Category Archives: ibm

Feb 2009 Clique Strategic Research Cluster funded: €3.56 million

I am one of the six principal investigators for Clique which was announced by the Irish Tánaiste as an Science Foundation Ireland funded (SFI) Strategic Research Cluster. Our industry partners, in this joint initiative are IBM, Idiro Technologies and Norkom Technologies. Our academic partners are UCD and DERI in Galway. Clique runs from 2009 – 2013 and has a focus on the analysis and visualisation of large graphs and networks, specifically social and biological networks. This is a very exciting development for my research as it will allow me to hire a number of postdocs and postgraduates but more importantly to work in a research eco-system with domain experts, industry partners, rich data sources and collaborators interested in various aspects of the end-to-end problems in visual analytics.


Many of the Clique team will be based in the UCD CASL

While these companies are providing matching funding and resources the SFI is providing €3.56 million over the course of 5 years. In total with industry and SFI funding the program has funding in excess of €5 million. The academic principal investigators involved are, Prof. Pádraig Cunningham, Prof. Denis Shields, Prof. Brendan Murphy, Dr. Aaron Quigley, Dr. Neil Hurley and Dr. Conor Hayes. The funding will be used to hire postdoctoral researchers and pay postgraduate scholarships.

The development of this research cluster has been a long time in the making. I’ve been an IBM visiting scientist since 2005 and others have been collaborating with Idiro and Norkom over a number of years. This cluster was first proposed over 1 year ago when 40 similar clusters were proposed to the SFI. The process to select these five from the forty has included a preliminary expression of interest (then review), full detailed proposal (then reviews), site visit (international panel), SFI review and board review and final the official announcement by the government! It’s a very rigourous process aimed to ensure the best research is funded, the value for the Irish tax payer is strong and the potential for industry is high.

I look forward to blogging about new team members, new research ideas, papers, outputs and commercilisation in the years to come!

[ Read SFI News Release ]

“SFI Strategic Research Clusters (SRCs) will help link scientists and engineers in partnerships across academia and industry to address crucial research questions, foster the development of new and existing Irish-based technology companies, and grow partnerships with industry that could make an important contribution to Ireland and its economy.

The SRC programme has been designed to facilitate the clustering of outstanding researchers to carry out joint research activities in areas of strategic importance to Ireland (in ICT and/or BioTech sectors), while also giving the time and resources to attract and cultivate strong industry partnerships that can inform and enhance their research programmes.”

Dec 2007 Umer Rashid starts as IBM/IRCSET funded postgrad

Umer Rashid has joined me this week as a postgrad in the SRG. Umer has a Masters from the U-VR Lab, GIST, Gwangju, South Korea under the supervision of Wontack Woo. He comes to us with a number IEEE, LNCS and HCI publications. His Masters thesis is on Context-based Disclosure of Personal Information in Pervasive Healthcare Using an Ontology-based Context Model. Umer is based on the 3rd floor of the CASLso he can colaborate with with other Ubicomp SRG researchers.

Umer is getting an IRCSET scholarship under the Enterprise Partnership Scheme from IBM and will be working on Human-computer-interaction in ubiquitous computing environments. His initial focus is on the personalization of user interfaces, and privacy and information disclosure issues associated with interaction of wearable computing devices with context-aware services in ubiquitous computing environments. Initially with a focus on instrumented spaces for long term self and remote monitoring by/of elders, using off the shelf wearable monitoring devices. We expect he will be working closely with Tom Holland and a number of other ubiquitous computing researchers in the CASL we expect with IBM and Vincent’s hospital in time.

Oct 2007 European Patent Office Invention Filed

As part of my role as an IBM CAS Visiting Scientist I work with Extreme Blue groups during the summer period. Three of my former UCD honours student Keith, Cheryl and Darin have ended up on Extreme Blue. I consider it to be an exceptional opportunity for any grad to understand and experience industrial R&D. My involvement with Extreme Blue is a collaboration and often results in invention disclosures and from time to time a patent is filed. One such patent for a mobile recommendation invention was recently filed in Europe and we expect a follow up international application in the months to come.

Sept 2007 Masterclass in Software Architecture

Next week along with a few invited software architecture leaders and members of UK and Irish academia I am attending an IBM Masterclass. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to learn more about this area due to my work with Lero, the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre.

Grady Booch Software Architecture Masterclass 13th and 14th September 2007 Royal Academy of Engineering, London

The objectives include:
• Sharing participant understanding of the state of the art
• Exploring opportunities for research
• Identifying curriculum needs and ways of meeting them
• Exploring opportunities for collaborative initiatives
• Strengthening relationships between academia and IBM

Following a keynote from IBM Fellow Grady Booch, participants will break out into a succession of affinity groups to share understanding and experience, and discuss further initiatives.

July 2007 Conference Roles IBM CAS 2007, AmI 2007, IOT 2008, Pervasive 2008

The summer is a busy time for completing research projects ready for publication in the coming year. Along with completing research projects the summer is also a busy time for reviewing papers for conferences coming up at the end of the year and for planning for events in the coming year.

I am the Program Chair for the IBM CAS Software and Systems Engineering Symposium 2007, Dublin Ireland, October 24. This has been a lot of work with the program committee reviewing and deciding on papers for publication. In addition, I’ve been busy reviewing papers for AmI-07 the European Conference on Ambient Intelligence (AmI-07), Darmstadt, Germany November 7-10. Along with acting as program chair and a program committee member this month I’ve also be busy with planning for future events almost 12 months away.

In 2008 I will be the Late Breaking Results Chair for the Sixth International Conference on Pervasive Computing (Pervasive 2008) on May 19-22 in Sydney, Australia. I will also be a member of the international program committee for Pervasive 2008. Another event of interest is the new Internet of Things International Conference for Industry and Academia on March 26-28 2008 in Zurich Switzerland where I will be on the Scientific Program Committee.

For more details see my [ Call for Papers Feed ]

IOT Logo

Mar 2007 IBM CAS Conference CFP

IBM Dublin CAS Banner

The Preliminary Call for Papers for the IBM CAS Software and Systems Engineering Symposium 2007 has now been published. This is the third annual IBM Dublin CAS research symposia organised as a multi-track single day event on October 24th 2007. This symposium is organised in association with CASCON 2007 -The 17th Annual International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering – URL (http://witanweb.ca/cascon2007/) and in cooperation with Lero, the Irish Software Engineering Research Center URL (http://www.lero.ie). A number of staff from the School of Computer Science & Informatics and Lero@UCD, LERO@UL, LERO@TCD and LERO@DCU are involved with the organisation and program committee for this Symposium.

Mar 2007 IBM Dublin CAS Symposium Program Chair

IBM Dublin CAS Banner
Aaron Quigley is the Program Chair for the IBM CAS Software and Systems Engineering Symposium 2007 (Dublin Ireland). This is the third annual IBM Dublin CAS research symposia organised as a multi-track single day event on October 24th 2007. This symposium is organised in association with CASCON 2007 the 17th Annual International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering (http://www.ibm.com/ibm/cas/cascon/dublin_track.shtml) and in cooperation with Lero, the Irish Software Engineering Research Center (http://www.lero.ie).

Nov 2007 Best Paper Award

We won the Best Paper award for “Visualisation Techniques to Support Derivation Tasks in Software Product Line Development” authored by Nestor D., O’Malley L., Healy P., Quigley A., Thiel S., at the IBM CAS Software and Systems Engineering Symposium 2007.

The IBM Centre for Advanced Studies Dublin Symposium 2007 Wednesday on October 24th 2007 was organised in association with CASCON 2007, the 17th Annual International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering (http://witanweb.ca/cascon2007/), and in cooperation with Lero, the Irish Software Engineering Research Center ( http://www.lero.ie).

The IBM CAS Software and Systems Engineering Symposium 2007 featured a keynote presentation from Professor Stefan Decker, DERI, research papers, a research panel on Sustainablility and Technology – Good partners? as a shared session (video conference) with CASCON 2007 in Canada, a research poster session and a capstone talk from Dr Steven Collins of Trinity College Dublin. The technical papers program featured original, internationally peer- reviewed research papers in the area of Software and Systems Engineering.