The Centre engages in outreach programmes to ensure research activities have the maximum impact. Programmes will be targeted at third level researchers, primary and secondary level students who may choose science and engineering as their career, and the general public. A selection of events is outlined below.
The Resistors!
CTVR's principal outreach targetting 2nd level school children is the production of an animated action series called The Resistors!. More details on the project can be found here or go to The Resistors! website. The series has since been re-edited into an feature length film.
The series and website were short-listed for two categories in the National Digital Media Awards 2007: Animation and eLearning Product. The website won the top award for eLearning product.
The Fascination of Light
The CTVR Photonics strand have an active outreach effort aimed at educating the general public about Light and its properties. Checkout their website here
Events Aimed at 3rd and 4th Level Students
- Network Maths courses: CTVR in collaboration with the Hamilton Institute at NUI Maynooth held the first in an annual series of masterclasses in July & August 2008
- Cognitive Radios, Cognitive Networks nad Dynamic Spectrum Access: 14-week course offered jointly by Trinity College and Virginia Tech to postgraduate students January - April 2008
- Thermal Management of Electronic Systems: course offered to industry and academia at University of Limerick, November 2007
- Integrated Systems Design module offered to final year Electrical & Electronic Engineering students at Trinity College by CTVR researcher Dr Suhaib Fahmy 2007 - 2008
- The RF Strand hosted a lecture by Dr. Degang Chen on Monday, 4 July, entitled ‘Accurate Testing of Precision Analog and Mixed Signal Circuits Utilizing an Imprecise/Inexpensive Instrument Environment’
- The RF Strand hosted a presentation in June 2005 by Tuli Herscovici, of Chelton Microwave Corporation, entitled “Antenna Challenges in Modern Communications Systems”.
- The O&M Strand hosted a meeting "Optimisation in Telecommunications" on 22 June 2005 including a talk by a visiting professor, Refik Güllü, on Integrating Forecast Evolution with Production/Inventory Planning: An Implementation Framework for a Fast Moving Consumer Goods Manufacturer. For further information see: http://4c.ucc.ie/web/seminars.jsp?start=0&end=5
- Bell Labs gave a talk entitled "Signaling at 160 Gb/s Data Rate and Beyond" in DCU on 22 June 2005.
- In May, Tom Cunningham, CTVR Outreach Officer, attended and gave a presentation at the Irish Science Centres' Awareness Network - Spring Meeting (http://www.iscan.ie/events.htm), where the CTVR Outreach Programme was presented.
- In January, 4C hosted a talk entitled "Incentive Compatible Multi-unit Combinatorial Auctions", by Rica Gonen of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
- Also in January, NITM (UCD) hosted a meeting with Bell Labs and three visiting Faculty members from the Technical University at Eindhoven, to develop collaboration in the area of Supply Chain Management.
Conferences
CISDR workshop The NUI Maynooth research team together with Virginia Tech and the Unites States Naval academy hosted the first international workshop on Next Generation Open Architectures, NUIM, May 12-13 2008.
IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, Dublin, April 22-25 2007. CTVR was an active supporter of the effort to attract the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference to Dublin in Spring ’07. The Vehicular Technology Society concerns itself with land, airborne and maritime mobile services; portable commercial and citizens’ communications services; vehicular electro-technology, equipment and systems of the automotive industry; traction power, signals, communications and control systems for mass transit and railroads. Prof. Donal O'Mahony (CTVR Director) and Dr. Lawrence Cowsar (then CTVR CTO) were joint General Chair of the conference.
IEEE DySPAN Dublin April 17-20 2007. THis conference was attracted to Ireland by the work of Linda Doyle's research team at Trinity College Dublin. She and Alcatel-Lucent researcher Milind Buddhikot were joint Deputy Chair of the conference. As part of the conference CTVR organised a dedicated showcase room where attendees could demonstrate their equipment and how it might interoperate with other teams.
SDR Forum and IEEE Standards Committee 41 (Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks) Invited by CTVR to hold meetings in Dublin to coincide with IEEE DySPAN. Both groups accepted the invitation and came to Ireland for the first time. CTVR secured a trial license from the Irish Regulator ComReg which gave a unique opportunity for SDR Forum members to conduct experiments in Ireland.
Adaptive Hypermedia 2006 attracted to Dublin by the network management team at TCD (led by Vincent Wade)
4th International Conference on Nanochannels, Microchannels and Minichannels - Limerick, June 19-21 2006.
3rd International Conference on Integration of AI and OR techniques in Constraint Programming for Combinatorial Optimization Problems, Cork, May 30 - June 2, 2006
Public Events
Festival of Science
The B.A. Festival of Science http://www.the-ba.net/ organised by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, was hosted by Trinity College from 5th - 9th September 2005.
The main aim of this event was to bring together scientific researchers and the public to help create a greater understanding of the value and significance of scientific endeavour. It comprised public lectures, revealing the latest developments in scientific research, in addition to a programme of activities for primary and secondary school pupils.
CTVR sponsored "Is Engineering Ingenuity?" and “Why We Should Love the Photon”