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International Forum of University Presidents
Mr Chairman, Rector, Professors, colleagues.
It is a great privilege to address the International Forum of
University Presidents in an area as vital and innovative as
Information and Communication technology.
In such august company, I am sorry to admit that I am not
a University President. I am a mere director. I hope you
will not throw me out for being so junior!
It is a particular privilege to be invited to speak in this
magnificent museum of telecommunications
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Here we are reminded that humanities desire to
communicate, to share ideas, to reach out to one another,
is one of the great driving forces of civilisation.
From the simple human desire to understand and be
understood came technology that first allowed us to write
to each other,
Then allowed us to speak to each other, and now allows
us to create and innovate together, free from the
limitations imposed by time, by distance and by language.
It is fitting too that we meet in Russia. If there is one
nation in the world where the need to communicate
accurately across vast distances has been crucial for both
every day life and for the very survival of the country, it is
here.
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Perhaps because of that history, this museum houses
many of the most significant exhibits in modern
telecommunications. From Popov’s pioneering work on
Wireless Telegraphy to the modern communications
satellites - we see the huge consequences of those early
Russian breakthroughs.
Today I am proud to join with the State University of
Telecommunications to launch a venture which we
modestly hope will also have far reaching consequences.
We are founding a partnership between two academic
institutions to help further the development and expansion
of the British and Russian telecommunications industries.
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The partnership we announce today springs from the
Russian understanding of and expertise in the
technologies of communication and innovation.
In 2006 I was honoured to host a visit to Warwick
Manufacturing Group, by Leonid Reimen, who was at that
time Minister for Information Technology and
Communications of the Russian Federation.
Minister Reimen was kind enough to commend the work
we were doing with industry, and described plans
for enhancing academic-industry links in Russia through
new techno parks linked to top Russian universities.
In 2007, two of my staff attended a round table meeting
between Russia and the UK. It was proposed that the
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Bonch Bruevich State University of Telecommunications at
St Petersburg would host the first techno park.
Rector Professor Gogol and international director Oleg
Zolotokrylin then visited WMG and the basis for a
successful partnership was cemented. Ever since then,
people, messages and emails have been shuttling across
Europe.
The result of all this communication is that we are proud to
agree that this autumn the first student will be enrolled in
masters-level training provided by a joint venture between
WMG and the Bonch Bruevich State University of
telecommunications.
What is special about this education is that it is directed to
the needs of companies in the St Petersburg region. The
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graduates of our programme will be fully integrated into
the businesses of St Petersburg, focussed on helping
them meet the needs of their customers in an ever
changing marketplace.
WMG already presents industrial courses, with prestigious
academic and industrial partners, in India, China,
Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.
It is a great honour to be adding the Bonch Bruevich State
University of Telecommunications to our list of partners.
I only hope Rector Professor Gogol feels the same way
about WMG!
Partnerships are becoming ever more crucial as each year
passes. The last two decades have seen an
unprecedented bringing global coming-together.
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Barriers to communication, whether political or technical
have fallen more rapidly than we ever imagined.
The positive consequences of this unprecedented ability to
communicate are obvious.
We can meet freely, share ideas, and develop new
research far faster than Popov, Bose, Marconi or Tesla
could dream of. We can innovate faster and participate in
the breakthroughs our colleagues are making.
Yet today, in the shadow of global recession, the
challenges of globalisation are just as clear.
It was once said a lie could get halfway round the world
before the truth could get its boots on.
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At the moment it seems that a speculator can crash the
world’s stock market before a government can get out of
bed.
This combination of opportunity and risk puts
telecommunications at the heart of social and economic
change and we all must adapt to that.
Disruptive technology and the ability for information to flow
freely are dramatically changing the way we all work.
Against that backdrop, we must focus on the core issues
of competitiveness and productivity.
To make better products and better ways of making them
has always been the task of engineers. We now have
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huge new environments to apply that philosophy to, and
we must do so boldly.
This twin mission of helping businesses and governments
develop products and processes that are more effective
and better priced is a constant in an ever changing world.
We must apply that focus in every field where our
knowledge can be useful, not just restrict ourselves to a
single area of expertise.
There are no limits in a business environment where
cross-application of ideas will be vital to success. We have
to apply our ideas and learn from others across a
multitude of disciplines.
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In 1982, when I founded Warwick Manufacturing Group,
our main interest was in automotive engineering and how
we could use applied research to improve the technology
and processes used in the industry.
It was clear to us that the CAD –CAM revolution would
transform the car industry beyond all recognition.
We persuaded many firms to invest in the kinds of
research innovations being developed in Japan, in South
Korea and around the world, but some felt they could
ignore those changes. They had secure markets, loyal
customers, large factories, executive dining rooms and
huge management teams. They asked us: “Why risk
changing that because of some innovation in computing”
Those companies no longer exist.
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Technology can move mountains. It can most certainly
depose chief executives.
The huge impact of change applies to researchers as
much as to businesses.
For twenty years, WMG grew by focussing on
manufacturing. Our research was on the technologies
needed within manufacturing such as automation,
robotics, control systems and systems integration.
We worked with companies in industries as varied as
Construction and aeronautics. We grew and built a strong
reputation.
Yet increasingly the innovations we saw came from the
impact of digitisation, of the free flow of information, the
ever increasing power of computing. The world was
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becoming "digital" and manufacturing had to change and
WMG change with it.
Today, businesses and families are dependent on
information and communication technologies.
The systems and technologies we are creating are
increasingly complex, offering an unbounded array of
potential services and applications.
Business has discovered the art of product proliferation
and choice as a means to drive revenue - giving
individuals both more choice and more complexity to deal
with.
As business and household preferences evolve, new
social trends emerge ever more unpredictably, making it
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difficult for technology and service suppliers to design and
deliver products for optimal profit and performance.
For example, thirty years age consumers expected a radio
in their car.
Ten years ago a CD player was standard.
Today they expect a computing system that is integrated
with a digital media player.
Soon perhaps, they will expect that we integrate a car’s
computing system with their home network, so that they
can tweak their car’s performance from the sofa, in much
the same way a Formula 1 pit crew can review telemetries
after a testing session.
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These potential consumer needs and the research cross
currents explains why WMG has moved strongly into
digital technology.
I have recently created a new fifty million pound digital
laboratory at WMG to research this broad interface
between digital technology and emerging business and
consumer needs.
Let me give you a few examples of the fields we are now
working in –
At WMG we have for many years modelled production
lines - but new modelling techniques have allowed us to
extend this to modelling the flow of patients through
hospitals, to ensure staff and equipment are deployed
optimally.
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Such has been the impact of this work that our local
Strategic Health Authority has funded a new Institute of
Digital Health at WMG with two new professorships to look
at everything from virtual surgery techniques to rapid
prototyping of body parts.
Imagine Mr Shevchenko, a patient in Milan, has a foot
broken in such a way ligament on bone structures are
severely damaged and the surgery will be complex. His
foot is scanned and the data sent to a podiatrist in Los
Angeles, who is able to produce a precise working model
of bone and ligament, via a rapid prototyping machine.
That Doctor is then able to make suggestions to an Italian
surgeon on the problems he will face in his operation. Both
surgeons then practice the operation on a virtual
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simulator, working together to refine their technique until
they are confident of success.
These are projects we can see emerging from research
we are doing now.
This sort of interaction means that ever increasing
amounts of data will be moving from place to place, and
whenever valuable cargo moves, there are those who
wish to steal it.
The threat is less from pirates, than from information
super-highway robbers. The problem with security
systems at the moment is that they do not factor in how
humans work. We have all had the experience of complex
security systems failing because users found them so
inconvenient they chose to bypass them.
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The view of the security community is that this is a
growing problem, as the incidence of cyber attacks
exploiting human vulnerabilities and identity theft
increases.
The increased proliferation of connected technology offers
more chances for malware to spread and enable
unauthorised access to personal and corporate facilities,
potentially compromising confidentiality and integrity of
data, devices, and critical national infrastructure.
The ability to understand where risk exists and how to
handle the human problems inherent in digital security will
be fundamental to building systems that are worthy of
trust.
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This is why I have created a team tailoring information and
network security technologies for optimal human use, so
that they might be more effectively deployed.
One of the vital areas we will all be looking at as our ability
to share data increases is what new ways we will find to
communicate and interact with each other.
Until recently we have communicated exclusively via sight
and sound - whether that is through television, the
internet, mobile phones or the most venerable of medium
of all, the Academic conference.
But now the technology exists for us to start to use touch
and smell, and even perhaps the language of data itself.
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To take one example, the look, touch, smell and feel of
Jaguar’s newest premium vehicles owe much to the work
at WMG. We now want to handle all the senses in the
virtual environment. Which sounds gives the feeling of
speed, which of comfort and safety?
Or take making a purchase decision. We now have the
capability to purchase from all over the world, but are
limited by our ability to evaluate. Say I was interested in a
Russian sculptor’s work. How can I truly get a sense of
the work without being able to see it, touch it, or see how it
would look in my living room?
A team at my lab is developing a virtual reality headset
and glove system which will provide low-cost, high
confidence, high quality multi-sensory knowledge. Imagine
being able to purchase a sculpture online and being able
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to feel the stone with the confidence that the purchasing
experience is the same as if you were there.
Alternatively, imagine being able to simulate an
experiment a hundred times, subtly shifting the
parameters of the experiment by touch and feel as you sit
in a virtual world the contains both you and the data for
your project, parameters you can shift with a touch.
Yet these projects, exciting though they are, have little
meaning if they cannot directly impact people’s lives.
One of the aspects of telecommunications and ICT that I
find invigorating is the directness in which innovation
translates to the real world. Being driven by our need to
communicate and share information means being
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focussed on what people really find useful and helpful in
their lives.
That why we are exploiting the internet to maximise
business opportunities for thousands of companies in the
West Midlands region of the United Kingdom, where WMG
is based.
This online e-commerce scheme is a meeting point for
organisations who are putting contracts out to tender and
businesses able to do the work.
There are over 7000 registered business members; over
50,000 tenders per year flow through the system; and
there are 11000+ users of the site. The system has
enabled hundreds of millions of pounds of business for
local companies, and the system has been adapted to
alert companies in India to contract opportunities in the
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UK, and to alert companies to tendering opportunities for
the London 2012 Olympics.
It is this same outward facing attitude that inspires our
enthusiasm for our partnership in the St Petersburg
Techno Park.
The need to face the real world is made ever clearer in
today’s global recession
I’m sure the impact of the current crisis is being felt at
every level. Governments become reluctant to fund
research. Businesses become wary of investing.
Universities wonder if they should cut back.
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To my mind, that creates pressure on all universities to
change the way we educate so that every talent can be
put to good use.
I have always had faith in engineering, whether digital or
mechanical, to find solutions to the real problems facing
people.
This is perhaps a contrast to the chasing of a mirage that
seems to have constituted some of the financial excesses
of the past.
I believe only a future built on practical research and real
innovation will have a firm foundation for growth.
We need to give every company, every individual a
chance to innovate and learn. To give everyone the
chance to learn means adapting new ways of teaching. In
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our partnership with Bonch Bruevich SUT we will be
focussing on modular education.
At WMG we developed the concept of offering a series of
independent modules, each designed to have both an
immediate impact of business effectiveness and a longer
term impact on individual abilities.
A modular approach means each individual student’s
education can be varied and adapted so their progress
constantly addresses the needs of the companies.
It is this approach we will use in partnership with the
Bonch Bruevich State University. Partner Businesses will
be able to develop individualised education programmes
for their workforce, which will meet the needs of their
company exactly.
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That makes it effective for the business, rewarding for the
student and ensures the university stays in touch with the
marketplace as well as academia.
To achieve progress in all these areas of technological
innovation by tapping of maximum possible talent is the
only way to ensure economic growth.
To do that, I believe that it is crucial for all of us to cooperate. I have always been firm in my belief that there is
no centre of knowledge in the world, but rather a
distribution of research breakthroughs, of knowledge and
of ability that we benefit from unevenly.
Sometimes, and I say this gently to my fellow Britons, the
advocates of globalisation of knowledge sound like
colonisers, not co-operators. People are far too easily
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convinced of their own expertise, and far too unwilling to
see talent and expertise in others.
If the history of telecommunication teaches us anything, it
is that the genius of men and women whose studies were
far flung and widely distributed needed to be brought
together for progress to be made.
I think of my fellow Bengali, Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose,
whose research, though held back by racism and lack of
funding, ran parallel to that of Marconi, Tesla and Popov. If
those four men could have worked co-operatively, think of
the benefits we would all have accrued.
It is that spirit of co-operation that I seek in every
educational and research venture WMG enters into.
A partnership of equals and of talents.
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That is why I am so excited that our partnership with the
Bonch Bruevich State University will be the first where
modules designed and developed by the State University
will be approved by my own university as part of a Masters
degree. What better sign that this is a true partnership, a
real co-operation?
My friends and new Colleagues, I am proud to associate
WMG with your sprit of co-operation, of learning, of
responsiveness to the needs of society.
The researches being undertaken here, at WMG and by
your universities across the globe are changing the world
around us.
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It is our shared duty to take further down the path of
communication, co-operation and understanding first
marked by Popov, by Bose, by Marconi and countless
others.
I am delighted to be on that journey with all of you.
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