Plenary Speakers
Tom is the chief executive of the Higher Education Authority, the funding and development body for higher education and research. He is a member of the Boards of HEAnet (Chairperson), the Irish Universities Quality Board, Science Foundation Ireland and the Central Applications Office.
A career civil and public servant, he has served in the Department of Justice, the Department of Education and the Office of the Revenue Commissioners. He holds degrees in civil engineering (NUI Galway) and law (King's Inns).
John was appointed CEO in 1997 when HEAnet was incorporated as a limited company on behalf of the Higher Education Sector. Previously he worked as Systems and Networks Manager in the Computer Services Department of Dublin City University. He has also worked with a number of international companies including Marconi Communications Systems in the UK and Motorola Information Systems in the US and the UK.
John represents HEAnet on the European National Research and Education Networks. Policy Committee, including GÉANT, DANTE and TERENA.
Leo is an internationally-recognised science broadcaster who has commentated live on major space missions around the world on BBC radio and tv. He is the founding Chairman of Discover Science and Engineering and is on the Board of Governors of the School of Cosmic Physics. In recent years, Leo has concentrated on developing new ways to reach large audiences with educational programming of the highest quality.
In today's tough economic climate, networks offer exciting new opportunities to reinvent the future. As traditional mass media decline rapidly, demand is growing for new economic models. Leo introduces the concept of an E&R tv channel over the network, one vision of what a "smart economy" might actually look like, where networks are at the heart.
Paul produced the award winning animated feature "The Secret of Kells" (Audience awards at Annecy 2009 and the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2009) and is Executive Producer of the animated children's series Skunk Fu!, which has sold globally to the BBC, Super RTL, Kids WB and Cartoon Network in the U.S.A.
Using examples from the Cartoon Saloon studio work, Paul will discuss their software relationship, merging hand drawn art with digital tools, and managing assorted studios around the world via online production management software.
Having combined a career to date in high speed networking (Cable & Wireless) and telecommunications (Nokia) with software development and systems analysis (Energis, Prime Carrier), Gareth is in a great position to see how the paradigm of cloud computing, elastic storage and ubiquitous networking combine to provide a research platform for the future.
Gareth and Brian will give an update on key developments in HEAnet
Brian Boyle is the Network Services Manager with HEAnet, where he works in the Managed Network Services team developing cost effective and technically advanced ICT services for national and international networking to benefit the Irish Education and Research community. Before that, Brian worked as an IP Network Operations Manager in Eircom.net and IT services developer in Motorola.
Gareth and Brian will give an update on key developments in HEAnet
Keith Rochford is the project coordinator for the e-INIS - national e-infrastructure project led by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. E-INIS is funded by the HEA under PRTLI 4 involving over 30 personnel from eight national project partners.
His industrial experience includes the roles of user support, systems administrator, technology specialist and software engineer.
The storage and management of large and diverse data sets is emerging as an increasingly important facet of many research activities. More complex simulations and higher resolution scientific instruments are just some of the reasons for the increase in data volume.
The pilot data management service being developed under the e-INIS project is dedicated to meeting some of these data management challenges and providing mechanisms for improved research data management and sharing.
This presentation will provide an overview of the e-INIS project and recent developments in the national e-Infrastructure before describing in greater detail, the data storage and management activities of the project.
Rob Malone joined DCU in 2005 as Technical Officer for the DCU Telephony section. He has been involved in numerous infrastructural projects including the upgrade to, and incorporation of IP Telephony services across campus, and the integration of various off site locations affiliated with DCU.
In August 2009 Rob completed his M.Eng. Telecommunications Engineering, majoring in Network Implementation. Currently Rob is an Administrator for Telephony Systems within the ISS Technical Infrastructure team in DCU and involved in the on-going DCU/HEANet WiMax Pilot.
Together with HEAnet, DCU is currently in the implementation phase of a WiMax pilot project, exploring its potential as a solution to the wireless needs of an ever evolving and technology hungry higher education body. Through the operation of a working WiMax base station on the DCU Campus we can explore the pros and cons of the technology in terms of practical implementation as a service offering.
In his talk Rob will present the findings of the pilot project to date.
Andrew joined the IMWS (Institute of Microelectronics and Wireless Systems) in NUI Maynooth to study WiMAX propagation in urban environments in 2008. He currently lecturers 2nd and 3rd years in the Electronic Engineering department as well as holding the 4th Final Year Project Office and Industrial Work Placement Officer roles.
Prior to that he has worked in the commercial world in Digital Equipment Corporation and Intel Ireland.
Deployment of 2.3GHz WiMAX Wave 2 system in an Unique Urban Environment - A New User Experience
The talk will include an explanation of the equipment setup and its specifications. The user experience of system setup, including the setup of 2.3GHz user devices, how to get coverage maps and what we used to generate them. This user's overall experience at the 2.3GHz frequencies, issues encountered, how they effected the project and how they were over-come.
Result of our coverage mapping of the NUI Maynooth campus along with experiments that we have conducted and an overview of their results and some of the projects that we are involved in. Finally a recommendation based on the system and our experiences with it.
Philip holds a primary degree in Electronic Engineering (IT Cork 1990) and a Masters degree by Research in the field of Wireless Technologies, concentrating on WiFi standards (IT Tralee 2005). He setup iLink in 2007 with a focus on the deployment of 3rd generation wireless mesh networks.
Work experience includes Project Management in the design and installation of computer and communications networks for clients such as BBC and the British Transport of Police in England and consultancy and solutions delivery to SMEs in Ireland. More recently he project managed an extensive applied research project across Ireland to assess the technical metrics of broadband communications being delivered to the end users.
As part of HEAnet's company strategy on wireless technology , HEAnet appointed iLink to conduct a survey on the present use of Wireless Mesh Networks in the HEI's.
This survey is primarily focused on the deployment and use of WMN in the HEI's. The survey is being conducted between Oct and Dec 09 and an interim report will be presented at this years HEAnet Conference.
Andy has worked in the Telecoms market in Ireland for the last 10 years. With a degree in Electronic Engineering from DCU he spent four years working in HEAnet. Notable achievements include setting up the Multimedia Services and team and as technical manager was also responsible for setting up the Schools Broadband project and team.
Andy left HEAnet to join eircom where he worked as a technical consultant developing solutions for large Networks incorporating WAN, LAN, Security and Unified Communications products. In 2008 Andy joined Telindus Ireland as a technical consultant continuing his customer facing role on developing Network based solutions. In the past year Andy has been involved in a number of different wireless projects based on Wifi and WiMax standards in Ireland.
Andy will be taking part in the Q&A session afterwards this talk
Eoin Kenny is a project manager within the network development team at HEAnet. His research interests are in the areas of advanced network architectures, control and management planes, web services and optical/Ethernet test beds. He received a degree in Electronic Engineering from University College Dublinin 1993.
Eoin will be chairing this session.
John Keating is the Associate Director of An Foras Feasa: The Institute for Research in Irish Historical and Cultural Traditions. His research interests include humanities computing, historical manuscript encoding, hyperspectral segmentation, software engineering and new methods of information transfer, for example, the Strangers to Citizens virtual exhibition currently available in the National Library of Ireland. He is one of the principle investigators of An Foras Feasa's HEA-funded grant "Humanities Serving Irish Society: Humanities, Technology, Innovation".
Aja Teehan is the Technology Officer of An Foras Feasa. Her research interests include humanities computing, document encoding for humanities research and software engineering methodologies for humanities research. She is co-lecturer, with John Keating, on the undergraduate module "Humanities Computing I", which is open to both humanities and computer science students. She has been involved in many digital humanities projects as data modeller and project manager, including The Alcalá Account Book Project, the Irish in Europe Project and the Amharc Eireann Newsreels Project.
In 2008 a pilot programme was established by collaboration between An Foras Feasa (AFF),
the Irish Film Archive (IFA), Gael Linn and Boston College, to create a VLE to support students both in collaborative writing and discussion, based upon the Amharc Eireann (AE) Newsreels and their supporting, contemporary, documentation such as posters, shot-lists and letters.
In February of this year the “Ireland Through Film and Fiction” course of the Irish Studies Program at Boston College used this VLE to investigate the emergence of Ireland as an international political entity in the 20th century. This paper will detail the process and products of the pilot programme. It will also address the pedagogy involved in the design of the environment.
Automating podcast production for the classroom
Before joining Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Donie worked in the private sector for over 16 years as an electronic engineer. Donie enjoys investigating problems to meet the demands of a thriving third level institution.
Donie recognises that students both expect and demand more technology in education to help them work smarter. As a result, he is ideally suited to take a lead in this growing area.
Donie is currently studying for a Masters degree at the University of Limerick in the area of mobility and robotics, using his knowledge and experience to facilitate those who live with disabilities. He plans to take this project to Phd level over the coming years.
Donie's talk relates to podcasting and the lead up to its implementation in Mary Immaculate College in 2010.
Forget about anytime anywhere learning- today we have everytime everywhere learning
Bio to follow..
Research on Research
Ian Bell M.Sc has worked in the DCU Information Systems and Services department as a systems analyst for 10 years. Ian had responsibility for rolling out the university research support system in 2000 and subsequent support to the IUA in the roll out of the national Expertise Ireland site. Ian now focuses his attention on provision of services for the research community at DCU.
DCU has undertaken research on its ICT provision for researchers. Following questionnaires and interviews with the wider research community, the Information Systems and Service department has collated results on what researchers would like to see from the department. The survey focused on technologies and also service provision.
This presentation presents those findings and will discusses the next steps for the department.
Paul Gaughan is the Project Coordinator for SmartBay Galway and has worked at the Irish Marine Institute since 2002. Paul received his MSc in Applied Geophysics from the National University of Ireland in 1993.
He worked in the offshore Oil industry for 5 years and as a software developer for the Marine Institute was involved in developing a range of marine data acquisition and sensor data visualisation systems. Paul is particularly interested in
advanced visualisation of marine data sets.
SmartBay is an initiative of Sea Change, the National Marine Knowledge, Research and Innovation Strategy for Ireland 2007-2013 and a key action of the marine component of the Government's Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation 2006-2013. The SmartBay project reflects an exciting intersection between knowledge, technology and the ocean and offers Ireland a major niche and competitive opportunity in the global market for smart technologies.
The SmartBay Platform will be utilised by researchers and industry to collaborate together to develop new products and services for global technology markets and to deliver valuable environmental management solutions.
The intention is to develop a cluster of projects over time involving multi-nationals, SMEs and third level groups harnessing a mix of deep skills in scientific and engineering fields in addition to computational, analytical and data management expertise.
Eugene is an analyst programmer with ITD in the University of Limerick. He is involved with managing Active Directory, student and staff accounts, and server management. He holds a BEng in Mechanical Engineering (UL) and a MEng in Computer and Communications Systems (UL). He is Microsoft (MCSE, MCSD, MCDBA) and Sun (SCJD, SCWCD, SCBCD) certified.
Identity Management at the University of Limerick, UL student Live@Edu email accounts, SSO and single logon systems in UL, idp.ul.ie Shibboleth server.
Glenn Wearen joined HEAnet in 2007 with responsibility for federated access. Prior to joining HEAnet, Glenn held a number of positions focusing on single-sign-on, federated access, and identity lifecycle management with HP, Baltimore Technologies and Fidelity Investments.
Glenn holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Applications (Software Engineering) from DCU and is an ISC2 Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and ICS Certified Data Protection Practitioner.
In his talk Glenn will explain how the operator of a federation can remove most of the effort required to adopt federated access for the identity provider and service provider.Glenn will also address the issue of data protection in his workshop entitled 'Data protection in the federated world'
Chad La Joie is a software engineer within the Grid and AAI teams at SWITCH, Switzerland's national research and education network organization. In addition to his position at SWITCH he also serves as the technical co-lead of the Shibboleth project.
His primary work efforts focus on identity management systems and improving the security of distributed systems. In addition he has worked in the areas of bio-informatics, natural language processing, disease and biological agent transmission detection and modeling, and various other topics.
This talk will discuss the current state of Shibboleth and features that are currently in development and will be added in future releases. In addition it will discuss how Shibboleth relates to technologies like OpenID, OAuth, Cardspace/Forefront and concepts such as user-centric identity, role/attribute access control, and cloud computing.
Eamonn holds a BSc in Computer Applications and an MEng in Telecommunications Engineering from DCU. As an employee of Lan Communications for over 10 years Eamonn was involved in the design and implementation of a number of large projects including the Government Network, the Aer Rianta (now Dublin Airport Authority) LANs and WAN and the PKI for the Revenue Commissioners ROS service.
At the end of 2008 Eamonn left Lan Communications to become a partner in DQ Networks, a small company offering technical services and consultancy in the field of voice and data communications.
Eamonn lectures on a part-time basis in Dublin City University on the MSc in Security and Forensic Computing.
In 2002 the Department of Finance went out to tender for an IP network for the Irish public sector. This tender was won by eircom and was delivered on their (then fledgling) Business IP MPLS network. The Government Network has grown from this to become a converged voice and data network linking over 200 Government Agencies with services from 11 telecoms carriers.
In this talk I will describe the structure and operation of the Government Network with particular emphasis on the services available to Institutes of Technology and Universities. This includes access to internal Government Network portal sites containing information about a number of "framework agreements" which public sector bodies can use to draw down products and services at preferential rates and access to the Government Network VoIP service to avail of services available under the mobile telephony framework agreement with some of the mobile telephony
operators.
Alan has a lifetime experience of providing the vision and management of ICT projects in an educational institution. He has led both academic and corporate ICT departments. He has a lead role in developing ICT strategies that are used in a range of key transformation projects including the designing and building of converged networks, the adoption of leading edge technologies and the establishment of effective ICT support structures.
New College Durham (NCD) has transformed from an old campus to a completely new one on the same site over the past five years, providing a modern and innovative environment for learning, teaching and working. Alan describes how his college got to where it is today and the key ICT elements in achieving the success.
Kevin's professional career has spanned advertising and publishing, working extensively on electronic publishing projects with Routledge and the university presses at Oxford and Cambridge. Before joining DIT in May 2002, he worked as a senior producer for Fathom.com, the online learning consortium founded by Columbia University.
Ten years ago, elearning was touted as the next big thing. Learning Management Systems were designed to facilitate the move from traditional classrooms to a virtual learning environment. A decade into the 21st century, Kevin suggests that technology and elearning as we are currently using it has not lived up to its promise and thinks that it's time to take stock.
Friederike has a Masters in physics from Alfred Wegener Institut for polar and marine research. Since the beginning of 2009 she has been working with Prof. Dr. Levermann, Potsdam University studying ice sheet and shelf dynamics.
As part of this work she invented a theoretical model to describe melting and abrupt breakdown of marine ice shelves.
Concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxides are rising rapidly in the atmosphere. It is known for at least 110 years that these molecules are greenhouse gases. Friederike will discuss the scientific basis of climate change and some of the "tipping elements" of the climate system.
These are processes which are particularly sensitive to climate change and may have a threshold beyond which the system itself switches into a different state even without further external changes. She will focus on such possible risks, as well as on decisions society has to take and the associated challenges.
Mike Norris has been involved in internetworking for over 25 years, since the early days of wide-area networking between Irish universities. In the late 1980s, he was hostmaster for the top-level IE domain. A founder member of INEX, he was chairman of the Irish Internet Neutral Exchange from 1999 to 2005. As chief technical officer of HEAnet he manages the provision of technical services to clients, with over 150,000 end users in 50+ Irish education and research institutions. He works with clients to develop and deliver the best and most cost-effective solutions for their growing and complex requirements.
Mike's talk will describe how the carbon footprint of networks can be measured and reduced, and how ICT can make real savings, in money and in greenhouse gas emissions, in other sectors.
Working with Microsoft Ireland for the last 12 years, Dave has worked in both consulting and technical pre-sales and now works in the Developer and Platform group as an IT Pro Evangelist. He has been working in the IT industry and specialising in Infrastructure and Networking for "a long time" and as such is well suited to discuss this topic.
Dave will be giving Microsoft's view on IPv6 and what it is doing to help with its implementation and broad adoption. The migration to IPv6 is seen as a technology problem - not a business issue, and as such demonstrating a good Return On Investment (ROI) to create a successful business case for any spend is proving difficult. Dave will explain how Microsoft's newer products use IPv6 and therefore will be helping to demonstrate that elusive ROI.
Dave Wilson has been working for HEAnet since 1996. His work concerns the planning of the national IP research network, including a close focus on areas such as BGP policy and IPv6, and he led the procurement and deployment of the latest iteration of this network. Dave also participates actively in a number of international fora, including RIPE, where he has been chair of netnews-wg and in the Irish IPv6 task force, which he helped to found and gain government support.
HEAnet completed its IPv6 rollout in 2003. Dave's talk will cover what comes next. In order to avoid unplanned disruption in the next three years, we're taking action to plan the changes to our IPv4 services, deliver a fully working IPv6-only service, and support our customers and suppliers in building business cases and making the changes.
Martin is Director of Intel Labs Europe whose mission is to advance Intel research and innovation. He is also Senior Principal Engineer and Global Director of IT Innovation at Intel Corporation, managing a network of IT Innovation centres catalysing worldwide IT Innovation. Martin is Professor of Technology and Business Innovation at NUI Maynooth and co-Director of the Innovation Value Institute, helping lead a unique industry-academic open innovation consortium to advance IT management and innovation.
Martin Curley will introduce a new design pattern called the IT Capability Maturity Framework which can act as a generally reusable solution for CIOs to help systematically improve IT capability and the associated value contribution. He will also demonstrate how the maturity model can be used to improve IT Innovation predictability, probability and profitability.
Erik specialises in the area "Future consumer demands and how the ICT world will evolve in a 10 year perspective" within Multimedia. During his years in Ericsson, he has conducted consumer researches in Europe, Asia, Americas, Middle East and Africa.
He has written reports on a variety of areas including Global trends, Broadband consumers, Youth in the future and Consumer drivers for 3G. He has also written a book "A journey to the 3rd Place" based on research on Early Adopters within the infocom area.
We are at a turning point. Today broadband is available more or less anywhere in Western Europe and is rolled out at a great pace globally. We are getting used to ubiquitous digital services, which are having a great impact in the way we communicate and use media. This evolution is mainly driven by the digital natives - those that are used to having the Internet everywhere and mobiles 24/7.
But what and how can education leverage on this development? What will education look like in the future? How must education change in order to meet the interest of the digital generation?
In this presentation Erik will share the 2020 vision and how education can be networked.
Paul is currently lecturing and performing research in DIT in the area of desktop and server virtualisation deployments. He has been responsible for running multiple virtualisation and thin client pilot projects within the DIT. From 1993 to 2003 he worked at Sun Microsystems, and was responsible for the development of Thin Client and Blade Server technology.
With recent advances in virtualisation technology, educational institutes are starting to move towards server and desktop virtualisation based infrastructures. Virtualisation promises to provision a server's resources more efficiently, increase hardware utilisation and ultimately reduce costs.
While server virtualisation provides many advantages, desktop virtualisation is often complicated. Within the DIT, virtualisation has been in use for many years. This presentation discusses the issues of the larger deployments and reviews the lessons learned.
Aidan has worked in the IoT sector for 19 years and in CIT since 1997 where he set up Europe's first Cisco Networking Academy, teaching CCNA, CCNP, Security, Wireless and VoIP curriculum and later worked for Cisco developing curriculum for this programme.
He is currently on secondment to IT Services in the Institute, fulfilling the role of Network Manager and IT Projects coordinator.
Aidan will explain CIT's move to the area of vitualisation and specifically why it saw VMware technologies as representing a solution to many of its IT requirements, an opportunity to gain experience with the concept of virtualisation and to organically grow its infrastructure.
He will also describe how CIT found a role for existing hardware and infrastructure devices in the college within the WMware ESX server umbrella to create a successful virtual server environment.
Ruth is Research IT Team Lead in UCD IT Services. Having worked for a number of years in the networking area she is now responsible for the delivery of research enabling services including HPC Clusters, Virtual Servers, Storage and Collaborative Services.
To overcome the inelasticity of the physical HPC Cluster, UCD decided to look closely at the many cloud services on offer.
Their idea was that if a user needed more nodes than the physical cluster could supply then the cluster would automatically extend into the cloud, increasing the compute capability available to the user. The focus of Ruth's talk will be on the experiences and realities of the project.
Michael has been with IBM for over 20 years. He is currently the worldwide leader for the IBM Education Industry with responsibility for strategy, marketing and sales across schools and higher education.
He is a member of the Board of Directors of the IMS Global Learning Consortium standards organisation, the California P16 Education Advisory Council, and the Business Higher Education Forum.
Cloud computing holds great promise for higher education institutions to enhance services and reduce costs. Michael will present a framework for cloud computing in education and share leading examples of projects and implementations for desktops, analytics, applications, infrastructure and business services.
Having combined a career to date in high speed networking (Cable & Wireless) and telecommunications (Nokia) with software development and systems analysis (Energis, Prime Carrier), Gareth is in a great position to see how the paradigm of cloud computing, elastic storage and ubiquitous networking combine to provide a research platform for the future. As the Network Operations Manager for HEAnet, he is responsible for ensuring that networking between you and any cloud service you might use is always available.
What is "Cloud Computing" and is it really the great paradigm shift it's hailed to be? What do the marketing terms mean and what does "the cloud" actually do? Most importantly, is it something you and your researchers should be using? Gareth aims to answer these questions and help you decide if "cloud computing" is for you, and if so, which cloud you might want to look at!
Billy is the Data Protection Commissioner, having been appointed by the Government in July 2005 for a five year term.
Prior to his appointment, he worked as a civil servant in various government departments, most recently Finance, Enterprise, Trade & Employment and Foreign Affairs.
It is increasingly difficult for the individual to keep track of who holds their personal information and how it is being used. Private-sector organisations wish to use such personal data for profiling and marketing.
The State is increasingly gathering such personal information itself and also accessing data held by private organisations, often without the individual's knowledge. Billy asks can our present data protection laws adequately protect the individual.
TJ specialises in issues involving IT law and civil liberties. A qualified lawyer and barrister and member of the Roll of Solicitors in Ireland, TJ also practises as a consultant with Merrion Legal Solicitors where he advises on matters such as online defamation and domain name disputes. He is chairman of the independent civil liberties group, Digital Rights Ireland.
Does Irish law adequately safeguard online communications? Are interception rules dating back to 1993 still fit for purpose when applied to today's Internet? Can Ireland afford to continue to stall implementation of the 2001 Cybercrime Convention?
TJ will be looking at the legal protections which Irish law provides for email, VOIP and other online communications and will assess their implications for Irish Internet businesses and users.
