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How to define a business model
Abstract
This session introduces the concept of a business model and define what it means for the entrepreneur and places it in the context of business planning. It investigates why business models come and go in fashion and why it is important to change them. It considers how to choose an appropriate business model as well as how to challenge and optimise your selected path.
Biography
Hermann Hauser co-founded Amadeus Capital Partners in 1997 with Anne Glover and Peter Wynn. In his long and successful history as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, he has founded or co-founded companies in a wide range of technology sectors. These include Acorn Computers, Active Book Company, Virata, Net Products, NetChannel, and Cambridge Network Limited. He was a founder director of IQ (Bio), IXI Limited, Vocalis, SynGenix, Advanced Displays Limited, Electronic Share Information Limited and E*Trade UK. At Amadeus Hermann has been a non-executive director of many investee companies including CSR, which provides single chip wireless solutions supporting communications over short-range radio links, and Entropic Research Laboratory, a company that developed voice recognition software, which is now the voice recogniser in Microsoft Word. Entropic was sold to Microsoft in 1999. He is a nonexecutive director of Plastic Logic, which has developed a process for producing flexible plastic transistors for use in computer displays, and Solexa, which is developing ultra-high throughput DNA sequencing technology. Hermann holds an MA in Physics from Vienna University and a PhD in Physics from the Cavendish Laboratory at King’s College, Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and of the Royal Academy of Engineering and an Honorary Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. Hermann holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Bath, Loughborough and from Anglia Polytechnic, and was awarded an Honorary CBE for ‘innovative service to the UK enterprise sector’ in 2001. In 2004, he was made a member of the Government’s Council for Science & Technology. Austrian by birth, Hermann speaks German, English, Italian, and French.
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Partnering with established organisations
Abstract
This session explores practical issues and challenges in partnering with established organisations from small entrepreneurial start-up perspectives. The session focuses on:
- Why should two companies work together
- How could they work together
- What issues might arise, such as differences in culture, ways of working and making decisions, how to get in, who to talk to, and so forth
- Some tips on how to overcome these issues from the speaker’s experience
Biography
As Director Research & Venturing, Mike Carr is responsible for our world-leading research and commercial exploitation unit, including our Patent licensing and Corporate Venturing activities. Mike joined British Telecom (BT) as a Technician Apprentice in 1972. He has a first class honours degree in Communication Engineering and joined the Visual Communication Research Division at BT Labs in 1980. During his 15 years with BT’s labs his career has focused on the research, development and practical design of real-time audio/visual and multimedia communications systems. He has several patents to his name in the field of video compression, and is the holder of two prestigious BT awards; the Martlesham Medal for R&D (1992) and the BT Gold medal (1994) for leading multimedia product developments. From 1994 Mike was responsible for driving BT’s company wide technology acquisition strategy and from 1999 he was based in Silicon Valley, California, United States, where he established BT’s US Technology office and Corporate Venturing activity. He returned to the United Kingdom in 2001 to take on his current post of leading BT’s Research & Venturing activity.
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Intellectual property
Abstract
There are many possible business models to take your idea and intellectual property forward. Should you license it out, start a firm to make and sell the product, or create strategic partnership agreements? This session provides a legal perspective on these different business models and the practical steps you need to take to protect your intellectual property.
Biography
Isla Furlong graduated from Cambridge University with a Master’s degree in Natural Sciences. She also completed a PhD in cell and molecular biology at the University of London involving research into programmed cell death. Isla is a Chartered and European Patent Attorney working in the Cambridge-based firm Venner Shipley LLP. She specialises in the filing and prosecution of patent applications in the field of biotechnology, particularly molecular biology, biological assays, gene sequences, DNA sequencing technologies, array technologies, genomics, proteomics, stem cells, diagnostics, therapeutics including cancer and immuno-therapeutics, viral vectors and gene delivery, peptide vaccines, biomarkers. Isla has worked within an in-house patent department of a leading multi-national company and also has experience of working with a number of academic institutions and start-up biotechnology companies.
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Keynote talk
Abstract
Rick Rashid gives an overview of Microsoft Research, highlighting some research projects from various Microsoft Research laboratories and presenting opportunities at Microsoft Research for PhD students and recent post-docs.
Biography
Currently charged with oversight of Microsoft Research’s worldwide operations, Rick Rashid previously served as the director of Microsoft Research, focusing on operating systems, networking and multiprocessors. In that role he was responsible for managing work on key technologies leading to the development of Microsoft Corporation’s interactive TV system and authored a number of patents in areas such as data compression, networking and operating systems. In addition to running Microsoft Research, Rashid also was instrumental in creating the team that eventually became Microsoft’s Digital Media Division and directing the first Microsoft e-commerce group. Rashid was promoted to vice president of Microsoft Research in 1994, and then to senior vice president in 2000.
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Productising research (opens in new tab)
Abstract
The research community generates a huge number of interesting results every year, but few find their way into consumer products. This talk discusses the differences between research results and consumer-ready software. We provide examples of challenges and key differences between writing a prototype to prove an idea can work versus writing a product designed not to fail.
Biography
John L. Miller is a Software Architect with Microsoft Research in Cambridge, where he works on an incubation team helping to integrate research results into commercial software. His previous experience in Microsoft includes helping to develop and ship networking services for Windows 2000 and Windows XP, Flight Simulator, and multimedia for Windows NT 3.1. He also worked for Carnegie Mellon University as a research programmer, and Justsystem Pittsburgh Research Center as a research engineer. Today, John’s work is focused around peer-to-peer networking and computer gaming.
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Giving a good presentation
Abstract
Lecture, presentation, or conversation? We examine:
- Who your audience is
- What they want
- Why you are addressing them
- How you handle practical issues such as nerves, body language, speech and voice, humour, visual aids
- What is success?
- What is plan B if everything goes wrong?
- How you recover
Biography
Ken Shaw has taught communication skills to MBA students at Judge Business School for 17 years. He has also taught at Said Business School, London Business School, Cass Business School, Henley Management College, ESMT in Berlin, Bled School of Management plus Leicester, Nottingham and Bristol universities. He has delivered training for commercial clients in France, Germany, Switzerland, The Bahamas, Holland, Norway, America, The Caribbean, Australia, and Singapore.
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Autostereoscopic 3D displays: stereoscopic perception without the special glasses (opens in new tab)
Abstract
The talk is in two parts. I begin by explaining what a 3D display can offer that a 2D display cannot and then cover the various technologies that can be used to build 3D displays that do not require you to wear silly glasses. In the second part of the talk, I describe the 3D display that was designed and built by the University of Cambridge and the work that was done to convert the proof-of-concept model into a commercial prototype. I conclude with an update on the commercial state of the 3D display market.
Biography
Neil Dodgson is Reader in Graphics & Imaging in the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. His research interests are in computer graphics, 3D display technology, human-figure animation, subdivision surfaces and image processing. Dr Dodgson been pioneering work in stereoscopic displays since 1992. His contributions include software, optical design, cameras, hardware, and the theory of autostereoscopic displays. He have published more than twenty refereed papers in the area. Since 2000, he has been one of the international organising committee of the annual Stereoscopic Displays & Applications conference, the premier venue for presenting results in the field. He chaired the conference in 2006 and 2007.
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Applying for research funding
Biography
John Hand has more than 20 years experience in the Research Councils, with the Science and Engineering Research Council and the the Engineering and Physical Research Council. John has been the Information Communication technologies (ICT) Programme Manager since April 2006, prior to which he was head of the Healthcare, Retail and Financial Services Sector teams. The ICT Programme funds research and training across all aspects of ICT research, from photonics and electronics through to fundamentals of computing.
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Mind-reading machines (opens in new tab) See also: Emotionally intelligent interfaces (opens in new tab)
Abstract
Facial displays are an important channel for the expression of emotions, and are often thought of as projections of a person’s mental state.Computer systems generally ignore this information. Mind-reading interfaces infer users’ mental states from facial expressions, giving them a degree of emotional intelligence. We use video processing to track two dozen features on the user’s face. These are then interpreted using statistical techniques through a hierarchy of analyses as basic actions, head and facial gestures, and finally groups of mental states. The talk describes an implementation of facial affect inference, together with an evaluation and some preliminary results of using the system to monitor car drivers.
Biography
Peter Robinson is Professor of Computer Technology and Deputy Head of Department at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory (opens in new tab) in England, where he leads the Rainbow Group (opens in new tab) working on computer graphics, interaction and electronic CAD. He is also a Fellow, Praelector (opens in new tab) and Director of Studies in Computer Science (opens in new tab) at Gonville & Caius College (opens in new tab) where he previously studied for a first degree in Mathematics and a PhD in Computer Science under Neil Wiseman (opens in new tab).
Professor Robinson’s research (opens in new tab) concerns problems at the boundary between people and computers. This involves investigating new technologies to enhance communication between computers and their users, and new applications to exploit these technologies. The main focus for this is human-computer interaction, where he has been leading work for some years on the use of video and paper as part of the user interface. The idea is to develop augmented environments in which everyday objects acquire computational properties through user interfaces based on video projection and digital cameras. Recent work has included desk-size projected displays and inference of users’ mental states from video images of their faces.
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How to write a great research paper (opens in new tab)
Abstract
Writing papers and giving talks are key skills for any researcher, but they aren’t easy. In this pair of presentations, I describe simple guidelines that I follow for writing papers and giving talks, which I think may be useful to you too. I don’t have all the answers—far from it—and I hope that the presentation evolves into a discussion in which you share your own insights, rather than a lecture.
Biography
Simon Peyton Jones, MA, MBCS, CEng, graduated from Trinity College Cambridge in 1980. After two years in industry, he spent seven years as a lecturer at University College London, and nine years as a professor at Glasgow University, before moving to Microsoft Research in 1998. His main research interest is in functional programming languages, their implementation, and their application. He has led a succession of research projects focused around the design and implementation of production-quality functional-language systems for both uniprocessors and parallel machines. He was a key contributor to the design of the now-standard functional language Haskell, and is the lead designer of the widely-used Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC). He has written two textbooks about the implementation of functional languages. More generally, he is interested in language design, rich type systems, software component architectures, compiler technology, code generation, runtime systems, virtual machines, garbage collection, and so on. He is particularly motivated by direct use of principled theory to practical language design and implementation—that is one reason he loves functional programming so much. He is also keen to apply ideas from advanced programming languages to mainstream settings.
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Programming biology (opens in new tab)
Abstract
This talk presents a programming language for designing and simulating computer models of biological systems. The language is based on a computational formalism known as the pi-calculus, and the simulation algorithm is based on standard kinetic theory of physical chemistry. The language is first presented by using a simple graphical notation, which is subsequently used to model and simulate a number of intriguing biological systems, including a genetic oscillator and a pathway of the immune system. One of the benefits of the language is its scalability: large models of biological systems can be programmed from simple components in a modular fashion.
Biography
Andrew Phillips is a researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge, where he is currently using techniques from concurrency theory to develop programming languages for modelling and simulating biological systems. Andrew was born in Barbados in 1977 and was awarded a government scholarship to study Engineering in 1995. In 2000 he received a degree in Computer Engineering from the INSA institute of Toulouse, France, together with a postgraduate degree in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge. He pursued a PhD in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, where he developed an experimental language for specifying and implementing secure mobile applications. He later joined Microsoft Research Cambridge in 2005 to develop programming languages for modelling biological systems, in collaboration with Systems Biology researchers from various external institutions.
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Peer-to-peer networking: removing the underlay from an overlay (opens in new tab)
Abstract
The talk describes Virtual Ring Routing (VRR), a new network routing protocol that occupies a unique point in the routing protocol design space. VRR is inspired by the overlay routing algorithms used in Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs). However, it does not rely on an underlying network routing protocol. It is implemented directly on top of the link layer. VRR has the unique feature that neither requires network flooding nor translation between fixed identifiers and location-dependent addresses. VRR provides both traditional point-to-point network routing and DHT routing to the node responsible for a hash table key. VRR can be used with any link layer technology and this talk will cover the design and evaluation of a VRR implementation tuned for wireless networks. Experimental results show that VRR provides robust performance across a wide range of environments and workloads. It performs comparably to, or better than, the best wireless routing protocol in each experiment.
Biography
For the last five or so years, Ant Rowstron has been working as a researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, United Kingdom. He received a MEng degree in Computer Systems and Software Engineering in 1993 from the University of York, UK, and a DPhil degree in Computer Science in 1996 from the University of York, UK. In 1996 he moved to the Computer Laboratory at Cambridge University, UK as a Research Associate and then moved to the Laboratory for Communications Engineering in the Engineering Department, Cambridge University, UK as a Senior Research Associate. During his time at Cambridge University he was a consultant for the Olivetti and Oracle Research Laboratory (ORL) (which became the AT&T Research Cambridge in 1998 and has now closed). In mid 1999, he moved to Microsoft Research Ltd in Cambridge, UK.
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Autonomous monitoring of vulnerable habitats (opens in new tab)
Abstract
Determining the longitudinal effects of changing environmental conditions on vulnerable species is fundamental for their effective conservation. Traditional methods for assessing behavioural and environmental conditions rely on considerable manpower and time-consuming field study. Not only does this limit the quantity of data that can be gathered, but it also constrains its scope and resolution. We are currently trailing a system combining wireless sensor nodes with novel Microsoft technologies to automate the collection and aggregation of detailed nest attendance and habitat information from a vulnerable seabird, the Manx Shearwater (Puffinus puffinus) on Skomer Island, Pembrokeshire. In this talk, I discuss the application of such methods to collect ecological data, its advantages and the new problems it presents, and the exciting data we are receiving from Skomer.
Biography
Robin Freeman joined the Computational Ecology group at Microsoft Research Cambridge earlier this year. Previously, he was at Oxford University, where his PhD focused on the analysis of GPS tracking of and analysis of avian behaviour. He is very interested in the use of computational methods for the measurement, analysis and assessmentof ecological systems. Previously, he had completed a degree in Computing (AI) at Aberdeen, and an Msc in Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems at Sussex.
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Machine learning applied to games
Abstract
Games are now big business; the global games market size now exceeds that of the Hollywood film industry and game titles can even spin off movies. We assert that machine learning can be used to make games more fun by adding learning to agents’ behaviour and may be able to cut costs by automating generation of agents’ behaviour. To that end, in this talk I look at a recent internship where a Reinforcement Learning PHd thesis was applied inside an Xbox 360 title.
Biography
Phillip Trelford is a Software Development Engineer in the Machine Learning and Perception Group (opens in new tab) at the Microsoft Research Cambridge Lab (opens in new tab). Within this group he works with Ralf Herbrich, Thore Graepel, Onno Zoeter and Joaquin Quiñonero Candela as a member of the Applied Games Group. His current areas of interest include XBox 360 (opens in new tab) development, grid computing (opens in new tab), Computer Go (opens in new tab), F# (opens in new tab) and ASP.NET with AJAX (opens in new tab).