Engineering Research for the Benefit of the Society
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Thas A Nirmalathas
Commercializing Research@
The University of Melbourne
Outline
• Changing landscape
• Role of MERIT– Internal structure for multi-disciplinary research
• Overview of Research Performance– How well are our staff performing
• University Research Agenda– how well aligned is the School with the University and broader
research agendas
• New Initiatives
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MERIT Model
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Opportunities
Impact
BiomedicalEngineering
Structured Matter
Sustainable Systems andEnergy
Information and CommunicationSystems
CBE
CEE
CSSE
EEE
GEO
MECH
• Society benefits• Publications• Knowledge
trans
• Inspiration• Funding• Partnerships
Departments with strong discipline base
Major Research Focus
Commercilization support is normally through Melbourne Ventures
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Melbourne Ventures is one of the University’s commercialisation support activities which are coordinated
via VP (Commercialisation)
CommercialisationResearch……………………………………………………Teaching
Technology & IP Rights
Patent & trademark management
Technology licensing
Start-up creation & investment
Melbourne Ventures
Courseware & Curriculum Materials
Curriculum licensing
Multimedia & specialised software licensing
Copyright management
Melbourne Curriculum
Licensing Services
Research Services
Research contract management
IP policy and procedures
Melbourne Research
Office
Consulting & Advisory Services
Connecting organisations to University of Melbourne experts
Client responsive contractual and project services
Consultancy division
Customised Award & Non-Award
Courses
Programs division
Customised award and non award postgraduate courses
Research Management
VP (Commercialisation)
(Melbourne Consulting and Custom Programs)
The quick summary of Melbourne Ventures
Mission
To build commercial value on the foundations of Intellectual Property developed at
The University of Melbourne
Core functions
● Technology assessment ● Technology licensing ● Patent & Trademark management ● Creation of start-up companies ● Industrial partnerships ● Attraction of investment capital
Established 2004
Outcomes
Licence dealsStart-up companies
Commercially driven research partnerships(typically revolving around licences & start-ups)
Recent spinout – Manjrasoft
• Cloud computing technology, called Aneka, is used to setup enterprise Clouds and run applications both in academia and industry. In addition, our software runs on public Clouds such as Amazon EC2.
• Manjrasoft's core technology enables enterprises to improve performance and scalability within existing, Windows-based software application and development frameworks by distributing application processing within .NET enterprise environment
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Research Engagement in Centres
• Participates in >140 Research Centres
• Core Participant in 12 National Cooperative Research Centres
• 14 Affiliated Medical Research Institutes
• 18 Federation Fellows
• Research Income (2007): A$309m
Indicative research income by Faculty
School has a number of research centres with their individual commercialization models
One such example is NICTA
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NICTA Commercialization
• Projects are often “use-inspired”
• Entrepreneur-in-residence program– They start by having a couple of projects under focus, take the researchers through
Heilmeier’s questions and market opportunity assessment exercises
• Early discussions with “end-users”
• Progressively more engagement and redirection of research
project towards getting them ready for commercialization
• Proof-of-concept grants to demonstrate technology
• Market Validation Grants
• Spin-out or licensing
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NICTA Investment Model
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“Optical Network Monitoring” • Rollout of reconfigurable optical networks
– Dynamic, high speed, transparent networks– Sensitive to a range of impairments, very
limited options for getting information• Network operators essentially “flying blind”
– can’t monitor new generation flexible & dynamic networks
– Can’t efficiently diagnose faults– Can’t predict problems when provisioning
• Operators want diagnosis and prediction systems– Low cost monitors distributed around the
network (OSNR and MIM)– Link and lightpath configuring tools– Automation of network management
Optical Cross-Connect
Multi channel WDM
Optical Signal
Monitors
Fibers
Router
Network Management and Control
Signal Diagnostics
Routing information and control
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from monitor port
ADC 1
ADC 2
Asynchronous clock
t
Asynchronous Delay-Tap Sampling
• Replace clock recovery with physical delay (t)
• Sample pairs using external clock & plot– “Phase portrait”, (Asynchronous Eye)
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000-60
-40
-20
0
20
40
60
80
Time
Dt
x2
y2x1
y1
Dt
x3
y3
Dt
x
y
101 & 010 transitions
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Asynchronous Delay-Tap Sampling
• 3-bit sequences geometrically separated
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000-60
-40
-20
0
20
40
60
80
Time
Dt
x2
y2
x
y
010 & 101 transitionsDt
x2
y2
110 transitions
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Impairment Signatures (simulation)
Eye
Delay=T
T/2
T/4
Clean signalOSNR 35 dB
Clean
ASE NoiseOSNR 25 dB
ASE Noise Dispersion PMD
1st order PMD40 ps, =45°
In-BandXtalk-25 dB
Crosstalk All
Dispersion800 ps/nm
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Pattern recognition
A B C D E F G
• Change in mindset– intuition can be wrong, signatures do exist
• Use pattern recognition techniques • Similar to those used for hand writing recognition
• Additional challenges– letters overlap– want to know the size– letters interact
Effort and Timeline
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Research
Commercialisation
Research phase
Dec 2007Spinout
Dec 2004 Dec 2009(R&D support)
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