CASL QuarterlyNewsletter of the Complex and Adaptive Systems Laboratory

Volume 1, Issue 1October 2012 – December 2012

In this issue:

FightMalaria@Home

CASL National Advisory Board

Prof D. Forney – An Interview

CASL Communications Pod

CASL Collaborative Seminars

Featured Research Article

CASL Alumni

CASL Miscellany

Welcome to the inaugural issue of CASL Quarterly, the Newsletter of the UCD Complex &Adaptive Systems Laboratory. CASL is an incubator for interdisciplinary research which isunderpinned by computational and mathematical sciences.

Through this quarterly newsletter we will communicate the latest developmentstaking place in CASL to the wider community. As a dynamic, interdisciplinary researchinstitute we always encourage and welcome enquiries from researchers about gettinginvolved with CASL. The CASL community is especially excited about the move to our newhome in Science East in 2014, and this physical move presents a unique opportunity toevolve the shape and focus of the research being undertaken within CASL. The new UCDScience Centre is the largest and most significant development in the history of third leveleducation that will unite scientific disciplines. As part of the process to prepare for this nextphase of CASL, during 2013 we will be undertaking an exercise to develop the new CASLstrategy to 2020, and we very much look forward to working with you, the broader UCD, Irishand International communities in its preparation.

Dr Michael O'NeillJanuary 2013

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CASL Welcomes a NewDirector

Dr Michael O’Neill was appointed Director of CASL in October2012

A CASL thematic leader (Natural Computing & Optimisation),and Senior Lecturer with the UCD School of Computer Science& Informatics; Michael joined UCD in early 2006. At that timeMichael established the Natural Computing Research &Applications group (ncra.ucd.ie) with his long time collaboratorProf Anthony Brabazon (UCD School of Business). Under hisleadership the group enjoyed rapid growth through numerousfunding successes reaching its peak to date of about 40researchers.

The NCRA group are responsible for the proposalwhich led to Science Foundation Ireland funding (€4.1 Million)the Financial Mathematics & Computation Cluster (FMC2) in2009. Finance is but one successful application area of O’Neill’sNatural Computing group, with diverse collaborations in, forexample, Autonomic Networks (with Bell Labs), Architecturaland Engineering Design, Ecosystem modelling, Music andSound synthesis, and Game Artificial Intelligence.

Originally trained as a Biochemist, and workingbriefly as a Clinical Biochemist, Michael completed a HDip andlater a PhD in Computer Science. CASL provided the idealinterdisciplinary environment which his group embraced whenCASL was established in late 2006.

Michael is the third Director of CASL, the sixthinstitute to be formally established in UCD. The CASL was atruly collaborative creation, rising to the challenge laid down byUCD President Hugh Brady and VP for Research, ProfessorDes Fitzgerald, to form an interdisciplinary research facility inthe ICT space. With support and input from academics from

many disciplines, including Computer Science, Engineering,Geological Science, Maths and Medical Science, Prof ScottRickard was selected as the Founding Director and Scott ledthe formation of the CASL in its current home in Belfield OfficePark. Under his Directorship, Scott steered the CASL to formalrecognition as a UCD Research Institute and also led theinitiative to relocate CASL to the Science Centre (funded underPRTLI5). In 2010 he stepped down as Director to focus hisattention on the real world application of his research inFinance, and he has enjoyed success in Dublin's InternationalFinancial Services Centre (IFSC). This set the stage for CASL’ssecond Director, Prof David Coker, an expert in ComputationalPhysical Modelling, to take the helm. During his time Davidestablished the CASL Industry Affiliates Programme (IAP), andin his last official act as Director, convened the first NationalAdvisory Board comprised of members of the IAP.

Michael has the pleasure of leading CASL duringan exciting time where we plan our move to Science East, and

CASL's new Director: Michael O'Neill

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form our new strategy looking towards 2020. The CASL owe agreat debt of gratitude and sincere thanks to the manyindividuals from UCD, the private donors (including the foundingmembers of CASL’s IAP ­ AOL, Icon, and Accenture), and ofcourse PRTLI5 funding which has given rise to the CASL’s newhome in Science East.

Fight Malaria@Home

CASL researchers, Dr Anthony Chubb and PhD student KevinO’Brien, working with Professor Denis Shields are harnessingthe donated computational power of personal computers to findnew targets for antimalarial drugs.

Most computers only use a fraction of theiravailable CPU power for day­to­day computation. The UCDteam have built a BOINC server that distributes jobs to donated'client' computers, which then carry out the work in thebackground.

Malaria kills a child every 45 seconds. Theparasite responsible, Plasmodium falciparum, continues toevolve resistance to available medication. New replacementdrugs that target new proteins in the parasite are urgentlyneeded.

Large pharmaceutical organisations such as GSKand Novartis have already tested millions of compounds andfound nearly 19,000 hits that show promising activity againstPlasmodium falciparum. However, they do not know whichtarget protein(s) is actually being affected by these compounds.If the target protein for each of these hits is identified, theprocess of drug discovery and development would besignificantly enhanced. The FightMalaria@Home project isaimed at finding these new targets by distributed computationor crowd­sourcing. Dr Anthony Chubb says, "We plan to dock

each of the 19,000 hits into structures of each of the 5,363proteins in the malaria parasite. The computational powerneeded is enormous.

By connecting thousands of computers, we canharness the equivalent power of large supercomputers to helpus with our research. We have over 10,000 computers from 110countries around the world signed on already. This is allowingus to do about 500,000 docking calculations per day, but weneed to get to closer to 1 million per day." The UCD team areappealing to people all over Ireland to donate computing timeby logging onto www.fight­malaria.org and following the simplesetup instructions. On this site, you can also monitor the leaderboard, top teams and project statistics. Malaria infects 216million people and kills 650,000 each year, mostly Africanchildren under five years old.

A video explaining FightMalaria@Home isavailable on the CASL YouTube channel.

Anthony Chubb and Kevin O'Brien presenting their work in thenew CASL Communications Pod

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CASL National AdvisoryBoard

CASL held its first National Advisory Board in September 2012.

On 21st of September, Brian Sweeney chaired the first CASLNational Advisory Board, which was followed by an open CASLIndustry Affiliates Programme information session forprospective members of the access programme. Dean RobertCalderbank (Duke Univeristy & chair of CASL ScientificAdvisory Board) was in attendance.

Following an overview of UCD's research strategyby Prof Des Fitzgerald, Dean Calderbank provided aninternational context to the CASL IAP. Dr Neil Hurley providedan overview of a successful collaboration which has arisen fromAOL's engagement with the CASL IAP. Following a proposal toIRCSET (now the Irish Research Council) they havesuccessfully obtained funding for a postdoctoral researcher tocontinue their collaboration with CASL.

A seat on the CASL National Advisory Board,which meets annually, is one of the many benefits ofmembership of the CASL Industry Affiliates Programme. Otherbenefits include opportunities for internships at CASL, facilitatedaccess to CASL researchers, attendance at the CASLSymposium Day, CASL seminars and thematic lunches, and acrows nest perspective on the research directions taken inCASL. The founding members of the CASL IAP are AOL,Accenture and Icon. We always welcome informal enquiries onnew applications for membership (casldirector@ucd.ie).

Further information on the CASL IAP is availablefrom www.ucd.ie/casl/getinvolved/industryaffiliatesprogramme.

CASL Directors (Rickard, Coker & O'Neill) at the 2012 CASLNational Advisory Board and Industry Affiliates ProgrammeInformation Session

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Prof David Forney – AnInterview

Engineers and scientists must be prepared to build for whatdoes not exist, according to coding and information theoryveteran Professor David Forney.

Speaking during a recent visit to UCD's Complex and AdaptiveSystems Laboratory, Prof Forney said scientific research ischaracterised by the unknown and it can often take time beforethe merits of a particular field of research become obvious. Hesaid predicting what research will prove fruitful is nearlyimpossible without a lot of time invested into it first. The futureapplications of an idea can also be hard to understand untilother technologies are available to exploit that potential, hesaid.

"I can't imagine what kinds of communicationcodes and schemes we're going to be using in 50 years, we'regoing to have one million times more computing power and Ijust don't know how we're going to use it," he said.

"To me Google is still a miracle. I never wouldhave conceived that having all this kind of information on yourdesktop would be possible within my lifetime." "Humans are justnot very good at conceiving what a thousand increase incomputing power is going to allow."

Prof Forney was in Ireland as part of his work asan external examiner for David Conti's thesis on trellis codes,which he said was another example of good research that willtake time before it shows its full value.

"I'd say the tide of practices is not immediate herethe motivation for looking at this class of codes is that they haveturned out to be useful for practical applications but they aren'tfully understood mathematically," he said.

"It's still an open problem but [David Conti has]developed a lot of helpful results along the way that hopefully

Prof Forney with Dr David Conti and Prof Gary McGuire

will contribute to cracking this problem."According to Prof Forney this seemingly backward

scenario, where an idea is exploited before there is a theory tofully explain it, is a relatively regular occurrence in scientificcircles. "This happens again and again," he said. "I started outat Codex Corporation where we built convolutional codesystems because they worked better than block code systemsbut there was no theory for it."

Codex, which specialised in error­correctingcodes and sequential decoding, did a considerable amount ofwork with NASA and helped particularly with the spaceagency's Pioneer mission ething which Prof Forney proudlynotes is still operational today.

Not only did his work on convolutional codes helpwith that work, it also advanced the field of decoding in general,he said.

"In turn the papers I wrote led to changes in theway we decode these things, which led to the next stage in

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applications of convolutional codes where the algorithms got alot more powerful through an understanding of their structure."

His 1965 thesis introduced the concept ofconcatenated codes, which was a major step forward in thearea of error correction and became a corner­stone of spacedevelopment for many years afterwards.

His work in building a theory around conventionalcoding was also instrumental in the development of the modemindustry which Codex eventually became a significant player in.

It is part of how research can often take you downunanticipated avenues, he said, conceding that these routescan often be dead too.

"Some people are probably workingon useless problems and others are probablyworking on things that are going to turn out tobe very useful and often it's hard to tell inadvance which is which."

For him, maintaining a level of, and an interest inresearch, while also working in industry during his career hashelped to minimise the time spent on less relevant areas likethis.

Prof Forney said regularly switching between thetwo areas throughout his career helped him to see whatproblems people were encountering on both sides of the fenceand focus his work on areas where he felt he could make themost progress.

He said moving between the two areas alsohelped him to maintain an enthusiasm for the work he wasdoing, stopping it from becoming tired or staid.

"What I would say to academics is that I've foundthat working on real problems in industry tells me where theinteresting academic research is too, he said."It's not that easyto do and for some it's too hard think I was very lucky in manyways."

"It leads to ask different kinds of questions,

therefore you tend to be able to work on more fundamentalproblems because no­one else has ploughed the ground beforeno­else realised this was an interesting problem before. ProfForney did accept, however, that modern academics mightstruggle to find the time to keep such close contact withindustry however he said it was vital that an attempt to do sowas made whenever possible.

"It's definitely true that being a professor hasbecome more demanding eople are doing less outsideconsulting than they were formally and I think that's a greatshame," he said. "It used to be at MIT that everyone really wasexpected to go out and consult for industry one day a weekboth as a supplement to their salary but it's also healthybecause it exposes you to real­world problems.

"That definitely happens less with youngerprofessors... I have to sympathise with them but at the sametime you have to keep drinking from a fresh well or else thingsare going to go stale."

While the demand that exists for modernprofessors and researchers may have its downsides there isalso an obvious benefit from the connected nature of the world,he added.

Prof Forney said it now barely mattered where inthe world people were based, as long as they had a computerand an internet connection they could contribute to importantwork. He said as long as people accepted that they were "onenode in a global network" they could do things on a much largerscale than was possible even a decade ago.

He also dismissed any suggestion that the greatachievements and discoveries had already been made and saidas understanding increases new challenges continually presentthemselves. "We have an expanding universe of research andpractice," he said. "New students always complain that all thegood stuff has been picked over and all the easy stuff has beendone and then, what do you know, someone does somethingnew."

Prof David Forney was interviewed by freelancejournalist Adam Maguire.

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CASL Communications Pod

The purpose of the pod is to provide CASL researchers andtheir collaborators with the equipment and support they need tocommunicate their research.

Story TellingCASL continues to be successful in building a strong researchreputation by communicating to peer audiences through wellestablished means such as journals, conferences and teaching.In hosting such a diverse mix of interdisciplinary groups, CASLis afforded the opportunity to engage and excite the wider

audience with our research. Audiences spanning the fullspectrum of society, from schools to industry, have benefitedfrom interactions with CASL. Some of the more recent methodsin successfully communicating to such audiences have beenthrough story telling using video. This visual approach can havea profound impact if it reaches the right audience for the rightpurpose. Recent examples of communicating our research withstory telling and video has greatly assisted in supporting;communicating what research is being undertaken in the CASL,attracting financial gifts for UCD Science East (new home ofCASL in 2014), industry funded PhD students and postdoctoralfellowships, international students exchanges and attractingnew Industry Affiliates Programme members.

Additional Support & TrainingIn Feb 2013 a number of entities in UCD will put together atraining programme in communications aimed at postgraduatestudents and postdoctoral researchers. CASL will be involved inthe running of this programme and a full list of the trainingclasses will be published by February 2013. We expect to haveparticipants from CASL, Clarity, the Earth Institute, the ConwayInstitute and SBI, the Food and Health Institute, the Colleges ofScience and Engineering and more. If you are interested inlearning more about this training then please contact BarryHogan (barrychogan@ucd.ie)

FinallyIf you have an idea for a video and wish to know more then weencourage you to try this facility in CASL and to contact tech­nical support (casltech@ucd.ie) who will be more than happy tohelp you through the process. For example, you can easilymake a quality recording in no more than 10 or 15 minutes bysimply meeting up and talking about your project/group/topic.Please take a look at our CASL YouTube channel and see ifyour research would benefit from similar representation.

CASL's Communications Pod, located on the first floor features aprojector display, flatpanel display and video recording equipment

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CASL Collaborative SeminarSeries

CASL welcomes researchers from across UCD andInternational Communities to speak at, or simply attend theCASL Collaborative Seminar Series.

The CASL Collaborative Seminar series launched inNovember 2012 and saw an impressive initial set of talks. Theaim of the series is to bring together individual researchers andgroups who are interested in Complex & Adaptive Systems topresent on a topic which is accessible to a broad CASLaudience. Our intention is to spark new interdisciplinarycollaborations, and to highlight existing CASL research.

In the first talk of the series, Dr DanielArchambault (Clique) spoke on visualization of Social Mediaand Networks, Miguel Nicola (Natural Computing) gave apresentation on Artificial Genetic Regulatory Networks. A jointseminar with Systems Biology Ireland was held in the ConwayInstitute Lecture Theatre drawing a diverse audience. ProfPietro Ballone (ACAM) gave a fascinating seminar on "OrderedStructures made by Entropy", while the final session beforeChristmas was a presentation by Dr Niall English (School ofChemical & Bioprocess Engineering) on "Computer SimulationMethods & Applications for Energy Research".

The seminar series continues throughout 2013,with the details of the next six sessions, which take place duringFebruary and March, presented across the page. We very muchwelcome informal enquiries on speaking at these events, andwelcome suggestions for speakers. In either case pleasecontact casldirector@ucd.ie.

Upcoming Seminars:

7 Feb 2013Dr Pablo Lucas (Dynamic Labs/Geary Institute)

"The Effects of Group Composition and Fractionalization in aPublic Goods Game: An Agent­Based Simulation"

14 Feb 2013Dr Michael Salter­Townshend (Clique)

"Latent Space Modelling of Multi­Relational Networks"

21 Feb 2013Dr Ciaran McNally (School of Civil, Structural & Environmental

Engineering)"Evolutionary Design for Structural Engineering"

28 Feb 2013Prof Denis Shields (CASL/School of Medicine & Medical

Sciences) & Dr Gianluca Pollastri (CASL/School of ComputerScience & Informatics)

"Title TBC"

7 Mar 2013Dr Mark Flanagan (School of Electrical, Electronic &

Mechanical Engineering)“Channel Coding for Wireless Communications”

14 Mar 2013Prof Tahar Kechadi (CASL & School of Computer Science &

Informatics)“Title TBC”

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Featured Research ArticleTofoleanu F. & Buchete N.V. (2012) “Molecular interactions ofAlzheimer’s Aβ Protofilaments with Lipid Membranes” TheJournal of Molecular Biology 421(4­5):572­586.

According to the Alzheimer Society of Ireland, there arecurrently more than 41,700 people living with dementia in thecountry. This number is expected to rise to 147,000 by 2041due to an aging population. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is themost common and well­known type of dementia, being thoughtto account for over half of all cases. A hallmark of AD is thebuild­up of protein deposits in the brain, forming amyloid senileplaques and tangles that stop the brain from functioningnormally.

The recent work of Tofoleanu and Buchete (J. Mol.Biol. 2012, 421:572­586, and Prion 2012, 6:4, 339­345) probesthe molecular mechanisms behind the cytotoxic effects that thepresence of the amyloid plaques has on neighboring neurons.This computational­theoretical study focuses on modelling themajor plaque components: the nano­scale amyloid fibrils formedby misfolded proteins known as Alzheimer’s amyloid beta (Aβ)peptides. As detailed, atomiclevel resolution structures are notavailable for Aβ amyloid fibrils due to their non­crystalline andinsoluble nature, computational simulations based on solid­stateNMR models are singular means of gaining insight into thestructure and dynamical behavior of these fibrils.

This study probes in atomistic detail the first stepsin the mechanism of molecular interactions between fibrillaraggregates of amyloid Aβ peptides and lipid membranes – aprocess that plays a crucial role in the AD pathogenesis. Thenew simulations (involving extensive calculations performed onIreland’s largest supercomputing facilities, ICHEC) reveal therelative contributions of different structural elements to thedynamics and stability of Aβ fibrils near membranes.

Recent studies on the cytotoxicity of Aβaggregates, suggest that waterformed Aβ assemblies canpenetrate the neural membranes maintaining their structure,forming ion channels that perturb the cellular ion homeostasis.The study of Tofoleanu and Buchete offers evidence that Aβpeptide fibrils must lose a significant fraction of their β­sheetstructure when inserted into lipid membranes, perturbing alsothe membrane integrity. This process could lead to non­specificion leakage, concurring with an alternative hypothesis regardingAβ cytotoxicity. These results may guide new experiments thatcould test the extent to which the structural features of water­formed amyloid fibrils are preserved, lost, or reshaped bymembrane­mediated interactions. Interestingly, the new findingssuggest a polymorphic structural character of amyloid ionchannels embedded in lipid bilayers, possibly explaining the

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CASL Alumni

Nuritas uses Computer Science to Deliver Healthier Food

Consumers are now demanding products that are not just dietor low fat they want scientifically proven ingredients with realhealth benefits. These are called functional foods as theygenuinely help address human health condition, whether that isdiabetes, cholesterol or inflammation. Nuritas founded by Dr.Nora Khaldi, is using computer science to help food companiesdiscover health benefits in their current ingredients and deliverfunctional food, while also in the process of raising investmentto develop their own ingredients in the future.

Some food ingredients such as peptides havebeen proven to carry health­enhancing properties. Theseproperties range from lowering sugar blood levels, andcardiovascular problems, to reducing cancer. Some of thesebioactive­peptides are naturally released from the food when wedigest them. But in most cases the peptides may not bereleased and thus the person will not benefit from theirtherapeutic activity. However if one were to identify the activepeptide(s) in a food source, these can be added to other foodproducts and marketed for public awareness. An individual withdiabetes for example could consume a daily cereal bar that

would help maintain healthy sugar blood levels knowing that ahydrolysate containing the bioactive peptide has been added tothe cereal bar.

Finding these peptides is not easy “the problem isthat these peptides are encrypted in food proteins, whichmakes them difficult to detect by the traditional experimentalmethods,” explains Khaldi, “It very often takes millions, andyears to identify these ingredients”. Nuritas uses bioinformaticsto create computer programs to search food genomes anddiscover peptides that help people actively reduce certaindiseases. This unique approach significantly cuts the cost andtime of discovering and developing such ingredients. Nuritaswas awarded at the Sierra Nevada Innovation Challenge inCalifornia in 2012 for best sustainable Ag and Food startup andwas quoted as “standing out as being one that could reallyimpact the world in which we live”.

Nuritas founder and CEO,Dr Nora Khaldi

difficulties encountered in their experimental characterization.These observations may also lead to the

development of new drugs that could modulate molecularprocesses such as membrane­mediated fibril nucleation oramyloid channel formation, which cause significantperturbations of normal physiological cell functions as observedin AD, type 2 diabetes and other amyloid­related diseases.

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Nuritas currently is focusing on assisting foodcompanies to research their existing commercial ingredients aswell as their by­products to identify bioactive peptides withimportant health benefits. This will allow the food companies torebrand their commercial ingredients and reach new markets.However, the future strategy for Nuritas also involvesdeveloping their own ingredients in 2014, these would then belicensed to food and nutraceutical companies to manufactureand distribute. For years, through hermaster's, postgraduate and postdoctoral career, Dr. Nora Khaldistudied the evolution of mammals, fungi, bacteria, and bothplantand mammal­derived foods, developing algorithms thatanalyze data to answer essential scientific questions. Herinterdisciplinary background combining mathematics, computerscience and biology allowed her to break down difficultbiological questions into smaller computerized problems. Dr.Khaldi conducted her doctoral studies at CASL in UCD at theDenis Shields laboratory, and also participated in the FoodHealth Ireland (FHI) initiative before spending a year in theUnited States at UC Davis where she completed the renownedFood Entrepreneurship Academy program.

More information available at www.nuritas.com

Funding NewsCongratulations to the following CASL researchers:

• Dr Vladimir Lobaskin was successful in coordinating a largeEU Cooperative grant €1M on Modelling the mechanisms ofnanoparticle­lipid interactions and nanoparticle effects on cellmembrane structure and function.

• Prof. Pádraig Cunningham won the hosting at UCD of aNational Data Analytics Technology Centre valued at €900k inconjunction with DIT and 4C Centre at UCC.

• FMC2 Cluster was awarded additional funding for another 2.5years following a very successful mid term review. The amountcommitted was an additional €1.79M until 2015.

• Dr Chris Bleakley secured a NSF, SFI, InvestNI grant titledWiPhyLoc8: Dynamic WiFi Positioning using Physical LayerParameters for Location­based Services and Security.

• Dr Marcus Greferath was awarded a COST Action Award€130K, “Random Network Coding and Designs overGF(q)”.This COST Action will set up a European researchnetwork and establish network coding as a European core areain communication technology.

• Prof. Frederic Dias was awarded €1.5 million in funding by theEuropean Research Council for the MULTIWAVE project.

• EI co­ordinator support grants were received from applicationsmade by 8 CASL PIs.

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Recent Graduates and PhDDefenses

Jonathan Byrne who graduated in December with a PhD on“Approaches to Evolutionary Architectural Design Explorationusing Grammatical Evolution”.

David Conti who successfully defended his PhD “An AlgebraicDevelopment of Trellis Theory”.

Florentina Tofoleanu who graduated in December with a PhDon “Theoretical & Computational Studies of the Structure &Dynamics of Alzheimer’s Amyloid­β Protofilaments & theirInteractions with Lipid Membranes”.

Wei Cui from the Financial Mathematics & Computation Cluster(FMC2) who defended his thesis “An Empirical Investigation ofPrice Impact: An Agent­based Modelling Approach”.

Matthew Stabeler (Clique) who successfully defended his PhDthesis, “Delay Tolerant Community Based Messaging in HumanInteraction Networks”, in December.

A new software venture focused on real­time fraud analysis,fraud detection and customer segmentation in Big Data wins aNova UCD 2012 Start­up award. In addition to the award,EgoNav received a cheque for €3,000, €2,000 worth of legalservices from Arthur Cox and six months free desk space atNovaUCD. EgoNav Analytics’ promoters are Dr Prag Sharmaand Dr Lorcan Coyle of UCD’s School of Computer Science andInformatics and Clique (Graph and Network Analysis cluster)and are based at UCD CASL. EgoNav's biggest lesson learnedso far: "Don’t sit in your room coding, get a real life solution to areal life problem that someone is willing to pay for."!

EgoNav Analytics Wins AStartup Award

Dr Lorcan Coyle and Dr Prag Sharma demo their technology

CASL “Geek T­Shirt” SloganCompetition!Have you an idea for a CASL T­Shirt slogan? If so, this is yourchance to have it realised, and win copies of the T­shirt for yourcolleagues. All you have to do is propose a T­shirt slogan undera theme of Complex & Adaptive Systems. The more humorousthe better! All entries should be submitted to casl@ucd.ie byFriday 28th February 2013.

CASL Charity PokerTournament

In keeping with CASL tradition, the 2012 CASL Charity PokerTournament took place on Thursday, December 20th, and wasa great success by all accounts. It wasn't all smiles andsunshine though, and what unfolded was a dramatic game ofdeceit and misdirection.

Starting with a raucous table of 12 seasonedgamblers, the competition was fierce, and all eyes were on thewinner's trophy and cash prize. However, those very eyesshould have been more keenly trained on the game at hand,and before long Fergal Reid and Kathleen Curran took theshameful title of 'first to go bust'. Their prize was a maths book,given in the hope that they will improve in time for next year'scompetition.

After whittling the table down to a final three ofNiall Haslam, Cormac Phelan and Cliona Tuite, it was with anair of inevitability that chip­leader Cliona took the 1st placetrophy and prizemoney. In addition, her sharp tongue earnedher the proud accolade of 'Best Smack Talk', ultimately leadingto Niall (3rd) and Cormac (2nd) being too demoralised tocompete. And so it ended, with two weeping nearly­men andone gloating winner.

Special thanks go to Bombay Pantry for providingprizes, O'Shea's bar for providing tasty platters of food, and tooall participants for pitching in to raise almost €300 for theSponsor An African Scholar (SAAS.ie) charity.

Sponsor an African Scholar (SAAS) is an Irishcharity (Charity Number CHY 17318) that provides sustainablesolutions to communities in Kenya. SAAS was founded in early2006 in response to the exploitation being experienced byyoung people and their families who live in extreme poverty.

Poker sharks hard at work on the 4th floor

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CASL Miscellany

Dynamics lab and Simulation Science PhD student EamonnO’Louglin won the Harvard Business Review competition fordata analysis and visualisation on Harvard publications atkaggle.com.

In early December the IRU hosted a farewellevent for Prof Petra Ahrweiler, who has recently taken up anew position in Germany as director of the German ResearchFoundation (DFG) and a Professorship at the AachenUniversity.

Prof Nial Friel was an invited speaker at theWinter simulation conference, Berlin and the invited organizerof the ERCIM Working Group on Computing and Statistics ,Oviedo, Spain

Dr Nora Khaldi moved to UC Davis and started acompany called Nuritas that develops computational tools tomine food for functional nutritional ingredients. This technologyis built upon research Nora carried out in the bioinformatics labat CASL.

Shield's Lab: CASL’s Bioinformatics Lab, inconjunction with UCD Conway and Systems Biology Ireland,hosted the 3rd Computational Biology and Innovation PhDSymposium in December. This three day symposium attractedover 100 researchers from Ireland and abroad and had a stellarset of keynote speakers.

RecSys 2012: Clique PIs & researchers chairedand organised two conferences: The 6th International AAAIConference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2012) andThe ACM Recommender Systems Conference (RecSys 2012).A total of 125 different universities/research centres and 60companies were represented at RecSys 2012. Notableattendees from the industry included FourSquare, IBMResearch, Baidu, Amazon, Google and LinkedIn.

November LunchTheme: "Upcoming EU Funding Opportunities"At the November "First Friday" lunch, CASL Director, MichaelO’Neill, made a presentation highlighting recent EU fundingsuccesses, including an Advanced ERC Award to Prof FredericDias, an EU Cooperative grant to Dr Vladimir Lobaskin, and aCOST Action to Dr Marcus Greferath. Máire Coyle and JenniferCraig from UCD Research made an informative presentation onupcoming calls which were relevant to the CASL community.This sparked new interest from a number of CASL researcherswho are subsequently preparing proposals.

December LunchTheme: "Science Communication"The December “First Friday” CASL lunch had a “ScienceCommunication” theme. A number of guest speakers madeuseful presentations on various UCD initiatives. Ulrike Kolchhighlighted the “UCD Science Showcase” Book which featuresa number of CASL PI’s. Alex Boyd outlined plans for the“Science Expression Competition 2013” (an IADT & UCDcollaboration to make films about research). “UCD Faces ofResearch” was introduced by Tamara Nolan. Barry Hoganoutlined the new CASL Communication Pod and recordingequipment, and our strategy to mobilise CASL researchers todevelop their own communication content.

Finally...CASL sends its warmest congratulations to the next generationof CASL researchers: Congratulations to Antonella and Nialwho celebrated the birth of Isabella, and to Tahar and Helen onthe birth of Samuel.

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Editor:Michael O'Neill

Contributors:Eamonn Hynes

Tara ByrneCormac PhelanElva O'Sullivan

Scott RickardAnthony ChubbAdam Maguire

Barry HoganVio Buchete & Florentina Tofoleanu

Prag Sharma

Email: casl@ucd.ieWeb: casl.ucd.ie