Science @ Strathclyde Business Breakfast

Physics Business Breakfast - Knowledge Transfer: A Physics Perspective

The University of Strathclyde’s Department of Physics hosted a very successful Business Breakfast on 20th June. The Department is home to Scotland’s second oldest University spin-out company IBH, now part of the world brand of the Horiba Group. Many further successful spin-outs have followed. At the event they showcased different options and pathways for Knowledge Transfer.

We welcomed 3 partners who presented at the event:

Dr Derek Peden, Innovations Manager at Design LED Products.

Design LED is an internationally regarded LED lighting technology SME based in Livingston. Design LED holds 63 granted and 13 pending patents across 14 families, covering 12 territories including US, EU, Taiwan and China and owns 6 registered designs in Europe. Derek leads the delivery of the company's R&D and Innovation projects, he also manages the company's IP development and coordinates IPR protection. Derek joined Design LED in 2009 in Applications Engineering. He was 7 years in Honeywell¹s Sensing and Control division in Product Engineering roles in the UK and Germany and he was a Higher Research Scientist at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). Derek is an Innovation Champion at the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre (CSIC) and is on the Board of Stakeholders of the Photonics21 PPP. He has a PhD in Applied Physics and BSc in Laser Physics and Optoelectronics, both from the University of Strathclyde.

Andrew Kinnear, Business Development Officer at the West of Scotland KTP Centre.

KTPs are a UK-wide programme that have been helping businesses for the past 40 years to improve their competitiveness and productivity through the use of knowledge, technology and skills that reside within the UK knowledge base. A KTP serves to meet a core strategic need and identify innovative solutions to help that business grow. As Business Development Officer, it is Andrew's role to help companies and knowledge bases come together to collaborate and build successful partnerships through KTP.

Richard Patrick, Head of Business Development at TMD Technologies Ltd.

With over 30 years experience in the field of high power microwave amplifiers, high reliability electronics and vacuum devices, Richard is a graduate engineering scientist from Reading University and has been closely involved in developing TMD's Transmitter business from its inception. Richard became TMD’s Equipment Division Manager in 1998, a post he held for 10 years growing the business from a turnover of less than £5m to over £20m. During this period TMD won two Queen’s Awards for products developed under Richard’s leadership. Richard’s work has also recently included winning over £2m in Innovate UK Grants for work to develop novel Quantum products and securing two Knowledge Transfer Partnership projects for the company with two different universities.

Presentations are available to download:

• Dr Derek Peden - Design LED Products Ltd.

• Andrew Kinnear - Knowledge Transfer Partnerships

• Richard Partick - Physics, Funding and Working with Strathclyde 

Computer & Information Sciences Business Breakfast - Machine Learning in Digital Health : Realising the Hype

This event was hosted by Professor George Crooks OBE, CEO of the Digital Health & Care Institute. Professor Crawford Revie of the Department of Computer & Information Sciences introduced the speakers who were:

Dr David Lowe, a Consultant in Emergency Medicine and Co Director of EmQuire the QEUH ED Research Group. He leads a portfolio of projects centred on unscheduled care and specifically data, devices and decisions. His research focuses on decision-making within acute care and the interface between data, the clinician and the patient. He is co-developing novel app based solutions in range of conditions including trauma, COPD and chest pain to support and enhance clinical decision-making and operational efficiency. Machine Learning work includes hospital flow management, imaging and risk stratification funded by InnovateUK, ScotGov and Industry.

David Spurway is the primary evangelist and CTO for IBM Power Systems in the UK and Ireland. As a member of the IBM Systems Channel Team and Technical Consultancy Group, David works with customers at all levels to resolve their challenges. David has been working in the IT industry for 23 years, in a range of different roles and positions. He regularly presents at events, discussing all things to do with IBM Power Systems, including AI, Cloud, Modern Data Platform, AIX, IBM i, Linux and more. With the occasional unexpected LEGO element and/or superhero turning up as needed! Title of his talk was... “What do Google and my Daughter Use for Machine Learning? POWER9!

Remember when the IBM Watson cluster beat Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter at Jeopardy? Good, because explaining Jeopardy is hard! What you might not know is that Google were in the audience watching, and came to IBM afterwards with a proposition. From there, the OpenPOWER Foundation was formed, which started as a partnership between IBM, Google, NVIDIA, Mellanox and Tyan and now has over 330 members. David discussed what Google have done since then.  But, what has this got to do with my daughter, Elizabeth and her love of dogs? Using some of the solution components that have come from the OpenPOWER Foundation, she was able to expand on an existing Machine Learning model and teach an IBM Power System to identify a Dachshund. 

Presentations are available to download:

•  David Spurway - What do Google and my Daughter Use for Machine Learning POWER9!

Computer & Information Science Business Breakfast - Cyber Security and the Internet of Things

The September Business Breakfast was organised by the Department of Computer and Information Science and included presentations from Raj Sark (Founder of Glasgow-based Connect-In Ltd.) and Dr Shishir Nagaraja (Department of Computer & Information Sciences). Information about the speakers can be found below:

Raj Sark, Founder of Glasgow-based Connect-In Ltd., is an innovation-driven entrepreneur who likes to make use of technology to solve practical problems. Raj comes from a background in wireless systems development having worked 8+ years in this industry. Worked before with RTX Telecom for clients like Microsoft, Skype and local SMEs as well. His venture Connect-In Ltd. designs and manufactures Bluetooth Smart™ solutions with focus on energy efficiency for IoT sensors. Their flagship product Xupo www.myxupo.com helps users to keep track of personal valuables straight from their smartphone! XUPO is a winner of multiple innovation awards including from MIT and Nokia. Raj is active with University initiatives and is passionate about contributing toward and supporting the local innovation ecosystem.

Dr Shishir Nagaraja, Reader in Cyber Security at the University of Strathclyde, discussed the security challenges of secure industrial informatics. The connected industry refers to the infusion of (Internet) connected components within industrial workplaces such as manufacturing, pharma, chemical processing, transport, and satellites. Connectivity enables super-scale sensing architectures which can deliver fine-grained data collection to generate actionable intelligence information about workflow optimisation using machine learning techniques. Connectivity also enables automated industrial processes that implement the intelligence gained about possible optimisations. At the core of these sensing and industrial automation systems lies the programmable control-system which contains all of the intelligent components. A major barrier to this vision is the holistic understanding of systemic challenges across connectivity, logic, and security, which repeatedly manifests itself in the context of the system of systems problem. Programmability is a huge opportunity however without appropriate security, the strengths of connected systems can be abused to quickly bring the system to its knees. 

The presentations from the event can be downloaded below:

• Xupo Presentation - Raj Sark

• The internet of things - Dr Shishir Nagaraja