This blog is no longer active. I maintained this blog as part of my role of Research Development Officer with the Faculty of Engineering and Computing, DCU. I have taken up a new role, but you can continue to find information on research in the Faculty, through the main Faculty website [HERE], and through the DCU news pages [HERE].
Thanks for reading!
Raymond Kelly

Friday 31 August 2007

Congratulations to Bart Mellebeek

Congratulations to Bart Mellebeek who has successfully defended his thesis and will be awarded the degree of PhD.

The title of Bart's thesis is "TransBooster: Black Box Optimisation of Machine Translation Systems".


Brief description of Project:
TransBooster is a new and modular approach to help Machine Translation (MT) systems improve their output quality by reducing the number of complexities in the input. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel by proposing yet another approach to MT, we build on the strengths of existing MT paradigms while trying to remedy their shortcomings as much as possible. TransBooster is a wrapper technology that operates on top of an existing MT system. It reduces the complexity of the input text by a recursive decomposition algorithm which produces simple input chunks that are spoon-fed to the baseline MT system. In other words, TransBooster guides the baseline MT system through the input text and tries to help the system to improve the quality of its own translations through automatic complexity reduction. TransBooster has been successfully tested on baseline MT systems of different characteristics (Rule-based, Example-based and Statistical baseline systems) and was extended to be used as promising alternative to current Multi-Engine MT techniques.


This project was generously funded by Enterprise Ireland.

Tuesday 21 August 2007

Success for Industry-Academia Partnership

Enterprise Ireland have featured the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, DCU in a recent set of case studies on their Innovation Partnerships scheme. The case study focuses on the research work of Masters student James Wall. Mr. Wall is investigating the field of submersible motors.

This project allows for a synergistic interaction between industry and academia. According to Ben Breen, Head of R&D at ABS Production Wexford, “The innovation partnership is an economical way of getting vital research done, and for us, it means that James’ advanced knowledge can become an invaluable asset to ABS.” The benefits for DCU are clear: “The funding and support from the Innovation Partnership Programme was an enabler for the research that was undertaken……..Conducting this type of applied research means that we get to apply our skills to solving practical problems”, said Dermot Brabazon, a lecturer with DCU who supervised the project.

Both parties are so pleased with the outcome of the project that they will be re-applying for funding to upgrade Mr. Wall’s research to PhD level.

SurfEng07: Surface Engineering Symposium & Exposition Workshop 2007

We are pleased to invite you to the "Surface Engineering Symposium & Exposition Workshop 2007" which will be held from Thursday 6th and Friday 7th September2007 at DCU, Dublin, Ireland.

The Surface Engineering Symposium and Workshop Exposition will be held in the Engineering Building of Dublin City University, on
Thursday 6th September2007 (Symposium- Dissemination of Research)
and
Friday 7th September2007 (Workshop Exposition - For those wishing to apply Surface Engineering out in Industry/Research)


This Symposium and Workshop Exposition is FREE to attend and the Registration Deadline is Wednesday 5pm August 22nd 2007.

There are two types of paper formats which you may choose;
1. Abstract Poster
or
2. Conference Paper
Note the deadline for papers is Wednesday 29th August 2007.

Please visit http://www.mecheng.dcu.ie/Surfeng2007/ for more information

Deadlines:
Registration for either/both Symposium /& Workshop Expo: Wednesday August 22nd 2007
Submission of Abstract paper: Wednesday 29th August 2007.
Submission of Conference paper: Wednesday 29th August 2007.
SurfEng Symposium start date: Thursday 6th September 2007


We look forward to welcoming you at DCU

Friday 3 August 2007

DCU receives €23m Research Funding under PRTLI 4

The Minister for Education and Science, Mary Hanafin, TD formally announced the outcome of PRTLI Cycle 4 at 11.00 am today. Under this scheme, DCU will receive €23m in research funding. This funding is based on 5 inter-institutional proposals:

- Nanoscience and Nanoscale technologies for Ireland (NANOTEIRE)
- National Biophotonics & Imaging Platform [NBIP]
- National Programme on (Bio)pharmaceutical & Pharmacological Sciences
- Humanities Serving Irish Society (HSIS)
- National Programme of Research on Knowledge, Innovation, Society and Space (KISS)

Significantly, the funding includes projects from across DCU, including science/engineering and humanities/social sciences.

Of particular interest to the Faculty of Engineering and Computing are the Nanoteire and NBIP programmes.

Nanoteire
Nanoteire (Nanoscience and Nano scale technologies for Ireland ) will create a shared national infrastructural capability by significantly upgrading and enhancing the laboratories and capital equipment holdings needed to establish top tier graduate education opportunities in nanoscience and nanoscale technologies for Ireland.

The DCU team, which comprises Professor Liam Barry, Dr. Pascal Landais and Professor Patrick McNally of the Research Institute for Networks and Communications Engineering (RINCE), and members of the National Centre for Plasma Science and Technology (NCPST), will focus on the theme, Ultrafast Photonic Processes and Interactions. To this end DCU will add very significantly to its high speed optical communications laboratories, nanomaterials growth and characterization facilities and high power laser facilities.

NBIP
Professor Paul F. Whelan of the Centre for Image Processing & Analysis (CIPA-RINCE), in conjunction with the Biomedical Diagnostics Institute at DCU has been awarded funding 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.