EPSRC Connect It seems that there is hope. A short while ago I was a member of an EPSRC ICT Panel, this was my second research panel, the previous being around two years ago. At that time we tried to rank around 35 good proposals and of those only a very small amount (if my memory serves me correctly) just 5 were funded. At this most recent panel, I’m very pleased to say that of the 24 proposals being ranked around 10 were funded.

I was recently asked by Research Councils UK ‘What are the key future challenges that UK HCI researchers can address and how can the UK research be better placed to contribute?’ Well apart from RCUK actually funding some research I thing it is by providing the research to inform industrial development; instead of often trying to build an industrial product ourselves as a demonstrator, or indeed, as the whole project.

The other week I was asked to prepare a one page overview of HCI in CS here at Manchester (for the EPSRC) - it seems to have evolved (may evolve) into the beginnings of a manifesto in part. You may find it interesting… - We see our work as ‘Core HCI Research, Applied Across Disciplines’. - We are interested in how users interact with the Web and how the Web, through its design and technology, enables users to interact with it (including Emergence & Evolution).