IBM hires seven scientists to advance R&D work

IBM has expanded its Irish research and development (R&D) programme with the appointment of seven visiting scientists, all from Irish academia, to its new Dublin Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS).

The scientists will give 20 per cent of their time towards their own research projects within IBM's Dublin Software Laboratory (DSL) in Santry, where they will work with IBM researchers towards commercialising their work.

IBM hopes the programme will bring fresh ideas into the labs as well as forge permanent links between Irish universities and research institutions, and industry.

"The number one reason we're doing this is to encourage innovation," said Mr Bill Kearney, manager, DSL. "Innovation is essential to the ongoing success of the lab, and ongoing innovation will enhance the future of the lab."

Dublin became the eighth international CAS location last September in a move that Mr Kearney said would give the Republic an established research centre that would allow for a broader pool of research projects and greater interaction with Irish institutions.

He and others within IBM Ireland hope that the Dublin CAS will spur further IBM R&D investment here. In the past, IBM has chosen CAS locations for significant R&D expansion.

Research focus areas within the programme - designed to mesh with DSL research interests - include end-user development tools, e-learning, unstructured information management (UIM), computational linguistics, collaborative software and on-demand computing.

Mr Kearney said the CAS model had been very successful in Toronto, Canada, where 60 scientists are based. "IBM continues to fund CAS because there's a real return on investment."

Scientists in Dublin will work part of the time in the DSL and will have an assigned mentor. They can also call on members of the lab for help on their projects.

The visiting scientists should get a good view of what the business potential of their research is, and also should have the expectation that their work will be commercialised, said Mr Kearney. They will be expected to produce joint publications and inventions that will be co-licensed with the researcher.

The appointments are for one year but have a rolling review. Most appointees will likely continue on in their research post, while new scientists will be added to the programme, perhaps as soon as the end of this year.

Later this year, IBM will also introduce a programme for PhD students, which will see the students paired to a researcher.

The new CAS scientists are Dr Josef van Genabith, Dublin City University (DCU), working on computational linguistics; Dr Andy Way, DCU, working on machine translation; Dr Vincent Wade, Trinity College, working on dynamic e-learning; Dr Nick Kusmerick, UCD, working on information extraction from unstructured information sources; Dr Julie Berndsen, UCD, working on speech recognition; Dr Alexey Lastovetsky, UCD, working on grid computing; and Dr John Keating, NUI Maynooth, working on controlling e-learning hardware resources via the internet.

An eighth appointee from outside the State will be announced shortly.