EEECS Research Society

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/QubEeecsResearchSociety

Downloadable resources:

(1) Bio of RS Committee Members, 2013/2014

(2) RS Progress Report, 2012/2013 (Please pay a little bit more attention to the slide "RS Key Message Revisited")

(3) RS resources (committee minutes, event presentations, etc.) can be found on the School sharepoint (username and password are required): https://intranet.qol.qub.ac.uk/schools/eeecs/Research/Forms/AllItems.aspx

(4) RS Events and News, 2012

(5) PhD Thesis Template, 2013

Reflections on the theme of collaboration a photographic study

Riddel Hall, Thursday, 28th March 2013, 9am-1pm 

Inspiration:

The secret is to gang up on the problem, rather than each other. —Thomas Stallkamp

Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success. —Henry Ford

It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. —Charles Darwin

The brief:

Can you think of a visual image that encapsulates the essence of collaboration? It could be amusing, it could be research based, it could be personal, smart, facetious, cynical or off the wall, (if so it may require an explanation). Why not collaborate with a colleague to produce a piece of art?

If the answer is yes to any of these questions, give vent to you artistic yearnings and submit up to three pictures to the “Benefits and Issues of Research Collaboration” EEECS Research Society Event. Submit you entries to Michael Bain, m.bain@ee.qub.ac.uk.  You will be able to see your art work exhibited at Riddel Hall on Thursday 28th March 2013.

Voting for the best contribution will again be entirely democratic, the contribution judged the best by the masses will not only win the admiration of her/his peers but also a prize. Art work must be original not just ripped from the net.

EEECS Research Society Event - “Benefits and Issues of Research Collaboration”

Riddel Hall, Thursday, 28^th March 2013, 9am – 1pm

Motivation

Promoting the interdisciplinary research and industry-academia partnership is on everybody's agenda, from individuals to Schools, Universities and Research Councils. Indeed, research collaborations are integral part of any research activity aimed at addressing major technological, social and environmental problems. The synergy of collaborations permits researchers to

• Maximise the impact of their work
• Advance their technical expertise and subject knowledge, and learn in depth on the current challenges and opportunities
• Further extend researcher networks and ultimately to gain independency in research

Research collaboration may have many different modes, ranging from co-authorship on a research papers to partnership between industry and universities. Along with their great benefits, research collaborations present fundamental challenges, for example matching the collaborators expectations as to what the nature of the research relationship should be, including individual rights and responsibilities.

This event is aimed at understanding the hidden potential of the research collaborations and how to make most of it, their structure and life-circle, fundamental issues and practical approaches to establishing new collaborations illustrated with the first-hand experiences of success and challenges in achieving the goal.

Registration for this event is now open: http://qubeeecsrs.wufoo.com/forms/research-collaboration-event

Event Agenda

8:45 am      Arrival and registration

9:00 am      Welcome speech by Prof. Tom Millar, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, QUB

9:15 am      Workshop 1: 'Research Collaboration Reconsidered: No Venture No Gain’

Presenter: Conor Quinn, Business Alliance Manager (Engineering and Physical Sciences), QUB Research & Enterprise,

This workshop is aimed at understanding different modes of research collaboration, what you may expect in terms of benefits and commitments involved, and how to identify and target potential collaborators and maximise the outcomes of the established partnership. An argument in support of the research collaboration, its basic taxonomy and fundamental issues will be discussed. The typical life-cycle of the research collaboration will be revisited, including the time when the active collaboration on a specific task is about to finish and you may wish to change the focus of your research programme.

10:00 am    Workshop 2: ‘Making Most of Attending and Organising Research Conferences’

Presenter: Dr Peter Kilpatrick

This interactive workshop is aimed at learning in practice on the major benefits of attending and organising research conferences and events as a measure of expanding researcher’s collaborative network. Planning of the attendance and follow-on activities will be discussed, alongside the best practice of research showcase aimed to attract collaborators from academia (including cross-disciplinary agenda) and industry. During the workshop, participants will have an opportunity to attend a mini-conference and present a research poster on their subject. They will be requested to make connections with potential collaborators and to suggest how to move it to the next stage of active partnership. In small groups they may be asked to draw a proposal for a special session or a conference aimed at a targeted audience.

10:45 am    Coffee/Photographic Exhibition “An Illustration for Research Collaboration”

The photographic entries, illustrating the best experience with and challenges of collaborative are welcome. The most artistic and inspiring message will receive the prize on behalf of the EEECS Research Society.

Please see the requirement of the art contest on the top of this agenda.

11:00 am     Expert Panel ‘Research Collaboration Knowhow’

                   Experts: Dr David Linton, Dr Paul Miller, Prof. Dimitrios Nicolopoulos, Dr Peter Kilpatrick

A panel of senior members of School academic staff will be available to answer any questions related to fostering productive research collaborations and resolving emerging issues. The experts will be sharing their personal experiences, credible practices and practical advice in order to help members of audience reflect on their own approaches and issues with collaborative research.

11:20 am     Insight 1: ‘A Story of Success’

                   Presenter: Dr Michael Loughlin, Senior R&D Engineering Manager, ECIT

The subject of this insight is a first-hand example of successful research collaboration presented by the experienced member of R&D staff. Attendees will learn the mechanics of success and how to turn their affiliation into support of the industrial and academic communities.

11:40 am    Insight 2: ‘A Story of Challenge’

                   Presenter: Dr Paul Miller

An example of how and why wishful thinking yields no successful collaboration will be presented. The attendees will learn from the first-hand experience about the hidden obstacles to be hit and sacrifices to be made when pursuing a collaborative proposal. Indeed, not all great stories have a happy ending, yet how they end can make them a truly great lesson and inspiration for many others.

12:00 am    Photographic Contest “An Illustration for Research Collaboration”

                   Music performance by Andy Zhou

12:30 am    Prize giving, feedback filling and buffet milling

Speakers’ Bios

Conor Quinn

An experienced business development professional, Connor has developed a powerful combination of commercial and technical skills in a range of roles within consultancy and technology enterprises. Having supplemented his core skill set as a Chartered Engineer with additional capabilities from his MBA Connor has spent recent years in business development and technology transfer functions within the UK university sector.

Dr Michael Loughlin

Over 15 years of experience designing and developing enterprise software solutions for the UK utility, telecoms and financial sectors. Michael has extensive experience leading software development teams in high-technology start-up companies and established multi-nationals and has commercialised academic research in speech recognition and network management. He has a PhD from Imperial College London in Computational Fluid Dynamics. Michael is currently co-investigator on an EPSRC funded project to develop autonomous methods in large scale industrial process management (EP/J012149/1) and a joint EPSRC/DSTL funded project to address information extraction in large data sets (EP/J020540/1)

Dr Paul Miller

Paul Miller is presently a senior lecturer in the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Queen’s University of Belfast. He received a BSc in Physics in 1985 and was awarded a PhD in 1989 for his work in the use of optical processors for pattern recognition. Following his PhD he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Electronics and Electrical Engineering. The area of research was the use of systolic arrays for Kalman filtering.

In 1991 he was appointed as a research scientist in the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, Australia. His research there focused on the use of optical correlators for automatic target recognition and tracking. In 1996 he was appointed Senior Research Scientist in the Tactical Surveillance Systems Division. He headed up a team looking into the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for focal area surveillance. In 1999 he rejoined Queen’s University Belfast.

Dr Peter Kilpatrick

Dr Kilpatrick is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at
the Queen's University of Belfast. He received a BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science in 1981 and a PhD in Computer Science in 1995, both from QUB. He is a member of the High Performance and Distributed Computing research cluster and has a long-held interest in the pragmatic use of formal specification notations to model and reason about systems, most recently distributed/grid-based systems and, in particular, autonomic aspects of such systems

Dr Kilpatrick is Chair of the Board of Examiners (Computer Science), ERASMUS Programme Director (Computer Science), a member of Academic Council and a member of European Activities Working Group. He served as Chair of the 21^st Euromicro International Conference on Parallel, Distributed and Network-Based Processing (PDP 2013), Belfast in February 2013.

Research

• Research Society