Information School News

On Thursday 29 January, PhD student Lucyantie Mazalan will present a research seminar on The Effect of Dimensionality on the Effectiveness of Nearest Neighbour Searching Methods in Chemoinformatics Applications. Nearest neighbour search in chemoinformatics application aims to identify the closest molecule to the query molecule. This involves measurements using different molecular similarity coefficients to the highly dimensional molecular descriptors. However, the performance of nearest neighbour search has been found to decrease as the dimensionality increases. One reason is because, as the dimensionality increases, the ratio of the distance from the query point to the nearest and farthest neighbour approaches unity. This study will investigate a range of different similarity coefficients on different molecular dimensionality. The results of this analysis will be used to assess the effect of the dimensionality on the effectiveness of nearest neighbour searching methods in chemoinf...

Dr Stephen Pinfield and Professor Peter Bath from the Information School will be Co-Investigators on a research project which will examine the transition to open access in the UK. The project is being led by the Research Information Network and is worth a total of £64,000.  It will run from January to May 2015. Sponsored by Universities UK, the research will be overseen by a steering group consisting of representatives from UUK, HEFCE and RCUK as well as the publisher and library communities.  The outcomes of the project will inform UK policy in this area.

Farida Vis, Faculty Research Fellow, has been elected to the Big Boulder Initiative Board of Directors. The Big Boulder Initiative is dedicated to the advancement of social data in businesses and organizations of all kinds. The BBI bring together representatives from companies within the ecosystem to collectively address key challenges in order to establish the foundation for the long-term success of the social data industry. Alongside Farida, two other new board members were elected: Justin De Graaf, Global Media Insights Director at The Coca-Cola Company and Mark Josephson, CEO of Bitly. The BBI board is chaired by Chris Moody, VP for Data Strategy at Twitter. In an official press release he welcomed the new board members by stating: “On behalf of myself and the entire board of directors, we are excited to have three new voices join the discussion as we kick-off 2015. With these additions, we have strong representation from the social data ecosystem that will help us drive our...