Dec
21
2006
At a recent visit to the Hamilton Institute at NUIM, we heard about the Hamilton Mathematics Grand Challenge. This is an outreach programme developed by the researchers there, and funded partly by SFI.
The idea behind the programme is to get secondary school children to participate in solving maths and logic puzzles. The puzzles are issued once a week during the school year, and children from participating schools submit their answers through a web-based form. At the end of the year, the top student in each school wins a prize of an Apple iPod, and the winning school will also win a prize.
The uptake of this programme appears to be excellent, with 2,500 pupils registered for this year’s competition, from about 30 invited schools. In fact, the competition is proving so popular that the guys in the Hamilton are getting phone calls from schools asking why they weren’t invited to participate. Hopefully over the next year or two the challenge can be rolled out on a wider scale – perhaps even nationwide.
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Dec
21
2006
We have been informed that DETE has formally announced the appointment of Professor Patrick Cunningham of the Department of Genetics, TCD to the office of Chief Science Advisor to the Government.
As of the time of writing, there is no formal announcement on either the DETE or Science Advisory web sites. I’m sure that that will be rectified in the very near future. An extract from the press release:
The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment today (Wednesday 20th December) announced the appointment of Professor Patrick Cunningham to the office of the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government.
Professor Cunningham is Professor of Animal Genetics at TCD. Originally from Waterford, he graduated from UCD in 1956 with first class honours in Agricultural Science. He went on to obtain a Masters Degree in Animal Nutrition from UCD in 1957, and a PhD in Animal Genetics from Cornell University in the USA in 1962.
Those familiar with the Irish research scene will be aware that the previous incumbant, Barry McSweeny, was forced to resign just over a year ago due to allegations over the source of his PhD. Mr. McSweeny has since gone on to another senior position within the Department of Marine and Natural Resources.
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Dec
14
2006
Silicon Republic is reporting that TCD School of Computer Science has won an award of a technology donation from IBM of its Cell Broadband Engine).
Although unnamed, the recipients of the award are almost certainly a recent SFI award winning team, headed up by Prof. Carol O’Sullivan and with Dr. Steven Collins, Dr. Fiona Newell and Prof. Henry Rice as co-investigators. Congratulations to them all.
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Dec
6
2006
According to the definitive web 2.0 validator, my blog scores 14 out of 50 in the web2.0 validation test, whereas the almightly flickr only scores 4 ex 50.
I’m 3.5 times more web2.0sey than flickr. Who’a thunk it?
Update. Following this post my score jumped to an impressive 17 ex 50, making me 4.25 times more web2.0sey than flicker! What a result.
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Dec
6
2006
At an internal meeting today, our DG brought our attention to a piece written in yesterday’s Financial Times. The article, by Alan Cane, is entitled Joining forces for innovation in the face of globalisation. It’s based on a Forrester report that looks at innovation transformers. These are defined as countries that are “effective at taking developments from other nations or companies and turning them into commercial products”. This is an interesting concept, as it seperates R&D spend in the country under study from product development based on technology developed anywhere.
The report breaks countries into four categories: leaders, strong performers, contenders and risky bets. Surprisingly (to me, at any rate), Ireland is the only country in the report identified as being in the leaders category. Industrial giants such as the UK, USA, Japan and France are all in the risky bets category. Quote:
Ireland is the surprise leader in a ranking of how far 26 industrialised countries benefit from a trend towards ‘innovation networks’—partnerships between companies or countries which are thought to be more effective than keeping research and development to oneself.
Looks like we’re doing something right here.
(Regrettably, I can’t find a link to the appropriate article on the FT website. If I find one, I’ll update this post).
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