UNMC is a key institution for Biodiversity Conservation in Asia

From 29th June to 2nd July Conservation Asia 2016, was held in Singapore. This is a joint meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology in Asia (Ahimsa Campos Arceiz is currently President of this society) and the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation Asia-Pacific. The meeting was attended by 600 people, from around 40 countries, …

AlphaGo: Computers and Game Playing: A Very Timely Lecture

Today (14:00, 07 Mar 2016 in F1A09 at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus) I am giving a two hour lecture on Computers and Game Playing. This lecture could not have come at a better time. At the end of January, Google’s DeepMind reported that AlphaGo had beaten the top European Go player (Fan Hui) …

Keynote speech at Technology & Application for Disaster Management International Conference 2015

Dr. Tuong-Thuy Vu, School of Geography, was invited as an international keynote speaker at Technology & Application for Disaster Management International Conference, 27-28 October 2015, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Highlighting the theme ““Managing Disaster Efficiently with Technologies”, Dr. Vu spoke on the “Space Technologies for Disaster Management”. The conference brought together relevant parties in the field of …

Challenge-based interventions to promote obesity awareness and seek innovation in youth and school children

Dr. Suresh K. Mohankumar and his obesity awareness team, including Dr. Soma Mitra (co-applicant) have received an activity support grant (Japanese Yen 1,000,000) from Tanita Healthy Weight Community Trust*, Japan. The funds will be used to promote obesity awareness/health education in youth and school children. *Tanita is a Healthy Weight Community Trust, from Japan supports …

First seminar of the EUMCCI Research and Innovation Committee

Earlier this year, EUMCCI established the Research and Innovation Committee. The committee is: “a committee of the Academic sectorial. The role of the committee is to advise Academic stakeholders on research strategies, initiatives and innovation that promotes the research and research education interests of the University and that fosters the conduct of research and research …

Pi (3.14159265359) Day

      Even if you know nothing about mathematics, most people will have heard of Pi. It is the number given by the the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter and is, arguably, the most well known number in mathematics. Such is the importance of the number that it has its own …

What is your Erdös Number?

Paul Erdös (1913-1996) is one of the most prolific mathmeticians. He wrote over 1500 papers in his lifetime and collaborated with over 500 people. As a tribute, his friends created the Erdös number, which is a tongue in cheek way of asking how well you are associated with the top mathematicians. Erdös himself has an …

How international are our publications?

I saw an interesting article (International research coauthorship – trends and implications) recently from blog.universitiesuk.co.uk, which discusses how collabotaion with international partners has changed over the past few years. I thought it might be interesting to see how we do, and compare ourselves against another well known institution in the UK. It shoud be noted …

Academic Ranking of World Universities 2013 released

“The long-heralded shift of global academic power towards Asia appears to be happening at a glacial pace, if at all, according to this year’s Shanghai Jiao Tong university rankings.” So starts the THES article (15 Aug 2013). The full list of rankings from the Academic Ranking of World Universities can be seen here. It is …

Impact Factor Distortions

If you follow the debate on the problems on automated research metrics, you might be interested in this piece from sciencemag.org. It makes a strong argument that evaluating individuals using the impact factor of a journal is, at best, wrong and, at worst, restricts the scientific process.