Okay, after the IPEAI I continued looking for University positions. One of the positions I applied for was:

Fully-funded Doctoral Studentship in Urban Water Systems

and Hydroinformatics: Artificial Intelligence techniques for

urban flood management

A fully-funded EngD studentship with a focus on aspects of Urban Water Systems and Hydroinformatics is available in the Centre for Water Systems (www.exeter.ac.uk/cws) at the University of Exeter starting in October 2009. The project is supervised by Professor Dragan Savic with HR Wallingford (www.hrwallingford.co.uk) as the industrial partner.

This unique 4-year studentship allows doctoral-level research to be conducted while working directly with industrial partners in the water sector. The programme also allows participants to receive postgraduate-level technical and transferable skills training at five leading UK universities in the water research field.

Applicants should have at least an upper second class honours engineering or science degree, or have an appropriate MSc qualification.

For further information on this project please contact Professor Dragan Savic at [e-mail].

To be considered for this studentship, please submit your CV to Alix Slater ([e-mail]) before 4:00pm on Monday 3 August 2009. Selected candidates will be invited for interview at the University of Exeter in August.

Funding Notes
The studentship is £19k per year for the first two years and £20k per year for the third and fourth years. It is funded through the newly established STREAM Industrial Doctorate Centre for the UK Water Sector (www.stream-idc.net and www.exeter.ac.uk/cws/projects/stream).

Due to funding restrictions applicants must be either UK citizens, EU students who have studied or been employed in the UK for at least the past three years, or overseas (non-UK, non-EU) applicants who have been employed in the UK for at least the past three years.
I was subsequently invited for an interview – and shortly after that received an e-mail with a formal offer

For anyone who may not know, an EngD is similar to a PhD (I will still become a Dr, assuming completion of the programme) but it’s a Doctor of Engineering rather than a Doctor of Philosophy. More details can be seen on wikipedia here.

I’m currently going through the administration due process and hope to receive more details and my actual written offer very soon.

I’ve also been learning to drive – for anyone on Anglesey I can wholeheartedly recommend http://www.angleseydrivingschool.com/ the teacher is very patient and a genuinely nice guy and I’ve made rapid progress. I’ve just completed an intensive course with 20 hours of driving tuition and now I’m just getting some extra lessons in to get myself polished enough to take the driving test.

My friend Noa also visited me (between getting the offer and taking the driving course – I really should update this blog more often, haha) which was really nice it was amazing to finally see her in person after ten years of talking online, and both her and her friends are lovely people. I will put up some pics of that soon once I’ve decided which ones I want to share

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Final day!

* Morning Session:
Helmut DISPERT, Kiel University of Applied Sciences
Title: Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence

* Afternoon Session:
Helmut DISPERT, Kiel University of Applied Sciences
Title: Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence

Were the two sessions on the final day. Both were interesting and some of the best talks of the whole thing well done Helmut.

Worthy of note, I got talking to a nice young lady called Qian on this last day also, she sat next to me and we chatted – and it seems I made a new friend

The farewell dinner in the afternoon was quite nice food very nice pizza’s and all. I left very early because I had to pack for the next day (was waking up at 4 o’clock).

Tags: Germany, Travel, University
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In the morning of day 6 we had George Kornaros from the Technological Educational Institute of Crete
giving a talk on Special Topics in Embedded Systems, which I’m sad to say I missed most of due to being very sleepy.

In the afternoon, we had Paul Jarvis, from our own University (Glamorgan) who did a talk on the artificial intelligence used in Pacman, and used game-maker as a base piece of software to allow us to play with the AI ourselves.

The game maker software package, is not something I feel would ever be used in a real game development environment, it’s a hobbyist kit, plain and simple. So I was a little concerned that this may lead to the others feeling that our course is too easy.

However for the most part it simply generated interest. I think the hands on lecturing style is very different to what most people here are used too, and adding a practical aspect to the lecture kept the interest up very well. So on the whole, well done Paul!

With regards to my future, I’ve received an offer from Glamorgan to continue there taking on the teaching hours I would have been doing as part of my PhD for fairly low pay and wait in hope of a project opening up.

This is taking a chance, and I’m still a little unsure about it. Waiting to discuss it with Ian hopefully.

Tags: Germany, Travel, University
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Well, day 1 didn’t get a blog entry, because I figured I’d combine them. There’s not much to say about day 1 except we flew and it was quite cool – my first time flying anywhere. Not scary at all, surprisingly.

Day 2 started off with a basic introduction to the event and a discussion of what “ambient intelligence” means. It’s a term to describe the idea of having thousands of artificially intelligent devices all attached in some way to one person – and the devices can interact.

After lunch, we had a lecture on Knowledge engineering, but it was covering things that myself and Alex Marshman have already covered in the final year of our degree. The second year students who are also here with me seemed to catch some of it though and maybe it will act as a good “taster” for the Modelling Intelligence module.

To get to and from the University I have to catch a ferry. It feels quite strange to casually catch a ferry every morning like a bus, but it’s a more entertaining way to travel than on the bus that’s for sure.

After catching the ferry home (well, back to Deutsch-Nordische Burse, which is where I’m staying) I caught the bus and went into town to get some food and stuff to wash with. The german bus system is very efficient (in Kiel at least), you don’t have to show anybody your ticket (same as the ferry) if you have one, you can just get on and ride. There are random bus checks and a large fine if you’re caught without a ticket instead. They also have maps of the entire bus route at every stop, along with a timetable, a display box of the predicted arrival times for the next few buses, and a “next stop” screen on the bus, with the name, plus a voice announcer for the next stop.

So anyway I succesfully found where I’m staying, attended the first days lectures, and travelled to town and back, so far. Hopefully tomorrow will go smoothly too.

Tags: Germany, Travel, University
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