From

imagination

to

impact

High Impact Research Directions David Skellern CEO

Presentation overview

• About NICTA • NICTA’s Research Directions – Themes and business areas – NICTA’s approach to research • Some examples • Strategic planning at NICTA • Why strategic planning is important

About NICTA

Recruit commercial and research staff from Australian and global communities

NICTA

• National ICT Research Centre of Excellence • Not-for-profit Company • $83m per annum including - Australian Gov (~60%) - Regional Gov (~15%) Seven university joint venture partners contribute researchers and students

Knowledge diffusion and enhanced ICT skills base R&D partnerships with industry, research institutes & universities Spin-outs, licensing & collaborations with leading users & industry

NICTA Founders & Partners

(2002) (2003) (2004) (2005)

NICTA Vision and Mission

Our Vision is that our imaginative research drives Australia’s ICT future Our Mission is to be an enduring world-class information and communications technology research institute that generates national benefit

NICTA Objectives

Our People objective is to bring together world-class researchers and professional staff, enhance their skills and build a culture of entrepreneurship and achievement in use-inspired basic research, enhancing Australia’s ICT capacity and capability.

Our Research objective is to carry out research that advances knowledge, is recognised for its excellence and generates breakthrough, user focused technologies.

Our Education objective is to work with universities to provide Australia with ICT researchers who have deep technical expertise supported by strong professional and entrepreneurial skills.

Our Linkages with targeted research, government, education, industry and domain partners.

objective is to increase our impact and results by working Our Commercialisation objective is to facilitate technology transfer and create channels to market for NICTA research.

What Will Success Look Like?

National benefit from NICTA research outcomes

Measurable industry growth & competitiveness from NICTA research outcomes

National benefit through a stronger ICT Skills base

Stronger ICT skill base – NICTA alumni

Research expertise and scale

One of the world’s top 10 ICT research centres by 2020

Business Model

NICTA People

705 people (June 09) – 273 full-time PhD students – 432 staff (373 FTE) Staff (FTE) and students by sites - update – 131 / 55: Sydney - Eveleigh

Aust. Tech Park Lab & HQ

– 53 / 66: Sydney - Kensington

Neville Roach Lab

– 69 / 62: Canberra:

Canberra Research Lab

– 74 / 97: Melbourne:

Victoria Research Lab

– 41 / 18: Brisbane:

Queensland Research Lab

– 5: Adelaide: Office 090721 NICTA Overview 10

So how are we going after 6.5 years?

• 11 technology licence agreements • 4 spinout companies • 107 PhD graduates from NICTA partner universities • Alumni in universities, industry and government • 75 active patent applications • > 3300 publications • > 130 prizes and awards

NICTA’s role - How

NICTA’s unique partnership with universities: • Produces high quality PhD graduates who have additional professional opportunities and training through NICTA • Maintains NICTA’s intellectual vigor through contributions of world class university researchers • Achieves national benefit by harnessing disparate university ICT researchers and building critical mass to achieve international impact.

NICTA’s role - How

NICTA has a systemic approach to achieving significant national outcomes from its research: • Our use-inspired basic research approach ensures that research is undertaken only after competitor and market analysis confirm good prospects for impact.

• Our aim is to make step changes in knowledge that are embodied in technology platforms to allow the research to be more readily transferred into use across the economy. • Commercial considerations are imbedded into our projects at the outset and ongoing entrepreneurial support works to transfer research outcomes into commercial results.

NICTA’s model: Use-Inspired Basic Research

Approach to Research New Knowledge New Technology Pure basic research Use-inspired basic research Purely applied research & development Existing Knowledge Existing Technology

• Our challenge is to develop long term projects that will both advance knowledge and enable the development of globally competitive products, processes or services.

ICT Capability

Themes Researchers are grouped across the company by Theme: Embedded Systems –

developing ‘smart’ products

Networked Systems –

technology that connects ‘smart’ products to form ‘smart’ networks

Making Sense of Data –

making sense of large amounts of data created by ICT systems

Managing Complexity -

designing ICT systems that are fit for purpose, cost effective and don’t have nasty side effects

Themes

• What they are – Larger collections of research capability – The line management structure of our research – A good level of aggregation for joint strategic planning with partner universities • Why we have them – A vehicle for long range (10 years) strategic planning...

– ... Which will hopefully engender larger, riskier higher payoff projects – A home for Lab staff • Who we encourage (insist!) they have around 30% unstructured unmanaged time for research • Great ideas start in a single person’s head...

Business Areas

Our

Business Areas

market knowledge and commercialisation experience.

are the sectors in which we build They are where we seek the majority of our use inspiration. • Biomedical and Life Sciences • Intelligent Transportation Systems • Safety and Security • Mobile Systems and Services • Software Infrastructure • Environmental Management

Themes and Business Areas

NICTA’s Research Directions a selection!

Embedded Systems Research Areas

1

Embedded Systems Engineering • GOAL: Model-driven process for fitting architectures and designs to problems.

• Challenge: Combine with “Design by Composition” approach for re-use.

• Virtual System Prototyping

Embedded Systems Research Areas

2

Secure, Reliable, Trustworthy Embedded Software • GOAL: De-facto standard for vendors of embedded systems.

• Trustworthy microkernel-based operating systems • Component-based systems constructed upon microkernel.

• System services to higher-level layers, such as a secure GUI. • Distributed Systems & Multi-Core

Embedded Systems Research Areas

3

Dynamic Scene Understanding on Visual Sensor Networks • GOAL: World-leading computer vision systems for dynamic scene understanding.

• Smart networked cameras with reconfigurable architectures • Computer Vision processing for bionic eye • Combination of geometric and statistical methods =>Moving Cameras + Moving Objects

Embedded Systems Research Areas

4

Wireless systems and Sensors on-a-Chip • GOAL: Pervasive wireless systems and sensors.

• Single Chip WPAN in CMOS at 60GHz – Integrated radio transceiver with phased antenna array – Digital baseband, MAC processing – WirelessHD, 802.11.AD (WiGig) • Sensor technologies & applications – Body Area Networking – Implanted devices

Embedded Systems Research Areas

5

Reconfigurable Systems • GOAL: Systems that adapt to changing requirements.

• Reconfigurable systems with HW/SW agents. Integrate 3 rd party components.

• Breakthrough scalable architecure

Solving real problems creates impact

Impact comes from applying ICT to real world problems!

• Making the digital economy more accessible to Australians.

• Help maximise the efficiency of Australia’s infrastructure and logistics through advanced systems which speed-up and simplify traffic, freight, port and airport operations and will also assist streamlined delivery of emergency services • Maximising farm yield by developing and deploying ICT systems which minimise the use of scarce water resources

Strategic issues for NICTA – future outcomes

4. Safer food produced more efficiently for Australians and as exports.

5. Computer technologies for enhanced health and well being, including bionic eye and improved cancer treatment. 6. Gain without the pain: effective service delivery to government and business without the implementation and cost 7. Hybrid vehicle control development in Australia driving competitive global green vehicle manufacturing

Research for the Digital Economy

Applications bringing together content and services, securely over the broadband network



Fast and scalable social networking



Remote office applications



Automatic update of in-car navigation systems



Efficient movement of goods

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Personalised medicine



Location aware media distribution



More crop for less water



Digital conveyancing and mortgages

NICTA

enabling new applications in the Digital Economy GENERIC DIGITAL ENABLERS eg

•

Context/Location

•

Search

• •

SOA Security

• •

Cognitive Systems

• •

Optimisation Mobility

• •

Collaboration SECTOR SPECIFIC eg

•

transport, health, water, logistics, eGov, emergency, enterprise … Cloud/Virtualisation (computing, storage …) bringing everyday services to the Digital Economy

•

Human body monitoring for sport and medicine

•

Building confidence through mobile security - already in over 250 million mobile phones

•

Content compression for mobile devices

•

Increasing capacity and reliability of the existing Internet backbone

•

Creating the next generation Internet with EU and US researchers

•

Increasing wireless Internet capacity outdoors

•

Developing wireless for home high-definition entertainment devices delivering reliable data for the Digital Economy inventing next generation Internet infrastructure

Lending Industry Example

LIXI Valuations Reference Implementation Internet

Internal Workflow

• Task Mgt •Applications

Lender

BPEL engine Valuation request Backchannel Valuation report

Valuer

BPEL engine

Internal Workflow

• Task Mgt •Applications

Intelligent Transport Systems

Active Traffic Management

Our 2020 Vision

A new, better informed Traffic Management Infrastructure

+

Better decision support and incident management A significant and measurable reduction in the total social cost attributable to congestion.

If nothing is done, the total avoidable social cost of congestion in Australia will exceed $20bn per annum by 2020” – BTRE 2007 And that’s about 1% of GDP!!! (…and that’s reflected world-wide)

Smart Sensing • Data Fusion ++ • Invariant feature detection • • • • Headlights Windscreens Edges … • Shadow/reflection removal • Low camera height Classification, flows, speeds, queue lengths, incidents with occlusion in extreme conditions (weather/light)

Control Optimisation Smart Intersection Control

Dynamic Traffic Model Optimise Control Plan

loop detectors, cameras, etc Sensors Actuators Control actions (switch lights)

Albion Park Test Bed • Major intersection of Pacific Hwy and Illawarra Hwy • Currently roundabout controlled • Grid-lock in AM and PM peak hours • All day grid-lock in vacations • Problem caused greater traffic flows than original design scenario • Installed signals… now… • Further opportunities for efficiency.

Cameras at Albion Park

Albion Park Test Bed

E

ntire Transport System Design & Optimization Example: For Technologically and Economically Developed Countries • Optimizing the control of vehicles, traffic & infrastructure to: – Minimize – fuel intake, emissions, traffic impact on infrastructure costs – Maximize – static & dynamic safety, energy conversion efficiency – Guarantee – sustainability of energy use and impact on global climate change

Strategic Planning at NICTA

Strategic planning at NICTA

• Important for ensuring outcomes for our research • Strategic planning occurs at three levels: – NICTA Corporate Strategic Plan 2007-2011 – Research Theme Strategic Plans – Project Strategic Plans

Theme Strategic Plans

• What – 10-20 page high-level 10 year research visions • Why?

– To develop longer range, higher risk, step-change projects – Useful for relations with universities and other strategic linkages – Connection with international linkage strategies • Status – Beginning to have some influence – Fair to say its a hard sell – But we are convinced it is the right thing to try

Why Strategic Planning is Important

Why strategic planning is important

Dr Michael Spence, Vice Chancellor University of Sydney Talk of a “mission statement” in a university and many of our colleagues will roll their eyes. Others will hardly be so polite. But however difficult it may be to articulate the primary purpose of an institution so complex and diverse as ours, the process can be very helpful. It helps to know our goals, and while they may never be fully realised, and measurement is difficult, to know how well we are doing in achieving them.

Why strategic planning is important

Strategic planning gives direction and establishes co-ordinated effort. It also minimises wasted effort and redundancy

.

• Arenas: where will we be active? • Vehicles: how will we get there?

• Differentiators: how will we win in the market place?

• Staging: what will be our speed and sequence of moves?

• Economic logic: how will we obtain our returns?

Why strategic planning is important

NICTA’s Theme Strategic Plans: • Specify the research areas where we want to achieve impact • Specify our goals within those areas • How we will get there • Provides a clear direction for our researchers.

• Ensures co-ordinated research effort • Minimises wasted effort.

Why strategic planning is important

Strategic planning sets standards of success and performance

• How will you achieve your objectives?

• How will you know when you’ve got there?

• What measures or targets will you use?

• Who are your competitors, and what is your differentiator, or ‘edge’?

Why strategic planning is important

Strategic planning empowers people to make decisions and take initiatives.

• Collective purpose and shared research direction •‘Buy-in’ from team members •Maintaining flexible parameters to empower researchers

Strategic plans also play an important role for people outside the organisation or team.

Questions?

Research Overview

Themes Embedded Systems Disciplines

• • • Trust and Security Reliable Operating Systems Tools and Platforms for ES

Networked Systems Making Sense of Data Managing Complexity

• • • Communications Stack Sensor Network Platforms Networking Technologies • • • • • • Machine Learning Reasoning Knowledge Representation Image Understanding Data Understanding HxI (Human-x Interaction) • Formal Methods • Software Design Process • Constraints • Control • Optimisation

Business Areas ICT used for… Biomedical and Life Sciences Intelligent Transportation Systems Safety and Security Environmental Management Mobile Systems and Services Software Infrastructure

NICTA’s role - Why

Where is the Australian ICT sector now?

• • • ~9% (~$98B FY2007) of Australian economy • Sector trade deficit of $21B (FY2007) • Export performance $5.7B  0.18% sector worldwide, including re-exports of over $1.4B

Composed of Australian SMEs and relatively small subsidiaries of MNCs There is no large Australian MNC ICT company • • • 26500 companies < 1% (~260) have 100 or more staff 95% have < 20 staff