TSSG has a strong presence at IM 2013

Dr Brendan Jennings (TSSG) and Bruno Klauser (Cisco), co-chairs of the IM 2013 exhibits/demonstrations programme, pictured as the demonstrations are assembled.

TSSG had a strong presence at the recent 2013 IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Maangement (IM 2013). IM is the primary IEEE Communications Society’s forum for technical exchange on management of information and communication technology focusing on research, development, integration, standards, service provisioning, and user communities. As such it is one of the key scientific conferences for the TSSG Emerging Networks Laboratory. Four ENL members attended this year’s IM: Jason Barron, Mohamed Adel Mahmoud Mohamed, Dr Lei Shi and Dr Brendan Jennings. Dr Jennings was a member of the organising committee for the conference, where he took responsibility for co-chairing the Exhibits and Demonstrations Programme. Dr Shi presented two papers: one in the mini conference addressing provisioning of virtual machines in IaaS cloud environments and one in the applications sessions proposing a language driven approach for definition of access control policies in enterprise communications systems. The latter paper is an output of a collaboration between ENL researchers and Cisco as part of the FAME research cluster. Finally, Jason Barron presented a poster addressing dominance checking in the authoring of access control policies. A Flickr photostream for the conference is available here.

TSSG Student Presents Paper at TRICANS 2013

TSSG PhD student Runxin Wang recently presented a paper entitled ‘Training Traffic Classifiers with Arbitrary Packet Sets’, at the 1st IEEE Workshop on Traffic Identification and Classification for Advanced Network Services and Scenarios (TRICANS 2013) in Budapest, Hungary. The paper, co-authored by Dr Lei Shi and Dr Brendan Jennings addresses techniques for classifying traffic on the Internet, that is analysing data as it flows through the network in order to classify why type of application is generating that data. Internet Service Providers typically treat different types of traffic differently, for example prioritising voice and video communications over peer-to-peer traffic. Previous works have shown that analysing the first few packets in a flow is usually enough to correctly identify the application. However, some application developers have realised this and instead change the first few packets in order to emulate a different application type, thus defeating the classification algorithms. Runxin’s paper investigated the use of a random selection of packets at the start of a flow for identification purposes—this approach is shown to work with an acceptable degree of accuracy.

TSSG student presents paper at QCMan 2013

TSSG MSc by Research studnt Mohamed Adel Mahmoud Mohamed recently presented a paper entitled “A Generic Algorithm for Mid-call Audio Codec Switching” at the 1st IFIP/IEEE International Workshop on QoE Centric Management (QCMan 2013) in Ghent, Belgium. The paper was written by Mohamed, his supervisor Dr Brendan Jennings and collaborators from the Hamilton Institute in NUI Maynooth and the IBM Dublin Software Lab. The work is an output from a joint project between researchers in the FAME research cluster and IBM that is addressing the assessment and improvement of voice and video Quality-of-Experience (QoE) perceived by users of enterprise communications systems. This paper presented an algorithm that performs in-call selection of the most appropriate audio codec given prevailing conditions on the network path between the end points of a voice call, taking into acound the QoE improvement that could be gained by switching codec and the negative impact of the switching process itself. Mohamed’s paper was one of three shortlisted for the best paper award at the workshop.

TSSG joins OASIS

TSSG recently became a contributing member of the OASIS international standardisation organisation. OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a non-profit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society. Its members produce standards for security, Cloud computing, SOA, Web services, the Smart Grid, electronic publishing, emergency management, and other areas.

TSSG’s main current interest in OASIS relates to standardisation of the eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) a language used to express rules that govern users’ acess to computing resources in IT systems. TSSG researchers Dr Brendan Jennings, Dr Steven Davy and Bernard Butler have a strong interest in XACML and have done significant work on the both the authoring/analysis of XACML rules and on the performance of XACML rule evaluation. TSSG’s work on this area was recently present to the OASIS XACML technical committee and the team are planning their further engagement in XACML standardisation activities.

Research Unit Manager

Location: Kilkenny/Waterford

Commencement Date: Immediately

Minimum Qualification Required: Degree in computing, telecommunications or equivalent and a minimum of 3 years commercial/research experience in a management capacity.

Major Duties:

The Research Unit manager will report to the TSSG Chief Operations Officer.

The role will include the following:

Securing sponsored research projects and developing new sources of funded research, including contract research – ie building a pipeline of income for the Unit.
Leading the sponsored and contract research projects of the research unit – ie being responsible for the delivery of all projects in the Unit.
Line management (administration and performance management) and mentoring of unit staff including management of budgetary and resource allocations.
Providing leadership on research projects activities within the research unit including identifying and building synergies between projects.
Developing and manage key internal and external relationships.
Ensuring intra- and inter- Research Unit collaboration.
Agreeing and delivering on specific TSSG vision, strategy, objectives, processes and targets/metrics.
Specification and delivery of research unit research vision and strategy.
Dissemination of information by publication in international journals and at workshops and conferences. This will involve international travel.
International representation of the Institute to the funding bodies, fulfilment of scientific services such as membership in relevant conference Program Committees, working groups and editorial boards; and peer-reviewing of international publications.
Liaise on a regular basis and provide periodic reports to the Management Team / TSSG Executive.
Development and maintenance of high quality external sponsor (funding bodies) customer, academic and commercial relationships.
Coordination and protection of IP with the Management Team/Technology Transfer Office.
Any other tasks that may be assigned by the Management Team.

The candidate should have excellent oral and written communication skills as this role will involve considerable inter- and external- organizational collaboration and also writing proposals to funding bodies. The candidate must display a readiness to take personal responsibility for issues that need to be resolved and act effectively within the scope of their own position to resolve them.

Requirements:

BSc/BEng in computing or telecommunications, or equivalent and preferably Masters or PhD level post-graduate research.
Minimum of 3 years commercial/research experience in a management capacity.
Strong project management experience.
Ability to rapidly understand and analyze new products and potential solutions to research challenges.
Attention to detail and methodical approach.
Track record of leading people.
Excellent written and oral communication, organisational and interpersonal skills.

Desirable:

Understanding of the preparation, implementation and maintenance of telecommunications and IP infrastructure equipment.
Knowledge of software development and processes.
European and National Research Project Management experience.
Track record in securing funding for R&D projects and liaison with, and development of, national/international contacts.
Experience at managing multiple project teams.
Experience in a commercial environment.
Experience in the delivery of solutions/products to customers.
Record of publication of scientific results.
Experience of filing patents.

Closing Date for Applications: 4pm on Monday, 24^th June 2013.

To apply for this position please submit a loose-leaf CV with accompanying letter/email specifying the position you are interested in to:

The Human Resources Office,
Waterford Institute of Technology,
Waterford,
Ireland.
Telephone: 051-845519
Fax: 051-302663
E-mail: recruitment@wit.ie