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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