International Exchange Activities between the Japanese National Institute of Informatics (NII) and the University of Bristol (UOB)

1. NII Internships conducted under the Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) on Collaborative Research in Computer Science and Information Systems

• For more information (including guidelines, application forms, and available projects) see the current Call for Internship Applications (for internships starting between June 2012 and March 2013).

• Under this agreement, MSc and PhD students at UoB may apply for a paid 2-6 month internship at NII.
• All interns will work on a project chosen from a list of about 80 available projects (which can be seen by following the link above).
• Candidates will shortlist three projects in ther application and, if successful, will be allocated one of them.
• Application forms should be obtained by following the link above.
• Successful candidtates will receive sojourn (living) expenses of approximately 171,000 Yen per month.
• Travel expenses are, in principle, not included under this agreement but may be (partially) covered by external budgets at the discretion of the NII supervisor.
• No familiarity with Japanese is necessary: NII is a very multi-cultural institution where most people speak English and where many of the students are European. On the contrary, this is a good opportunity to learn Japanese as NII run Japanese language courses.
• Students on a PhD. or four year MSc. may undertake an internship at any point in their study (subject to approval by their supervisor).
• Students on a one year (advanced or conversion) MSc. may undertake an internship in the period between September to March (after completing their degree and project but before graduating).
• The number of applications (accross the entire university) is limited to just three in response to each call for internship applications (of which there are usually two per year).
• At present, these internships are only being actively advertised to final year MSc. and PhD. students in the Department of Computer Science and to BCCS students (as our research activities are closely aligned with those of NII).
• The aims of the internship are (i) to strengthen research links between NII and UOB, (ii) to contribute to the chosen research field, and (iii) to enhance the student's research and social skills.
• Applicants (or their UOB supervisors) are advised to contact potential NII supervisors before finalising the (top three) projects they wish to apply for.
• Successful students are expected to write a technical report at the end of thier internship, which should ideally be co-authored by the NII and UOB supervisors.
• Applicants should send me exactly one MS-Word (or PDF) document: the completed application form (which should contain all relevant information from their CV and case for support, and which should ideally be proof read by a native English speaker).
• These intenships are competitive so you need to write a strong argument (case for support) explaining why you would be the best candidate for your chosen projects (which should ideally involve some collaboration with a UOB staff member).
• All communication and applications should be directed to Dr. Oliver Ray.
• The internal UoB deadline for submitting applications for the current call is Tuesday 17th April.
• Notification of acceptance is expected in May.

2. Research visits conducted under Annex A on Logical Reasoning and Knowledge Discovery in Bioinformatics

• Under this agreement, staff at UoB may apply for grants for short research visits to NII, where they will receive travel and sojourn expenses
• Note that such grants can only be applied for once a suitable research project has been drawn up and established as a formal annex the MOU
• In addition, each applicatation must be accompanied by a detailed day-to-day breakdown of the activities that will be carried out in Japan
• All communication should be directed to Dr. Oliver Ray

Publications

• O. Ray, T. Soh and K. Inoue. Analysing Pathways using ASP-based Approaches. Proc. 2010 Conference on Algebraic and Numeric Biology, LNCS 6479:167-183, 2011.
• H. Nabeshima, K. Iwanuma, K. Inoue and O. Ray. SOLAR: An Automated Deduction System for Consequence Finding. AI Communications 23(2-3): 188-203, 2010.
• Y. Yamamoto, O. Ray, K. Inoue. Towards a Logical Reconstruction of CF-Induction. New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, pp. 330–343, 2008.

Workshops

• ECML/PKDD 2012 Workshop on Learning and Discovery in Symbolic Systems Biology (LDSSB'12)
• 2011 International Symposium on Symbolic Systems Biology (ISSSB'11)

3. Additional Information