ResearchAnnouncement

NRF call for concept notes, planning for deadlines this holiday season and other updates

03 December 2019

Dear colleagues

This announcement aims to keep members of the research community informed about news and updates in the research space.

What's in this week's newsletter:


Planning your deadlines around the holiday season 

The eRA pre-awards approval process depends on various UCT staff including faculty finance, deans and deputy deans and in some cases Research Contracts and Innovation (RC&I).  Since the holiday season is fast approaching we urge any researchers planning to apply for grants over this period to liaise with their administrative support staff, faculty finance staff and deanery about their availability to complete the required eRA approvals to make sure grant applications are submitted to various funding bodies on time. 

Research contracts processing 
RC&I are already experiencing an increase in numbers of contracts to be processed through the eRA system ahead of the holiday season and would like to warn researchers to anticipate a longer turnaround time. Priority will be given to contracts where invoices need to be raised this year.

From the 27 December 2019 to 3 January 2020 a few RC&I staff (who are on leave) will be on standby for matters of real urgency:

30 and 31 December 2019 
Warda Sabley (021 650 3546)
Jessica Senekal (021 650 5080)
Nandie Makatesi (021 650 4150)
Maghmuda Ockards (021 650 4133)

2 and 3 January 2020
Piet Barnard (021 650 3865)
Nandie Makatesi (021 650 4150)

Planning a National Institutes of Health (NIH) application?
If you intend to submit an NIH application over the December/January period, please contact your faculty administrative and finance offices soonest with the necessary information and deadline dates. RC&I would prefer that applications which need to be submitted between 30 December and 7 January reach them by the 23 December 2019.


NRF call for concept notes: South Africa – Joint Institute for Nuclear Research research and innovation grants 

Deadline: 6 January 2020

The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) is an independent, multinational research agency located in Dubna, Russian Federation, and conducts both theoretical and experimental research, mainly in the fields of elementary particle physics, nuclear physics and condensed matter physics. The associate membership to JINR provides the South African research community with access to world-class research facilities at the JINR, and networking opportunities with the global JINR scientific community. As part of an agreement, three-year research grants are awarded to South African researchers in collaboration with researchers at JINR laboratories. 

Find out more on our Current Funding Opportunities page here.


Guidelines for filling out the new memorandum of understanding between supervisors and postgradutes now available 


The memorandum of understanding (MoU) is a formal agreement between a postgraduate student (master’s or doctoral) and their supervisor regarding their expectations of each other, and the research requirements for completion of the degree. The intention is for students and supervisors to discuss and agree on a number of important issues at the point of registration.  

There are two versions of the MOU: one for postgraduates in their first year of study (ACA47a) and the other for returning postgraduates (ACA48).
Both are available to download from the UCT forms website here.

For help filling out this form you can download the guidelines here.


(Reminder) Don't miss the final information session for 2019.

If you are still unsure of how the electronic Research Administration (eRA) system will affect you and your research administration, please RSVP to the last information session of the year.

Our senior co-ordinator Nikhat Hoosen will take you through the various modules of the eRA system and explain how it is designed to help both researchers and their support staff to more easily capture and track the administrative processes around the research lifecycle.

Date: Friday 6 December 2019
Time: 10h15  to 11h45
Venue: RISR Seminar Room, Allan Cormack House (Research Office)
2 Rhodes Avenue, Mowbray 
Parking available on top of Shoprite
RSVP: Natalie Simon by 4 December 2019.


Selection panel members needed for Association of Commonwealth University's Early Career Conference Grants

The Association of Commonwealth University's (ACU) Early Career Conference Grants fund early career researchers from member universities to participate in overseas conferences, and ACU Fellowships fund short collaborative research or partnership-building visits from one member university to another.

The ACU is seeking additional members for the selection panels for both schemes. these positions are voluntary and would involve reading and marking up to 50 applications using marking guidance provided by the ACU, and some markers would also be asked to participate in a virtual selection meeting of around an hour.

Selection panel members should either be academics in any field, professionals working in research management or similar roles, or others with experience in assessing funding applications.

If you are interested please complete this short online form by Friday 20 December.


Public lecture: Reasoning about the behaviour of AI systems

The South African Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research (CAIR) kindly invites you to a public lecture by Adnan Darwiche from the University of California on reasoning about the behavior of AI systems.
 
Darwiche will discuss the compilation of some common machine learning systems into symbolic and tractable representations that precisely capture their input-output behaviour. This includes classifiers based on neural networks, Bayesian networks and random forests. He will show how the compiled symbolic representations can be used to explain and verify system behaviour, including bias, in addition to quantifying system robustness. He will also discuss a new class of tractable, machine learning models: Testing Arithmetic Circuits (TACs), which are as expressive as neural networks. The structure of TACs can be synthesized from domain knowledge and their parameters can be learned from labelled data using gradient descent. However, one can reason about the behaviour of TACs and provide some guarantees that are invariant to how TACs are trained from labelled data.

Date: Monday 9 December 2019
Time: 18h00
Venue: Snape TS3B, Snape Building,  Upper Campus.
 


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