2 foundation meeting: introduction john shawe-taylor
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2
Foundation Meeting:Introduction
John Shawe-Taylor
2Overview
Context for the Establishment PASCAL Network of Excellence
Aim of the network Some organisational details Historical context of videolectures.net Achievements
Ingredients of new Foundation
Overview of the Network of Excellence
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2Mission statement
The objective is to build a Europe-wide Distributed Institute, which will pioneer principled methods of pattern analysis, statistical modeling, and computational learning as core enabling technologies for that are capable of natural and seamless interaction with and among individual human users.
multimodal interfaces
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Some highlights from the network
Infrastructure of the Network A comprehensive web site that enables the managing of
its activities through a set of programmes covering activities from Workshop organization to Curriculum development (see www.pascal-network.org)
A system for recording events and a repository of the state-of-the-art presentations on research topics covered by the network that currently contains 60 complete events totalling 1253 lectures (see http://videolectures.net/pascal/)
A repository of research papers and technical reports with over 3000 entries produced during the project
A computing cluster for large scale computing work by network participants
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Some highlights of the Network
25 Challenges, some with high impact: RTE (Recognising Textual Entailment) now
adopted by NIST Visual Object Categorisation – de facto
standard in computer vision Trading exploration and exploitation – led to
development of MoGo, world champion Go playing program
18 Pump priming projects funding mini collaborative research initiatives,
6 mini projects for making visible and promoting PASCAL output to a wider audience
2Demo Sites
2PASCAL2 - Statistics
Currently 53 Sites in the Network 17 Beneficiaries 36 non-beneficiary members
5 year project: Mar 08 – Feb 13 Funding €6M Dual-band funding model Activity in line with PASCAL1 Intention to establish a permanent
successor organisation
2 Management Structure
Strategic Advisory Council – Sue Becker, Mike Mozer, Helge Ritter, Satinder Singh and Sebastian Thrun
Steering Committee – executive body meeting twice yearly – coordinators, programme managers, gender issues rep, finance and executive officers (~20 people).
Executive Committee – Executive Officer (UCL), Finance Officer (Soton), Coordinators, Web Manager (Soton)
Individual Programme Committees/Managers Assembly – one representative from each site
2 Implementation - Portal
2 Request page
2 Programme Requests
ResearcherResearcher
Programme ManagerProgramme Manager
ReviewerReviewer
CoordinatorCoordinator
AdministratorAdministrator
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3
RequestRequest
AcceptAccept ReviewersReviewers
RejectReject
0
9
Itemised BillingItemised Billing
Final ReportFinal Report
AcceptAccept
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CompletedCompleted
7
ApproveApprove
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4
Site Manager/Site Administrator
Site Manager/Site Administrator
2 Summary
PASCAL established a stable method of prioritising activities funded by modest funds through an internet based proactive funding model
Perhaps one of the most successful outcomes was videolectures.net
Agreement to fund a Charity Foundation to promote/develop this activity with a grant of £5000/year for four years
Potential to inherit the funding model and web portal from PASCAL
2Proposal
Establish UK Charity with subsidiary in Slovenia
Organisation would mimic PASCAL: Steering committee overseeing activities
organised in Programmes with funding through calls
Institutions as members with some voting rights
Directors carrying overall responsibility for day-to-day operations and financial reporting
2Activities
The Foundation enables the provision of online academic videos, papers, technical reports, software and other materials, and actively promotes their free availability
Through its activities the foundation will promote the spread of knowledge and rigorous academic debate to anyone with access to the internet anywhere in the world
It also aims to develop more widespread interest in such material and such debate
2Mission statement
Promotion of the use of open access in new and innovative ways that enhance the distribution, accessibility and availability of scientific and academic content
Promotion of widespread adoption of open access for academic material
Supporting the development of enabling technologies for recording, production, accessing, presentation and/or storage of academic materials
Promotion of academic debate concerning the ethical issues arising as a result of scientific knowledge and its relation with belief systems of all types
Promotion of equal access to academic material independent of race, nationality or gender
2XGO Foundation
Idea is to create a focussed organisation with a particular role
Potential for significant impact in an exciting field
Still in planning stages so very open to ideas
Approved by PASCAL steering committee and European Commission project officer and reviewers
2Conclusions
XGO has potential to become the major player in an exciting new domain
PASCAL has established an efficient way of promoting and funding scientific enabling activities
Opportunity to create new Foundation specifically promoting and developing the scope and impact of videolectures, but potentially extending this remit
Currently in the process of defining the rules of operation of the Foundation