As part of the JISC/ESRC Awareness Raising and Training programme,
Lancaster University's Centre for e-Science is holding an Agenda Setting
Workshop (ASW) on “Quantitative Methods in e-Social Science” at Lancaster
University on 6th April 2005.  By bringing together social scientists,
computational scientists and other interested parties the workshop will
seek to explore what limitations and restrictions are currently
experienced by quantitative e-social scientists.
It is hoped to establish a collective agenda, so that activities can be co-
ordinated to reduce duplication, provide pressure groups and support
members of the e-social science community as required.

Speakers include :
Dr Rob Allan, CCLRC Daresbury who will be talking about access to
resources on the Grid covering both user interfaces and resources/services
such as the NGS and data services
Dr Khurshid Ahmad, Professor of Artificial Intelligence, Department of
Computing, University of Surrey who will be presenting results of work in
quantitative methods, especially in the analysis of non-stochastic time
varying data and the experience of his team based on the FINGRID project
where they created a grid of 24 nodes and analysed tera-bytes of data.

The aim is to determine priorities for training/tools/services. There are
several activities to plug into, for instance the JISC have just spent
over £3.0M to help create Virtual Research Environments (VREs) and the
ESRC National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS) has just funded two e-
Social Science research nodes, (CQeSS - Collaboratory for Quantitative e-
Social Science and MOSES – Modelling and Simulation for e-Social Science).

Complimentary accommodation will be available to delegates at Lancaster
House Hotel for the night of Wednesday 5th April with a welcome dinner
provided.  The workshop will commence at 9.00 am on Wednesday 6th April
2005 at Lancaster University (Room A41 Faraday Building).  The workshop
should be finished by 16:30. There is no cost for attending and expenses
will be reimbursed.

If you are unable to travel but are still interested in participating you
can join the workshop via Access Grid "U of Lancaster - eScience" through
the Manchester Virtual Venue Server.  The session will also be recorded
and accessible at a later date via the ReDReSS website
http://redress.lancs.ac.uk/.

If you are interested in attending or wish to receive further information
please contact Judy Camp, Lancaster University, Centre for  e-Science
01524 592175 - [log in to unmask] or Audrienne Cutajar Bezzina -
[log in to unmask] by 25th February 2005.


Dr Gillian Sinclair
Programme Manager
ESRC National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS)
University of Manchester
Dover Street Building
Dover Street
Manchester
UK
M13 9PL

Tel: 0161 275 1380
Email: [log in to unmask]
Website: http://www.ncess.ac.uk
News mailing list: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/E-SOCIAL-SCIENCE-NEWS