CASL QuarterlyNewsletter of the Complex and Adaptive Systems Laboratory

Volume 1 , Issue 2January 201 3 – March 201 3

In this issue:

World record code cracker

CASL ACE Awards 201 3

REACH

Prof Frederic Dias Honour

Featured Research

Breaking Ground TV Award

CASL Collaborative Seminar Series

My Internship at KAUST

CASL Alumni - Dr Ian Harris

Funding News

CASL IAP "First Friday" Lunches

CASL Miscellany

Welcome to the second issue of CASL Quarterly, the newsletter of the UCD Complex & Adaptive

Systems Laboratory. CASL is an incubator for interdiscipl inary research which is underpinned by

computational and mathematical sciences.

As I settle into my new role as Director of CASL we have started to implement our annual plan, and in

particular are making great progress in the area of communication, with CASL Quarterly being one of the

results. I am very grateful to Team CASL for the hard work that they, in particular Barry Hogan, has put into

leading the REACH initiative. REACH, which is highl ighted in this issue, is a pilot programme for Science

Communication Training which has been developed through cooperation and collaboration across UCD's

Research Institutes. Our aim is to create an ecosystem of Science Communicators amongst the graduate

and postdoctoral researchers, to help us communicate more effectively the exciting science that is being

undertaken at UCD. We are very grateful to UCD Research which has recently supported this initiative

through the latest round of Seed Funding.

We have had a large number of success stories over the past quarter and some of the highl ights have

been captured in this issue. By way of example, we warmly congratulate a number of CASL investigators

including Prof Frederic Dias who was honoured with the Chevalier (Knight) of the Ordre des Palmes

Académiques, The Breaking Ground short fi lm team won a Royal Television Society award, and our latest

CASL ACE Award recepients Dr Lorcan Coyle and Dr Prag Sharma (EgoNAV), Dr Colm Ryan (ICON

Newman Fellow in Genomics), and Kevin O'Brien (Fight-Malaria@Home). On recent funding success

stories we warmly congratulate Prof Nial Friel on an SFI Investigator award, and the hugely significant SFI

Centre called INSIGHT, which is comprised of many past and present CASL PI 's including Prof Pádraig

Cunningham's Clique Strategic Research Cluster and TRIL led by Prof Brian Caulfield, who have teamed

up with Clarity, DERI and 4C to create a national centre in Big Data. Last but not by no means least (in

fact in the first article in this issue) we feature the World Record Breaking Research being undertaken by

Prof Gary McGuire and his team in the area of cryptography, which has implications, for example, for the

security of financial transactions.

We hope you enjoy this issue, and of course we always welcome feedback on CASL Quarterly and ideas

and suggestions for features in future issues.

Dr Michael O'Neil l

Apri l 201 3

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Claude Shannon Instituteteam break cryptographyworld recordCongratulations to Prof Gary McGuire, Dr Jens Zumbragel, Dr

Faruk Gologlu and Dr Rob Granger for achieving a world record bycracking a code used by the security industry for credit cards andbank account detai ls.Using the supercomputer at ICHEC the team from the ClaudeShannon Institute and CASL solved a famously difficult conundrumknown as the discrete log problem. To perform secure transactionsonline, mathematicians create algorithms using numbers stretching tohundreds of digits. These numbers must be large enough to preventdecryption by criminals, but small enough not to slow downtransactions, which should take place instantaneously.

As part of the process, the Dublin-based research team, led byProfessor Gary McGuire, broke the world record in February,previously held by mathematicians in France, by solving the discretelog problem using a 1 ,971 bit number. The largest number previouslyused to solve it was a 1 ,425 bit number. McGuire, from the School ofMathematical Sciences in UCD, said secure online transactions werenow reliant on the discrete log problem or its variations. Most usecodes based on numbers larger than the highest number ever to bedecrypted but not so large as to slow down transactions. “Onlinebanking, buying something on Amazon or your airl ine tickets – anysecure website that you put your credit card in [is based on it], ” hesaid. The problem is also used to secure e-voting machines aroundthe world. Mike Scott, chief cryptographer with CertiVox, an onlinesecurity firm, said the achievement would force his industry to reviewsecurity levels. “All of our security depends on variations of thediscrete logarithm problem, so if the problem isn’t as hard as wethought it was, then that could be a bit of a worry,” he said.

Scott said the UCD team’s success in cracking such a “tough nut”had been noted by those interested in cryptography. “Out in thecryptographic blogosphere people are talking about it – people areimpressed,” he said. The record for the biggest number used to solve

the problem was set at 1 27 bits by Don Coppersmith from IBM inAmerica in 1 984. I t has since been broken several times, with Frenchresearchers vying with each other and a Japanese team from Fujitsu,unti l the Irish triumph last week. The UCD team is making plans tobreak its own record.

McGuire decided to tackle the problem after reading about theJapanese world record last summer. He gathered a team of CASLpost-doctoral researchers, made up of Dr Robert Granger fromEngland, Dr Jens Zumbragel from Germany and Dr Faruk Gologlufrom Turkey for the record attempt, and Science Foundation Irelandprovided the funding. The team applied to ICHEC to use itssupercomputer and created a mathematical formula to solve theproblem. Measured in bits – the most basic units of computercalculation – their record stands at 1 ,971 bits. In layman’s terms thenumber is 594 digits long. McGuire said their formula meant theyshould be able to break their own record, given time. “We can pushthings on quite a bit, ” he said. “Over the next month we hope to goup to 4,000 bits. That would never have been imagined a year ago.”

Adapted from Science Spinning by Sean Duke. First published in theSunday Times, Irish Edition, 3rd March 2013

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Pictured from l - r; Dr Rob Granger, Dr Jens Zumbragel, Prof Gary

McGuire, Dr Faruk Gologlu at UCD CASL, March 201 3.

CASL ACE Awards 201 3

A research award for Achievement Collaborationand Excellence

Each year CASL recognises the Achievement,Collaboration and Excellence of the researchers within

the CASL community through the CASL ACE awards. This

year nominations were solicited and reveiwed by a

subcommittee of the CASL Executive Committee. On 1 4th

March the awards were hosted in the CASL Orange Room

and the winners, Dr Lorcan Coyle and Dr Prag Sharma, Dr

Colm Ryan and Mr Kevin O'Brien were presented with the

awards.

Dr Lorcan Coyle & Dr Prag Sharma, UCD CASL, Clique,

UCD School of Computer Science

Joint award shared with Dr Lorcan Coyle and Dr Prag

Sharma for their innovative startup company EGONAV.

EgoNav Analytics, a new software venture which has

developed a novel solution for identifying and highl ighting real-

time fraudulent behaviour in large customer datasets has won a

runner-up NovaUCD 201 2 Start-Up Award as part of University

College Dublin’s 1 7th NovaUCD Campus Company

Development Programme.

Dr Colm Ryan, UCD CASL, Clique, UCD School of

Computer Science

Colm received a B.A. in Computer Science from Trinity College

Dublin in 2005, and spent several years working as a software

developer with IBM. In 2008 he was awarded an IRCSET

scholarship, and commenced a PhD in CASL, under the

supervision of Prof. Pádraig Cunningham & Dr. Gerard Cagney.

DirectorMichael O'Neill with Dr Lorcan Coyle receiving CASL ACE award

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DirectorMichael O'Neill with Dr Colm Ryan

As part of his PhD, Colm spent twelve months at the Krogan

Lab in University of California San Francisco, where he worked

with researchers who are at the cutting edge of bioinformatics.

As a result of his work on genetic interaction networks in San

Francisco, he has recently achieved a number of publications in

high-impact biological journals, notably Molecular Cell and Plos

Genetics.

In November 201 2, Colm successful ly defended his viva in

UCD with no corrections. He was awarded the inaugural ICON

Newman Fellowship in Genomics, al lowing him to progress to

postdoctoral research with the Shields Lab in CASL. His work

currently focuses on the combination of computational and

experimental approaches to discover gene variants, providing

an insight into cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer.

Mr Kevin O'Brien, PhD Shield's Lab, UCD CASL

Kevin has been the driving force behind the realisation of the

Fight-Malaria@Home BOINC Project. In addition to managing

his ful l-time PhD project on the identification and

characterisation of short l inear motifs both experimental ly and

computational ly; Kevin has been devoting his spare time to the

development of a massively paral lel infrastructure for the

elucidation of novel targets for the treatment of malaria.

Kevin has successful ly implemented a complex web

infrastructure for the management of vast amounts of data

involving thousands of users across the globe. This work

should be recognised as a superb application of his

computational ski l ls to a biological problem.

Kevin has also been involved in a number of other successful

projects in CASL. Recently he was part of a team that produced

a comprehensive computational prediction of al l short l inear

motifs in the human interactome. He has been involved in the

generation of visual isation tools to aid in our understanding of

protein interaction networks and worked with Clique

Researcher Dan Archambault on the visual isation of multiple

complex overlapping sets. In addition, Kevin played an

important role in a metric evaluation of EulerView and

VennMaster for the purposes of visual izing the results of

Proteomics Experiments. These two techniques help visual ize

proteins that are common and outlying to a series of

experiments.

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DirectorMichael O'Neill and Kevin O'Brien at ACE Award Event

Nominations Open for next round of CASL ACE Awards

A - Achievement

C - Collaboration

E - Excellence

Nominations for the next round of CASLACE Awards should be sent to casl@ucd.ie

A new and exciting communications training programmeis being piloted in UCD. Launched in Apri l 201 3, REACHwas established by the Institutes to provide training to PhDstudents and early stage researchers in key areas ofcommunication. The programme offers insights andexpertise to help communicate research to wideraudiences.

REACH brings together PhD and early stage researchersfrom across many of the UCD Schools, Colleges andInstitutes to participate in a structured training programmein key areas of science communication.

Students have the opportunity to study modules such as;Introduction to Communications, Elevate Yourself, TechnicalPresentations, Presenting Posters, Fi lm, ProfessionalFootprint, and Disseminating your research via socialmedia.

A REACH Out graduation event wil l take place on June27th where participants wil l showcase their work at the UCDCinema.

Visit the REACH website for more information.

Prof. Frederic Dias Honour

Prof Frederic Dias was honoured with theChevalier (Knight) of the Ordre des PalmesAcadémiques.

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The Knighthood was presented to him by H.E. Ambassador

of France Mrs Emmanuelle d'Achon at the Ambassador's

residence in Dublin on March 20th 201 3. This is one of the

highest honours that France can bestow and was original ly

established by the Emperor Napoleon.

Ambassador of France Mrs Emmanuelle d'Achonwith Prof Frederic Dias, March 2013.

Featured Research

Swarm Intelligence: New Collective Properties of Swarm

Dynamics Uncovered

CASL Researchers Maksym Romenskyy and Dr Vladimir

Lobaskin from University College Dublin, I reland, have

uncovered new collective properties of swarm dynamics in a

study just published in European Physical Journal and

presented in the current CASL Collaborative Seminar Series.

Swarming is the spontaneous organised motion of a large

number of individuals. I t is observed at al l scales, from bacterial

colonies, sl ime moulds and groups of insects to shoals of fish,

flocks of birds and animal herds. Ultimately, this could be used

to control swarms of animals, robots, or human crowds by

applying signals capable of emulating the underlying interaction

of individuals within the swarm, which could lead to predicted

motion patterns elucidated through modell ing.

The authors were inspired by condensed matter models, used

for example in the study of magnetism, which were

subsequently adapted to be biological ly relevant to animal

swarms. In their model, in addition to the abil ity to al ign with its

neighbours, each model animal is endowed with two new

features: one for coll ision avoidance and another preventing

direction change at every step to ensure persistence of motion.

The team performed computer simulations of up to 1 00,000

self-propelled particles, each mimicking an individual animal

and moving at a constant speed on a plane surface.

They found that when the swarm becomes overcrowded, the

globally ordered motion breaks down. At high density and when

the nearest neighbours are within one step of each other, each

animal can no longer decide on the safe direction of motion.

Instead, it is busy correcting its motion to avoid coll isions.

They also described, for the first time, a power law that

quantifies the average degree of al ignment in the direction of

motion for animals within the swarm. The law describes how

the alignment decays from the centre of the swarm, where

animals can best judge the swarm motion due to their

maximum number of neighbours, to the periphery.

M. Romenskyy and V. Lobaskin (201 3), Statistical properties of

swarms of self-propelled particles with repulsions across the

order-disorder transition, European Physical Journal B, DOI :

1 0.1 1 40/epjb/e201 3-30821 -1

Article adapted from The European Physical Journal, 27 March 2013.

Simulation snapshots of a

swarm. © M. Romenskyy and

V.Lobaskin

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Breaking Ground TV award

CASL and IADT's UCD ‘Science Expression’ short film

Breaking Ground has won the Undergraduate

Entertainment Award at the Royal Television Society

Awards.

D irected by Keith Browett of The National Fi lm School, Dun

Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Breaking

Ground stems from a collaboration with Prof Scott Rickard at

UCD’s Complex and Adaptive Systems Laboratory (CASL) who

focuses on dynamic interdiscipl inary research that advances

scientific knowledge through mathematics and computation.

Prof Chris Bean, Director of UCD Earth Institute, and Dr Martin

Quinn, cardiologist at St Vincent’s University Hospital, were

collaborators.

"The UCD Science Expression competition presented us with

exactly what every emerging fi lmmaker wants; something new

and something challenging. I t gave us a great opportunity to

explore the relationship between science, the visual arts and

storytel l ing. The experience was unquestionably enl ightening

and rewarding. The imaginative fi lms that came from the

project would never have come under any other

circumstances”, said fi lm student Keith Browett, Director of

Breaking Ground. The fi lm uses live action and animation to

i l lustrate the story of collaboration and inspiration.

Science Expression is led by UCD Research and The National

Fi lm School, Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design &

Technology, and in 201 2 was supported by Science Foundation

Ireland. I ts aim is to l ink scientists and student fi lmmakers

together to create new Irish science fi lms. The joint project

Pictured from l-r: Alex Boyd, UCD

Research; Barry Hogan, UCD CASL;

Keith Browett, Director, Breaking Ground

NFS IADT; Alan Hopkins, Director of

Photography, Breaking Ground NFS

IADT and Barry Dignam, IADT.

challenges teams of scientists and students to create short

three-minute fi lms with a strong visual dynamic, and an

imaginative, provocative, and unconventional storyl ine.

"Scientists have important things to say and fi lm makers can

help convey their stories,” said Professor Des Fitzgerald, Vice-

President for Research at University College Dublin.

The fi lm stems from a collaboration with Prof. Scott Rickard at

UCD's Complex and Adaptive Systems Laboratory (CASL) who

focuses on dynamic interdiscipl inary research community

advancing scientific knowledge through mathematics and

computation. Director at UCD Earth Institute, Prof Chris Bean

and Cardiologist at Saint Vincent's Hospital, Doctor Martin

Quinn, are in large part to thank for the making of this fi lm.

CASL Collaborative SeminarSeriesCASL welcomes researchers from across UCD andInternational Communities to speak at, or simply attend theCASL Collaborative Seminar Series.

CASL hosted the second round of the CASL CollaborativeSeminar Series in this quarter and saw an impressive set oftalks. The aim of the series is to bring together individualresearchers and groups who are interested in Complex &Adaptive Systems to present on a topic which is accessible to abroad CASL audience. Our intention is to spark newinterdiscipl inary collaborations, and to highl ight existing CASLresearch.

In the first talk of the series, Dr Pablo Lucas spoke on “TheEffects of Group Composition & Fractionalization in a PublicGoods Game: An Agent-Based Simulation ”. Dr Michael Salter-Townshend fol lowed with an excellent presentation on “LatentSpace Modelling of Multi Relational Networks”. Dr MiguelBustamente gave an interesting seminar on “Completeclassification of discrete resonat rossby drift wave triads onperiodic domains”, while Prof Denis Shields and Dr GianlucaPolastri gave a fascinating collaborative seminar entitled “WhyN to one and N to N bidirectional neural networks are good atidentifying features in biosequences: applications to thediscovery of bioactive peptides”. The final seminar was by DrMark Flanagan on “Channel Coding for WirelessCommunications”.

The seminar series continues throughout 201 3, with the detai lsof the next eight sessions, which take place during Apri l & May,presented across the page. We very much welcome informalenquiries on speaking at these events, and welcomesuggestions for speakers. In either case please contactcasldirector@ucd. ie.

Upcoming Seminars

4 Apr 201 3

Dr Jens Zumbragel, Prof Gary McGuire, Dr Robert Granger, Dr Faruk Gologlu

(CASL/School of Mathematical Sciences)

"A Cryptographic World Record: An Overview of the Problem & Techniques"

1 1 Apr 201 3

Prof Joao Marques-Silva (CASL/School of Computer Science & Informatics)

"Minimal Sets over Monotone Predicates"

1 8 Apr 201 3

Prof Nial Friel (CASL/School of Mathematical Sciences)

"Bayesian inference for social networks using the exponential random graph

model"

25 Apr 201 3

Prof Tahar Kechadi (CASL/School of Computer Science & Informatics)

"Imbalance Class Distributions & their Impacts on Big Data Classification"

2 May 201 3

Dr Vladimir Lobaskin (CASL/School of Physics)

"Order from disorder: Dynamic self-organisation in dissipative "

9 May 201 3

Dr Chris Bleakley (CASL/School of Computer Science & Informatics)

"Mobile 3D Motion Tracking for Sports and Health"

23 May 201 3

Dr Alexandros Agapitos (CASL/School of Computer Science & Informatics)

"Adaptive distance metrics for nearest-neighbour classification based on

genetic programming"

30 May 201 3

Dr Kathleen Curran (CASL/School of Medicine & Medical Sciences)

"Modell ing Diffusion Tensor MRI Data"

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My Internship at KAUST

Simulation Science PhD StudentAaron Byrne shares his internshipexperience at KAUST, SaudiArabia.

Last winter I spent 6 months collaborating at King Abdullah's

University of Science and Technology, or KAUST for short, in

Saudi Arabia, thanks to an Erasmus Mundus grant.

Upon arriving at the magnificent campus on the coast of the

red sea I quickly learned that despite in many ways Saudi

Arabia being the opposite of Irish culture, that the people there

were very friendly and welcoming and as a result I thoroughly

enjoyed my time in the University and in Saudi Arabia.

The research carried out was performing an ab-initio

simulation of a novel design of dye sensitized solar cel l and has

led to an ongoing collaboration with Udo Schwingenschlögl at

the Solar & Photovoltaics Engineering Research Center

(SPERC).

SPERC is one of 8 research centers in KAUST and it fosters

an interdiscipl inary approach to basic energy science and

engineering.

The centre has access to state of the art facil ities including the

“Shaeen” supercomputer, which has a total of 65,536 compute

cores with a total of 64TB of distributed memory across the

resource.

King Abdullah's University of Science and Technology

Recent GraduatesCongratulations to the following PhD students whosuccessfully defended their PhD thesis and graduated ;

Guangyu Wu , Cl ique, who successful ly defended his PhD on"Network Analysis ofUser-Generated Content" .

Fergal Reid , Cl ique, who successful ly defended his PhD on"Computational Analysis ofStructure and Dynamics in ComplexNetworks" .

Conrad Lee, Cl ique, who successful ly defended his PhD on"Detecting and Evaluating Structure in Social Media Data" .

Alison Sneyd , Claude Shannon Institute, who successful lydefended her PhD on "Codes Over Rings and Applications toCombinatorics" .

John Mark Swafford , Natural Computing and FMC2, whosuccessful ly defended his PhD on "Analysing the Discovery anduse ofModules in Grammatical Evolution"

CASL Alumni

Dr Ian Harris, Software developer, Openmind Networks

I am currently working in Openmind Networks, an Irish owned

software development company that produces messaging

software for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). Historical ly the

mobile messaging market was dominated by SMS. Openmind

Networks has been hugely successful in providing SMS

services to MNOs; the company currently holds a 40% global

market share in SMS Hubs.

However, the messaging market is changing. The rapid

expansion of smartphone and tablet technology means users

can do more with their mobile devices. Coupled with ubiquity of

high speed data connections, be they WiFi or mobile data,

customers demand a richer messaging experience than

traditional SMS. Features such as read reports and composition

notifications are now considered part of the basic messaging

service.

This has lead MNOs to extend messaging with such richer

features. IMS networks are now being rol led out, on top of

which RCS services wil l be provided. MNOs wil l soon provide

services such as rich IM messaging, image and video sharing

and fi le sharing.

However, MNOs are not alone in seeking to enrich your mobile

experience. Other messaging services such as WhatsApp and

Viber have created feature rich messaging services and have

amassed substantial user bases. Google and Facebook are

also investing heavily in mobile messaging. With al l of the

various parties looking to be your main messaging provider the

area has become highly competitive.

I t is this competitive market that is one of the main focuses of

Openmind Networks' innovative business unit. The IBU is

currently focused on developing a range of RCS application

servers and it is on this project that I am currently working.

The team begin by developing our products to international ly

agreed standards - set out by the GSMA. Following this a range

of interoperabil ity testing must be carried out between the

application servers and the IMS core network. When testing is

complete a system can go live and the MNOs subscribers can

enjoy their new RCS service.

The focus of my PhD in CASL was applied mathematics,

which certainly helped me develop a logical way of thinking

needed for IMS/RCS development. However, CASL also

provided me with a wide range of computational experience

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CASL Alumni, Dr Ian Harris

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that I have been able to leverage and build upon in my current

role."

My PhD research was in the area of nonlinear waves. I t was

specifical ly concerned with the effect of long term and

hysteretic phenomena on shock profi les. The PhD title was

"Nonlinear waves in the presence of hereditary effects".

I enjoyed the collaborative environment of CASL; seeing

researchers from different fields working together to tackle their

individual and shared research goals. In my own case it was

exposure to researchers in highly computational fields that

helped me.

Funding News

The CASL had a very successful quarter application-wise. Over 4

mil l ion Euro was applied for in total, arising from applications from

fifteen different CASL researchers. Applications were made to a

diverse set of funding bodies, including: SFI , EI , IRC, EPA, NERC,

EU and the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, Saudi

Arabia! Good luck to all applicants!

Congratulations to the following CASL researchers & their

collaborators:

- Professor Nial Friel from CASL was awarded SFI Investigator

Programme Funding for his research: Advances for the probabil istic

analysis of network data.

- Dr. Nicolae Buchete - A 3-year postdoctoral fel lowship from the

International Human Frontier Science Program organization was

awarded to Dr. Goar Sanchez, who wil l join Dr. Nicolae Buchete's

group in CASL in July 201 3.

INSIGHT

Science Foundation Ireland announced funding of the new

INSIGHT Centre for Data Analytics as part of a €70m research

investment. INSIGHT brings together pre-existing centres and

clusters (CLARITY, DERI, CLIQUE, TRIL, and 4C) to develop a

new national data analytics centre that wil l focus on

fundamental science in data analytics and applied research in

areas such as Connected Health and the Discovery Economy.

Over 30 industry partners are part of the centre and it wil l bring

in a total of €1 0m cash funding. Prof Barry Smyth, Prof Padraig

Cunningham and Prof Brian Caulfield are the lead PI ’s for UCD

and Prof Smyth wil l be the current Interim Director. Insight is

expected to start in July 201 3 and recruit 20 PhD students.

CASL Social Committee

We are looking for Committee Members to helpus organise the next bit of CASL related SocialActivities.

- Come and have your say!

- Get to meet others in the building.

- Use the funds available to organise events that YOU want!

- Get rid of the foosball table (or the table tennis table) and

propose alternatives!

To join contact caslsocial@ucd.ie

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CASL "First Friday"

CASL continues to host the "First Friday" lunches which take place

on the first Friday of every month. Such lunches are in place to

facil itate an informal gathering of the research community and

Industry Affi l iates Programme members to promote discussion in

proposed topics such as research themes, funding, and broader.

All are welcome!

February and March lunches are summarised across the page;

February Lunch

Theme: "Multi Wave ERC Project"

February’s First Friday lunch was centred around a

presentation by Prof Frederic Dias on the Multi Wave ERC

project, and provided some useful advice and inspiration to

potential applicants of ERC programmes.

March Lunch

Theme: "Thematic Quality Review Workshop"

Friday 1 st March fol lowing the Thematic Quality Review

Workshop CASL held a First Friday Lunch with participation

from Brian Sweeney, Chair of the CASL National Advisory

Board and representation from Accenture and ICON.

CASL Miscellany

Dr Vladamir Lobaskin was invited to talk at Zing conference

Nanobiomaterials, Lanzarote, February 1 6-1 9, 201 3.

"Nanoparticle-glycocalix interaction under flow.

CASL Director Michael O’Neill has been invited to become an

Associate Editor of Applied Soft Computing.

Prof Nial Friel was invited guest lecture for two weeks at

"EuroBayes", MSc the International Master Degree in "Bayesian

Statistics and Decision Analysis”.

Professor John Cotter, FMC2 Director, gave a keynote address on

‘Bridging the gap between market, investment and pensions risks’ at

a recent IPE360 event in Dublin on 1 4 March 201 3. John also gave a

press interview after his talk.

Prof Frederic Dias hosted the ERC Multiwave Workshop on Friday

22 March in the UCD Clinton Auditorium.

Dr. Nicolae Buchete gave an invited presentation at the

"Electromechanics in Biosystems Workshop" held in the Conway

Institute, University College Dublin, I reland, March 26-28, 201 3.

Prof David Coker and the members of ACAM group had invited

Symposium Presentations at the "The Advent of Quantum and

Classical Dissipative Theory", Institute of Molecular Sciences,

Okasaki, Japan and : "Energy transfer and charge separation

dynamics in natural and artificial nano-structured l ight harvesting

system", presented at the Theoretical Chemistry Group, Department

of Chemistry, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.

NCRA research features in the Irish Times article "When software

takes its cue from nature"

PhD student Wei Cui received the Chinese Government Award for

Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad" by China Scholarship

Council (CSC).

FMC2 PhD student Patrick O'Sullivan had his paper on Adaptive

Universal Portfol ios accepted in the European Journal of Finance. This

wil l be published later in 201 3.

PhD student Gianluca Negri co-authored a paper in Nature Methods

“Quantitative genetic-interaction mapping in mammalian cells” Feb 1 3th

201 3.

Two articles by NCRA researchers have appeared in the latest issue of

Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines 1 4(1 ): "A comparison of

grammatical genetic programming grammars for controlling femtocell

network coverage", and "Better GP benchmarks: community surveyresults and proposals".

Clique researchers Fergal Reid and Conrad Lee have setup a startup

called Synference that aims to provide Predictive Analytics tools to

industry. They are now based in NovaUCD.

Dr Norah Khaldi gave a presentation at the Science Gallery entitled

The Future of Food. She argues the future is functional food, where

food products wil l contain added natural molecules such as bioactive

peptides that help humans fight various diseases such as diabetes.

Finally..Congratulations to Dr James McDermott, CASL Principal Investigator, and

his wife Niamh on the birth of their baby boy in March.

Another congratutions to Keelin Murphy, former TRIL Communications

Manager at CASL, on the recent birth of her twin babies!

A warm welcome to Dr Roisin Loughran who joins CASL as our new IT&

Media Support .

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Editor:Michael O'Neil l

Contributors:Alex Boyd

Aaron ByrneTara Byrne

Prof Frederic DiasSean Duke

Dr Ian HarrisBarry Hogan

Eamonn HynesVladimir Lobaskin

Roisin LoughranProf Gary McGuire

Elva O'Sull ivanMaksym Romenskyy

Prag SharmaUCD Research