chris horn's blog

On the morning that today's Irish Times announced that our health service minister is seeking a further 900Meuro reduction in the 14,000Meuro health budget, our deputy prime minster ("Tanaiste") Mary Coghlan announced a further 45Meuro investment in three large national science research centres.

I'm waiting for the reaction from certain public chat-show hosts on our national media: "how is it morally justifiable to spend 45Meuro when it would appear that the crisis in our accident and emergency units in our hospitals is about to severely deepen ?"

Let's see. 45Meuro would buy 560 return flights to Florida on the Government Gulfstream for the Minister of Health and her colleagues; or almost 5,000 return first class transatlantic airtrips for the CEO of a major Irish agency - funded by the taxpayer; or over a 1,000,000 pay-per-view private in-hotel movies for the executives of a major Irish agency - funded by the taxpayer; or 90,000 gifts (glass barometers) for a serving senior Minister - from taxpayers funds. And, as an afterthought perhaps, the investment is worth 228,000 attendances at accident and emergency units in Irish hospitals; or 69,000 in-patient bed days at Irish hospitals; or about just 35% of the cost of a failed and written-off national payroll system for our health service.

The 45Meuro invested today in world class scientific research is a serious moral choice. We can invest in science, or we can partially reduce cut backs in our public services. The consequential responsibility on our science research leaders is onerous. The three centres receiving funding today have already demonstrated impactful advances not just on the standard of scientific research in Ireland, but also to the potential economic and social benefits to Ireland - and indeed humanity at large.

Dr Fergus Shanahan's APC team have already produced world class leadership in the understanding, and the consequential application of, of the complex microbiology and pharmabiotics of the human intestine. The global benefits of pro-biotic food additives are largely due to their outstanding work.

One of the potential benefits of nanotechnology research is the highly targetted delivery of drug payloads to any specific part of the body. Today's delivery of drugs in the human body is akin to the military carpet bombing of world war two: one can appreciate the benefits if we could deliver drugs within the body as clinically as today's military smart weapon delivery systems. The CRANN team, hosted at TCD by John Boland, have much opportunity here and it is perhaps surprising that SFI have apparently not yet focussed more on the biomedical opportunities of nanotechnology research.

Dr Stefan Decker and his team at the DERI project (disclosure: I am on the technical advisory board) in Galway are focussed on enabling computers to really understand the deep complexity of human languages and nuances. If computers can learn to understand the semantics of human communication, then one of the many outcomes can be not just better web search engines, but better web based harmonisation engines which can reconcile what you already know with what you might not know. The opportunities to advance human understanding - by leveraging what is already known by across both today's, but also yesterday's, humanity, rather than forgetting or re-discovering what is in fact already known elsewhere or previously in history - are breathtaking.

But there are also other major centres in Ireland. Declaring a personal interest as the Chair of its governance board, the CTVR centre is globally unique in exploiting a great untapped natural resource, which we are extremely fortunate to have here in Ireland: the airwaves - the 'electro-magnetic spectrum' - which are unsaturated in Ireland, and thus a wonderful opportunity for very advanced new communication technologies. The BDI centre is researching very rapid diagnosis and self-test of medical conditions by non-invasive (e.g. saliva, sweat, blood pinpricks) sampling. The REMEDI centre is researching advanced stem cell research from adult humans.

All of this research, conducted in Ireland, is incredibly impressive. Furthermore, Irish scientific diaspora have returned, and Ireland is acting as a magnet for other nationals to undertake world class research here. The quality, and quantity, of high profile, globally widely-cited scientific papers, and of patents, has increased dramatically.

For me, one of the most exciting consequences has been the proliferation of cross-disciplinary and inter-institutional research amongst our young researchers and principal investigators, despite perhaps our long standing traditional hostility and open competition that all too often has hitherto corrupted some of the more established and senior talent in our universities (as I wrote here). There are clear opportunities for further collaboration between the universities in Ireland supported at the highest level.

But I remain concerned.

I remain concerned, because in my own view, the Irish state agencies - and in particular Science Foundation Ireland - have insufficiently focussed on the opportunity to translate world class research undertaken in Ireland into innovative products and services for the global market. In my view, Science Foundation Ireland is myopically focussed on Science: but what we also need - perhaps need even more - is a focus on Engineering. Ireland needs to take the most interesting scientific results globally available to engineer innovative new products and services for the world market.

I was surprised and concerned, for example, to learn that SFI reputedly believes that the work at REMEDI is overly focussed on commercial exploitation and industry linkage, rather than as SFI reputedly believes what is more nationally strategic basic research: this seems to me to in fact be the antithesis of what the small open Irish economy, with limited financial resources by global standards, actually needs. I am surprised and disappointed, that SFI does not have, and a senior executive has actually told me that it does not see the need for, a national showcase or centre for the outstanding scientific results which its sponsored researchers have already produced, and which are available for uptake by national and multi-national industry at large. I am surprised and disappointed that SFI sees no role in outreach to the Irish public to explain the importance of science in incidents like last week's national dioxin crisis, through a vehicle such as the Science Gallery (again a disclosure: for which I am chair). I am surprised and disappointed that SFI seems to think it can be just a shipyard launching ships, rather than an admiral not only building ships, but leading a complementary and mutually re-enforcing cohesive fleet to take on the world.

45Meuro is a lot of accident and emergency bed spaces. I absolutely know that the research teams receiving this funding feel the awesome national responsibility of the Irish taxpayer watching over them. But I am concerned that SFI is currently missing a much bigger picture than it currently seems able to see.

In the 70s I was a postgraduate student at TCD Computer Science, and interested in digital satellite networking and local area networking technologies. I spent some time studying the design of the Cambridge Ring and other token ring networks. I was then completely inspired by the emergence of CSMSA/CD Ethernet algorithm (in turn derived from the earlier ALOHAnet radio broadcast network) whereby instead of carefully synchronized access to the shared medium, senders are optimistically allowed to transmit whenever they wish: if interference occurs on the medium because of simultaneous transmission, then a randomized backoff procedure allows the system to recover.

I was reminded of all this when I was chatting last week to Lawrence Cowsar, head of Bell Labs Ireland and CTO of the CTVR initiative (I'm chair at CTVR). Sometimes interesting systems result from relaxing constraints and encouraging established taboos to be challenged: for Ethernet, the taboo of careful synchronized access was replaced by unconstrained transmission initiation.

Lawrence, over dinner, was bemoaning the fact that academic research funding is usually and inevitably given for highly focused, highly specialist, uni-disciplinary research. As a result, although the majority of postgraduate researchers, PhDs and post-doctorates may have some experience in team work, that team work is only within the constraints of their own particular research area, under the guidance in most cases of an appropriately myopic faculty member.

By contrast, in general in industry, and in Bell Labs as one example, researchers pro-actively participate in inter-disciplinary teams. This in general seems to be in complete contrast to most academic research. One reason this seems to be is that in general it is difficult to find funding agencies willing to invest in real inter-disciplinary projects, for which multiple research laboratories and multiple terminologies and backgrounds are involved – in general proposals for such research are peer reviewed by research specialists who in turn emphasize uni-disciplinary and singular focus as the best way that their own particular state of the art can be advanced.

I was also reminded of the inertia towards “interference” of disciplines and research when chatting to Lawrence about the technology and algorithms of co-channel management for mobile phone (cellular phone, if you are US) networks. In today’s mobile networks, transmitter masts are carefully erected across a city or landscape so as to minimize interference between masts which reuse the same radio frequencies. This co-channel management challenge is usually resolved by map-colouring algorithms, which allocate frequencies to masts during the network design so as to minimize interference. Sometimes, I smiled to myself, do research proposers seeking financial support from various funding agencies use a map colouring algorithm to minimize the overlaps between their work and so optimize their chances of funding ?

CTVR, and the other CSETs funded by SFI, really are inter-disciplinary: multiple laboratories, academic and industrial, with a very large set of skills and backgrounds. Terminology and a common ability to communicate and collaborate were definitely a problem in the early stage of CTVR. However, we are now seeing highly interesting results which IMHO could only have emerged specifically because of the inter-disciplinary nature of CTVR.

One example is collaboration between the thermal (heat) management research team in the University of Limerick, the radio frequency (RF) and dynamic spectrum research team in NUI Maynooth, the software radio team in TCD, and finally the constraint and optimization analysts at UCC (a full list of CTVR partners is here). It turns out that the taboo of pair-wise interference minimization for co-channel algorithms for mobile (cellular) phone networks can be broken. In fact, channels need not be carefully separated, and interference can be allowed. Using insights from “temperature interference” in thermal management systems, instead of pair-wise constraints between transmitters, a single constraint can be applied to all transmitters whose signals can still be reliably discerned by a receiver. Channels can then be allocated in mobile networks in such a way that has the commercial benefit of reducing the numbers of transmission masts and equipment required.

Who would have thought that research into heat management would lead to an interesting new way of allocating channel frequencies in a mobile phone network ?

Another example of multi-disciplinary work is the application of well understood results in the radio frequency and dynamic spectrum field to the relatively younger area of photonics and management of light, for next generation 100Gigabit Ethernet – work being led by Tyndall at UCC, but for which the NUI Maynooth RF engineers have been able to bring remarkable insight.

In my view – and I believe I speak for Lawrence too – some of the ablest and best researchers which industry can hire come from those postgraduates and post-doctorates who have truly experienced and innovated in inter-disciplinary research. Taboos can sometimes be best challenged and overcome by researchers from outside the immediate specialist domain in question. And yet, world-wide, much academic research seems structurally resistant to such ways of working.

Fans of Roddy Doyle will know that one of his novels is “The Van” in which Jimmy Rabbitte sells cheap grub – fish and chips - to the hungry in Dublin, whilst trying to stay one step ahead of the city health officials. If you haven’t heard of Roddy Doyle, then perhaps you might nevertheless have seen the movie or heard the music from “The Commitments”, which is based on one of his other books, and is the story of a new soul band born in Dublin city.

“The Van”, or “Van the Man”, are also nicknames for the great Belfast musician and singer Van Morrison, one of my personal favorites.

Anyway. “The Van” is kind-of well-established in Dublin culture!

For the next two weeks, a new “Van” is hitting the streets of Dublin. It is white, marked prominently with “CTVR” and has various antennae on the roof. In fact, it will be making history: in conjunction with two major international wireless conferences being hosted back to back in Dublin – IEEE DySpan and IEEE VTC – the first civilian trials (I believe in the world..) will be taking place in live dynamic spectrum, ultra-wideband antennae and software radio.

The unique trials are being undertaken by international researchers attending either or both conferences, and the research team in the Centre for Telecommunications Value Chain Research (CTVR), for which Prof. Donal O’Mahony is the Centre Director; Dr. Linda Doyle of TCD leads the software radio activities; Dr. Ronan O’Farrell of NUI Maynooth leads radio frequency hardware research; and for which I am the current chairperson.

Raw data and the results of the live experiments are being made available to the attendees of the two conferences, for follow up study and research. Some leading companies and researchers worldwide have brought their own equipment and research tools to Dublin to be able, for the very first time, to conduct their own live experiments, during the two conferences.

Our national Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) granted CTVR a special trial license for the research, which enables live experimentation in dynamic spectrum management. The work has global impact, since in general the electromagnetic spectrum worldwide is increasingly crowded. Currently, broadcasters (mobile phone operators, TV stations, radio stations, emergency services, satellite communications, navigation frequencies, etc) are statically allocated frequency ranges by each jurisdiction. In many cases however, the spectrum at specific frequencies and at a particular location or region may be actually currently idle – for example a TV station might be currently off-air, or current traffic on a mobile phone network relatively light. Dynamic spectrum techniques change the entire model: frequencies can be allocated on demand as actually needed rather than statically pre-allocated; used, and then released. They even can be traded on demand, opening up entire new business models..

Ireland’s own use of the electromagnetic spectrum is not as crowded as many other jurisdictions, in part as a consequence of not having a large military requirement for frequency allocations. ComReg has been remarkably fore-sighted in permitting (I believe, the world’s first civilian) live experimental use of a large swathe of frequencies, including for CTVR. One major possible use of dynamic frequency techniques and ultra-wideband antennae is for IPTV transmissions. Equally, software radios potentially enable miniaturisation of the current portfolio of antennae ‘stacks” – such as in “tri-band” cell and mobile phones, and other mobile devices and sensors – into a single, dynamically-tuneable, antenna driven by software.

If you’re in Dublin city over the next two weeks, watch out for the CTVR Van!! And if you’re interested in dynamic spectrum, software radio or ultra wide-band antennae, then get along to the conferences, in the Burlington hotel.

A couple of weeks ago, I gave a keynote address at a Science Foundation Ireland seminar in UCC. A few people have asked me to post a copy on my blog, so with apologies to those of you uninterested in Irish science policy who may want to skip this blog entry, here it is.

The event was a public presentation by all seven Centres for Science and Engineering Technology, to the general public and media. Minister Michael Martin attended. The seven CSETs are:

· Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC) led by Prof. Fergus Shanahan, and researching gastro-intestinal health

· Biomedical Diagnositics Institute (BDI), led by Prof. Brian MacCraith, and researching early detection and diagnosis of disease

· Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Naondevices (CRANN), led by Prof. John Boland, and researching nanotechnology applications

· Centre for Telecommunications Value Chain Research (CTVR), led by Prof. Donal O’Mahony, and researching telecommunications technologies

· Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), led by Michael Turley and Prof. Dr. Stefan Decker, researching the semantic web

· Lero, led by Prof. Kevin Ryan, and researching software engineering

· The Regenerative Medicine Institute (Remedi), led by Prof. Tim O’Brien, and researching gene and cell therapy for tissue repair

I had returned from Beijing the previous evening, and got up very early that Monday morning to drive down to Cork for 8.00am. The address follows:

--

Welcome. 24 hours ago I was in China, where I have been a regular visitor this decade. I am sure many of you here in Cork will be proudly aware that your city is twinned with the city of Shanghai, since 2005. Perhaps only some of you will be aware that in addition to a sharing of challenges and opportunities as a nation’s second capital, that both cities have 021 as their city telephone dialing code!

China is one of the few nations to have put a man in space. They have a stated ambition of a man on the moon within the next decade. Just recently, they demonstrated a millimeter accurate trajectory in intercepting at high speed, and thus deliberately destroying, one of their own satellites. They have just two weeks ago launched their first satellite of the first non-US global positioning system (GPS) constellation, a full two years ahead of likely launch of the first satellites of the European Galileo GPS constellation.

China is widely accepted as the global focus of manufacturing, including high value intricate parts and systems. But it is quite clear that China is also increasingly undertaking world class scientific research and development, and is doing so specifically to enhance the national competitiveness. Large science parks co-exist alongside manufacturing zones to further improve their processes and capabilities. There is high investment in research and development for improving the environment, improving energy efficiency, and improving health care. Biopharma and biodevice research and manufacturing is collocated with large clinical hospitals. There are rumours of nanomanufacturing and nanofabrication initiatives being planned. There are high levels of technology literacy, appreciation and fascination, particularly amongst the young. Space science merely accelerates a scientific and technology culture, together with an immense national pride.

Minister Martin has stated that “Ireland’s sustained economic growth and prosperity depends upon establishing a culture of scientific and technological innovation‚ a high level of research and development‚ and a globally competitive knowledge-based economy”.

In my view, we have yet to establish a deep culture of scientific and technological innovation. Given the major economies – the US and China - and their investment and momentum in science and engineering, where is there room for us here in Ireland ? What should be our focus, if we are not to conduct catch-up “me-too” science ?

A world class scientific result is now increasingly no longer the privilege of a single dedicated science professional. Today, it is far more usually the work of teams, collaborating domestically and worldwide. As but one example, consider how laboratories world wide collaborated extensively with their peers in China to identify the virus in 2003 which had led to unexplained deaths amongst poultry workers in Guangdong province: hitherto virus in poultry which was neutral to humans, but which had mutated. To my knowledge however, Ireland then played no role in the international detective work.

Today, I believe that the greatest opportunities for novel discovery lie on the boundaries between disciplines, areas in which specialists from a variety of backgrounds work together on a common challenge. Equally, the activities with the likely highest benefits to society and economic opportunities may be discovered when others may be too narrowly focused. The most likely successful structures are inter-disciplinary and highly collaborative, both science and engineering, teams, which is why we have – centres for science and engineering technologies – CSETs.

The Minister has mentioned the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre, and this morning we will hear more about it and each of its six peer CSETs. All the CSETs are inter-disciplinary. As an example, the convergence of biological expertise with semiconductor engineering and nanoparticle scientists in the BDI CSET is leading to highly sensitive and hence early detection and low cost detection of diseases. The collaboration of radio frequency physicists, with software and electronic engineers, with market trading theorists and business analysts in the CTVR CSET means that radio frequencies need no longer be exclusively licensed and auctioned to the most competent bidders, and instead that right to use specific frequencies can be dynamically traded as a new global commodity: COMREG has described this initiative as Ireland’s potential new gold.

We need an integrated national focus to yield economic and social success. Cross agency co-operation on sustaining research, and development, nationwide on a small, carefully chosen, number of specific scientific and engineering problems which, if solved here in Ireland, will yield intense value for our tax payers’ investment. Such investments clearly need to be thoughtful and nationally strategic.

As taxpayers, we now own seven highly energetic CSETs, led by seven outstanding scientific chief executives whom you will meet today, our centre directors. Will the portfolio of economic and social agencies as part of our civil service now build on the CSETs, these seven people and their teams, as the foundation for a sustainable economic and social benefits for the decades ahead ?

The focus is not solely on increasing R&D undertaken in Ireland, but also problems which if solved will provide immense value to our society and to our economy. If the agencies can collectively execute well on the CSET model, I believe that Ireland will have built a global show case which we will hold in pride in the years ahead.

The LeMass era, also associated with TK Whitaker, opened Ireland to international economies. The IDA was established, leading to substantial manufacturing jobs, and also which a decade ago gave birth to its sister agency Enterprise Ireland. The concept of a free economic zone was one important tactic used in the national strategy, and which has been widely admired by the Chinese and others. Today, now, in this – as yet unclaimed and unnamed - era, our administration has established SFI. In this era, the CSET model, if fully developed as a national initiative of carefully orchestrated strategic impact , will I believe be even more significant than the model of a free economic zone.

2007 has so far been of public concern here in Cork, with plant closures. But Cork is uniquely placed through its formal alliance with the east to demonstrate the economic and social benefits of a sustained focus on science and technology, including in particular international co-operation. Like Shanghai, Cork has the number 21 associated with it; and like Shanghai, Cork has an opportunity to come of age, as a dynamic and energetic location in the 21^st century.”

Gee, welcome to my blog, thanks for stopping by.

A little about me: electronics engineer, then got into software. Co-founded IONA back in Feb. 1991, along with Annrai O'Toole and Sean Baker. Was CEO from then until 2000, including taking the company public in 1997. Came back again as CEO in 2003 and stepped down for the second time in 2005.

Today I’m Vice Chair of the Board, and have no executive role. In practice, I attend our board meetings – typically twice a quarter, one physical and one by concall. I take part in strategy discussions, including our merger and acquisition plans. From time to time I’m asked to meet customers, and always enjoy doing so.

Since stepping down from an operational role in IONA, I’ve got myself involved in a fair few other activities. I have an interest in China, and founded the Ireland China business organisation back in 2000, although today I have no longer have any committee involvement. Together with Nicole Bernard I co-founded, and chair, Slisiar which provides business services to companies entering the Chinese market. We have a small team in Beijing – Nicole is resident there – and have clients not just in the IT sector, but also for example in wind farms, the building materials industry, and agrifoods. Pretty much regardless of a sector, the challenges of trading with China, or establishing a business in China – hiring, legal authorisations, channel and partner development, etc – remain similar. I visit China a few times each year.

I also co-founded and am non-executive chair of Cloudsmith, along Mitch Sonies as CEO and Henrik Lindberg as CTO. Cloudsmith is very virtual – Mitch is in Manhattan, Henrik is in Stockholm, I’m in Dublin and we also have a small team in Prague: but skype and our internal wikis and blogs keep us together. We raised private finance for Cloudsmith over the summer of 2006, and started operations just in October 2006, and will launch its initial – free - service to the world wide developer community round about Eclipsecon 2007. The Cloudsmith guys have already donated open source technology to eclipse.org in the form of Buckminster and Cloudsmith will add some interesting services later this year.

Last November, I agreed to become non-executive chair of LeCayla. LeCayla was founded a few years ago by Conor Halpin, who created and managed our CORBA mainframe business in the late 90s. LeCayla is private, and venture capital backed by Trinity VC. It is a very interesting play in the “software as a service (SaaS)” space, and offers billing, rating and metering technology for software ISVs who want to build a new business model using SaaS. LeCayla’s technology can be bundled with an ISV’s software package, and then when installed inhouse on end customers machines, can monitor actual usage (driven by whatever business rules the ISV wishes) and securely report this for billing purposes. SaaS is typically positioned – eg by salesforce.com – as the combination of remotely hosted software and pay-as-you-go. LeCayla’s technology enables pay-as-you-go but the actual software can either be remotely hosted or inhouse.

In 2006, I became involved in a couple of projects for Trinity, from where we founded IONA back in 1991. The bigger of these is one of the seven national centres for science and technology (CSETs) in Ireland. I’m chair of the woefully named – I didn’t chose the name! – centre for telecommunications value chain research (CTVR). Participants in CTVR are seven universities led by TCD, together with Bell Labs Ireland and Lucent-Alcatel, and some smaller participation by Xilinx and EADS. It’s a big project and working in areas as diverse as photonics systems for terabit ethernet, cooling technologies, corrosion and failure research, ultra wide band antennas, and software and cognitive radio. The key theme underlying and guiding the research is identifying leverage points in the global telecommunications industry – in its value chain – for which successful new research could have a highly disruptive impact and create entirely new business opportunities. Donal O’Mahony is centre director – the CEO – of the project and is doing a fine job co-ordinating such an ambitious inter-disciplinary, inter-institutional nationwide academic-industry initiative. One of the very exciting aspects of the project is the license granted to it by COMREG, the Irish telecommunications regulator, to allow experimentation of ultrawide dynamic frequency techniques for cognitive radio on the national electromagnetic spectrum: the only such license granted anywhere in the world.

A second project at TCD which I chair is the Science Gallery. This is the ground and first floors of the new ship-shaped building at the corner of Pearse street and Westland Row. The Gallery will open later this year, and will be free to the public. It will be a venue for discussion and debate on scientific issues of interest to society: for example, global warming, the MRSA super-bug, avian bird flu, radiation from mobile phone masts, and so on. It includes exhibition space and a theatre. We have just appointed Michael John Gorman as the first CEO, and Michael John is putting his team together for the official launch and opening later this year.

I have been the chair of UNICEF Ireland for several years, which fund raises from the Irish public and commercial sector on behalf of UNICEF world wide. We also actively advocate on childrens’ issues to Irish Government, and have been successful in for example getting the Government to allocate a considerable proportion of its investment in HIV/AIDS work for children. Maura Quinn has been the CEO since 1996, and is stepping down next April having rescued the organisation from near bankruptcy in 1996 to the multi-million euro business it is today. We have just concluded our search process for her replacement but we have not yet announced who is the new CEO, who will start her work in April.

I’m also currently acting as a business coach to six CEOs of Irish software companies. They were allocated to me by Enterprise Ireland under its inaugural one year mentoring programme for 30 CEOs, together with Stanford Graduate Business School and with CLG Executive Coaching. In practice, we meet together monthly for peer discussion, and I naturally keep in touch with each of them on their strategic issues.

I guess that’s about it. I do also have occasional meetings of the IBEC ICT management committee; and with Vinny Cahill and David Abrahamson as an advisor to the Dept. of Computer Science at TCD on the research and teaching programmes.

Every day, and every week, is different. Sometimes I have a lot going on. Sometimes not. I work from home a lot, and avoid going into the city if I can. I’m usually travelling once a month or so, although from October to December last I don’t think I had a single trip. Right now, I’m just back from Beijing and Shanghai last week, in Dublin and Cork this week, and heading for Stanford next week.