of Maths/Stats. The suspicion that we are
not
doing well in comparative terms is supported by the evidence, and we
have
written to all three bodies, providing copies of the data that had been
collected, suggesting a range of possible ways of addressing the
mismatch,
and asking for meetings at which the issues can be discussed.
Hopefully
there will be more news in this area in a future newsletter.

6. Thanks to Professor Lin Padgham

----------------------------------

Lin served as CORE President in 2015 and 2016, and as

Secretary/Treasurer
for a number of year prior to that. As of a couple of month ago Lin
also

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stepped out of all but 20% of her day job at RMIT University, to focus
on her
"hobbies", such as emails, students, research projects, and CORE
activities.
Lin has continued to serve in 2017 on the CORE Executive
Committee as
Past President; nevertheless, I'd like to thank Lin for her service to the
Australasian computing community through her term as President,
and I look
forward to her continued input. In particular, Lin has been a champion
of
the rankings activities summarized above.

7. Nominations for CORE Executive in 2018

-----------------------------------------

Which leads, of course, to an advance warning of the 2018 Heads and

Profs
meeting, which will take place as part of ACSW in Brisbane. I'll take
this opportunity to note that the CORE Executive Committee is one of
the
many elections in which dual citizens are welcome to nominate, and
being a
joint Australian-New Zealander might even be a positive advantage :-)

Finally, apologies for having not written earlier in the year. Too many
coursework students, too many reports and etc to be filled in, and
always
the lurking fear that no-one will be interested enough to make it
through
to the end. If you have, well done, and thank you.

Cheers,

Alistair Moffat, ammoffat@unimelb.edu.au

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