What's New

• The AISB's own Convention in 2012 will honour Turing
• 2012 marks the centenary of Alan Turing's birth. Alan Turing Year, seeks to bring together news of all the events and organisations which will be marking the occasion.
• The AISB'11 Convention was held from 4-7 April at York, organised by Dimitar Kazakov and George Tsoulas.
• Reminder: AISB members have free access to ECCAI AI Communications from the Members Only Area.
• Reduced rates are now available to AI researchers on selected titles from the Eurospan bookstore.
• Postgraduate Conference for Computing: Applications and Theory (PCCAT 2011) was held in Exeter with AISB-sponsored prizes for best poster and best paper.
• Winners:
  • Mr Ali Hussain Ali, CNRS, University of Plymouth
  • Mr Martin Peniak, PhD student - artificial intelligence, University of Plymouth

Awards and Sponsorship

• The AISB offers regular Student Travel Awards of up to £300 for conference trips. A list of Student Travel Award Recipients is available.
• AISB members are eligible for the ECCAI dissertation award, and can also apply for ECCAI travel grants to attend the ECAI conference and ACAI summer school.
  • Procedures for applying for ECCAI Awards and Travel Grants.
• Mutual Benefit Ideas - including sponsorship details.

Responses to Consultations

In January 2010 the Committee made a submission to the House of Commons' Select Committee on Science and Technology for use in their enquiry into science funding. The submission is a reorganized version of the comments on research impact assessment in the AISB response to the Hefce consultation on the REF. (House of Commons' Reponse as a Word document, House of Commons' Reponse as a PDF)

In December 2009 the Committee sent in a response to HEFCE's consultation on the REF. The response contains, in particular, strong statements concerning the currently proposed impact component of the REF and concerning the use of quantitative indicators to measure research. (HEFCE Respose as a Word document, HEFCE Response as a PDF)

In September 2009 the committee sent in a response to the Royal Society's consultation on "The Fruits of Curiosity: innovation and future sources of wealth" (PDF Fruits of Curiosity Call). It is partly about the role of and policies in support of curiosity-led scientific research, within which we are proud to include AISB-related research. Fruits of Curiosity response as a PDF. The Royal Society report, The Scientific Century: Securing our Future Prosperity, is now available.

The Committee would welcome hearing from any society members about the issues in the above responses (or other issues in the consultations but not addressed in the responses). Such views will not affect the consultations, in their current stages at least, but may inform future activities of the Committee.

And if you wish to take part in such responding activities in the future, please consider being nominated in future nomination rounds for committee members, or just tell us as we could use your help informally.