Feature interview with Antonio Nucci: chief technology officer of narus, winner of the "CTO of the year"

Dr. Antonio Nucci is the chief technology officer of Narus and is responsible for setting the company's direction with respect to technology and innovation. He oversees the entire technology innovation lifecycle, including incubation, research, and prototyping. He also is responsible for ensuring a smooth transition to engineering for final commercialization. Antonio has published more than 100 technical papers and has been awarded 38 U.S. patents. He authored a book, "Design, Measurement and Management of Large-Scale IP Networks Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice", in 2009 on advanced network analytics. In 2007 he was recognized for his vision and contributions with the prestigious Infoworld CTO Top 25 Award. In 2013, Antonio was honored by InfoSecurity Products Guide's 2013 Global Excellence Awards as "CTO of the Year" and Gold winner in the "People Shaping Info Security" category. He served as a technical lead member of the Enduring Security Framework (ESF) initiative sponsored by various U.S. agencies to produce a set of recommendations, policies, and technology pilots to better secure the Internet (Integrated Network Defense). He is also a technical advisor for several venture capital firms. Antonio holds a Ph.D. in computer science, and master's and bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering from Politecnico di Torino, Ital

Bridging the gap between research and agile practice: an evolutionary model

There is wide acceptance in the software engineering field that industry and research can gain significantly from each other and there have been several initiatives to encourage collaboration between the two. However there are some often-quoted challenges in this kind of collaboration. For example, that the timescales of research and practice are incompatible, that research is not seen as relevant for practice, and that research demands a different kind of rigour than practice supports. These are complex challenges that are not always easy to overcome. Since the beginning of 2013 we have been using an approach designed to address some of these challenges and to bridge the gap between research and practice, specifically in the agile software development arena. So far we have collaborated successfully with three partners and have investigated three practitioner-driven challenges with agile. The model of collaboration that we adopted has evolved with the lessons learned in the first two collaborations and been modified for the third. In this paper we introduce the collaboration model, discuss how it addresses the collaboration challenges between research and practice and how it has evolved, and describe the lessons learned from our experience

On collaboration between academia and practice for research and innovation: A pilot study for BillerudKorsnäs

Collaboration between academia and industry is believed important for innovation: industry needs academic expertise and know-how and academics need empirical data, test beds and more. So what needs to be improved? A pilot study conducted for BillerudKorsnäs confirms findings in previous research: the main challenge to industry-academia collaboration is the lack of mutual understanding of each other’s needs, expectations and output. However, despite the clear importance of mutual understanding, there are few suggestions in the literature how to improve the situation beyond checklists for collaboration. The pilot study addresses issues of how to find sharp research tasks that are relevant to both parties, how to bridge cultural differences and different demands, and what kind of interaction model to aim for? Based on a literature review, interviews with accomplished academics at Lund University and practitioners from BillerudKorsnäs, the conclusions drawn in summary are: • Finding a good research builds on mutual understanding of different needs, combining industry problems with issues relevant for developing the greater knowledge base (theory). • Bridging cultural and other differences is best done through a greater “understanding of each other’s worlds,” spending time together, building trust, and improving communication through key persons from both sides who play the role of “translators” or “liaison officers.” • Finding the best interaction model (i.e. PhD, consortia etc) requires time and other resources to address needs, research goals and expectations, team members, responsibilities, and not least: deliverables. There is no one model, but as a general rule, long-term strategic collaboration efforts are found more fruitful based on an equal partner approach where learning is at the core. Furthermore, the authors of the study suggest that an important step forward, for a firm who wishes to collaborate with academia, is to develop a visual tool to facilitate mutual understanding. Drawing from previous and more recent findings, one such tool could be a further development of the so-called Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) model, or other generic models for project, process, or product development

University knowledge transfer office and social responsibility

Numerous studies and reviews about University Knowledge Transfer Offices (UKTO) have been written, but there are few that focus on Social Responsibility (SR). We present a systematic review of the research on both fields. We consider not only logics from agency theory and resource-based view, but also the dynamic approach from institutional theory, as they aim to generate sustainable economic and social value. The evolution of Knowledge Transfer Offices depends on their role as brokers of collaborations among different stakeholders, according to their mission and capacity to confront the innovation gap. We follow the line of SR viewed as a response to the specific demands of large stakeholders. Building upon recent conceptualizations of different theories, we develop an integrative model for understanding the institutional effects of the UKTO on university social responsibilit

Healthy aging in complex environments : exploring the benefits of systems thinking for health promotion practice

Background Many different stakeholders and contextual factors influence the success or failure of health promotion activities. Conventional approaches and evaluation designs underlying health promotion interventions, often explicitly take contextual variables out of consideration by controlling them. In doing so, relevant information about why a project was successful or failed to reach success remains invisible and ‘black boxed’. Next to this, in health promotion practice, control over contextual variables often is not possible. Aim Given the complexity of health promotion practice, research approaches often do not fit the realities of practice. As a result, health promotion activities are not always experienced as meaningful by all stakeholders involved. This thesis aims to appreciate the complex environment in which health promotion takes place by applying a systems thinking perspective to healthy aging in order to contribute to more robust strategies and interventions to support the aging population. Methods Systems thinking aims to include a diversity of viewpoints on an issue. Therefore, to be able to answer the research questions, multiple methods were required. A combination of literature review, semi-structured and open interviews, interactive workshops, case study and survey research was used. Different sources for data collection included the aging population, local and national stakeholders, and AGORA project members. Results Part I of this thesis concludes that a systems thinking approach strengthens health promotion by 1) including diverse stakeholder perspectives, 2) explicitly addressing contextual factors, and 3) co-creating solutions with all involved. Following this conclusion, Part II addressed the application of systems thinking at the local level by investigating different stakeholders perspectives on healthy aging. Results show how there is a discrepancy between the way aging individuals experience healthy aging as an integral part of everyday life and the way services and interventions are presented with a focus on isolated health themes. Local healthy aging strategies can benefit by taking into account an assets based approach that better matches aging persons’ perspectives. Next to this, collaboration between local stakeholders can be facilitated when shared issues are made visible and contextual preconditions are taken into account. Since the operationalization of systems thinking in health promotion can benefit from learning experiences with application in practice, findings from Part II were discussed in interactive presentations and workshop formats within participating municipalities. This resulted in the co-creation of a model to facilitate collaboration and the co-creation of an intervention through application of this model. The salutogenic concept Sense of Coherence was identified as a promising concept to operationalize systems approaches in health promotion practice. It was therefore expected that quantitative measurement of SOC could provide useful information for both the development and evaluation of health promotion. The OLQ-13 scale to measure Sense of Coherence was therefore investigated for its psychometric properties. Results indicate difficulties with the use of this scale in aging populations. Deleting two items from the original 13 items, improved the functioning of OLQ. Conclusion The importance of the fact that health issues and possible intervention strategies are perceived differently by involved actors was argued within this thesis. Research is one amongst many stakeholders and a systems thinking approach implies linking all kinds of actors in order to enable co-creation of projects. Consequently, the definition of health risks, health determinants, and possible intervention effects have to be verified in both scientific research and everyday practice. Strategies to improve health are context sensitive, and consequently, certain strategies may not work in some settings whereas they function perfectly well in others. Measurement of successes of interventions should therefore use multi-method evaluations combining the use of quantitative and qualitative approaches to gain insight in the ‘black box’ of why an intervention failed or was successful. If not, alternatives are overlooked and at the same time successes may go unnoticed. </p

Cross-layer design of multi-hop wireless networks

MULTI -hop wireless networks are usually defined as a collection of nodes equipped with radio transmitters, which not only have the capability to communicate each other in a multi-hop fashion, but also to route each others’ data packets. The distributed nature of such networks makes them suitable for a variety of applications where there are no assumed reliable central entities, or controllers, and may significantly improve the scalability issues of conventional single-hop wireless networks. This Ph.D. dissertation mainly investigates two aspects of the research issues related to the efficient multi-hop wireless networks design, namely: (a) network protocols and (b) network management, both in cross-layer design paradigms to ensure the notion of service quality, such as quality of service (QoS) in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) for backhaul applications and quality of information (QoI) in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for sensing tasks. Throughout the presentation of this Ph.D. dissertation, different network settings are used as illustrative examples, however the proposed algorithms, methodologies, protocols, and models are not restricted in the considered networks, but rather have wide applicability. First, this dissertation proposes a cross-layer design framework integrating a distributed proportional-fair scheduler and a QoS routing algorithm, while using WMNs as an illustrative example. The proposed approach has significant performance gain compared with other network protocols. Second, this dissertation proposes a generic admission control methodology for any packet network, wired and wireless, by modeling the network as a black box, and using a generic mathematical 0. Abstract 3 function and Taylor expansion to capture the admission impact. Third, this dissertation further enhances the previous designs by proposing a negotiation process, to bridge the applications’ service quality demands and the resource management, while using WSNs as an illustrative example. This approach allows the negotiation among different service classes and WSN resource allocations to reach the optimal operational status. Finally, the guarantees of the service quality are extended to the environment of multiple, disconnected, mobile subnetworks, where the question of how to maintain communications using dynamically controlled, unmanned data ferries is investigated

Randomised controlled trials of complex interventions and large-scale transformation of services

Complex interventions and large-scale transformations of services are necessary to meet the health-care challenges of the 21st century. However, the evaluation of these types of interventions is challenging and requires methodological development. Innovations such as cluster randomised controlled trials, stepped-wedge designs, and non-randomised evaluations provide options to meet the needs of decision-makers. Adoption of theory and logic models can help clarify causal assumptions, and process evaluation can assist in understanding delivery in context. Issues of implementation must also be considered throughout intervention design and evaluation to ensure that results can be scaled for population benefit. Relevance requires evaluations conducted under real-world conditions, which in turn requires a pragmatic attitude to design. The increasing complexity of interventions and evaluations threatens the ability of researchers to meet the needs of decision-makers for rapid results. Improvements in efficiency are thus crucial, with electronic health records offering significant potential