Thursday, February 26, 2015

Midlands Graduate School 2015

Registration for the Midlands Graduate School is open! I'll be lecturing again this year on functional reactive programming, and am very much looking forward to meeting the participants.

Overview

The Midlands Graduate School in the Foundations of Computing Science (MGS) was established in 1999 as a collaboration between researchers at the Universities of Birmingham, Leicester, Nottingham, and later Sheffield. It has two main goals: to equip PhD students with a sound basis for their research by deepening their knowledge on the mathematical and conceptual foundations of computing; and to provide a platform for making contacts with established researchers in the field and with their peers who are at a similar stage in their research careers.

This year's MGS is hosted by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield. It will start on April 07 and finish on April 11.

Information about previous events can be found at the MGS web site.

Programme

MGS 2015 consists of nine courses, each with four or five hours of lectures and exercise sessions. Three of the courses are introductory or core; they should be taken by all participants. The other courses are more advanced or specialised. Participants may select them depending on their interests.

This year the invited lectures will be given by Prof Jeremy Gibbons, Oxford.

In addition there will be early evening sessions in which participants can briefly present and discuss their own research.

Core Courses

Category Theory Roy Crole, Leicester
Typed Lambda Calculus Paul Blain Levy, Birmingham
Patterns in Functional Programming Jeremy Gibbons, Oxford

Advanced Courses

Homotopy Type Theory Thorsten Altenkirch, Nottingham
Infinite Data Structures Venanzio Capretta, Nottingham
Security Protocol Verification Eike Ritter, Birmingham
Functional Reactive Programming Neelakantan Krishnaswami, Birmingham
Building Verification Tools with Isabelle Georg Struth, Sheffield

More information about the course schedule will be given shortly.



Registration

The registration deadline for MGS 2015 is Monday March 16. The registration fee is £460.

This fee includes 5 nights of accommodation and breakfasts at Hotel Ibis in Sheffield (from Monday April 06 evening to Saturday April 11 morning) as well as lunches, coffee breaks and the conference dinner.

A reduced fee without accommodation is available on request.

Participants need to register through the University of Sheffield Online Store. Payment is by debit or credit card.

Travel

MGS 2015 takes place in the Sir Frederick Mappin Building of the University of Sheffield, which is located on Mappin Street. Information on traveling to Sheffield and finding the Mappin Building is given here. A schedule of lectures and details about the lecture halls will be announced shortly.

Accommodation for MGS 2015 is at Hotel Ibis in the city centre of Sheffield.

The city centre of Sheffield is very compact. It takes about 10 minutes to walk from the train station to Hotel Ibis and about 20 min from the train station or from Hotel Ibis to Mappin Building.

There are many restaurants and pubs in the near vicinity of Mappin Building around Division Street and West Street. More restaurants can be found in the Hunter's Bar area of Sheffield along Ecclesall Road, or along London Road.

Organisation

Georg Struth (G.Struth@dcs.shef.ac.uk)