Rince Institute News

• April 2010 - Pre-cancer stage is a focus of early detection initiative New approaches are being developed that could eventually help doctors to pick out and treat unusual growths on the bowel wall. View the full article on the Irish Times website.

• March 2010: Dublin City University (DCU) has agreed to license its breakthrough Computer Aided Detection (CAD) technology to Biotronics3D a London-based company, active in the research, development and marketing of advanced, image-based medical diagnostic devices.  The solution, developed at DCU’s Centre for Image Processing and Analysis (CIPA), is designed to assist in the early detection and treatment of colon cancer. Computed Tomography Colongraphy (CTC) also known as Virtual Colonoscopy (VC) is an alternative to traditional endoscopic optical colonoscopy procedures. Using the VC approach, the patient undergoes a non-invasive CT scan of the colon from which a computer generated 3D image of the organ is displayed on a workstation. The CAD tool automatically identifies abnormalities on the colon surface and identifies these on the computer display to assist the clinician in diagnosis. The CAD technology is the result of an extensive multi-year research programme led by Professor Paul Whelan. The project involved a broad multidisciplinary research team at CIPA in DCU, and was supported by leading consultant clinicians in Ireland, Dr. Helen Fenlon and Dr. Padraic Mac Mathuna. Of the license agreement Professor Whelan stated, “We look forward to engaging with the Biotronics3D team to bring this DCU research to market.”

• February 2010: New Rince Director appointed

  

  Prof. Barry McMullin has been appointed as the new Director of the Rince Institute for a three year term beginning February 2010.

• October 2009: Congratulations to Dr. Hrishikesh Venkataraman and Dr. Gabriel-Miro Muntean who were awarded the best paper award at The World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science (WCECS2009), in San Francisco on  for their joint paper: H. Venkataraman, S. Agrawal, A. Maheshwari and G.M. Muntean, “Quality-Controlled Prioritized Adaptive Multimedia Transmission in WiMAX-based Cellular Networks”

• October 2009:  The annual Rince Institute Research Day took place on October 1st. As well as showcasing Rince Research including Energy iniatives an interactive entrepreneurial forum took place with enterprise specialists Paddy O'Boyle (Invent), Dr. Sarah Ingle (DCUBS) and Dr. Stephen Daniels (Electronic Engineering). K.V Rajani from the Nanomaterials Laboratory won the best poster competition.

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• January 2009:  Congratulations to Dr. Dahai Yu & Dr. Ovidiu Ghita who were awaded "Best Paper" during the 3rd Pacific-Rim Symposium on Image and Video Technology (PSIVT2009), in Japan for their paper "A Novel Visual Speech Representation and HMM Classification for Visual Speech Recognition".

• The 2008 China-Ireland International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies (CIICT 2008) was held in Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT) on 26-28 September. This year the conference was addressed by the Irish Ambassador to China, H.E. Declan Kelleher, who praised the collaboration between DCU and Chinese universities and deemed it as a “successful model”.

  Dr. Xiaojun Wang of the School of Electronic Engineering, DCU, is a main initiator and organizer of the CIICT conference series, which is jointly sponsored and organised by Chinese and Irish Universities. This international conference focuses on topical research in the broad area of Information and Communications Technologies. The stated objectives of the conference series are to strengthen science and technology research collaboration and to provide a platform for facilitating academic and industrial research interactions between China, Ireland and other countries. The first CIICT conference in the series was hosted by Hangzhou Dianzi University (HDU) in 2006, DCU was the host in 2007, National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM) will host CIICT in August 2009, and Wuhan University has committed to host CIICT 2010.

  

  H.E. Declan Kelleher, Irish Ambassador to China (2nd left); Mr Joe Keating, DCU Alumnus, Visa Officer, Irish Embassy in Beijing (2nd right); Dr Xiaojun Wang (1st right), DCU, CIICT 2008 TPC co-Chair.

  CIICT 2008 builds on the successes of previous years, 450 paper submissions were received of which 170 papers were accepted, published, and will be indexed by the Inspec database. The plenary session, chaired Prof Michael Ryan of DCU School of Computing, included speakers Dr Paul Dodd, head of Industry-Research Development in Science Foundation Ireland, Prof Zhong Yixing of BUPT, Prof David Cotter of Tyndall National Institute, and Dr David Linton from Queens University of Belfast. Dr Zhen Liu, a post-doc in the Network Innovations Centre in Rince received a best paper award at the conference. The School of Electronic Engineering in DCU has strong collaboration with Chinese universities. Five PhD students funded by the China Scholarship Council have come to the school this year and over 80 taught masters students from Wuhan University have enrolled in a collaborative master program in the last two years. The school has also a number of IRCSET funded PhD students and post-docs from prestigious Chinese universities. It also has joint PhD supervision arrangements with a number of Chinese universities.

  

  Front row (Left to Right): Ms Xiao Xiaoyun, Director of Information Technology, NSFC; Prof Zhong Yixing, BUPT; Prof Zhang Yinghai, Vice President, BUPT; Prof Zhang Zhaotian, Deputy Director General, NSFC; H.E. Declan Kelleher, Irish Ambassador to China; Dr David Linton, Queens University, Belfast; Prof David Cotter, Tyndall National Institute; Prof Michael Ryan, DCU; Mr Wilford Zhao, Director China, IET. Back row, Mr Joe Keating (2nd left), DCU Alumnus, Visa Officer, Irish Embassy in Beijing; Dr Xiaojun Wang (3rd left) , DCU, CIICT 2008 TPC co-Chair. Ms Weining Wang (4th left), Director of Academic Office, BUPT; Prof Muqing Wu, Director of International Office, BUPT.

  CIICT 2008 was kindly sponsored by the State Key lab of Networking and Switching Technology in BUPT, the Research Institute for Networks and Communications Engineering (RINCE) at Dublin City University, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), and the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC).

• September 2008:  Dr. Gabriel-Miro Muntean is joint editor of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society's special issue of Broadcasting entitled "Quality Issues on Mobile Multimedia Boradcasting".

• DCU Engineering student awarded Google Europe Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship
  Congratulations to Patricia Moore (Centre for Image Processing and Analysis [CIPA] www.cipa.dcu.ie) on being awarded a Google Europe Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship 2008. Patricia was one of 20 talented young women selected from 295 students in 157 different universities across 31 European countries who applied for the 2008 award. The awards took place earlier this summer as part of a networking retreat in the Google Engineering Centre in Zurich.

  

  Established in 2007 in Europe, the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship is awarded annually to female students for accomplishments within the science and technology community. The scholarship aims to encourage women to excel in computing and technology, and become active role models and leaders.

  295 students from 157 different universities across 31 European countries applied for the 2008 award. Selection criteria included academic performance, leadership within the science and technology community, answers to four short essay questions and interviews with members of a review committee.

  63 finalists were selected, of which 20 outstanding female Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD Computer Science students received the EUR 5,000 Scholarship for the 2008/2009 academic year.

  Patricia is currently undertaking a PhD in "Virtual Sculpting for Intuitive 3-D Computer Graphics" under the supervision of Dr. Derek Molloy within the Centre for Image Processing and Analysis, www.cipa.dcu.ie RINCE/Faculty of Engineering & Computing, DCU.

• Rince Research Away Day
  A very successful and enjoyable RINCE Research Away Day took place in the Deer Park Hotel in Howth on the 18th of September. The day consisted of a broad range of talks and posters, given by Principal Investigators, postdoctoral researchers and research students from the various research groups within Rince.

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• Dec 2007: Rince appoints two research officers to support its research.  Dr. Prince Anandarajah and Dr. Olga Ormond are working closely with the High Speed  Devices and Systems  (HSDS) and Network Innovations Centre (NIC) respectively.  They are the first point of contact for the researchers within those two groups.

• Dec 2007: Congratulations to Nicolas Sezille, Dr. Kevin Robinson and Prof. Paul Whelan (VSG, CIPA) who won the DCU INVENT (ICT/Engineering Section) Invention Disclosure Award for 2007 for their CAD-CTC patent. http://www.cipa.dcu.ie/

• Dec 2007: Congratulations to Dr. John Mallon and Prof. Paul Whelan (VSG, CIPA) on their Enterprise Ireland (Industrial Research and Commercialisation Committee (IRCC)) Technology Development grant. http://www.cipa.dcu.ie/

• National Biophotonics & Imaging Platform - The Centre for Image Processing & Analysis (CIPA Rince - http://www.cipa.dcu.ie/), in conjunction with the Biomedical Diagnostics Institute at Dublin City University has been award funding under the HEA’s Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI IV) scheme as part of the National Biophotonics & Imaging Platform (NBIP).The mission of the NBIP is to provide an integrated national access and training infrastructure in research, education, technology development and industry collaboration for the State’s investment in Biophotonics and Imaging. The total value of the funding awarded to this platform (consisting of researchers from RCSI, DCU, NUIM, NUIG, UCC, UL, DIT and CNRS (France)) in 2007 was € 30 million (€7 Million to DCU). CIPA will be the Image Processing and Analysis Facility within the Imaging Technology core of the NBIP. See http://www.nbip.dcu.ie/ for additional details.

• Nanoscience and Nano-scale Technology for Ireland
  Nanoscience and Nano-scale technology for Ireland (NANOTEIRE) is a national collaborative research project involving 6 Irish Universities, and Dublin and Cork Institutes of Technology. The research programme is funded by the Higher Education Authority through the Programme for Research in Third Level Institute (PRTLI). Nanoteire embodies the drive to transform Ireland to a knowledge economy and to establish itself as an international leader in innovation and technology development in the specific areas of electronics, photonics, and biosciences. 

  Within DCU the research programme will focus on (a) All-optical processing for high-speed photonic systems (b) Ultra intense laser interactions with matter, and (c) PLD growth and characterisation of nanostructures. The Nanoteire team at DCU will also deliver taught courses for graduate schools in nano-photonics, commission new infrastructure, and work closely with the project management team This research programme is being undertaken through a collaborative initiative between 2 national centres of excellence in DCU, namely the Rince Institute and National Centre for Plasma Science and Technology (NCPST). The research area of this programme has been outlined as an immediate priority research area for both research centres, for the associated faculties of Science and Health, and Engineering and Computing, and by the Research Office in DCU.

• CIICT 2007 
  The 2007 China-Ireland International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies (CIICT 2007) will be held August 28th and 29th in Dublin City University. This year's conference is organised by Rince and the State Key Lab of Networking and Switching Technology, China. 
  For more information, visit the conference website: CIICT 2007

• Irish Machine Vision and Image Processing Conference 2006
  IMVIP 2006 is the main conference of the Irish Pattern Recognition and Classification Society(IPRCS), a member body of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR).The 2006 Irish Machine Vision and Image Processing (IMVIP) Conference will be hosted by the Vision Systems Laboratory, Rince Institute, Dublin City University, bringing together theoreticians and practitioners, industrialists and academics, from the numerous related disciplines involved in the processing and analysis of image-based information.  For more details please visit the IMVIP 2006 website.

• China-Ireland Conference 2006
  The first CIICT conference is being jointly sponsored and organized by Hangzhou Dianzi University and Dublin City University, and will be held in Hangzhou Dianzi University in the autumn of 2006. It is hoped that the conference will include participation from a number of Irish and Chinese universities, and from researchers in other countries. For more details please visit the China-Ireland Conference (CIICT06) website.

• May 2006 - Workshop 2006
  The School of Electronic Engineering here in DCU is running a workshop on 'Career Awareness in Electronic, Information and Communications, Mechatronic & Digital Media Engineering' on 10th and 11th May. The 2 day workshop is designed to facilitate a 'hands on' engineering experience that will give participants an exposure to new technologies. It includes building their own electronic product while sampling a little of university life.  The workshop is open to transition year students. It is preferable that the students are taking Honours Maths for their Leaving Certificate. For queries please contact Ger Lardner at (01) 700 5604 or email: workshop@eeng.dcu.ie.

• February 2006 - Flashes of Brilliance - The Cutting Edge of Irish Science
  This new book by Dick Ahlstrom published by the Royal Irish Academy is the first book to highlight the breadth and depth of scientific research in Ireland today. The book features Professor Barry McMullin and his work on the 'Artificial Cell' which was originally published in the Irish Times on 2nd September, 2004

• January 2006 - HP Invent Award
  DCU student, David Noonan, who graduated with a First Class Honours BEng in Mechatronics Engineering this year, has been awarded a Joint Runner-Up Prize in the 2005 Hewlett-Packard Invent award. The prize was awarded by the Minster of Education, Mary Hanafin, T.D., at a ceremony in HP’s manufacturing plant in Leixlip, Co. Kildare on 1 Dec 2005.  This award recognises the best Final Year Projects in undergraduate science and engineering programmes on the island of Ireland. David’s project, supervised by Prof. Patrick McNally in the School of Electronic Engineering, focused on the use of advanced x-ray analytical techniques for evaluating the impact of the removal of lead (Pb) from solder interconnections in silicon microchips. As a result of European Union legislation, toxic lead metal is being phased out of integrated circuit semiconductor device production. David analysed the feasibility of using Nickel as an alternative solder metal and his work will help pave the way for future efforts in this regard. Prof. McNally noted that “David’s work is of such high quality that we will be publishing it in an international journal in 2006”.  Shown below, at the award ceremony, are (left to right): Minister Mary Hanafin, Mr. Lionel Alexander, vice president and general manager of HP Manufacturing Ltd., and Mechatronic Engineering Graduate Mr. David Noonan.
  

  

• November 2005 - Ericsson Medal 2005
  The winner of the 2005 Ericsson Medal for best final year project is Steven O'Callaghan for his project "Performance Comparison of Wireless Technologies when Streaming Multimedia" supervised by Dr. Gabriel-Miro Muntean. The award was presented at a ceremony at School of Electronic Engineering, DCU on Tuesday 1st November 2005 by Traoloch Collins, Head of the Systems Integration Department at Ericsson Global Services Delivery Centre in Dublin.
  

  

• September 2005 - Recent Promotions
  In recent months, the School of Electronic Engineering and the Rince Institute have been successful in having two of their academics appointed to Professorial positions. In April of this year, Professor Paul Whelan was awarded a Personal Chair by the University and more recently Dr. Barry McMullin received an Associate Professorship.
  

  

• August 2005 - Journal of Electronic Imaging Cover Story
  A Vision Systems Group Paper entitled 'Computational approach for depth from focus' by Ovidiu Ghita, Paul F. Whelan and John Mallon (2005), featured on a recent cover of the Journal of Electronic Imaging 14 (2), April 2005, 023021 (1-8). View the cover.
  

  

• July 2005 - Kevin Robinson, winner of 'SFI Best Student Paper' Award
  Kevin Robinson, PhD student with the Vision Systems Group in the Faculty of Engineering and Computing at DCU, was recently awarded the `SFI Best Student Paper Award' at the the 18th IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems held at TCD in June 2005.
  

  

  
  In conjunction with his supervisor Professor Paul Whelan, Kevin submitted and presented a paper on the "Analysis of the Pancreato-biliary System from Magnetic Resonance Cholangiopancreatography (MRCP)".  The ultimate goal of Kevin's research is to develop effective techniques in the analysis of the biliary tree, using computer-aided diagnostic tools. The data currently obtained from MRI scans for the detection of gall stones is comparatively low-resolution and the process itself is noisy. However, using the latest imaging techniques, the process becomes more effective, easier and less time-consuming for the radiologists. More importantly, using image processing, the diagnosis of gall stones and other pancreato-biliary conditions is likely to become more robust. Kevin's research was jointly funded by the Department of Radiology in the Mater Hospital, and through an Albert College Senior Fellowship.  For more details, the paper can be found here.

• January 2005 - RINCE Pioneers Research Skills Transition Year Programme at DCU - RINCE pioneered a transition year programme focusing specifically on Research Skills. The idea behind the scheme was to allow second level students to understand what electronic engineering research entails, what its application is and how it affects the world we live in.
  

  

  
  Five students from Scoil Chaitríona, Glasnevin worked for 2 days in December on a one-to-one mentoring basis with researchers from five different leading-edge Rince laboratories. After a brief introduction to the research being carried out in the areas of Vision Systems, Speech Processing, eAccessability, Video Media Processing and Radio and Opticals, students opted to work in the laboratory of their choice. After two days of laboratory practice in a laboratory situation each student gave a short presentation and demonstration of the work they had carried out. It is hoped to repeat and expand on this scheme in the coming year.

• Nov 29nd 2004 - Prof. McNally elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics - Prof Patrick McNally of the Rince Institute's Microelectronics Research Laboratory has been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (FInstP). Prof. McNally was only one of two newly elected Irish fellows out of a grand total of 74 in 2004. The other newly elected fellow was also a DCU faculty member, Dr.John Costello, School of Physical Sciences.  This senior class of membership is bestowed on members of the Institute of Physics and indicates a very high level of achievement in physics and an outstanding contribution to the profession.

• November 1 2004 - The 2003/2004 Ericsson medal and prize for final year projects in telecommunications engineering was shared by John Diskin and John Fitzpatrick, graduates of Telecommunications Engineering.  They collaborated on an investigation of MIMO radio systems, supervised by Dr. Conor Brennan, (director of the Rince Institute RF Modelling and Simulation Group.) The medals and prizes were awarded after the engineering graduation ceremony, by Orvar Hurtig, Manager of Ericsson Global Services in Dun Laoghaire. Both prizewinners are now working towards Ph.D. degrees. The Telecommunications Engineering degree at DCU is a part of Rince's educational mission.

Dr.Conor Brennan (left), John Diskin, Orvar Hurtig, John Fitzpatrick and Ultan O'Gorman

• Nov 22nd 2004 - Collaboration with DCU - Prof. Bin Liu, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China recently visited DCU to work with his Rince Institute collaborators Drs Xiaojun Wang and Martin Collier on their research on Optimized Processing in Network Processor for High-Performance Routers (more)

• October 2004 - RINCE Research Seminar Series - A Seminar entitled: ‘Acceleration algorithms for computational electromagnetics’ Will Be Presented by Dr.Conor Brennan, RF Modelling & Simulation Group, Rince Institute, DCU on Friday,October 15th, 2004 at 3.00 p.m in S209

• June 2004 - Rince Institute researchers Drs Darragh O’Brien and Ronan Scaife of the Rince Speech Laboratory have been awarded a 2004 SFI Basic Research Grant for an investigation into "New Distance Measures for Concatenative Speech Synthesis" To date, no one has come up with a distance measure that accurately and consistently models human auditory perception of speech in this context. The Rince team of O'Brien and Scaife will work on the search for a better distance metric. Not only will this project contribute to better automatic high quality speech synthesis, but it will also advance our understanding of human hearing.

• June 2004 - Rince Institute researcher Robert Sadleir of the Vision Systems Group has been awarded the best presentation prize at the Association of Physical Scientists in Medicine 2004 Annual Scientific Meeting on June 11th 2004. His award winning presentation was on the 'Automatic detection of colorectal polyps at CT colonography using shape information'.

• June 2004 - Rince's Dr. Barry McMullin is involved in a new 8.5M euro integrated project to evolve programmable artificial cells. The European Commission has approved an Integrated Project (PACE) that will create the foundation for a new generation of embedded information technology using programmable, self assembling, artificial cells. A consortium of some 13 partners and 2 cooperating groups from 8 European countries, including Ireland and several USA organizations will pioneer this new approach under the IST-FET section of the 6th Framework Program (FP6).  Dr. Barry McMullin, who leads the Artificial Life Laboratory at Rince, DCU states that a multidisciplinary consortium is vital for addressing these issues. The PACE partnership currently includes partners with competencies in Complex Systems, Embedded Systems, Robotics, Evolution, Statistics, Chemical Kinetics, Physical Simulation, Microfluidics, Organic and Bioorganic Chemistry, Computer Interfaces, Control Systems, as well as with Standards and Learning Services. (for more information)

• June 2004 - The 2004 EE & Rince Institute sponsored John Holland Undergraduate Student Research Scholarships were awarded to 2nd year Electronic Engineering student Gao Zhi and 3rd year Mechatronic Engineering student Ronan McKitterick at an award ceremony on Friday June 11th, 2004.  Gao Zhi will work under the supervision of Prof. Charles McCorkell on a project entitled 'Design of dynamic simultator for the evaluation of microscale machines'. Ronan McKitterick will work under the supervision of Dr. Noel O'Connor on a project entitled 'Automatic Identification and Indexing of Vehicle Registration Plates from CCTV'.

• April. 2004 - Rince's Microelectronics Research Laboratory (MRL), directed by Prof. Patrick McNally has just been awarded funding for a new project at one of Europe's leading large scientific institutions.  The work will be carried out in collaboration with the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (FzK) Germany, which is one of the biggest science and engineering research institutions in Europe.  (more details)

• Feb. 2004 - Rince Researchers Drs. Xiaojun Wang and Martin Collier have been successful in winning a Royal Irish Academy/SFI grant under the China-Ireland Research Collaboration Fund. This grant has been awarded for their Research on Optimized Processing in Network Processor Units for High-Performance Routers. The award will enable close collaboration between Drs. Wang and Collier and Professor Bin Liu group in Tsinghua University, China. This furthers the Irish/Chinese academic linkages already established by Dr. Wang.

• CIVR2004 - The 3rd International Conference on Image and Video Retrieval (CIVR2004) will take place in Dublin City University on 21st-23rd of July 2004, hosted by the Center for Digital Video Processing.  CIVR2004 will be a 3-day event with 2 days devoted to a research track and 1 day devoted to a practitioner track.  Proceedings will be published by Springer-Verlag.  For more information, please visit the CIVR2004 website at the following link. (more)

• Oct. 2002 - SFI funding success for the Vision Systems Group
  Prof. Paul F. Whelan (Vision Systems Group, Dublin City University) in conjunction with Dr. Helen Fenlon (Department of Radiology, Mater Hospital) and Dr. Padraic Mac Mathuna (Gastrointestinal Unit, Mater Hospital) have been awarded a SFI Investigator Programme Grant for their work in medical imaging.  This research programme will focus on the automated computer analysis of Computed Tomography (CT) Colonography image data sets for the detection of colorectal cancer using standard and low-dose radiation CT acquisition. The project will take place over an 4 year period.

• June 2002 Dr. Patrick McNally, Microelectronics Group and Director of the Rince Institute was elected Chairman, Programme Committee for 5th International Conference on Materials for Microelectronics & Nanoengineering, Southampton, UK, 2004. A project entitled "SXRT of Cu IC Metal Strain", for which Dr. McNally is project leader, was awarded Category II experimental status (long term and high to very high priority) and beamtime at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Hamburg, Germany through the EU Large Scale Facilities Programme.

  A recent award for 3rd placed best poster for “Stress characterization of device layers and the underlying Si1-xGex virtual substrate with high resolution micro-Raman spectroscopy, W.M. Chen, P.J. McNally, A.F.W. Willoughby and T. Tuomi was won at the 4th Int. Conf. on Materials for Microelectronics & Nanoengineering (MFMN2002), Helsinki, Finland, June, 2002.

• June 2002 The Microelectronics Group at the Rince Institute has just been awarded an IRCSET (Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering & Technology) Basic Research Grant, valued at €190,000. The aim of this project is to establish the possibility of using new materials overlaid on silicon to generate blue light emitting devices. This project proposes a paradigm shift in the field of wide-bandgap optoelectronics, i.e. the growth of a cubic zincblende, wide-bandgap, direct bandgap, optoelectronics material on silicon substrates, i.e. g-CuCl on Si. This is a completely novel material system, with compatibility to current Si or GaAs based electronic/optoelectronics technologies. The research team is led by Dr. Patrick McNally (Director of Rince, and leader of the Microelectronics Research Laboratory within the Microelectronics Group,) and will commence in Autumn, 2002. More details may be obtained from

• May 2002 Dr. Noel O'Connor of the Visual Media Processing Group (VMPG) has been awarded funding of €161,000 from the Enterprise Ireland Research Innovation Fund for research into power efficient hardware accelerators for MPEG-4 mobile multimedia applications. The award will be used to support both postgraduate and postdoctoral research. The project will run over a two year period and will expand the Group's activity in this fast growing field.

• First Joint IEI/IEE Symposium on Telecommunications Systems Research: 
  27th November 2001, IEI, 22 Clyde Road, Dublin 4
  This symposium gives postgraduate researchers in Irish institutions an opportunity to interact with others working in the broad field of telecommunication systems. It is imagined that the research work presented in the symposium will typically be the first publication for a postgraduate student and hence will often be work in progress. The participants will, therefore have a great deal of common experiences that makes the social aspect of this symposium important. This broad range of topics will allow participants to see a cross section of the many research projects currently underway in Ireland and the growing interdependencies between these different fields, such as:
  Telecommunications Networks, Internet Protocols, VoIP, ATM, MPLS, QOS, Network Security, Network Applications, Wireless Systems (GSM, 2.5G, 3G, 4G), Software Radio, Optical Systems, Multimedia Networking, Software for Telecommunications Systems
  http://telecoms.eeng.dcu.ie/symposium

• October 2001: The Visual Media Processing Group (VMPG) of RINCE has been awarded over 60,000 EUR as a member of the SCHEMA (Content-based Semantic Scene Analysis and Information Retrieval) project. The SCHEMA project is a Network of Excellence funded under the Information and Societies Programme (IST) within the EU's 5th RTD Framework Programme. The Network, which consists of 13 members (9 university and 4 industrial partners) representing 9 different European countries, was awarded a total of 900,000 EUR. The monies will be used to fund common publications, international workshops and a visiting scientist programme aimed at fostering European collaboration in the general field of digital video processing for indexing and information retrieval applications.

• The IEE Teletraffic Symposium is being held in Dublin this year, co-sponsored by Rince  The Symposium is an annual forum for discussing the performance engineering issues in evolving communications networks, and the new techniques that are being used to address them.  It is being held on Wednesday, 16th May to Friday, 18th of May 2001. More Information

• The Computer Vision Seminars 2001 will be running from the 20th of March until the 1st of May.  These Seminars are being run in association with the Rince Institute, Irish Pattern Recognition and Classification Society and the Vision Systems Laboratory.

• The Vision Systems Laboratory has been allocated funding by the Dept. of Radiology and the GI unit, Mater Hospital (Dublin) to investigate the use of imaging techniques in the morphological analysis of the small intestine.  This award will partially support the funding of a PhD student and will feed into the VSLs existing virtual medical imaging systems research program.  Details of the PhD studentship are available online. (Posted by: Dr. Paul F. Whelan, November 2000)

• September 2000: Dr. Barry McMullin has been awarded funding of £100,000 from AIB PLC, to carry out a major research project into the accessibility of Internet and Web facilities for visually impaired users in Ireland. Comments Dr. McMullin: "There is a real danger that the recent explosion in Internet services in Ireland will exacerbate the gap between digital haves and have-nots. This project, generously supported by AIB, is a major opportunity to oppose this trend, and exploit technology for the benefit of all our citizens." (more)

• RINCE is closely involved in the organisation of the 3rd International Conference on MATERIALS FOR MICROELECTRONICS (MFM2000) to be held 16-17 October 2000 in Dublin Castle.  Dr. Patrick McNally, Director of Rince's Microelectronics Research Laboratory, is Head of the Local Organising Committee, Member of the International Advisory Board and a Member of the Programme Committee.  Rince will be sponsoring the conference via the supply of audio-visual systems and technical support, as well as participating in the conference sessions.  The Conference is sponsored by the Institute of Materials (UK) and is co-sponsored by the Institute of Physics and the IEEE Electron Devices Society. (more)

• The Microelectronics Research Laboratory in Rince has just carried out the world's first study into the possibility of using x-rays to image the minute bumps produced on the surface of semiconductors when a strained epitaxial layer is grown upon the underlying semiconductor.  A paper entitled "On the Use of Total Reflection X-Ray Topography for the Observation of Misfit Dislocation Strain at the Surface of a Si/Ge-Si Heterostructure" by Patrick J. McNally, G. Dilliway, J.M. Bonar and D. Lowney will appear in the next few weeks in Applied Physics Letters.

• The Centre for Digital Video Processing has been successful in securing funding under Enterprise Ireland's IP2000 scheme.  The centre is a collaboration between the Visual Media Processing Group (VMPG) of the School of Electronic Engineering and the Multimedia Information Retrieval Group (MMIR) of the School of Computer Applications.  The funding obtained, amounting to £410,000 is for a new three year project which aims to significantly enhance the functionality of the FISCHLAR video browsing system.  The FISCHLAR project developed a system which can record and store a broadcast TV programme and play it back to users on demand.  The project developed techniques to analyse the visual aspects of digital video and choose representative frames which can be presented to users in a non-linear browsing interface.  An extension to this work (in collaboration with NUI Dublin) allows user personalisation of programme choice for recording and for playback.  The new project will extend this work via the development of analysis techniques using a number of different information sources such as audio, video, teletext (closed caption material) and program metadata.  The resulting descriptions will facilitate content-based operations on recorded material such as: interactive search, filtering, alerting and summarisation.  In addition to this analysis work, a number of different delivery mechanisms will be investigated, focusing mainly on emerging mobile technologies.  More information available at the VMPG, MMIR and FISCHLAR home pages.

• Dr. Jennifer McManis of the Performance Engineering Laboratory has been awarded an Albert College Junior Fellowship by the DCU Research Committee.  The fellowship will support a postgraduate student for two years, starting in September 2000.  The research project will study performance issues that arise in electronic commerce (ECommerce) Web-based systems, and in particular how to design and operate ECommerce systems so that their customers receive satisfactory service.  The Performance Engineering Laboratory is located within the School of Electronic Engineering, and is concerned with analysing and modelling the performance of computerised systems and networks.

• Book Announcement : The Vision Systems Laboratory announces the forthcoming publication of P.F. Whelan and D. Molloy (2000), Machine Vision Algorithms in Java: Techniques and Implementation.  Springer (London), 298 pages,  ISBN 1-85233-218-2, Due. Aug. 2000.  Machine Vision Algorithms in Java provides a comprehensive introduction to the algorithms and techniques associated with machine vision systems.  The Java programming language is also introduced, with particular reference to its imaging capabilities.  See the books WWW site for further information.

• Based on an application to the University's Research Committee, Dr. Noel O' Connor of the Visual Media Processing Group has been awarded a Junior Albert College Fellowship.  The fellowship will support a Ph.D-level postgraduate student for a period of two years.  Research will focus on developing a new approach to visual object segmentation and tracking using combined colour/texture and motion analysis.  For more details please visit the Visual Media Processing web site.

• The Visual Media Processing Group of the Rince Institute has been designated an EU Marie Curie Development Host.  As a result, the group is now seeking a postdoctoral fellow to assist in coordinating the A-VISAGE project.  The A-VISAGE project addresses indexing and visual summarisation of broadcast television programmes.  The objective is to automatically extract a "Table of Contents" and an "Index" for programmes.  For more details please visit the Visual Media Processing web site.

• The DCU Educational Trust (DCUET) has announced the establishment of their Research Fellowship and Research Studentship Schemes.  Applications from any subject/discipline may apply to either the Fellowship Scheme valued at IE£30,000 per annum for two years or the Studentship Scheme, valued at IE£14,000 per annum for three years.  The Closing date for the receipt of applications is 16th June 2000.  For further details may be found here.