CSIR Meraka Institute Strategic and operational plan Marlien Herselman 17 May 2011

CSIR Meraka Institute

Strategic and operational plan

Marlien Herselman

17 May 2011

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Presentation Outline

• Some relevant problems

• Meraka vision

• Meraka Value proposition

• Macro structure

• Meraka's research competencies and cyberinfrastructure initiatives to enable our vision

• Strategy for securing R&D contract income

• Key challenges and priorities in the functional domains

• Budget

• Other strategic issues

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Some relevant problems

• Poverty– Income gap – 1.2 billion people (388 million in Africa) live on less than $1 a day– Lack of assets – low productivity, missed opportunities, weak health and low

level of skills– Vulnerability – external shocks, internal conflicts– Powerlessness – no voice nor bargaining power

• Universal primary education– In Africa, 32 million out of school, 59% will never enrol

• Functional Illiteracy– 38% of the adult population in sub-Saharan Africa, or 153 million adults, lack the

basic literacy and numeracy skills needed in everyday life• Access to knowledge

– 51% of South African households own no leisure books– 7% of public schools in South Africa have functional libraries of any kind

• Cost of communication– Europeans spend little more than 1% of their average monthly income

on mobile communication, Africans spend 17.7% Barriers to inclusion

– 650 million persons with disabilities - Ban Ki-moon

It is our belief that one of the greatest opportunities is

to leverage the human potential andcreativity of African people

through sustainable developmenttowards an information society

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VISION

Our vision is that Meraka will be recognised for the contribution that its research, development and innovation (R,D&I) in information and communications technology (ICT) and cyberinfrastructure has made in accelerating South Africa's development towards an information society, where everyone can create, access, utilise and share information and knowledge to their individual and collective benefit..

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Value Proposition

Meraka strives to contribute to South Africa’s development towards an advanced information society by addressing key issues with broad societal impact through ICT, viz:

• Enabling ICT readiness – by focusing on extending both infrastructure and access through researching, developing, demonstrating and building broadband infrastructures, and on ensuring inclusive access

• Promoting ICT use - through R&D and innovation that increases ICT intensity and pervasiveness in society

• Contributing to ICT capabilities and skills – by enabling advanced human capital development

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Meraka achieves its value proposition through:

• Its ability to undertake multi-disciplinary projects

• A strong and growing profile as the foremost ICT R,D&I institution in Africa, with competence in the following areas:

– integrative systems, platforms and technologies– wireless networking and media– human language technologies– knowledge engineering and representation– earth observation science

• Its expertise in building national cyberinfrastructure

• Extensive networks and strategic partnerships

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Competence Areas, Research Groups and Cross-cutting Initiatives

Centre for High Performance

Computing

SANReN

Very Large Scale databases

SAGrid

Integrative Platforms

and technologies

Living Labs

Real-TimeVideo Coding

Wireless MeshNetworks

Advanced Sensor Networks

(emerging area)

ICT for Earth Observation

Remote SensingResearch

Speech technologies

Speech Applications

Integrative systems,

platforms and technologies

Integrative Platforms

and technologies

Living Labs

Next Generation ICT and Mobile Architectures

Internet of Things Engineering Group

Trusted Network Infrastructures and

Platforms

Living Labs and methodologies

(including Crime Prevention)

Cyber-infrastructure

Networks and Media

Earth Observation Science and Information Technology

Human language technologies

&Knowledge

technologies

Knowledge Representation &

Reasoning

Enterprise Knowledge

Engineering and Management

ICT for Service delivery

ICT for Rural development

Education/Mobile learning

ICT for Health

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Networks and MediaResearch group priorities• Wireless Mesh Networks – Strengthen cognitive radio and

spectrum management capacity with WITS and Georgia Institute of Technology

• Real time video coding - Commercialisation and second round funding for the ARTIST project

• Advanced Sensor Networks – Smartgrid and mining applications in collaboration with University of Pretoria, Georgia Institute of Technology and other CSIR units

Competence area level initiatives• Further the relationships with Global Research Alliance Institutes

1) Fraunhofer HHI - joint research on P2P media protocol and low rate extensions to the international H.263 video coding standard for developing countries

2) Fraunhofer FOKUS, VTT and TNO joint research in converged Infrastructure for Emerging Regions.

• Further relationship with Wireless World Research Forum and IEEE Communications society through leading the work groups in Wireless technologies for emerging regions.

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Earth Observation Science and ITResearch group priorities• Remote Sensing Research• DST Earth Observation application development project

• Comparison of 4 different local and global Fire Danger models, driven by weather forecast data by comparing it to satellite-based active fire detection and burned area as retrospective proxy for fire probability

• Satellite-derived vegetation greenness data incorporation in local models (e.g. Lowveld model) to indicate vegetation curing and fuel moisture, to improve Fire Danger predictions.

• Implement “AFIS field units” in SADC with real-time active fire and fire danger service as part of EC-funded African Monitoring of Environment for Sustainable Development (AMESD) project.

• ICT4EO• Develop scientific workflow environment for integrating Sensor

Web services for earth observation data and products with health data

• Demonstrate scientific workflows for modelling environmental factors that influence the incidence of cholera on EC FP7 project: Earth Observation for the mitigation of health risks (www.eo2heaven.org)

Competence area level initiatives• Participate in the establishment of the CSIR Space Forum• Continued collaboration with NRE and other CSIR units in

context of Natural Environment RIA

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Human Language and Knowledge TechnologiesHuman Language Technologies• Speech technologies for multilingual, telephone-based

information service for DBE• Automatic speech recognition systems with speaker-

independent accuracies > 50% for vocabularies of 100-200 words

• Demonstrably more natural-sounding text-to-speech systems incorporating natural language processing

• Broadband data repository for 11 official languages• Work with Google on languages outside 40 priority languages

Enterprise Knowledge Engineering and Management• Enterprise engineering platform for health care delivery, in

collaboration with Built Environment and Biosciences• Adapt everyday communication technologies (e.g. low-end

mobile phones) to capture indigenous knowledge in collaboration with NMMU

Knowledge Representation & Reasoning• Centre for Artificial Intelligence with UKZN• Collaboration with UKZN, NRE and SANBI on Biodiversity

Information Management System

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Integrative systems, platforms & technologiesBuild new research groups

• Next Generation ICT and Mobile ArchitecturesDependable scalable robust future proof architectures and solutions to enable an inclusive information society

• Internet of Things Engineering GroupLarge scale, smart/optimal solutions in the Cloud which integrates physical objects (“smart devices”, sensors and tags) with the Internet.

• Trusted Network Infrastructures and PlatformsNetwork infrastructures with built-in security, dependability and privacy to support complex distributed systems and transactions.

• Living Labs and methodologiesUser driven innovation and real world validation of technology

Competence area level initiatives

• Indigenous Knowledge Systems treasure hub for communal socio-economic development with DST

• Establish mobile applications laboratory in collaboration with Innovation hub supported by Infodev, DST and Nokia

• Converged (IP, Voice & Mobile) Communication Mobile Platform (e.g For Presidential Hotline)

• Tshwane Smart City - linking sensors, networks, data and processing through Internet of Things, with Innovation Hub and municipality

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Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) and Very Large Scale databases

Centre for High Performance Computing

• Extension of phase 2 machine (SUN M6000) to at least 80 to 100 teraflop – currently running at 80% capacity – aim to get back in TOP500

• Expand number of user from 500 by about 20% targeting mainly non-traditional users

• Consolidation of industrial users forum

• Commission GPGPU cluster as test-bed preparing of phase 3 machine / 2nd node (2012)

• Results from flagships coming for instance cardiovascular simulation, astronomy

Very Large Scale databases

• Implement phase 1 of VLDB minimum of 1 petabyte storage

• SAEON, HSRC, National Heritage Council through national library as lead users

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SANReN Governance SANReN Advisory Forum Cyberinfrastructure structure

Metro rings Complete metro rings in

Tshwane, Ethekwini & Cape Town - adding 85 sites to SANReN

SKA Support Ensure on time completion

of Cape Town to SALT and Meerkat SANReN link: vital for South Africa's SKA bid

Extending the backbone Evaluation of 7 RFPs for

connectivity to remote and disadvantaged institutions, contract and expediteroll-out

Securing R&D contract income

• Government Sector - support strategic partners and explore contract R&D opportunities– Top strategic partners: DST, DoC, DAC, DoH, USAASA, SITA, DBE,

COGTA, DRDLR, DTI, ICASA

• African continent - increase partnerships for capacity building, HCD and research by aligning with CSIR and DST initiatives and prioritised countries, and by exploring new contract R&D opportunities– Explore donor/funding agency and AU opportunities for coordination,

networking, research and HCD as well as contract R&D funding– CSIR ICT Flagship with Meraka playing a leading role, supporting

major initiatives, including South Africa’s SKA bid

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Securing R&D contract income

• International - diversify international collaboration and increase collaborative R&D and HCD– Donors, foundations and multilateral agencies– Bilateral agreements as framework with a focus on the EU and

emerging markets in Asia and South America – Competitive R&D through especially the EU FP7 calls for proposals.

• Industry / Private sector- To grow and diversify sales to industry by seeking R&D partnerships and contracts, and by aligning with government’s priority to increase competitiveness through innovation– Initial focus is on the ICT and telecoms sectors, including mobile, fixed-

line and Internet service providers– Long haul model

Key challenges and priorities in the functional domains

• HR/HCD Transformation

Leadership Pipeline

Leadership development for newly appointed CAMs, RGLs and other managers

• Strategic research management Meraka Research Strategy ICT R&D and Innovation strategy implementation roadmap Meraka alignment to and participation in CSIR RIAs

• Outcomes / Technology Transfer Securing and protecting of intellectual assets Building a patent portfolio Increasing commercial licensing of technology – short-term

focus on real-time video coding IP cluster / ARTIST project

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Other Strategic Issues

• Marginal and emerging research groups– “Stage gate” maturity process

• Cyberinfrastructure structure– Working document with discussion of key issues

and options developed (Wright, Cloete & Sithole)– Refinement through discussions with international

groups (Netherlands, Finland, Norway)– Next step: discussion with CSIR Executive & DST

• Funding / Business model– Competence area leadership– Articulate and package offerings– Optimise ratio between R&D capacity and

management and support overhead

Thank you!