General queries

• For general queries, please contact Hans Fangohr (<fangohr@soton.ac.uk>) or a school representative.
• For computing and modelling support queries, please contact the group's email <cmg@soton.ac.uk>. We welcome questions of the "I like to model system X but don't know how to" the same as "I have developed a very cool method that I'd like to apply to Y -- can you tell me who may be interested in this". The point of the group is to bring people together.

What is the purpose of the Computational Modelling Group?

There are two main objectives:

1. To present the computational modelling activity at the university of Southampton to the outside (i.e. to other academic institutions, industry, funding bodies, etc).

   While we do have wide spread use of computational modelling across the faculties and a large group of academics conducting world class research that is driven or strongly underpinned by computer simulation modelling, Southampton is not generally perceived as a strong centre for Computation. We'll try to change this.

2. To bring together the computational modelling community within the university. Currently, there are pockets of computational activity, with occasional links between them.

   However, there is generally little knowledge of the breadth of activities that are being carried out within Southampton. Improving our connectivity, and awareness and exploration of common and complementary skills and expertise, can strengthen our position significantly.

   Apart from the development of new ideas for grant proposals and interdisciplinary initiatives, we should profit from sharing, for example, training events and seminars, adverts for studentship/staff vacancies, etc.

   As part of the day-to-day computational work, researchers and students across the campus have similar questions and queries, and could save time by sharing mini-howtos, experience etc.

   iSolutions support the Computational Modelling group with staff time dedicated to supporting existing and new users of the university's computing facilities.

What is the relation to other research groups?

Most researchers and students will have a primary (school-based) research group, which will often have a particular application focus, and may use computational modelling as a tool.

In addition to their primary research groups, staff and students are welcome to join the Computational Modelling Group, which is a thin umbrella for the various activities in Southampton to strengthen our position, and improve networking within Southampton.

What are the next planned steps?

A web site (http://cmg.soton.ac.uk) is under preparation that lists all academics, post-docs and research students using some form of computational modelling. This will be complemented with advertised research projects for each individual (just a title, picture, and very brief summary) to provide an overview of the work going on in Southampton. There are be research topics to which researchers can associated their projects and themselves to reveal similar research activities.

There is the opportunity to share seminar and training announcements, news items, post-doc and studentship vacancy adverts, and we have a mailing facility to be able to contact other CMG group members on short notice.

In the medium term future, this can be extended in various ways that we consider useful, and will be based on feedback from group members. Planned extensions are inclusion of membership to primary research groups and a link to computing related publications on eprint.

We also provide a computing support point for all computing related support queries (please email to cmg@soton.ac.uk for this). If appropriate, queries will be forwarded and dealt with by iSolutions or OMII-UK (who kindly support the Computational Modelling Group through staff time). If the query relates to modelling questions, we will try to find the most appropriate computational academic to help with this. (If, for example, an academic with little modelling experience would like to simulate something from their domain but feels that some advice/support/collaboration with more computationally experience colleagues would be helpful).

The next big task is to find out what work we are collectively carrying out, where there are overlaps and complementary skills that we can exploit better, and to present our work to the outside (the public, academia outside Southampton, funding bodies, industry).

What else is the group doing?

The group provides dynamic webpages, Wiki pages and forums to support its members and the Iridis user community. We also organise about two Iridis user group meetings per year.

The group can sponsor meetings relating to its work.

Can the group support a workshop/seminar/training course on ...?

The group has limited funds that can be used to provide minor expenses, such as tea and coffee, for seminars, workshops etc that relate to the work of its members. Please approach cmg@soton.ac.uk or your school representative if you would like to organise such an event.

Organisations structure

The group's activities are lead by a small team of core group members which is currently being established. We aim for one representative from each school.

Can I join the group?

Yes, follow the instructions given in the manual to create your own entry on the http://cmg.soton.ac.uk pages, or ask cmg@soton.ac.uk to create a page for you (the former option is preferred and will be the faster route).