Monday 15 September 2014

Commission on RS

This is actually old news as permission to form the new Commission was granted at the AGM in July 2014, but for a number of reasons I delayed posting of it. I have had quite a few roles in the Irish Institution of Surveyors (IIS) over the years -





- Membership Secretary : dealing with membership grades, arranging professional interviews, setting up discount schemes and sitting on council.

- Editor : I stepped down as Membership Secretary when the position of Editor became vacant. The IIS had a quarterly publication called the IIS NEWS, and it was my job to scan the trade and research publications, round up articles or get people to write ones that were specific to Ireland. I would put it together and then find advertisers to pay for the printing. Also required me to sit on council.

- Treasurer:  I resigned as editor while doing my PhD and when I finished I agred to take up the role of Honourary Treasurer. Managing the accounts, revenue payments, dealing with auditor reports, reports to council at monthly meetings. I  shared this role from Oct 2012 to July 2014 with the previous treasurer as i could not get into Dublin as often as required.

Chair of the Commission on Remote Sensing. This is my new role. I pushed for formation for this Commission because, and I am not alone in thinking this, the IIS is currently geared more towards people working in land conveyancing, construction, laser scanning or boundary surveying. Members working in Photogrammetry, GIS or other non-lidar forms of RS are not adequately represented. Outsiders assume from the low numbers of these professionals in the IIS that these members are therefore not meant to join, so they don't join, and so numbers are low, and then people think they are not meant to join, etc....it's a vicious circle.


I think it's time to change that. The IIS specifically mentions different types of Remote Sensing in the articles of association and people working in these fields should be encouraged to join and helped to have a bigger say in what happens in the Institution. The alternatives are the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland (SCSI), who also specifically mention RS in their pathways to membership, the Institute of Civil Engineering Surveyors (ICES) or the Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Society (RSPSoc) in the UK. The word, 'surveyor' is one that probably puts people off these organisations (except obviously the RSPSoc) if they work in GIS and RS - and this is the type of issue we need to deal with in the Commission. In the SCSI they have the Geomatics division, which at least sounds slightly more inclusive as Geomatics encompasses GIS, RS and Surveying, but you're still going to be classed as a 'Chartered Surveyor' if you go down that route. People whose Degrees are in Remote Sensing might not relate to a Geomatics division.

Lots of terms - lots of things to sort out, but now the Commission is in place we can start getting members on board. One of the reasons this is going so slowly is the upcoming vote on a merger between the IIS and the SCSI.



All of this might have to be repeated in a different forum in the SCSI Geomatics Division - (that will get a separate blog post regardless of outcome) - but I had hoped to know the result so I could do a talk on this at the IEOS2014 where alot of the target audience will be in the room.

Unfortunately we won't know in time.




Friday 12 September 2014

ERC Grant Writing Masterclass

The research support office at NUIM put on a grant writing masterclass for ERC applicants. It was very useful and I learned alot, hopefully stuff I can also apply to IRC and SFI grants in future. Good job research support. It was aimed at all levels - starter (StG), consolidator (CoG) and advanced (AdG) so there was quite a selection of people in the room, from all disciplines. I also found out that it will be nearly two years before I can apply for the starter! The requirement is a minimum of 2 years research experience from the date of graduation - but in my case I had a big wait from submission (Oct 2012), to viva (Jan 2013), to graduation (Sept 2013). That was almost a year working as (but not being paid as for all of it!) a post-doc that isn't reckonable. So although two years from my graduation is Sepember 2015, I will miss that call and therefore Sept 2016 is my first date of eligibility!

While I was bemoaning the loss of all this time (and ignoring the near impossibility of getting an ERC) it occurred to me that it might not be a bad thing at all. I will be able to present 4 years work experience as a postdoc but slip into the two years bracket (or something along those lines).

Now all I need is an idea.

And a novel methodology.

And to work in a different country first.

And 5 Journal Papers.

And at least one paper without my thesis supervisor.

And a better CV.

The mobility and CV bit aren't insurmountable, as the guest speaker, Lotte Jaspers pointed out, there have been Nobel prize winners that got turned down for it, so the idea is even more important.


Needless to say, if I get one, I'll post.

Monday 8 September 2014

Paper published

I'm just back from holidays and I had a nice break. Even better - I found out that another paper was accepted. I had my second journal paper, MIMIC: An Innovative Methodology for Determining Mobile Laser Scanning System Point Density, published in Remote Sensing. This is another open access journal and the sister journal of Sensors, the journal that published my first paper.



That's two :)

And my h-index didn't go up! I did get quite a few new people following me on Research Gate after publishing this paper - so hopefully I'll get some citations from them.

About Me

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My name is Conor. I am a Lecturer at the Department of Geography at Maynooth University. These few lines will (hopefully) chart my progress through academia and the world of research.