June

PPARC KITE Club - Technology and Industry News - June 2005

1 Compliance and Conformity, Exception and Anomaly in Science and Engineering - 8/9.7.05

This two-day iAstro (COST Action 283) workshop will be held in central London on Friday 8 and Saturday 9 July 2005. Themes of the workshop include: target and faint feature detection, from imagery and other signals, abnormal tissue in medical imaging, two-class classification problems with very imbalanced priors, one-class classification, to determine conformity and anomaly, novelty detection, e.g. in machine condition monitoring, serendipitous knowledge discovery in data mining, attention.

Applications include astronomy, medical imaging, forensic imaging, video compression, vision in sport, transport and surveillance and one-class problems in industrial machine vision.

For further information, please contact Prof. Fionn Murtagh, RHUL, email: fmurtagh@acm.org or telephone: 44 1784 443429.

See http://www.iastro.org for more information.

2 Advanced Instrumentation Workshop - Autumn 2005

We are currently preparing for a KITE Club workshop to be held this Autumn on the topic of Advanced Instrumentation. The objective will be to bring together delegates from companies involved in component and instrument manufacture, trade associations and research groups involved in the development of instrumentation for PPARC projects.

If you are interested in participating in this meeting, in showcasing your technology and instrumentation capabilities, please contact Nathan Hill.

3 Detectors / Cameras for High Resolution Biology, Biosignal Analysis

A meeting was held between people from the PPARC and BBSRC communities in February this year. The objective was to highlight topics for further action, with a view to developing support from BBSRC for research projects aimed at building collaborations between physicists and life scientists.

We are now moving to the second stage of this initiative, which will focus on developing specific topics for support by BBSRC. This will consist of a small workshop focused on the twin topics of 'cameras for high resolution biology' and 'application of techniques from astronomy and high energy physics for biosignal analysis'. The first topic will emphasise recently deployed astronomical cameras, particle physics detectors and developments in Active Pixel Sensors. We are seeking six representatives from our community for each topic.

If you are interested in participating in this small workshop, please contact Mark Littlewood.

4 Hospital-acquired infections

You will doubtless be aware that hospital-acquired infections such as MRSA have become a priority issue in the National Health Service. Our contacts at the Department of Health are scouting for new technologies that could be used to control the spread of hospital-acquired infections. Although these are most likely to be based upon chemical treatments, we are interested to find physics-based solutions.

If you have technology ideas in this area, please contact Mark Littlewood.

5 PPARC Research in Industry

The recent announcement by PPARC of its "PPARC Research in Industry (PRI)" mechanism is a breakthrough in attitudes towards industrial engagement in its programme. PRI funding aims to engage industry in PPARC's programme technology development and knowledge transfer activities. The mechanism allows commercial organisations to apply
directly to PPARC for funding for the first time. The emphasis is on collaborations between industry and academia. Applications for funding will be made in response to specific announcements of opportunity. The calls are being issued under a pilot programme for 2005/06, the first of which, CREST (Collaborative Research in Exploration Systems and
Technology) was launched on 27th May. The closing date for outline proposals is 30 June. By encouraging collaborative development of technology, we aim to increase the long-term rate of industrial participation in PPARC science projects and the rate of Knowledge Transfer activity for the wider benefit of the UK economy.

Our overall strategy is to:

Promote co-ordinated technology development within the PPARC programme and with other partners (e.g. defence and healthcare);
Encourage researchers to be aware of the possibilities for exploitation;
Raise awareness in industry and other research sectors of the technological strengths and opportunities afforded by PPARC science;
Encourage collaboration between UK companies and the research community

For further information on the PPARC Research in Industry mechanism and funding calls currently available to industry, visit http://www.pparc.ac.uk/In/pri.asp

For further support in building partnerships for Programme Technology Development and Knowledge Transfer, please contact Nathan Hill

What are Programme Technology Development and Knowledge Transfer?
Programme Technology Development (PTD)
The aim of Programme Technology Development is to develop the technology capabilities needed to underpin UK technology leadership in future PPARC science projects. It applies to the pre-construction phase of projects and seeks to pave the way for more:

UK intellectual leadership in key work packages in international projects;
UK industrial return on construction phase contracts

Knowledge Transfer (KT)
The aim of PPARC's knowledge transfer activities - such as the PPARC Industrial Programme Support Scheme (PIPSS) - is to help transfer the technologies and knowledge developed in pursuit of PPARC's science objectives into other applications. Knowledge Transfer may take place through collaborative developments, spin-out formation, skills transfer, consultancy and intellectual property licensing. Destination applications include industry, healthcare, life sciences, other science (e.g. fusion research), defence and security.

6 Games industry initiative

Many people attend KITE club meetings and ask us what happens next. The truth is that it is up to participants to take the next steps, using the contacts made and renewed at KITE club meetings to build working partnerships. The Industry Coordinator team can of course provide support for further contacts and sources of funding, but the impetus has to belong to the collaborating organisations.

In November 2004, we held a speculative meeting on 'software for the games industry' (see http://www.pparc.ac.uk/In/Sc/List/GamesInd_webv1.asp for details). It was a small meeting, and in fact attracted as many people from film post-production as from the games software industry. Results so far have included two PIPSS applications, a successful Follow-on Fund award and a direct relationship between one of the participating companies and a university spin-out company.

Of course, not all contacts can be successful, but we rate this as a reasonably successful outcome for a speculative meeting.

Contacts

Nathan Hill, PPARC Industry Coordinator and UK Technology Transfer Coordinator for CERN.
Email: nathan.hill@qi3.co.uk Tel: 01223 422405.

Also Mark Littlewood mark.littlewood@qi3.co.uk, Glyn White glyn.white@qi3.co.uk and David Rafe david.rafe@qi3.co.uk

June

PPARC KITE Club - Technology and Industry News - June 2005

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