chris horn's blog

Just a short reminder that I'm running a parallel blog to diary my work this year as President of Engineers Ireland - quite busy and an awful lot going on ;-)   Hope to put some more thoughts here in this blog when I eventually get a chance :-)

Posted my talk this afternoon at the Engineering in Context symposium here.

Its main focus is the impact of the internet on education and teaching; and the role of mentoring and coaching by professional engineers to young engineers.

Just a note to say that I've started a new blog specifically devoted to the next 12 months as President of Engineers Ireland.

I'll keep this blog for musings, opinion pieces etc, of a more general nature....

I was approached by John McGowan, former President of Engineers Ireland, back in 2007 and asked "Chris I know you're very busy right now, but what will you be doing in two years time ?". So, I signed up to be put into the pipeline of Presidents for Engineers Ireland, and last night my twelve months started. Martin Lowery (ex IDA and Coilte) will take over from me this time next year, with PJ Rudden (MC O'Sullivan, Bord Gais and now RPS) takes over from Martin in two years time.

I attach below the inaugural speech which I gave last night at the headquarters of Engineers Ireland. Apologies for the length! The main points are:

• Thanking my colleagues.
• Innovation now being Ireland's highest strategic priority: in my view, innovation is rather different from invention, and is also not limited to scientific and technology discovery.
• Regret that the national transition year scheme appears to be being diminished, since it will reduce discovery, innovation and team work with our young people.
• Engineers Ireland to take an initiative on the teaching of higher level mathematics, applied mathematics and pure sciences in our schools.
• Increasing Engineers Ireland's recent initiatives to assist unemployed Members.
• Opening up Engineers Ireland to a much broader membership:
• Opening up full membership of Engineers Ireland to ordinary bachelors degree (level 7) graduates of accredited engineering courses, in addition to honours bachelor degree (level 8) as at present;
• Opening up full membership of Engineers Ireland to level 7 and level 8 graduates from "cognate" courses in mathematics and sciences, provided that the individual is in practice working in an engineering discipline.
• Chartered Engineering status for graduates from 2013 will require masters (level 9) education, or demonstrated experience equivalent to masters level.
• Encouraging and frankly expecting most, if not all, faculty members of universities and institutes of technology to become Members of Engineers Ireland, and ideally Chartered Engineers.
• Engineering is an altruistic profession, serving society. Engineers have a duty to articulate concerns about the safety, health and welfare of society
• Engineers in Ireland today have concerns over infrastructure issues relating to water, broadband, roads maintenance, and strategic vulnerability of national electricity supplies and grid, amongst other issues.
• Activities in Ireland in any engineering discipline - such as civil, mechanical, electrical, bio-medical, software, petrochemical... - which impact, or could impact, the safety, health and welfare of individuals or society should be regulated so that approval is required by a Chartered Engineer. Engineers Ireland will push for regulation, and may in the short term initiate a voluntary disclosure and public register of projects which have been duly approved.
• Ireland has suffered severely from governance failures in various sectors. Engineers Ireland already has a strong code of ethics. There is currently no national embracing legislation for good faith reporting. Members who in good faith report concerns about their employer or client, or even another Member, concerning the safety, health and welfare of individuals or society, and who subsequently feel inadequate action was taken or even worse that they were sanctioned, can bring this to the attention of Engineers Ireland which will if necessary defend such a Member.

The full text follows:

I attended the third annual conference Science, Engineering Communications and Outreach conference earlier this week at Engineers Ireland. As incoming President of EI next week, I had the privilege of presenting the annual award for Science, Engineering and Technology Awareness to Jim Cooke.

I had not met Jim before, but had heard of his remarkable work. Jim has been a physics and mathematics teacher at the Christian Brothers School in Synge Street, in Dublin city centre, for over 40 years. He also reintroduced the teaching of Applied Mathematics at the school, after it had been absent from the school curriculum for a very long time.

Computers are designed, at least at the high level, by people. Computers thus in turn reflect human intellect - innovation but also copying, sheer brilliance but also blind shortcomings. Like any engineering discipline, there is much to be learnt not just about technology but also about psychology and sociology by examining the design of computers.

If you are at all interested in computing, you really should visit the Computer History Museum in Mountain View California.

The museum is hosted in what used to be a Silicon Graphics building, just off route 101, and in fact in which I recall I had several business meetings a decade ago. Now in the foyer is one of two magnificent working reproductions of Babbage's Difference Engine - the other is in the Science Museum, London. Every hour or so, two curators give an enthralling demonstration of how the machine operates, the mechanics and the arithmetic behind it, to calculate values of arbitrary polynomial equations.

But the main part of the museum is a warehouse at the back. I experienced sheer exuberance and absolute awe by the wealth of history laid out in row after row after row. The Z3 of Konrad Zuse - a German civil engineer - is there, the world's first programmable electromagnetic computer built in 1941 at the height of the second world war using 2,400 telephone relays. The 40 rack, each 8' high, 18,000 vacuum tube ENIAC from 1946, which had to be physically reconfigured for each program "load". Gene Amdhal's PhD project, the 1955 WISC - complete with bullet holes (don't ask!). The SAGE real time air defence system from 1955, with the first ever graphical user interface. The bet-your-company IBM 360 - the first machine I used. The NASA Apollo guidance computer which Neil Armstrong had to override just before the Tranquility touchdown in 1969. The wonderful Dec PDP-8, and then -11, upon which I spent many a happy hour. The first 10MFLOP machine, the CDC6600. The IMP, the original backbone of the predecessor of the internet, and on which packet-switching was first built. The first ever computer for the kitchen - the H316 - a wonderfully funny folly. The first hobbyist machine Altair 8800 for which Bill Gates and Paul Allen produced Altair BASIC. Seymour Cray's extraordinary and aesthetic CRAY-1, -2 and -3: using cable as delay lines! The actual very first Apple-1, in a wooden box, built by Steve Wozniak in 1976. They're all there: mercury delay lines, core memories, vacuum tubes, first silicon transistors, first silicon chips, first use of gallium arsenide, huge magnetic disks, first robot arms, first computer mice, it is just so extraordinary, inspiring, and provocative.

I was recently interviewed for a podcast about my huge enjoyment of Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine" - IMHO one of the very great books of the computer industry, and written by a lay reader for ordinary mere mortals. I was therefore delighted to see a Data General Eclipse and Digital VAX 11/780 amongst the exhibits, no doubt carefully placed to glare at each other across the aisle.

Sadly though, the museum feels, to me at least, like a cemetery. The entire warehouse has a distinctive smell of stale electronics, and all the exhibits are morbid artifacts, frozen and lifeless in their dusty racks and dull cabinets. Each of them yearns to be powered up just one more time, strains to feel the surge of bits pulsing through its accumulators, registers, de-multiplexers, decoders, caches, and yes switches and lamps.

On my visit, I stayed well after the curator had announced closing time, and managed to corner him. Surely each of these wonderful machines could be powered up again ? Even if the electronics in some cases were now no longer safe and thus a fire risk, why not simulate their operation by judiciously hiding a microprocessor in the background somewhere to cycle through lamp and circuit sequences and bring some of the thrill of these machines back again ? He responded that although this had been considered, there are apparently strongly held views by the trustees that such sorcery would detract from the raw stature of the exhibits, and perhaps demean their creators. In a way perhaps, I do understand: these magnificent wonders and follies of the most innovative and creative industry mankind has ever known now lay sadly but peacefully at rest for ever.

One of the core tenets of the Science Gallery, which I currently chair, is to bring science and technology to life by having researchers and innovators in the flesh present to discuss and explain their work to curious members of the public. A science museum is interesting, and it can be fun to try out experiments yourself. But the Gallery is different: the scientists and engineers are there in front of you, and in many cases can do the experiments alongside with (or even on!) you.

It would be wonderful to have all those inspirational architects and engineers behind the incredible machines in the Computer History Museum rightfully and deservedly proudly present when one visits. Sadly I guess, this is unlikely to ever happen. Perhaps at best there can be video interviews available to try and explain the sheer excitement behind the innovations they each made. Each one of them a master of the particular universe of virtual reality that they had uniquely created.

Whatever about trying to explain the creativity and discoveries made by computer engineers to the public, how on earth would one do it for software ? Yes, I am aware of the interest group on software at the Computer History Museum itself. But could there ever be a Software History Museum, what would it inspirationally show and how would it operate ?

Its perhaps conceivable to consider a Museum, or Gallery, of the history of computer games. Perhaps also of the evolution of graphical user interfaces. But a history, an exhibit, of software in general ?

I think the real story to be told about the history of software is not about programming languages themselves - Fortran, Simula-67, Forth, Lisp, C, Basic, Prolog, Perl, Ruby and so on. Rather it is about the evolution of programming itself: the development of data structures, the unfolding of functional as well as declarative thinking, the interplay between data and logic, introspection, aspect orientation, and so forth. Very best of all, I strongly believe that this story needs to be told plainly and simply so that the world at large can understand and appreciate how software has been evolved as we learn to reflect and begin to understand how we ourselves think and reason and learn.

I can recall after commons (the formal evening meal at my alma mater) having a heated conversation with a Professor of Genetics and various humanities students over coffee. I was the sole technologist. I fervently explained that just as there can be incredible beauty in literature and music, there too can also be extraordinary beauty in the structure of software, these artifacts of the soul and mind. However, it took a trained intellect to understand this. I was of course ridiculed, and left feeling battered and appropriately flamed. But perhaps one day, some truly gifted people will produce a software appreciation, through which mere mortals can too see the wonder, exuberance and awe of great software creations.

There's some considerable debate here in Ireland about the need to "up skill" our economy, in the light of loss of jobs to lower cost economies. I however contend that there is not so much a need to "up skill", but to "core skill" - to get back to fundamentals and thus ensure that we have a solid foundation of lifetime skills.

One of the key attractions which as a nation have used to attract and retain our comparatively high levels of foreign direct investment in Ireland has been the availability of a talented, well educated and technically oriented workforce. If we in Ireland aspire to build a future for our own young people as a leading nation for innovation; with high value services; succeeding as a knowledge-fuelled economy; having good, stable and well paid jobs; and with the ability to afford high quality social support for the weaker members of our society, then education in core intellectual skills are inextricably intertwined with our future.

Our young people should be able to reason, to deduce and derive, to correlate and spot patterns, to explore and to be inquisitive, and to be articulate and confident. In my humble view, these are more life centric skills than learning facts and perspectives by rote: knowing something off by heart, but not understanding why, why not, and so what. Skills taught in schools should be for life. There are many things which can be learnt during adulthood, but some skills which are difficult to learn without a solid foundation during the teens and 20s.

Without these skills, we will have little to offer the 21st century global economy. If our young people are weak in core skills, many of them may not find well paid careers in Ireland nor overseas: these jobs will go to other nationals in other economies.

In my view, and I admit as an elderly grey traditionalist, mathematics is a critical catalyst to careful reasoning and deduction. Mathematics is too vast to be learnt by rote and instead requires insightful thinking and intellectual clarity. Taught well, it enables core intellectual skills for life. It also makes learning easier, not just for mathematics, but many other subjects, since understanding comes from reasoning, rather than learning by rote.

The decline in the Irish attainment of mathematics and core sciences has been gradual. It has perhaps gone unnoticed by many, but major employers across a range of business sectors of strategic importance to Ireland are seriously concerned to see substantial decreases in the number of our students taking technology courses, and in particular the fall off in those taking mathematics. If we all aspire to build a future for our young people as outlined above, then competence in mathematics is a cornerstone. Competence in mathematics underpins not just engineering and the physical sciences, but also sectors such as alternative energy and green systems, financial services, medical research, and cross disciplinary areas such as bio-engineering. For so many areas of our potential national prosperity and quality of society, competence in mathematics is critical.

With further government budget cuts imminent, there is a very serious risk that teaching in mathematics and the core sciences will dramatically suffer further. This is especially so at secondary school (high school, in Ireland) level, since these subjects are perceived as resource intensive and difficult to teach. The Principals of eleven secondary schools of one Irish county have recently jointly written an open letter to all the parents of all their students stating that in view of Government cutbacks, they may no longer be in a position to teach honours mathematics and sciences at all in their schools. There is further anecdotal evidence of schools consciously cutting their teaching programmes in areas which are nevertheless critical to the future of our nation, as their way of meeting newly imposed budgetary constraints.

Incredibly, almost 20% of our schools no longer offer honours mathematics to their students. In 2007, only 14% of Irish university applicants to honours degrees had achieved honours mathematics capability in school.

It is also widely accepted that several factors need to be urgently and collectively addressed to resolve this issue: the professional development and inspiration of mathematics teachers; the teaching and examination methods of honours Mathematics; and other implicit disincentives to students such as points, grading and curriculum factors.

Points, in particular, deserve mention. In Ireland, we have a highly unfortunate and ill-conceived national system of awarding points in our school examinations for grades obtained, regardless of the intellectual difficulty of any particular subject. Earning points by studying honours mathematics is widely projected as overly difficult when equivalent points could be earned for less effort elsewhere. Students are in some cases explicitly advised by some teachers and advisers to take a cluster of subjects which together may overlap in content and collectively make points accumulation easier, regardless of career aspirations. Students who score particularly high totals of points, are under considerable pressure to undertake university degrees which require high numbers of points to apply, regardless of their career aspirations: "don't waste your points". University courses with limited places (due to resource constraints) usually require high levels of points. Courses which offer wonderful career opportunities do not necessarily require extremely high points, and high scoring students usually as a result do not take them.

Examinations are ill constructed. Substantial question choice enables teachers to omit major sections of a course syllabus, thus focussing students on a more limited syllabus which is likely to be sufficient to earn examination points. I'm aware of university professors aghast that some first year university students, ostensibly with high numbers of points, arrive into technology degree courses without any knowledge, for example, of trigonometry: some teachers omit trigonometry from their teaching, correctly believing that high points can still be achieved by filtering out questions during an examination.

In my view, our economy can no longer afford to be impartial in the content of its educational services. Some topics available at our schools can be learnt at any stage in life: others are much more difficult to do so.

Teachers should be encouraged to foster reasoning, deduction, derivation, correlation, exploration and curiosity, intellectual clarity and insight, fluency and confidence. Mathematics and the core sciences are clear catalysts. Teachers who achieve consistent success in their students in these subjects should not only be acclaimed but also receive fiscal reward - if this cannot be done through Government pay, it may be possible to do via industry sponsored competitions. Teachers whose own core skills are weak should be offered re-skilling and professional development. Considerably more use should be made of the web - including podcasts and vidcasts to complement the music on students' personal players - to cultivate dynamic, current, interesting course material: social free educational networking can compensate to some extent weaknesses in any specific teacher in a particular school.

Our country needs to get back to basics: core skills taught well, rather than nebulous "up skills". Mathematics and the core sciences are one critical foundation.

Dell finally announced yesterday that they are winding up their manufacturing operations in Limerick, and instead focussing their European manufacturing investments in Lodz, Poland.

Dell has been a major employer in Ireland, responsible for 5% of GNP according to one estimate. The immediate loss of jobs in the Limerick plant will be 1,900; and with estimates of consequences for a further 1,500 jobs which in firms which directly supply the plant, and a further 7,000 jobs in other industries at risk.

Although the demise of Dell's manufacturing was not a surprise, I was frankly surprised and disappointed by aspects of the way the announcement was made. Dell quite rightly insisted that they would tell their own staff first before anyone else. However I believe it was unprofessional and pusillanimous of Michael Dell, the Dell CEO, not to make the announcement in person himself in Limerick in front of his own staff. He instead sent his VP Operations, EMEA. Michael has been the beneficiary not only of professional work by his own manufacturing staff in Limerick, but also personally of the plaudits by the local community on his several visits to Limerick over the years, not least an honorary degree from the University of Limerick. He was a gentleman enough to receive these accolades, but not man enough to deliver his savage news in person to his own staff.

I was also astonished that the Minister for the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (DETE) and co-incidently also the Tanaiste (Vice Prime Minister), Mary Coughlan chose not to appear in person in Limerick. Instead she relied on the local Limerick Minister, the Minister of Defence Willie O'Dea, to be present. In my recollection, previous Ministers of DETE have usually been on hand at the times of major job losses. In fact, as a result of her absence and residence in Dublin Mary Coughlan may have sent the Irish public a not so subtle message: maybe she does not support Willie O'Dea in Limerick and his statements about the future prospects with Dell.

Mary Coughlan is apparently due to travel with the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen to Japan next week to lead a trade delegation from the Irish business community. The timing of this trip could probably not be worse relative to the Dell announcement and the general poor economic condition. One can only hope that Brian Cowen and Mary Coughlan will return to Ireland with very major significant positive news of substantial Japanese investment and business contracts: presumably that is why they are still travelling despite the rapidly deteriorating domestic economic situation and the anxious Irish public.

I said in my opening statement above "finally announced". I think there was a strong fear for some time - maybe even two years or longer - that Dell would stop its Irish manufacturing sooner or later. That being said, I personally do believe the stated Dell corporate position that the decision was only made within the last week, despite some Irish media accusations to the contrary. In a public company, such major announcements are generally material, from the legal perspective, to the public investor community. Public announcement of a major decision thus usually follows immediately after the decision itself: otherwise there is a danger of leaks and the strong possibility of criminal "insider trading". The actual decision was therefore in fact almost certainly only made very recently.

Nevertheless, there was indeed a fear and suspicion for some considerable time that Dell would stop its Irish manufacturing. It is surprising therefore that our Government appears to have poorly handled the announcement. There was plenty of time to prepare a well considered contingency plan, and immediately initiate it. Indeed, I suspect that such a plan was almost certainly prepared by agencies such as the IDA, Forfas and Enterprise Ireland - they are staffed by competent professionals. Perhaps the apparent mismanagement of the consequences of the announcement by the Cabinet and Ministers is symptomatic of a much deeper issue: the Cabinet is overcome by the tsunami of bad economic news, does not know what agencies and advisors to work with or even trust, and is frankly paralysed and frozen in the headlights of the media and of public anxiety.

A senior civil servant today commented to me that it is amazing to consider the turn around in Prime Minister Brown's performance and public perception in the UK. From a period just last July, when he faced a back benchers revolt and the opposition leader David Cameron looked to be the inevitable victor, Brown has executed a stunning turnaround and is now neck and neck with Cameron, if not ahead.

Prime Minister Brown is performing. He is taking visible and urgent actions and steps, and has set out a direction to lead his people...

Looking ahead here in Ireland, it is very clear that we cannot rely on manufacturing activities to sustain our economy. We do have very valuable operations continuing here, not least in IBM, Intel, Apple and HP. The challenge is whether we can nurture our own cohort of Irish companies to leverage such multinationals as a global distribution channel. Are there products and services which we can supply to these companies regardless of where they happen to currently position their own manufacturing operations (hopefully yes in Ireland, but not guaranteed to continue to be so) ? What new products and services can we build, offer, license to them that add value regardless of where they happen to have their operations ?

The answers of course include both new innovations and more efficiently produced current products and services. But amongst the answers is also the strong possibility of building businesses by sublicensing results from the multinationals themselves, with early and nascent markets - I wrote about this in an earlier article.

Our enterprise strategy must evolve - quickly - in Ireland. We need to focus increasingly hard on innovation in Ireland, and building our own companies by exploiting the opportunities which the presence of the multinationals here create.

The doomsday is that Ireland deteriorates to become a domestically traded services economy: services sold within Ireland to support the goods and services we import.

We do not need to "up-skill" so much as "core-skill". "Upskilling" is nice political camouflage, but frankly a shallow aspiration. We instead need to ensure that we have a strong foundation in the core skills - not the "up" skills whatever they are - which are necessary for innovation, insight, and the development of a true indigenous enterprise culture.

A few weeks ago I posted a link to an article which I had written for the Irish Times Innovation monthly magazine.

I'm becoming an occasional columnist for it, and another article appears here in today's edition. The spelling mistake in the title of the online version is their mistake, not mine!

Happy New Year , and thanks for watching my 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.

I remember once in Trinity when I was an engineering student having a long and isolated evening trying to argue a case that there is beautiful art in software programming – and in all engineering disciplines – with a skeptical but distinguished professor of history and fellow humanities students. I explained that software can be incredibly wonderful architected, but of course only the cognoscente – ie software developers, but not mere mortals – can appreciate so. But on the other hand most mere mortals can appreciate the visual arts, good music and literature even if they have not had specialist training. I came away glad I had a flame suit, but it was a fun tease anyway.

The Science Gallery focuses on the confluence of science and technology with art and discovery. This weekend we are hosting ArtBots – the Robot Talent Show, as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival. I went along to the opening last night – it was pretty busy – and really enjoyed some of the more artistic entrants.

On walking in, you are met by Rubot II, which was a centre of attraction for many of the teenagers there, and impressive if not particularly artistic. But close to Rubot, you can hear and see what a 6 metre length of vibrating and oscillating steel band looks like in the Storm and 6 Bands. I really liked the Rechnender Raum, an inverted dynamic machine in which its computations are sent to its centre. What Is It Without The Hand That Wields It was little gruesome, weeping blood every time a player was injured in Counter-Strike Source. I really liked Gossamer-1 with the intricate patterns it layered in response to the ambient sounds in the exhibit.

Ray Lee gave an astonishing orchestral performance of robotic music entitled Force Field as he conducted, and played virtual instruments. By moving his hands – air guitar like – he could pluck strings, play chords, and assemble a rhythmical cacophony of harmonies and melodies – quite amazing. Unfortunately however his only concert was last night, and so if you missed it, well you’ll have to wait until next time.

There are fifteen exhibits altogether, together with play areas where you can build your own robots. Entrance, as is our policy is free. On the flip side, the exhibition is only running this weekend and finishes tomorrow evening: we have to meet the costs of having the exhibitor engineers and artists be with us in Dublin.

So, if you are in Dublin this weekend, do hop on the DART and go explore the show. Its great to be able to show the public that there is art in software, science and engineering :-)..

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Postscript: some photos from the show are here.

I was asked to give a keynote speech earlier this week at the International Manufacturing Conference 2008, DIT.

I was perhaps (deliberately :-)) a little controversial and I had to wear my flame suit when responding to the Q&A afterwards, not least because sone of the audience were academics in Irish engineering schools, but not professional engineers!

If you have any views on this topic, please do post a comment.

Best
Chris

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I speak to you today as the current Senior Vice President of Engineers Ireland, the professional body for engineers in this country. I will have the honour next year of serving my year as President.

I am an electronics engineer, graduating from a four year undergraduate programme in 1978. My first three years were spent in general engineering topics, and I chose to specialize in electronics only in my final year. So, I put my credentials in front of you ladies and gentlemen, and admit that I only have a hazy recollection of my lectures and tutorials in thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, applied mathematics, instrumentation and control, and so on....

So, in coming to you today I thought I ought to prepare myself by browsing the internet and trying to understand what are the current issues, opportunities and challenges facing you in the Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering professions today. Googling, I found myself reading current and back issues of magazines not only of our own Engineers Journal, but also of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Forgive me, but I was initially a little taken aback! I read a number of viewpoints which suggested that the West is losing manufacturing competencies and capacity to the emerging economies of the East, and in particular of China. If I were a potential student of manufacturing engineering, I might think that the future held little hope for me unless I emigrated to Guangdong, Zhejiang, Hebei or somewhere else in China!! Now personally, I really enjoy visiting that country and have done so regularly for some years – indeed I was the founding Chairman of the Ireland China Association back in 2001 – and frankly, if I were a younger professional starting my career I would seriously think of emigrating there. But I’m not convinced that many Leaving Certificate students would necessarily agree with me, and still less their parents. But some of your colleagues in your discipline seem to be strongly suggesting that there is no career future in manufacturing engineering unless one moves East.

It got worse. I came across another article, suggesting perhaps that we are seeing the imminent demise of mechanical engineering. In the good old days, a manufacturing plant was driven off a central power shaft spanning the longitudinal axis of the factory, with various gears and belts driving machinery at each station. In the good old days, cars, trucks and locomotives had central powertrains, gearboxes and hydraulic fluids controlling the power and torque from the power plant to the wheels. But nowadays, the electrical and electronic engineers are apparently winning and, using high power semiconductor gates, large amounts of electrical power can be delivered and minutely controlled, with extreme precision, in ways that can only make mechanical engineers drool! Most modern aircraft, including in particular the entire Airbus family, use fly by wire rather than fly by mechanical linkage. All new cars soon may not have drive shafts and gears boxes: the power will be delivered using cables via all electric drive chains, with microprocessors making sense of it all:: Your garage mechanic will need to become a garage electrician!

But then, I was relieved to find counter-points of view, observing how both manufacturing and mechanical engineering are evolving. Composite materials are driving new applications, not least in the biomedical domain for prosthetics. Manufacturing engineering has evolved into systems integration and product integration, harnessing a diverse set of emerging, disruptive technologies to yield innovative and exciting products. Scales are continuing to shrink, and minimization of both mass and energy are a common objective. Smart, intelligent materials with their own embedded controllers are not uncommon. Kinematicians lead efforts in unraveling protein folding, essential to genomics, proteomics and DNA scaffolding. Thermal engineering is becoming more and more critical: I am aware of the truly excellent work being done by Jeff Punch and his team in the University of Limerick in this regard, in particular in the domain of thermal stabilization of photonic lasers for telecommunications applications, in the context of my chairmanship of the CTVR national project in telecommunications.

In fact, as reputedly one wag stated: it’s no longer about “M”anufacturing engineering. It’s no longer about “M”echanical engineering. The “M” denotes something else: today it is about Multi-disciplinary engineering.

I fervently support this view. In my own career with computers and software, my industry not only changes its technologies, but also rapidly changes its perspective as new applications appear. A professional engineer today, regardless of his or her background, must have a multi-disciplinary philosophy. That has two complementary aspects: the intra-engineering and external. Multi-discipline, in the intra-engineering sense, implies an understanding and training across multiple engineering specializations, understanding the application of mathematical and scientific results to civil, mechanical, electrical, electronic, software, manufacturing engineering, and so on. By the external multi-disciplinary aspect, I mean the ability to discuss articulately with line of business managers, product marketing, corporate marketing, corporate lawyers, human resource professionals, and of course financial analysts.

But today, forgive me, in this country, I wonder have our colleagues in our engineering academies – both universities and institutes of technology – lost the plot ? One of their concerns I guess – and I speak as a past university lecturer – is the usually desperate quest to achieve recognition by their peer academics in other departments across the rest of the organisation. As an engineering department struggles to achieve recognition, and of course financial resources, amongst perhaps stronger groups in the pure sciences, the medics, the department of law, the business studies department, all of the various departments of humanities and so on, there is a natural tendency to play the game: “publish or perish”. And in publishing, and researching, more and more esoteric niched topics are addressed, in which one may have a reasonable chance of obtaining international recognition as an accomplished researcher but in what may be a very narrow field indeed.

However a consequence of this may be a tendency to over-specialise undergraduate courses. In a national market in Ireland, where there are few enough Leaving Certificate students obtaining honours standards in mathematics – which of course is the usual standard for entrance into courses leading to professional engineering accreditation – does it really make sense to have proliferation of undergraduate courses ? Let me give you some idea, from the list of undergraduate courses nationwide which are accredited by Engineers Ireland as giving a foundation to become a Member of our organization: Chemical and Process Engineering; Electronic Engineering; Electrical Engineering; Microelectronic Engineering; Mechanical Engineering; Materials Engineering; Process Engineering; Process and Chemical Engineering; Structural Engineering; Civil Engineering; Environmental Engineering; Civil, Structural and Environment Engineering; Manufacturing Engineering; Production Engineering; Computer-Aided and Manufacturing Engineering; Industrial Engineering and Information Systems; Aeronautical Engineering; Digital Media Engineering; Information and Communication Engineering; Manufacturing Engineering with Business Studies; Mechatronic Engineering; Medical Mechanical Engineering; Biosystems Engineering; Computer Engineering; Building Services Engineering; Agricultural and Food Engineering. I know that all the academics involved in offering this wonderful diversity are sincere in their disciplines, but isn’t it time we stood back and asked ourselves is there a better way to help students select Engineering as a profession ? And ensure that they have a very solid, multi-disciplinary approach to Engineering as a profession ? And leave at least some of the specialization, when and as necessary, to their continued professional development during their career ?

Let me change tack, and give you another concern which I have. If one of my family ever were to pursue a career in surgery, I and they would expect to learn from practicing surgeons. If I were ever to take lessons to become an aircraft pilot, I would like lessons from a qualified professional pilot. In my business career, whenever requiring professional legal or financial advice, I have sought the necessary qualified professional individuals.

And so, if any of my family pursue an Engineering career – and one of my sons is studying Engineering – I would expect, and they expect, to be taught by professionals. Professional Engineers.

In preparing today’s talk, I browsed the web sites of the Irish universities and institutes offering those courses I alluded to above, and examined the credentials of the academics of the various engineering departments concerned – at least, as published on their web sites. It was very very interesting, and I encourage you to try the exercise yourself.

For example: one department: six full time academic staff, only one of them – the head of Department – listed C.Eng. as amongst his accomplishments. Another: four academics, no C.Eng listed. Another: twenty academics, one Fellow, four C.Engs. And so on.

Now there are many PhDs. And a few Professors. But why so few Chartered Engineers (or Fellows) ? I suspect that perhaps the various web pages aren’t always accurate, and C.Eng qualifications aren’t always listed. However, that in turn is indicative: why would an Engineering academic not be much more proud of the fact that he or she was a Chartered Engineer, or Fellow, and advertise that fact, ahead of being a Dr. or Professor ??...

In the medical profession, a simple Mr, Ms or Mrs as a title commands great respect: the individual in question is likely to be a highly qualified surgeon or consultant, rather than a simple General Practitioner Doctor, or an esoteric academic Professor. A highly qualified practitioner gains respect. Why are our own Engineering academics not as proud of practical professional experiences ? Why is it acceptable to have a non Chartered Engineer teaching professional engineering ? Should it be acceptable ? Why do engineering departments not insist on a C.Eng. recruitment policy, and why do they not demand that their younger staff achieve C.Eng. status as rapidly as possible, if necessary ahead of achieving professorial status ? Why do our engineering students not question – no, demand – that the majority of their teaching comes from professional engineers ?

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me remind you or advise you if you have not already heard, that Engineers Ireland has taken the decision that from 2013 in Ireland, it will be necessary to have achieved a Masters level of education, over five years, in order to become a Chartered Engineer, from the current position where a four year accredited undergraduate degree is sufficient. While thus bringing us into line with many of our international colleagues, the change is also an opportunity for us to consider the structure staffing, and directions of our academic engineering programmes.

Thank you for your time this morning, and my opportunity to address you. Let me leave you with a summary: if we are going to attract more people to a wonderful and exciting career in professional engineering, then we ourselves must become even more professional in our education. We need to stress a multi-disciplinary approach, re-visit our thinking about premature specialization, and ensure that as many of our instructors as possible have professional engineering qualifications.