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YEAR BOOK |
Waterford Institute of Technology
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TSSG in WIT celebrates 10 years of research excellence
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The centre was established in 1996 and has grown from 3 to 110 members (staff and students) in ten years, and is organised into two primary divisions: the Research Division (focused on basic and applied research) led by M�che�l � Foghl� as Research Director, and the Innovation & Development Division (focused on pre-product software development and innovation) led by Barry Downes as Commercial Director. In addition there is a smaller Operations Division providing administrative and technical support. The TSSG is currently engaged in over 30 active projects funded from various sources (including the European Commission, Irish HEA, SFI, and Enterprise Ireland). These research projects comprise a balanced portfolio of basic research, applied research, pre-product/experimental development. This emphasis on a critical mass of activity at all stages of the research lifecycle is currently unique in Ireland. It means that many of the TSSG employees are not academic researchers, but are professional developers, managers and entrepreneurs focused on realising economic impact from the expertise in the TSSG's research activities. In contrast, within the basic research activities, most of the staff are academic faculty and post doctoral research fellows, and it is on these programmes that the PhD research students mainly work. Supporting the broader remit of research that embraces commercialisation, the TSSG is physically located within WIT's Research & Innovation Centre, in a dedicated building on the new Carriganore Campus, funded by the HEA and Enterprise Ireland, that includes training for entrepreneurs and incubation space for commercial spin-off activities.
The TSSGs has a history of over 50 funded projects where TSSG has had the role of leading partner in over 65% of those projects. In this 10 year period TSSG has established itself in the following areas:
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� Basic (strategically oriented) Research: the TSSG has won an SFI PI-Cluster award (focused on autonomic network management) and an SFI Research Frontiers award (focused on accounting and billing for aggregated services) as well as HEA PRTLI Cycle III funding (focused on management for pervasive communications environments and on the management of location-based services).
� Applied Research: the TSSG is now the most successful Institution in Ireland in terms of attracting EU Information Society Technologies (IST) research funding, with more cumulative funding than any other college or company. � Pre-product Development: the TSSG has established a very strong record of success in Enterprise Ireland's Commercialisation Funds, the Technological Development (CF-TD), the Proof of Concept (CF-PoC) and the Innovation Partnership (IP) schemes. As part of this process a number of spin off companies have been established and more are in the pipeline. |
Spotlight on European funding
The TSSG has attracted numerous IST funded projects and based on historical success in previous projects, the TSSG has played a crucial strategic role in scoping different future activity in FP7. TSSG's history in engagement of EU projects includes FP4 (ACTS), FP5 (IST/TEN Telecom), and FP6 (IST/eTEN).
Examples of current TSSG projects that were successfully gained from IST include:
Directorate D
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Unit D1 (Communication Technologies): DAIDALOS I (Designing Advanced network Interface for the Delivery and Administration of Location independent, Optimised personal Services), DAIDALOS II (follow-on to Daidalos I), ENABLE (Enabling efficient and operational mobility in large heterogeneous IP networks), In this unit TSSG is also involved in Technology Platform of eMobility.
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Unit D3 (Software Services): ESFORS (European Security Forum for Web Services, Software and Systems), ALBATROSS (Architecture for Location Based Applications of Third Generation Operation Support Systems) (completed). In this unit TSSG is also involved in Technology Platform of NESSI
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Unit D4 (ICT for Trust and Security): SecurIST, SENIT (Security Expert Initiative), in this unit TSSG is also leading the scope for security projects for FP7
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Unit D5 (ICT for Enterprise Networking): DBE (Digital Business Ecosystem), OPAALS, ONE
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Unit F3 (Research Infrastructure): via the Irish National IPv6 Centre, and other national infrastructure initiatives, the TSSG has strong links to this unit
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Unit F4 (New Working Environment): BRAINBRIDGES, CORELABS
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Unit H4 (eTEN): RISER (Registered Information Service for European Residents), Billing4Rent
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Unit G3 (Embedded Systems): MORE (Network-centric Middleware for group communications and resource sharing across heterogeneous embedded systems)
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Autonomic Communications Infrastructures and Management
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Management and Testing of Next Generation Networks
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Security for IPv6 Networks
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Service Oriented Architectures for IP Multimedia Systems
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Automated Configuration of Accounting and Billing Systems
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Pervasive and Context-dependant Communications and Services
For further information:
Research Projects: M�che�l � Foghl�
Research Director, TSSG, WIT
[email protected]
+353 51 302963
Commercial Projects: Barry Downes
Commercial Director, TSSG, WIT
[email protected]
+353 51 302932
Website: http://www.tssg.org