Research budget cut down in Spain

According to a spokesperson of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the 2010 research budget will be decreased by 15% as compared to 2009. This is a dramatic change in relation to the overall direction that the Spanish government has been holding for the last few years, in which a policy of sustained growth in R&D funding was systematically applied.

Controversy is served. Despite the well known world-wide recession that affects Spain as much as any other western country, a 15% cut down is disproportionate when compared to other areas of the national budget, which, again according to government spokespersons, will suffer much smaller reductions, no reductions at all, or will even be increased.

With this post I want to show my disagreement with the Spanish government’s policy of applying the most severe budget cut down in the research area. No al recorte del presupuesto en I+D.

No al recorte del presupuesto en I+D

Computing infrastructures specialist: position available

We have a position available at LaPa – CSIC. We are seeking top people to design and deploy completely new computing infrastructures for the lab. The major areas of expertise that we are looking for are TCP/IP networks, Microsoft Windows Server and Active Directory environments, and systems integration.

Please contact me by 15th November if you are interested. Thanks.

You can download the full call here in English and Spanish.

Scientists

Is it a curse?

Here. Here. Here.

Here.

Perspective is a very powerful thing. Perspectives can change. Perspectives can be altered.

– Jill Tarter

Deadline for PhD applicants closing soon

A couple of months ago I announced an opening for a PhD student at the Heritage Lab where I work. The deadline for applications is closing on 15th January, so I encourage you to have a look at the call ASAP if you’re planning to apply.

Download the call here in Spanish or English.

Wirfs-Brock responsibility model, ISO/IEC 24744 and organisational roles

This is why I love my job. I get to do all this experimental stuff and I get paid for it!

Okay, let me explain.

We are undergoing some reorganisation at work. In case you still don’t know, I work at a research lab of over 40 people where I try to apply software engineering to cultural heritage. Most of my workmates, however, are archaeologists, historians, anthropologists or soil scientists. Anyway. A few weeks ago we decided that we should define a few key roles that people should be playing at the lab. How do you define a role? Mmmmm… Well, ISO/IEC 24744 says that a role is a collection of responsibilities that a producer can take, where a producer is, usually, an individual in an organisation. I like ISO/IEC 24744 because I believe it can be applied to much more than software development methodologies, and the definitions are quite good. The fact that I was a key contributor to it has nothing to do, of course.

Talk at the EUVE

I’ll be giving an invited talk at the Heritage and New Technologies mini-conference organised by the European Virtual Engineering Technology Centre (EUVE) in Vitoria, Spain, next Wednesday 12th November. My talk is titled “Information Technologies and Cultural Heritage: Learned Lessons”, and I’ll be describing the whys and hows of a few technologies that I and my team tried to apply to archaeology and heritage management in the past with various success rates; some were promising but didn’t work, and some did work albeit they lacked a solid foundation.

If you happen to be nearby Vitoria on the 12th, contact EUVE and drop by!

Don’t trust what you read

Here at CSIC Galicia we have a very good media person, and my colleague Cristina Sanchez-Carretero and I, who have recently joined the Heritage Lab in Santiago de Compostela as staff researchers, are getting lots of press coverage lately. Well, not lots, but definitely a lot more than what I am used to. In the last few weeks I have been interviewed a few times and I have appeared in a number of local and regional newspapers.

Usually, I like media. Or, rather, I like the work they do. I appreciate their role in society and I understand that they are necessary elements that help us researchers spread the word of what we do to non-technical people. We need them; without them, we would be forever isolated in our lonely ivory towers.

However, sometimes they fail miserably. Last monday, the local paper De Luns a Venres included an interview with me based on a phone conversation that a journalist from that paper and I had held a few days back. I wasn’t sure when my interview would be published, and when that Monday I opened the paper on the bus on my way to work and saw my own face staring at me with that haunted look, I could not help but anticipate that something was wrong. I read through and yes, there it was. The answers to some of the questions that I get asked in the interview are totally or partially made up. Yes, that’s what I mean: I didn’t answer what you can read on the paper.

In some cases, they “extended” what I really answered on the phone with some adornments. Maybe they felt my answer was too terse or bland for their audience. In some other cases, the answer I gave is just not there, and an alternative, totally unrelated answer takes its place.

I couldn’t believe the lack of professionalism exhibited by this paper. This is a brief interview and I am not talking about anything important; it’s just a few personal things and a very, very abstract description of what I do at work. Still, making up interview answers is appalling.

So, don’t trust what you read. Not everything, anyway.

Call for pre-docs

As I said a few days ago, I am seeking excellent candidates to do doctoral studies with me here at CSIC. We are offering a good grant/position package plus extra funding for travel and stays.

You can download the full text of the call in Spanish and English here.

If you are interested, please let me know by 30th November. Thanks!

Building up the team

I am trying to build up a team to do research on information technologies applied to cultural heritage. This is not an easy task, the major difficulty being, of course, finding the right people. At the moment I am looking for somebody who would like to to enroll as a PhD student in this area and also for a good software developer with experience with the Microsoft .NET platform.

Please contact me if you’re interested. Thanks!