Newsletter February 2017
INSIDE IBM Watson IoT Hackathon Award
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Bilal Ahmad, Lero@UL, competed in the first IBM Watson IoT Hackathon held in Portershed, Galway.
WELCOME TO THE LATEST ISSUE OF THE LERO NEWSLETTER
Welcome to the first Lero newsletter of 2017, the first since I became Director of Lero member, Dr Cathal Ó Broin, has won an Institute of Physics Lero, a position which I am (IoP) award for best thesis in Computational Physics. honoured to occupy. Please enjoy the fabulous Women in Game Development success stories below, involving a great number Brenda Romero Lero@UL has written a chapter in the book, of Lero members across our “Women in Game Development: Breaking the Glass Level-Cap”. partner institutions. If you Working hard at NUIG are not featured, we look
Institute of Physics Awards
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Kieran Conboy, Denis Dennehy and Ken Power delivered the first in a series of Lero workshops on flow techniques in software development.
IBM Watson IoT Hackathon Award The idea was to develop a technology that would be accessible and easy to use especially for older people. The technologies used were, VT Sigfox sensor, IBM Bluemix and Node-Red and CISCO.
Bilal Ahmad and his team Bilal Ahmad, Lero@UL, competed in the first IBM Watson IoT Hackathon held in Portershed, Galway. His research area is Connected Smart Ageing and he used this in helping to find a design solution for the competition. Current research states social isolation and loneliness as one of the most critical problems in the lives of the elderly which can contribute to health problems such as dementia and cardiovascular diseases. It has also been found that disengagement from society and other community level activities is as bad as 15 cigarettes a day. In order to provide a solution to this problem Bilal along with a team of five others helped design an IoT app to overcome the problem of social isolation in older adults.
So the story starts with Eileen who is in her late 70’s and she is wearing a band that has a sensor deployed in it. This sensor is continuously reading the number of steps she takes or her movements. This data is then sent to IBM Bluemix platform. Eileen can also pick up her phone and send a voice message like, ‘Hi, I am feeling very sad and a bit lonely’. A third party app is used to convert the words in this message to voice and send them to Bluemix. After that Node-Red and sentiment analysis can be used to analyse Eileen’s current mood and physical condition. Based on the results of the analysis a notification can be sent to a family member or friend about her and they can then use a web-interface to virtually visit her. A total of 12 teams participated in the event and awards were given for, best overall hack, best citizen scientist IoT project/community hack and Edge Hack. Bilal and his team won the Edge Hack prize.
forward to including your success story in a future edition. In the meantime, belated best wishes for 2017.
PMI Agile Methods in the Semiconductor Industry Conference Prof Brian Fitzgerald, Lero @ UL, and Prof Kieran Conboy, Lero @ NUIG, presented at the PMI Agile Methods during the Semiconductor Industry conference. Industry presentations were made by John Barry (Intel) and Noel Butler (S3 Group). The event was very well attended and future events on this theme are planned.
Very Successful Viva for Aravind Congratulations to Aravind Vasudevan, Lero@TCD, who successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled, “Static task partitioning techniques for parallel applications on heterogeneous processors”, in July. The external examiner was Prof Thomas Fahringer of the University of Innsbruck. The internal examiner was Prof Jonathan Dukes and Prof Gavin Doherty acted as chair. The examiners recommended that the PhD thesis should be accepted without the need for corrections.
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Institute of Physics Awards
Invited speakers Lero @ NUI Galway continued their seminar series this autumn with, ‘Open Innovation in Services: Insights and foresights’. Dr Anne-Laure Mention was the invited speaker. She is leading a research unit focusing on innovation economics and management within the Public Research Centre Henri Tudor, Luxembourg (www.tudor.lu).
Lero member, Dr Cathal Ó Broin, has won an Institute of Physics (IoP) award for best thesis in Computational Physics. The yearly prize is awarded by the Computational Physics group (CPG) committee of the IoP. They award the prize for the thesis which they believe contributes most strongly to the advancement of computational physics. Cathal’s thesis focussed on developing code to quickly solve the dynamics of intense, ultrashort lasers interacting with atoms and molecules. The work had two major strands. Firstly, he applied time-dependent variation of R-matrix theory to molecules for the first time. Concurrently with that work, he offloaded his calculations on graphics cards using OpenCL to significantly speedup calculations. Cathal’s thesis was supervised by Dr. Lampros Nikolopoulos of Dublin City University. Cathal is a researcher in LERO where he is developing a library for extreme-scale high-performance data access for Oil & Gas seismology in collaboration with Tullow Oil plc and DataDirect Networks and led by Dr Michael Lysaght. Congratulations from all in Lero.
An illusion of publicity? Facebook and the transformations of a public realm in Kenya
She is actively involved in research projects, mainly focusing on innovation and performance measurement and management in the financial and business to business services industries. Her research interests mainly concentrate on open and collaborative innovation, intellectual capital measurement, management and valuation, innovation and technology management. She has been a visiting researcher at McGill University, Canada and Ferrara University, Italy and at Singapore Management University, Singapore.
Irish Research Council Appointment Kieran Conboy has been appointed to the board of the Irish Research Council by John Halligan, the Minister of State for Training, Skills and Innovation. This is a 3 year term commencing in September 2016. The board has responsibility for the Council’s strategic planning, impact on education, policy and industry as well as governance of the Council’s funding calls and awards. Congratulations Kieran!
Dr Stephanie Diepeveen also gave a talk at Lero@ NUIG. She is a postdoctoral researcher with the Centre of Governance and Human Rights at the University of Cambridge which explores questions of political authority, control and digital media in Eastern Africa. Her recent doctoral research focused on everyday politics in Mombasa, Kenya, drawing on Hannah Arendt’s ideas about the public realm to interrogate the implications of digital communication technologies in the nature and possibilities of everyday politics. Stephanie has engaged in a variety of empirically-based research projects around themes of citizen participation, digital technologies and African politics, both in her doctoral research at the University of Cambridge and as a research analyst at RAND Europe.
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Computer Science in Upper Second Level Education
Women in Game Development
In September 2016 a research consortium led by Lero submitted its interim report on the provision of Computer Science in Upper Second Level Education Internationally to the National Council of Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA). This research was commissioned by the NCCA to assist its work in advising the Minister of Education and Skills, Richard Bruton, and his Department on the inclusion of Computer Science as a discrete Leaving Certificate subject. The consortium presented their final research report to the NCCA in November. The consortium consists of Lero members Clare McInerney, Neil Keane, Dr. Chris Exton, Prof Tiziania Margaria, Prof Rory O’Connor and Emeritus Prof Kevin Ryan.
Brenda Romero Lero@UL has written a chapter in the book, “Women in Game Development: Breaking the Glass Level-Cap”. She has been in the game industry longer than any other woman having begun her career in 1981and she writes about her experience in the opening chapter in this work. From Amazon’s write up, “Videogame development is usually seen as a male dominated field, even playing videogames is often wrongly viewed as a pastime for men only”.
It also includes Dr Oliver McGarr and Prof Sibel Erduran from the National Centre for STEM at the School of Education in the University of Limerick and Ted Parslow chairperson of the Third Level Computing Forum.
But behind the curtain, women have always played myriad important roles in gaming. From programmers to artists, designers to producers, female videogame developers endure not only the pressures of their jobs but also epic levels of harassment and hostility.
IFIP Award for Prof Brian Fitzgerald
DG Connect
At its General Assembly held in San Jose, Costa Rica, IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing) voted Prof Brian Fitzgerald one of eight recipients of its Silver Core Award. Congratulations to Brian for this well-deserved recognition. The award will be presented at a future IFIP event.
Mike Hinchey presented at an expert workshop held by the European Commission, DG Connect in October. Mike’s invited presentation was based on the report “Software Innovation Potential in the Context of Horizon 2020” by Mike Hinchey, Brian Fitzgerald, Brian Donnellan and Tiziana Margaria, and was commissioned by the European Commission.
CCD Ambassador Award Prof Brian Fitzgerald recently received the Conference Ambassador award in recognition of bringing the 37th International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) to Ireland in 2016. With 1,789 attendees, the Dublin conference established a new record for number of attendees at the Conference.
Prof Fitzgerald is pictured receiving the award from Emer Relihan, Convention Centre Dublin
National Ploughing Championships Marie Travers (UL), Ciaran Cummins(UL), Mairead O’Connor (NUIG) and Clare McInerney (UL) represented Lero at the National Ploughing Championships in Screggan Co. Offaly in September. SFI hosted four centres on each of the three days of the championships.
The stand was very busy all day particularly during the very heavy showers. Fortunately we didn’t need to get towed out of the mud to exit the parking/ field (unlike most people) It was certainly an experience! Big thanks to Maire, Ciaran and Mairead for coming along.
EuroSpi Three Lero members, Rory O’Connor, Paul Clarke, and Fergal McCaffrey presented five papers at the 23nd European Conference on Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement (EuroSPI 2016) which was held in Austria For more information please see, http://2016. eurospi.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=106
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NIIF Award for Anthony Project Summary Dr. Liliana Pasquale
The aim of this project is to develop robust, affordable and userfriendly technologies to empower field archaeologists to conduct their own high quality digital capture and analysis. This project will involve collaboration between leading Computer Scientists and Archaeologists within UCD and across Europe working in areas such as Computer Vision, Data Analytics and Software Engineering, Neolithic Art, ritual, symbolism and Monumentality. The award will enable the development of a proofof-concept technology, and support potentially ground-breaking advancements in field archaeological data capture using advanced image processing and data analysis techniques.
Ireland is a rich source of megalithic symbols such as those found at Newgrange. Archaeologists use digital techniques to record images of these symbols in the field. However, these techniques can be prohibitively expensive as they often require specialist expertise.
Brenda Romero, Lero@UL, found herself one of the unexpected stand-up comedians of Inspirefest 2016, causing much of the audience to erupt into fits of laughter as she recalled her background in gaming. Beginning her game development career in 1981, Romero was one of only five women in the industry at that time, but noted that the advent of mobile gaming has seen greater numbers of women enter the fray. “For the first time in my career, I was hearing things like ‘We would really like to talk to you because you’re a female game designer’, not ‘We would like to talk to you even though you’re a female game designer’,” Romero said on stage this year. She is now working with her partner and co-founder John Romero – a legend in game design in his own right – on developing their studio in Galway, having taken the decision to move here after falling in love with Ireland. Brenda is also the course director for the upcoming MSc in Game Design & Development and has been confirmed as a speaker at InspireFest 2017. You can follow Romero at her Twitter handle @br
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Fatemeh Golpayegani Lero @TCD, 1st on left We’ve had a very successful Science Week 2016 in Lero. Lero members Jesus Galan, Yehia Elrakaiby, Reka Peterscak, Ita Richardson, Ciaran Cummins and Clare McInerney delivered Smart Futures presentations and technology workshops during the course of the week. We engaged with over 400 primary and second-level students.
Thesis in 3 Lero hosted the UL regional heat for the Thesis in 3 competition on during November. Fatemeh Golpayegani from Lero@TCD participated in the regional heat. The Thesis in 3 National Finals were held in Dublin on Monday Nov 7th (https://thesisin3.com/)
MEGADojo Yehia El Rakaiby and Fayola Peters both Lero@UL were mentors at the MegaDojo in October. It took place at the Limerick Institute of Technology. Yehia mentored children in Java and Scratch while Fayola mentored beginner HTML.
There were also robots to play with, virtual reality and an app to help non-verbal kids communicate with their parents via pictures. This app automatically translates images to text and sends these to the parent’s mobile.
Dell displayed their first ever laptop and their newer products for IOT.
It was a cool way to spend the afternoon.
Developments in Global Software Engineering Education
Pictured from left to right, FIE panel members: Michael J Oudshoorn (Wentworth Institute of Technology, USA); John Noll (Lero @UL), Tony Clear (Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand); John Barr (Ithaca College, USA); Sarah Beecham (Lero@ UL); Mats Daniels (Uppsala University, Sweden)
Sarah Beecham co-organised a panel at the 46th Annual Frontiers in Education IEEE conference in Erie, USA during October. Six panellists, including Lero’s John Noll, shared their own experiences in teaching software engineering courses and in globalisation initiatives. They provided their personal perspectives on the challenges and solutions in providing Global Software Engineering courses. Insights were backed up by findings from the panel members’ report, “A recent and major review of the literature on GSE Education”, (Clear, Beecham et al, 2016).
The audience participated in lively discussions as to how to combine teaching soft skills such as cultural understanding and multi-site team collaboration, along with the all-important technical skills needed for successful Global Software Engineering. This panel follows hot on the heels of a Workshop on Global Software Engineering Education (GSE-Ed’16) that was held in August, at the International Conference on Global Software Engineering http://www.icgse. org/.
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Working hard at NUIG Kieran Conboy, Denis Dennehy and Ken Power delivered the first in a series of Lero workshops on flow techniques in software development. The first half of the workshop gave participants an understanding of how to manage impediments to flow, including their identification and removal. The second half focused on challenges and recommendations for scaling flow techniques beyond individual projects to portfolios of projects and to the organizational level. Throughout, participants shared their own insights and practical knowledge. This is the first of a series of workshops where participants will be able to take lessons learned, apply them in their own organisations and then reflect and report back to future workshops to get feedback and iteratively build competencies in the use of flow techniques. The next one will be hosted by AIB in Ballsbridge, Dublin on January 12th. Any queries on this and the future workshops can be directed to kieran.conboy@nuigalway.ie.
Autumn 2016 HiPEAC https://www.hipeac.net/partners/ Lero@TCD hosted the Autumn 2016 HiPEAC Computer Systems Week from November 7th to 9th in Dublin. This is a twice-yearly event that brings together researchers from across Europe to exchange ideas and create new research collaborations and is sponsored by the European Network on High Performance and Embedded Architecture and Compilation (HiPEAC). A total of 240 registered delegates attended from across Europe, and participated in a variety of thematics sessions and small group meetings. A particular highlight was the HiPEAC Industry Partnership Programme (HiPP) event which had speakers from ARM, Xilinx, Daqri, Codeplay and Movidius. David Gregg from Lero@TCD said that he was delighted that the event was such a success and attracted so many prominent European researchers from academia and industry.
With no less than three people from Lero involved there will be a significant Lero presence at the event, Program Co-Chair: Markus Helfert, Lero, Dublin City University, Ireland Industry Track Chair: Joe Gibbs, Lero, UL, Limerick, Ireland Key-note Speaker: Emil Vassev, Lero, UL, Limerick, Ireland The 3rd International Conference on Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems (VEHITS) will be held in Portugal in April 2017. Its purpose is to bring together engineers, researchers and practitioners interested in the advances and applications in the field of Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems.
This conference focuses on innovative applications, tools and platforms in all technology areas such as signal processing, wireless communications, informatics and electronics, related to different kinds of vehicles, including cars, off-road vehicles, trains, ships, underwater vehicles, or flying machines, and the intelligent transportation systems that connect and manage large numbers of vehicles, not only in the context of smart cities but in many other application domains.
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FESTA News Prof Ita Richardson, Lero@UL, presented on the FESTA Strategic Career (SCM) Manager at the FESTA/GARCIA Final Conference in Brussels. The SCM was developed as a collaboration between Lero and the FESTA EU FP7 project and is based on the aSPIRE project undertaken by Dr John Noll. FESTA, which Ita has been leading since September, completes its work in early-2017. The team have been instrumental in the introduction of Athena SWAN to the University of Limerick, and Ita continues to be the Science & Engineering Athena SWAN champion, sitting on the national, UL and Science & Engineering committees.
PROFES 2016 The 17th Product-Focused Software Process Improvement conference (PROFES 2016) took place in Trondheim, Norway last week. There was a good Lero presence at the event. John Noll and Sarah Beecham, Lero@UL chaired the Doctoral Symposium while Mohammad Abdur Razzak, Lero@UL, presented at the event. Mohammad then co-chaired the Open Space discussion session with Dr Habil Daniel Méndez which was attend by industry, including Microsoft and Amazon. John chaired the Process Improvement session.
Renowned Scholar Seminar Series Prof Brian Fitzgerald delivered an invited seminar at the renowned Scholar Seminar Series in Copenhagen Business School. His talk was entitled “Two’s Company, Three’s a Crowd: Lessons from Crowdsourcing Software Development”
A symposium on the development of a computer science curriculum for Irish schools. Earlier this month the Digital Learning group gathered in Farmleigh House to discuss the development of a new computer science and computational thinking curriculum for Irish schools. They were delighted to be supported by over 90 attendees who gave so generously of their time and considerable expertise in education and ICT. They were particularly pleased to have the support of Education Minister Richard Bruton and Ireland’s Digital Champion, Lord David Puttnam. The international perspective on the development of a new curriculum was provided by Prof Tom Crick, Prof of Computer Science & Public Policy at Cardiff Metropolitan University and Dr. Panagioti Kampylis of the EU Commission Science Service. For more information see http://excited.ie/
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Industry –Lero Publication Collaboration A joint LERO-Tullow Oil-DataDirect Networks abstract has been accepted for Rice Oil & Gas HPC Conference 2017
Dr Cathal O’Broin of LERO@ICHEC will present the ExSeisPIOL library, developed within the ExSeisDat project at LERO.
The Oil and Gas High Performances Computing (HPC) Conference, hosted annually at Rice University in Houston Texas, is the premier meeting place for networking and discussion focused on computing and information technology challenges and needs in the oil and gas industry.
ExSeisPIOL is dedicated to seismic processing workflows for petroleum seismology and is optimised for the structure of seismic files to deliver significant improvements in both productivity and performance on large-scale HPC systems. Using modern OO design, the library is
developed on top of an interface abstraction which targets MPI-I/O and other I/O interfaces. The library also targets the latest in burst buffer technology with appropriate access semantics or through the direct exploitation of the low-level interfaces, to deliver a significant improvement to I/O performance over standalone parallel filesystems such as Lustre and GPFS.
Lero Christmas Parties
Some photos from our 2016 Christmas parties in Dublin and Limerick
Dublin Limerick
All Publications for 2016 are available to view in Linx. (Please contact gerard.mulligan@lero.ie if you require login details for Linx)
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