TFInstitute Autumn Conference on 'Security & Trust'

Security and Trust

How to empower and protect all users?

The Tommy Flowers Autumn Conference took place 26–27 September 2017 - our third conference in the Institute’s first year. 

Over 130 people attended across the two days, with students and academics from across more than a dozen universities and with senior representatives from some of the world’s biggest ICT companies and Innovation Martlesham members - with ADVA, Sandvine, Vodafone, Huawei, Cisco; Intel and the National Crime Agency all presenting.

The event went exceptionally well with excellent feedback from both students and industry.

The conference focussed on Security and Trust, addressing how the ICT industry must protect customers and themselves from deliberate external and internal attacks. How technology can empower users and how new capabilities can, in turn, enable new kinds of attack or have unintended consequences - resulting in a constant evolution across technology, user behaviour and the perception of human rights.

 

 
Professor Ben Azvine – BT Research & Innovation’s Global head of security research and innovation hosted the event.

 

"Cyber security is, in my opinion, one of the greatest man-made challenges of our time", explained Ben. "The frequency and impact of breaches is increasing and we need to continuously adapt and innovate to stay ahead of the threat environment."

 

Over the course of the conference, a number of panel sessions were held addressing:

• The wider society viewpoint
• The industrial view point
• Industry’s perspectives on Security

Addressing the societal viewpoint, the audience were treated to an interactive panel session with Prof Howard Shrobe (Director of Cyber Security @ CSAIL, MIT); Ian Daft (National Crime Agency) and Prof Lorna McGregor (Director of University of Essex Human Rights Centre).

 

Howard discussed case studies looking at pitfalls in the current security design architectures and discussed new architectures that could lead to 3 classes of benefits - Prevention; Resilience and Regeneration – allowing systems to recover more quickly from attacks to fully functional states.

 

Ian Daft explained the workings of the NCA, discussing the fight to cut serious and organised crime; how innovating with industry is so important and gaining confidence and trust from the public.

 

Prof Lorna McGregor provided a fascinating insight into "algorithmic accountability" – in other words, when so much of our lives are now controlled by algorithms (Artificial Intelligence software applying statistical techniques to huge data-sets), how do we know who is ultimately responsible for the decisions that are being made, and how can we challenge them?

 

The industrial panel session was chaired by Alex Healing, BT Research & Innovation’s Chief Researcher Visual Analytics. He was joined by Kevin Smith (Senior Technology Strategist, Vodafone); Igor Shaula (Solutions Architect, Intel) and Chris Roberts (Security Service Creation, Cisco). Each provided an interesting perspective, discussing:

• The future of security
• How it is important to include the security aspects into new technology designs
• Increased expectations from technology by the customer
• 5G network demands including fast, resilient, adaptable and secure
• Improving customer experience without breaching customer privacy
• Virtual Reality services
• Industry being responsible for Big Data

The BT Research and Innovation’s Security practice provided an in-depth Industrial case study, describing the challenges and changing threats of the landscape and by collaborating with industry and Universities, a whole host of hot topics can be addressed including: CLOUD environments; IoT Security; machine assisted cyber threat hunting; authentications; pattern based anomaly detection; Blockchain architecture; cryptography; flexible interactive visualisation; Intelligence Augmentation and Bitcoin.

 

An industrial panel, consisting of Huawei (Jerry Thompson and Michael Hill- King); ADVA Optical Networking (Uli Schlegel) and Sandvine (Matt Farmer) provided an insight into their perspectives on security, discussing embedded security in devices; CLOUD architectures; post quantum and terabit encryption; problems with IoT devices and how to learn from their behaviour and how they pull innovation from universities.

 

Throughout the conference and using the lessons learned from each of the panel sessions, breakout sessions were held discussing the most important scientific research challenges (to protect from attacks; to defend human rights and to enable society to prosper) and how the research of the post graduate researchers could contribute.

 

Key points captured:

• We must secure systems to help society prosper
• We need to understand how national crime agencies come into play
• We should approach security from a holistic point of view – developing technology to improve our lifestyle, thereby improving the world to become a better place
• The importance to educate and empower the user in responsible ways
• Making people more aware of their personal data and how it is used

Students identified ways in which their own research can contribute:

• Smart home environments and privacy – understanding what it means to individuals and groups of people e.g. families. Different components and cultural aspects need to be taken into consideration.
• Internet of Things (IoT) – develop algorithms which are fast and smart
• Looking at risk management and methods to make IoT more secure – making the most of the data and analytics currently collected

A tour around the "Network Operations Centre" provided Tommy Flowers Institute members the amazing opportunity to view the heart of BT’s operations and discussing the security of the centre.

 

BT Research & Innovation’s Head of University Research, Fraser Burton said, "Over the first year, the Institute has gone from strength to strength, with growing involvement across academia, industry and government. As the pace of change in the digital economy increases, we are increasingly using autonomic systems to support our decision-making and we need to ensure our future research leaders create and understand the powerful new tools that are now possible.

We look forward to an even more exciting second year, growing the capability of the ICT industry for the benefit of the whole of the UK".

 

Lorna McGregor is back and speaking at the 'Data Science & AI' forum of our Autumn 2020 virtual conference

Let's Get Physical - Autumn 2020 Conference

Date: 12th - 16th October 2020
Location: Virtual 

Fees: none, you can register for as many days as you like

Register: here! 

Find out more.

We are absolutely delighted to have Lorna McGregor back, attending the forum discussion on 'How do we know that AI is doing the right thing?' Please tune it on Friday 16th October at 2PM.

Lorna was as well a Keynote speaker at our conference on 'Security & Trust - How to empower and protect all users'.

 

Lorna McGregor is a Professor in the Law School and Director of the Human Rights Centre (on study leave 2017) at the University of Essex. She is the Principal Investigator and Co-Director of an ESRC Large Grant (£5 million) on Human Rights, Big Data and Technology. Lorna is also a Co-Chair of the European Society of International Law's Interest Group on Human Rights, a Co-Chair of the International Law Association's Study Group on Individual Responsibility in International Law, a Contributing Editor of EJIL Talk! and a Commissioner of the British Equality and Human Rights Commission. 

 

Prior to joining the Law School, Lorna worked for REDRESS and the International Bar Association. Lorna holds an LL.B (First Class Honours) from Edinburgh Law School and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, where she was a Kennedy Memorial Trust Scholar and Henigson Fellow. 

Prof Howard Shrobe to talk at our conference on 'Security & Trust'

Howard Shrobe is Director of CyberSecurity@CSAIL.  His research interests include software and hardware architectures for computer security and the use of AI techniques in software development and other engineering disciplines. At the present time his main interests are in new (hardware and software) architectures for secure computing, the security of industrial control systems, intelligent  assistants for programmers, and policy issues related to cyber security.

·         From 1997 - 2000, he served as associate director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

·         From 1994 - 1997, he served at  DARPA  as Assistant Director and Chief Scientist of the Information Technology Office. He was responsible for the Intelligent Systems and Software Technology group in the office with direct involvement in the Evolutionary Design of Complex Software and the original suite of Information Survivability programs.

·        From Feb 2010 - Oct 2013, he served at  DARPA as a Program Manager Information Innovation Office where he sponsored two programs on cyber security: CRASH (Clean-slate design of Resilient Adaptive Secure Hosts) and MRC (Mission-oriented Resilient Clouds).

·         From Oct 2013 - November 2014 I served as Associate Director of CSAIL

Uli Schlegel of ADVA to speak at our conference on Security & Trust

'ADVA Optical Networking SE' is one of our strongest supporters since the beginnings of Tommy Flowers Institute and we are delighted to have Uli Schlegel as speaker at our conference on 'Security & Trust - How to empower and protect all users'.

Uli Schlegel is ADVA Optical Networking’s technical expert for enterprise networks. He has over 17 years of experience in WDM technology and optical networking systems.

 

He holds an engineering degree (Dipl.-Ing. Physikalische Technik) from the University of Applied Sciences (TFH) in Berlin, Germany.

Uli currently drives product development in the data center interconnect space. He mainly focuses on solutions for storage and server connectivity as well as encryption and security relevant topics.

Ian Daft, NCA, to speak at our conference on 'Security & Trust'

We are proud to have Ian Daft from the National Crime Agency as a speaker at our conference.

 

Ian is a Manager within the Intelligence Collection Department of the NCA leading on the development of new capabilities to ensure the NCA is able to counter organised crime with public confidence and security.

 

At the moment he is giving specific attention to the application of Voice Biometrics and Analytics. A specific interest in the scope for appropriate co-operation between strategic partners.

 

His previous positions in the Agency have included in Financial Crime and as a Staff Officer within the Command Team. Prior to joining the NCA, Ian worked in Europol, Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office with his last posting being as 1st Secretary at the British Embassy in Athens. He holds a MA in History as well as degree level qualifications in Financial Crime, Personnel & Development and Project Management.

 

We are looking forward to interesting insights and discussions during our Tommy Flowers Institute Autumn Conference on 'Security & Trust - How to empower and protect all users?'

Prof Ben Azvine BT Head of Security Research

Prof Ben Azvine PhD, MBA
Global head of security research and innovation, BT

Conference TFNetworkSpring22

Digital Transformation
➣ Conference overview and registration 
➣ YouTube TFNetworkSummer21 Conference Playlist 

Date: 5th May 2022
Time: 

11:15 - 11:30 Presentation

11:30 - 12:15 Panel discussion "How to create impact in Digital Transformation

Ben Azvine is responsible for setting direction and strategy for Security research, identify innovation opportunities and lead a strong international team of researcher to develop new capabilities in collaboration with industrial and academic partners.

Ben has 30 years’ experience in both academia and industry. His previous roles included leading the IT research centre and head of business intelligence & customer analytics research at BT Group Chief Technology Office. He holds a BSc in Mechanical Engineering, an MSc in Control Engineering, a PhD in Intelligent Control Systems from Manchester University, and an MBA from Imperial College, London. Having held research fellowship and lectureship posts in several universities, he joined BT in 1995 to lead a research programme to develop and exploit novel Artificial Intelligence technology to support next generation IT systems. Since then he has held senior, principal, chief research scientist posts at BT’s global R&D headquarters in Adastral Park, Ipswich where he is currently based.

He has edited two books and published more than 100 scientific articles on novel application of intelligent systems. He is an inventor of 50 patent applications, has won 4 BCS and an IET gold medals for IT innovation, and holds visiting professorship positions at the Universities of Bristol, Cranfield, Suffolk and Bournemouth. Ben is a current fellow of Institute of Telecom Engineers (FIET) and has acted as the chairman of the European network of excellence for Uncertainty management techniques from 1998 to 2001. His current research interests include the application Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to Cyber security, protection of critical national infrastructure, data analysis and information & knowledge management. His current projects include Visual Analytics for Cyber defence, cloud & Internet security, machine learning and anomaly detection in network data and future identity and access management.

LinkedIn

Ben was the sponsor of the TFNetworkAutumn17 "Security & Trust" conference

Synopsis

In 2017 already, Matthew Hancock, The UK Minister of State for Digital at the time, stated at the Singapore International Cyber Week:

“The UK categorises cyber-crime as a tier one threat to our national security. Since 2011 we have had in place a National Cyber Security Strategy. … Our full spectrum approach ranges from developing the new skills and expertise we need, supporting the cyber ecosystem, collaboration with critical infrastructure, the established cyber industry, start ups, and academia to protect our national security and protect the public’s way of life, while contributing to our prosperity and building a more trusted and resilient digital environment. …

Our growing expertise was perhaps best showcased during the 2012 Olympics. The London games were the first ever “digital games” - the first to provide public Wi-Fi access in all Olympic venues, with more content broadcast online than ever before, and much of it accessed via mobile devices - and yet, despite a peak of over 11,000 attacks per second, the network was never once compromised”

In 2017 as well, during our TFNetwork conference on “Security &Trust”, we explored how technology can empower users so that they can protect themselves and their data. And this means that we need that credible track-record of secure operation to create the user’s trust in those constantly evolving technologies, which have capabilities that potentially can turn the table, enabling new kinds of attacks. So there is constant evolution across technology, user behaviour, and the perception of human rights.

Half a decade later the digital landscape is evolving at an even increasing speed, and more than ever it is my opinion that Cyber Security is one of the greatest man-made challenges of our time. The frequency and impact of breaches is increasing at the same mindboggling trajectory as the digital transformation of our world, and the need to continuously adapt and innovate to stay ahead of the threat environment, is raising the bar for researchers.

 

Post Graduate Researcher Details - Reginald Ankrah

My name is Reginald Ankrah. I am a doctoral researcher at The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. My research area concerns the use of computational techniques to optimise and solve real world problems in industries.

 

Telecommunications networks are vast and complex structures that need to undergo continual evolution to adapt to change. Telecoms technologies continually undergo rapid change. In parallel, user demand on networks is subject to ongoing growth periodically punctuated by the emergence of disruptive new products and services.

 

The market is highly competitive and so providers need to adapt promptly to demand. However, changes to the network involve considerable capital investment. This leads to complex investment decisions bearing significant financial, technical and reputational risk. In particular, to maximize return, new telecommunications networks must be designed to be robust enough to meet expected demands over their lifetime.

 

Computational intelligence offers a range of algorithms and techniques that are applicable to complex, multifactorial decision making. Probabilistic models derived from analysis of datasets can confer predictive insight into how decision outcomes are affected by interactions between various input factors.  They can also support Monte Carlo simulation of future decisions allowing what-if analysis, optimized decision-making and statistical confidence intervals for complex decision scenarios. Clustering approaches are used to identify similarities in datasets, for example, customer profiling. Optimisation algorithms like genetic algorithms, particle swarm optimisation and ant colonies optimisation can be used to optimize use and placement of resources when there are complex and conflicting decision factors involved. For example, such approaches would be useful in determining the placement of equipment and network structure.

 

My research aims at investigating the application of novel and advanced computational techniques to create specialised planning and risk-modelling algorithms focused on key aspects of network design.

Post Graduate Researcher Profiles – Davide Ferraris

My name is Davide, and I am a doctorate researcher at the University of Malaga, Spain. I am a Marie Curie fellow involved in the NeCS project founded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 675320.

My research topic is about Metrics for Cyber Security focusing on Trust Metrics for the Internet of Things.

The vision of the Internet of Things (IoT) is founded on the following premise: it is possible to create a world-wide network of interconnected objects which will probably be readable, recognizable, locatable, addressable and/or controllable by Internet. Gartner said that billions of devices are foreseen to be connected by 2020, so trust issues will grow exponentially.

A system such as IoT needs trust because the entities involved should know the other entities in the network. This knowledge is the basis to decide if to trust or distrust another entity. The problem of finding a suitable way to establish trust becomes more complicated in IoT due to its heterogeneity and dynamicity. Trust management systems have been used during the decision-making process to assist entities that must interact with others in a system. How to measure trust becomes a key issue for IoT systems also because all the heterogeneous entities will use their own trust management systems. This is one of the main challenges we will have to face in my research.

My research will focus on give to trust measurement a key role on IoT systems, considering trust in the  whole IoT System Life Cycle from the early to the final stages of a System development.

Post Graduate Researcher Profiles - Michael Ojo

My name is Michael and I’m a doctorate researcher at the University of Bournemouth.  My research looks at  the “Architectural Framework for Intelligent Autonomic process management”.  My research work seeks to explore the combination of model-based approaches and artificial intelligence to provide self-sustaining solutions which will have huge impacts on business productivity.


With the advent of BigData and emerging technologies, business processes are becoming more complex with increasing levels of uncertainty.  The applicability of the current approaches to business challenges will soon be completely outpaced by this increasing complexity. Therefore, the need for data-driven system solutions which are smart, flexible, scalable, support dynamic composition and robust in the presence of change, arises.


The aim of autonomic computing is to address complexity inherent in software defined processes, by making processes/ systems to be self-managing.  But  we are in a digital age where innovations, technology, business goal and the cost of managing these business processes  are constantly changing (growing in complexity).  So there is need to develop a new way of applying autonomic computing paradigm to address this growing complexity.  This new way should be applicable to future business processes.


Model driven architecture (MDA) is the technique of defining processes, systems, as  interaction of diagrams or simply pictorial representation. For example if BT have a set of diagrams that describe a product and a code/document that describe the same product, in the future, It will be easier and faster for a BT new recruit to make innovations from that set of diagrams, than code/documents. This makes BT more future-ready for innovations. Technically, code/document is regarded as low-level abstraction while diagrams are termed higher level abstraction.


In a nutshell, we want to look into how we can apply MDA  in an autonomic  process to  improve business processes.

TFInstitute Summer Conference on 'Converged User Experience'

Converged User Experience

How to deliver the connectivity and performance required?

The Tommy Flowers Institute Summer Conference took place 13 – 14 June 2017.
110 people attended over the two days, with students and academics from across 25 universities and senior reps from some of the world’s biggest ICT companies and Innovation Martlesham members including: Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Cisco and Nokia; Shareband; Cambridge Wireless; Spotless; EPSRC, Innovate UK and Suffolk County Council – who took part in various panel sessions. The event went exceptionally well with excellent feedback from both students and industry.

Mansoor Hanif, Research & Innovation’s Research Director of Converged
Networks opened the conference and presented an informative discussion
looking at “Convergence - Approaching the Singularity”. He described customer drivers and customer expectations; how corporates want converged solutions and look at converging platforms, in particular the customer benefits and the technology that is required.

Mansoor said, “A big part of a truly seamless experience is not having to worry about what network is being used at any point in time. The network and the device should, in conjunction, select the network that can best meet the needs of the services the user is trying to access at any point in time.”

Following panel sessions over the two days with industry, it became clear of the similarities in their ambitions for user convergence.

Key points:

• Integration of data from a variety of business systems to create a single holistic digital record
• Ensuring a trusted and safe cyber environment
• Delivering intelligent technology and systems
• Enhancing user experience to remain relevant to end users’ needs
• Collaboration with Industry; Academia and Networks to solve real world problems

An interesting breakout session was set by Research & Innovation’s Mary Lumkin, to look at “What does convergence mean to users?” lively discussions ensued around how convergence could benefit those involved in health and social care (patients, GPs, carers, hospitals and local authorities) and was followed up by ideas of how participants’ research could address some of the challenges identified. Mary said “there are many different organisations that contribute to person centric care, each of whom have different requirements and challenges. Sharing data appropriately, securely and with consent has the potential to achieve positive patient outcomes in a cost efficient way. It is exciting to consider how technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning can help to achieve this”.

BT’s Technology, Service and Operation’s MD of Networks - Karl Penaluna – presented a fascinating case study looking at enriching the customer experience through the power of programmability.

Karl discussed how different approaches are needed to succeed and to fully achieve BT’s vision - of providing customers with a real time view in a single pane of glass. He outlined that different ways of working, new skills and a changed industry landscape are required.

“New technologies, coupled with new ways of working allow us to enhance and transform the customer experience”, said Karl. “Converging IT and Network infrastructure and moving from static to programmable networks unlocks services that are truly “on-demand” and by opening up this infrastructure, places customers in control, speeds up deployment and provides consistency of experience. In creating a new Dynamic Infrastructure unit, we have taken a bold step towards this and the first services are being delivered to customer now.”

A trip round Innovation 2017 provided Tommy Flowers Institute members the amazing opportunity to engage with BT and associated companies and explore the technologies and opportunities of the future. Many commented, “I never knew BT did so much innovation”.

BT Research & Innovation’s Head of University Partnerships, Fraser Burton said, “Our ability to convene academia, industry and government to openly discuss shared goals and challenges continues to be a great contribution both to Adastral Park and to BT’s University Research programme, and to the UK’s ICT postgraduate researcher community.”

A key research question that emerged was, given the trend for AI to dynamically manage Quality-of-Experience on a converged infrastructure, how can we understand what the AI has done and why? Exciting times lie ahead for our research community as we tackle the challenges of future networks. The Tommy Flowers Institute Autumn conference is from 26th – 27th September 2017 - focussing on “Security and Trust”.

Downloads:

Conference brochure (pdf)
Communicarion brief
Photos  
Presentation(pdf):

• Ericsson - 'Convergence in the Networked Society', Stewart Lacey

Post Graduate Researcher Profiles - Sam Tickle

My name is Sam Tickle, and I am a doctorate researcher at the University of Leeds, and my research concerns the detection of change in signals.

 

At first glance this may seem somewhat innocuous and abstract, but the uses for change detection are incredibly ubiquitous, especially for a company such as BT, where spotting a small shift in a single data series in efficient fashion can make all the difference in mitigating a future operational failure, containing a denial of service attack, or simply maximising speed of customer service.

 

Changepoint detection has been used elsewhere to great effect, including, health care, finance, environmental science and large-scale retail. The advent of the Big Data Age, however, has presented something of a challenge for existing changepoint methods, where datasets of interest can have millions of variates in addition to a high density of observations.

 

I am therefore specifically interested in efficient changepoint detection for data streams. This project contains two broad phases

• The first being to examine the means of speeding up current techniques, and
• The second to pioneer novel approaches to multivariate changepoint detection.

We have had some success with the first phase already, with potential for real-time high-dimensional change detection now a reality. The paper, and computer package, for this will be appearing soon.

Hanif Mansoor to open the TFI Summer Conference

BT’s Director for Converged Networks - Mansoor Hanif - will open the conference and outline industry initiatives to deliver 100% connectivity and ultra-reliability enabled through converged technology. These include the Telecom Infra Project’s Ecosystem Acceleration Centre, the Future Networks Research Centre and the Lime SDR hackathon.

He will describe how the focus on optimal converged customer experience will lead to a Converged 5G network that is best for customers

Mansoor joined EE in November 2011 and led the technical launch of the 1st 4G network in the UK and was also accountable for the integration of the legacy 2G and 3G Orange and T-mobile networks. Until 2016 he led the team who plan, design, rollout, optimise and operate all EE radio access networks, including Mobile Backhaul and Small Cells, and was accountable for the coverage aspects of EE’s Emergency Services over LTE programme. He was also a board member of MBNL (the joint venture of EE with H3G) until 2016. During the acquisition of EE by BT, Mansoor led the EE network Integration team and is currently Director of the  Converged Networks Research Lab based in BT’s Global Research centre in Adastral Park. He is a member of the BT Technology Steering Board and is a board member of the Scottish Innovation Programme.

Our 2017 Summer Conference is approaching fast

Our Summer Conference on 'Converged User Experience' is taking place at Adastral Park, Ipswich, on the 13th and 14th June 2017.

Converged User Experience - what is that all about?

One may have heard about 'Converged Networks', a term which says it on the tin and which WhatIs.com describes as:

"Network convergence is the efficient coexistence of telephone, video and data communication within a single network. The use of multiple communication modes on a single network offers convenience and flexibility that are not possible with separate infrastructures. Network convergence is also called media convergence."

Then there is 'Technological Convergence', when different systems or procedures come together in one device or form factor*. 'Convergence' seems to be a key word wherever we look these days, there even is Convergence 2017 a music, art and technology festival in London.

So, bringing things together, building context, cross-pollinate between previously unrelated subjects, building, creating, enabling is what it is about, in whichever way or form, and the world of ICT is the medium it thrives on. 

As an organisation that aims to bring academic expertise together with industrial power to create a better world for people, we identified the subject of 'Converged User Experience' as one of the big strategic challenges.

Fixed, mobile and IoT (Internet of Things) infrastructures are coming together as technology evolves, but it is the user who remains the point at which all this technology truly converges. It is the experience of the user that matters. Network engineering and data science combine in order to serve the users' need to communicate with each other wherever and whenever, to be entertained, and to control their environment on the switch of a button. 

The ICT industry faces and ongoing challenge to cost-effectively deliver the connectivity and the performance required. 

The Tommy Flowers Institute Summer Conference will address this challenge. We have fantastic speakers lined up and participants will have the opportunity to network and input their expertise in break out sessions. Additionally participants will have the opportunity to visit Innovation 2017, BT's major technology exhibiton.









*quote from WhatIs.com 

The Tommy Flowers Institute Spring Conference Launches

“Future Organisation – How to build agility and customer focus?”


The Tommy Flowers Institute launched its first conference looking at the Future Organisation. This kicked off the programme of “real-world” conferences.




Prof Tim Whitley, MD of BT Research & Innovation

The Tommy Flowers Institute exists to improve university researchers’ employability, in both industry and academia and thereby enable them to achieve more economic and societal impact – both as individuals and from their research. The Institute is complimentary to what academia can provide, bringing in industrial exposure, opportunities and contacts that just are not available elsewhere – at least not in all one place.

Prof Tim Whitley, MD of BT Research & Innovation said “The Tommy Flowers Institute is focused on the researcher and not just the research. TFI brings together industry and academia to develop the research leaders of the future. These events help galvanize industry to work with world class academic institutions in a new manner, to help generate the research leaders that the nation is going to need”.



Malcom Lowe-Lauri,
Executive Director of the Cambridge University Health Partnership

Major industry players including BT, Huawei, 3M, Intel and Adva united to articulate a clear vision of their future organisations and their future skills requirements. Hosted at BT’s global research headquarters at Adastral Park, 30 industrial sponsored PhD and Post-Doctoral researchers received a once in a life time opportunity to quiz the leaders of our industry.

We were joined by Malcom Lowe-Lauri, Executive Director of the Cambridge University Health Partnership who highlighted the importance of building a tech cluster system. Christiane Gruen, MD of 3M UK and Ireland, discussed the challenges of ethically coordinating a global technology initiative.



Christiane Gruen, MD of 3M UK and Ireland

Innovation Martlesham (IM) companies including Rokker; Coderus and Oxems provided the unique viewpoint of smaller and medium sized enterprises. They value being part of the Tech Cluster at Adastral Park, as it provides good opportunities to network. They also value the opportunity to offer projects to students to help them with business challenges. Engaging with TFI gives smaller companies access to bright minds and a great collaboration opportunity.

Industrial case studies were presented by experienced industry practitioners and were analysed in depth by the post grad researchers and academics. This included discussing the challenges of reskilling teams as a result of adopting new technology which dramatically transforms the organisation. Trust and the role of management during change was also discussed.

Attendees workshopped new approaches to business processes in the context of considering “The Employee Experience in a Future Organisation”. Head of Employee Experience, Sue Hessey, said “there was incredible output from such a short session, underlining the brain-power and engagement of the attendees”.

Specific post grad opportunities were highlighted by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), The Operational Research Society and European opportunities from EIT Digital. The clear message highlighted the necessity to network; build knowledge; broaden your mind and enjoy it! EPSRC’s Associate Director for Business discussed Skills for Innovation and business inspired training.

The culmination of the event was the post grad researchers taking a leadership role themselves and detailing a clear programme of future conferences, online collaboration, newsletters and journals with enhanced networking opportunities to share research interests and challenges.

BT’s Head of University Partnerships, Fraser Burton said “This conference has been a spectacular success. It’s brought together local and central government, local and global businesses. Plus the very best postgraduate researchers and academics.”

Downloads:

Conference brochure (pdf)
Communication brief (pdf)
Photos 

Presentation downloads (pdf):

• 3M Keynote - 'The challenge of ethically coordinating a global technology initiative', Christiane Gruen
• EIT Digital - 'Driving Europe's Digital Transformation', Dennis Moynihan
• EPSRC - Skills for Innovation - Kedar Pandya

• 3M
• Adastral Park
• Adva
• BT
• Cambridge University Health Partners (CUHP)
• Coderus
• EIT Digital
• EPSRC
• Huawei
• Innovation Martlesham
• Intel
• National Physical Laboratory (NPL)
• The Operational Research Society
• Oxems
Rokker
Tommy Flowers Institute Media - video, brochures, images

Spring 2017 Conference - So chuffed!

A big 'Thank You!' to everybody who made our first conference such a success. We will have a proper and more formal write up with all the respective mentions once we will have fully digested the impact of this event.

What three days it has been! We only just closed the venue doors behind us and I - that is Rika - feel that a rather personal account, taken freshly right after the event, might reflect, and preserve, the atmosphere for a bit longer. And a great atmosphere it was thanks to all your engagement and contributions.

We had the most amazing keynote speakers and panelists spurring on fantastic discussions. We had such a strong feedback through our breakout sessions, encouraged through the variety of people of different professions. I have to admit that throughout the planning stage there was a little niggling feeling that this might be a risky approach: Would we be able to do justice to all of you, give all of you a voice, and an opportunity to feed back and to make a point? What a relief that all the feedback we reviewed so far tells us that this was one of the best features of the conference.  We are well chuffed!

So, we will have a couple of slower days now, during which we will tidy up our boxes and clear our desks and then we will go straight back at it again.

Our next conference will be 13th-15th June 2017 and be called the 'Summer Conference on Converged Customer Experience'. Given the nature of Tommy Flowers Institute it will be an invite only conference, but do get in touch if you wish to learn more.

The Tommy Flowers Institute launch first Conference

 Future Organisation – how to build agility and customer focus?

 

The Tommy Flowers Institute, who’s aim is to develop ICT researchers for leadership excellence, launched their first conference “Future Organisation – how to build agility and customer focus?” at the end of February 2017. It was attended by sponsored PhD students, UK Academia and members from the ICT Industry.  

The questions investigated included:

• What will successful organisations look like in the future?
• How will the best organisations create and present a more human face to their customers and employees?
• How will they make smart decisions fast enough and co-ordinate their activities better, internally and operating in a network of partners?
• What is the best way to balance speed of response with risk?
• What will the relationship between humans and machines?

Key speakers include BT’s Prof Tim Whitley; Christiane Guen, MD of 3M UK and Ireland; Malcolm Lowe-Lauri, Executive Director, Cambridge Health Partnership; Dr Alison Wall, EPSRC Associate Director and BT’s Tim Shaw, MD Future Voice.

Comms Brief of 'The Future Organisation' conference (download PDF)

Conference Brochure of 'The Future Organisation' conference
Images of 'The Future Organisation' conference
Slides of 'The Future Organisation' conference ( (PDF)

• Skills for Innovation, Kedar Pandya, EPSRC
• Keynote: The challenge of ethically coordinating a global technology initiative, Christiane Gruen, 3M
• Driving Europe's Digital Transformation, Dennis Moynihan, EIT Digital