Great event.

In their invention machine translation has been turned to the task of making a language (the same language for input and output) more understandable while retaining the original context. A key benefit offered by the implementation of this invention is that “naturalness” of machine translation is no longer limited by the training data used. The system chooses how to speak a piece if text based on the training data it has and the retention of meaning based on context.

For more information contact Peter Conlon. A marketing flyer can be downloaded here (pdf).

Steganography is the ancient art of hiding information. Digital technology gives new ways to hide information in multimedia content such that it remains perceptually unchanged. An example is digital watermarking which balances the need to achieve statistical transparency while maximizing the amount of transmitted information.

FORTRESS can be deployed to detect hidden information amongst otherwise innocuous Internet traffic. This hidden information may comprise of illegal or offensive images such as pornography, terrorist messages or unauthorized data such as industrial espionage.

For more information contact Peter Conlon. A marketing flyer can be downloaded here (pdf).

This Fast and Scalable Derivatives Pricing technology is ready for productization. The teams next objective is to conduct a market feasibility study to determine the size and type of the potential market. This will involve the derivatives desks and research departments of the major financial companies who are the main institutions brokering complex derivatives deals with investment banks and hedge funds.

Interested? For more information contact Peter Conlon.

Further Information

Current state of the art use implicit methods for calculation of Complex Derivitive Prices. The much easier to use and implement explicit methods have largely been ignored for the valuation of derivatives up to now due to the significant computational burden associated with a constraint that they suffer from. The research has developed a number of methods that relaxes this computational burden. This technology could result in the resurgence of explicit methods as a leading contender to be one of the main derivatives pricing methods used in industry and academia when dealing with complex derivatives.

The potential business opportunities for any product would be to target the major financial institutions that regularly use complex derivatives. These include investment banks, commercial banks and hedge funds. Other non financial financial companies such as energy companies that are involved in the energy derivatives business are another potential source of business. Furthermore the UCD technology could be integrated with other high end financial software and solution providers such as Bloomberg, Fitch Solutions SuperDerivatives.

When developing a prototype/technology demonstrator it’s important to arrive at the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The MVP defines the least amount of development that you have to do to deliver a product that a customer will buy.

First off you have to gather requirements (owned by the customer and marketing team). These requirements drive a set product features (negotiated between marketing and the development team). Each of the features will in turn be defined as a set of specifications (owned by the development team but heavily referenced back to the requirements. Each feature will have a performance metric attached that will dictate when aand if a feature passes its acceptance tests).  Do this up front and validate with your customer. Agree that the test performance metrics will satisfy their requirements.

Requirements will typically take 3 forms: Musts, Needs and Wants. Musts are the key requirements without these the customer will not accept the product. Needs are key features that you should try to deliver but if you don’t they must form part of a product roadmap. Finally Wants are non-core functionality (such as emailing image data for instance). In creating the MVP you have to address as many of the Musts as possible, some of the Needs and maybe none of the Wants. The un-included requirements will form the basis of a product/development roadmap.

You might arrive at 20 Requirements. Each of these requirements will drive multiple features some external and some internal but which in combination will fulfill the requirement. Typically requirements can be grouped to form work packages.

For a software prototype development project such as a piece of commercially funded research (emphasis on “small r big D”) I would suggest a focused development process so that you and your “customer” are constantly aware of:

• progress (for your customer) and
• requirements (for you as the developer).

There is a very real danger at  this stage of development to create something that you feel fits what the market requirement. You probably realize that this may not be what your customer wants, needs or must have.

I would suggest designing you work packages and your development process around an Agile development model (rapid prototyping). In such a scenario your customer is constantly aware of progress and you are constantly aware that that progress is aligned with the project requirements because you receive constant feedback from your customer (closing the loop).

In Agile development each of your identified development strands are broken down by feature into chunks that can be delivered in short iterations (say 2 or 3 weeks). At the end of each iteration that code is then “releases” to a key individual or individuals and you get immediate feedback (say within a week). At certain other key points in the project (integration points) when a number of features come together satisfying a requirement the project might engage in a more formal testing process (alpha testing – you may have multiple of these, these may also trigger internal regression testing where you try to discover if a new feature breaks existing features). Towards the end of the project when all has been completed a beta trial of the software might commence leading to a concentrated effort to remove bugs. In a prototype project beta testing  may not actually exist or may be very short. The key thing in Agile development is that the process forces you to constantly address issues the customer has.

Remember, test early and often, a small chunk at a time.

Outside of the major research initiatives such as Clarity and Clique, UCD has a breath and depth of expertise in a number of key areas of ICT. To help the process of building up a managed portfolio of commercialisation IP I have identified 3 broad areas:

1. Wireless communications and networking – Physical infrastructure, low power signalling, protocols, management/routing etc.
2. Information Control – Data forensics, information hiding/steganography, network analysis, encryption etc.
3. Teaching and Learning – in particular spoken and written language

Other possible areas could include energy/utility management and medical imaging.

Watch this space for future posts expanding in the various business development opportunities I  identify.

Diffusion Tensor Imaging can provide a unique insight into the neuronal architecture of the human brain in-vivo. A significant barrier to the clinical utilisation of tractography is that fibre pathways generated differ from true anatomical connectivity.

FastTRACT is standalone software tool specifically developed in collaboration with consultant radiologists, neurologists and neurosurgeons to address the variability of results and reliability of the reconstructed fibre representations.

For more information contact Peter Conlon. A pre-marketing flyer can be downloaded here (pdf).

Contact Peter Conlon for more information and watch out for future posts

With the growing popularity of social networking, RSS feeds are being accessed less and less. The proposed technology marries the depth of news from RSS feeds with the breath of interests from Social Networking. News items are recommended as the user interacts others via micro-blogging. Targeted delivery of news allows for opportunistic deliver of advertisements tuned to what interests the user (as opposed to what they are searching for).

For more information contact Peter Conlon. A marketing flyer can be downloaded here (pdf).