The Ropes

Welcome to the DReaM group! This page contains the essential information for those new to the dream group with some essential things to know about and do. The DReaM group is part of CISA, in the school of Informatics.

Social

Every Tuesday at 11:00 we attend a DReaM talk where a member of the group presents some ideas. These are informal talks and a great venue for getting feedback on ideas. It is suggested to prepare 10 minutes of material and the group take the rest of the hour and bit asking questions and discussing issues.

After this, we go for lunch at 12:30, meeting at the ground floor of the foyer of the Forum.

Sometimes we arrange outings and dinners too. You should be on the email lists below to make sure you get the announcements.

Email lists

There are 3 email lists you need to sign yourself up for - this involves going to each of the following webpages and entering your email address and clicking the signup button, this will send you an email which contains a link you need to click on to complete registration. You will be sent a password reminder once a month. The lists are:

• dreamers - information for all dreamers, conference announcements etc.

• edindreamers - information for dreamers in Edinburgh, talks, lunches etc.

• daydreamers - fun

Shared Computing Environment

The dream group has a shared computing environment on top of the DICE system used by all of informatics. To get access to this, you need to fill out a support form (informatics uses its own security certificate, accept and add this when asked), asking to be added to the unix group "dreamers" - this is the same as the AFS group inf:dreamers. Our environment includes a shared filespace with various tools we all use to make our lives easier and more efficient. In particular, note that we have a shared bibtex which contains useful paper as well as our own paper - make sure you help keep it up to date.

BlueBook Notes and Trip Reports

We have an internal series of informal notes for half-baked ideas to get early feedback on our thoughts and work in progress; these are the Blue-Book Notes. We also have a series of notes containing our experiences from various trips to workshops, conferences, and research visits; these are the Trip Reports. People often write a Bluebook note, and then give a dream-talk about it. Feel free to do so!

Shared Webserver

We have a shared dream group webserver (you're looking at it!) should make your project a webpage here with at least the name of the project a brief outline and who is involved.

Platform Grant Funding: How it Works

The Directly Incurred (DI) costs associated with the Platform Grant (PG) will be used as a Flexibility Fund (FF). The FF will support a variety of activities, e.g. short-term research contracts with the aim of pump-priming new research activities as well as maintaining and extending research platforms (e.g. IsaPlanner). FF includes travel and subsistence, as well as the salaries.

By its nature, the FF is "Flexible" so if you have an idea but you are not sure if it fits, then please ask Andrew Ireland. FF requests should be sent to Andrew Ireland, Alan Bundy and Jacques Fleuriot using the latex template located here.

The PG has a budget to support (travel and subsistence) Distinguished Visitors (DV), both academic and industrial, with the aim of furthering the group's research agenda. DV requests should be sent to Andrew Ireland, Alan Bundy and Jacques Fleuriot using the latex template located here.

The PG also has a budget to support PG investigator travel and subsistence. Requests should be sent (via email) to Andrew Ireland.

In terms of administering the PG, Heriot-Watt will:

1. Provide 80% funding for RAs, including Estates and Indirect costs (based on Heriot-Watt university rates).

2. Provide 80% funding for RA and CoI travel & subsistence.

3. Provide 100% funding (travel and subsistence) for Distinguished Visitors, i.e. expenses claims will be administered directly via Heriot-Watt.

The payment mechanism will require UoE and IC in raising an invoice for 80% of any costs incurred with respect to the PG (showing 100% expenditure). The only exception to this will be the "distinguished visitors", where 100% of expenses claims will be paid direct by Heriot-Watt as noted above.

All invoices should be sent to:

Claire Porter

MACS Research Administrator

School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences

Heriot Watt University

Riccarton Edinburgh

EH14 4AS Tel: 0131 451 3411; Fax: 0131 451 3327; email: C.Porter@hw.ac.uk