Open Source Innovation in Universities

On March 24th, OSPO++ is organizing an in-person event at Trinity College Dublin to discuss emerging trends relating to open source in Open Science, Innovation and Knowledge Transfer. We will be gathering to share recent experiences from universities and public research institutions from around the world.

We are delighted to partner with Trinity College Dublin, Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software and Open Ireland Network to bring you this event.

EVENT OVERVIEW

Open source powers today’s software industry. 98% of the world’s software now contains open source code. The world’s most innovative organisations are using open source software (OSS) to increase developer productivity and as a lever to drive rapid market adoption. Open source software is a also critical component of the Open Science movement, which aims for increased reproducibility, trust and longevity of research outputs across all disciplines. New policies concerning open source are emerging from the EU, US and elsewhere.

As a result, it is important to re-examine at how open source software is managed in universities and research institutions. How will universities handle the rapid increase in the use and creation of open source software? How does it relate to the management of Open Science, Innovation, Knowledge Transfer and Intellectual Property Rights? How can they evolve their strategies to take advantage of the opportunities now emerging around open source software in governments and the corporate world? How can your institution support and collaborate with researchers, spin-outs, scale-ups and large corporations who are engaged in open source innovation ecosystems?

Open Source Software is not the answer for every knowledge transfer scenario - however, considering the global trends, knowing when and how to optimise the use of open source is now essential for any successful Knowledge Transfer strategy today. This event is designed to explore global trends and discuss them in the context of Knowledge Transfer Strategy for Universities and Research Institutions.

Come along to this event to learn more about the global landscape of Open Source in Knowledge Transfer, learn from those with personal experience in this space, and discuss practical next steps for your organization.

AGENDA

Please note the agenda is subject to change.

08:30 - 09:00 - Registration & Coffee

09:00 - 09:10 - Welcome & Introduction

09:10 - 09:25 - Welcome Address

Linda Doyle, Provost, Trinity College Dublin

09:25 - 09:50 - Keynote - Open Source Policy Trends in Europe

Sachiko Muto, Chair, OpenForum Europe & Senior Rsearcher, RISE

09:50 - 10:15 - Global Trends in OSS

Clare Dillon, Co-founder Open Ireland Network, Community Organizer OSPO++

In this session, Clare will cover the recent global trends in the open source ecosystem. She will explore the critical role open source software and hardware now form in the tech sector and will discuss some of the emerging opportunities and challenges these trends present.

10:15 - 10:40 - Open Source in Open Science

Sayeed Choudhury, Director of Open Source Programs Office, Carnegie Mellon Libraries

This session will explore emerging trends of how open source software software can form part of any open science or open scholarship strategy. In an April 2022 publication by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine on Open Scholarship Priorities and Next Steps discussed how, from a reproducibility standpoint, the sharing of code and software are critical for open science. In certain fields (e.g. computer vision) research papers will no longer be accepted for publication without the accompanying software being made available as open source for reproducibility. This session will also discuss how research translation and tech transfer offices might evolve to address these emerging trends.

10:40 - 11:20 - Panel: Enabling OSS Innovation in Universities

Moderator:

Richard Littauer, Community Development Manager, Open Source Collective; Community Facilitator, OSPO++

Panel:

• Aoife Tierney, IP Development Manager, Trinity College Dublin
• Jiří Marek, Open Science Manager at Masaryk University
• Michael Nolan, Associate Director, Open@RIT
• Noel O'Connor, CEO, Insight SFI Research Centre for Data
• Sayeed Choudhury, Director of Open Source Programs Office, Carnegie Mellon Libraries

11:20 - 11:45 - BREAK

11:45 - 12:10 - Commercial Open Source

Andrew Wichmann, Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures

Open source software is often available at no cost. However, in recent years we have seen a significant number of high-growth companies emerge that have business model that incorporate open source software. These organizations are often categorized as Commercial Open Source (COSS) companies. COSS companies deliver value by offering commercial versions of open source software (with related warranties and support), alternative license options or add-on proprietary software. In this session, Andrew will cover some of these emerging business models and explore trends in today’s COSS ecosystem.

12:10 - 12:35 - OSS Licensing in Practice

Cindy Chepanoske, Director of Technology Licensing, Carnegie Mellon University

The technology licensing landscape has changed over the last number of years. Cindy will discuss how OSS licensing practices have evolved in Carnegie Mellon University and the Technology Transfer Office’s continuing efforts to adapt and support it. She will include an overview of OSS licenses used and the processes now in place to enable researcher innovation across a wide variety of disciplines.

12:35 - 12:50 - Measuring Innovation in the Age of Open Source

Brad Topol, Director of Open Technologies, IBM

For years, IBM has led the US in patents. In 2020, they decided that they would no longer pursue the goal of patent leadership. As a result, 2022 is the first time since 1993 that IBM didn’t claim the top spot on the list of companies with the most U.S. patents. The reason? Focus. Patents are only one measure of a company’s true capacity for innovation. Increasingly, this requires balancing trade secrets and patents alongside “open innovation”. In this virtual session, Brad will give an overview of IBM’s new innovation strategy.

12:50 - 13:30 - Panel: Collaborating for OSS Innovation

Moderator:

Clare Dillon, Co-founder, Open Ireland Network; Community Organizer, OSPO++

Panel:

• Cindy Chepanoske, Director of Technology Licensing, Carnegie Mellon University
• Lucie Smolka, CEO, Open Cities
• Jacob Green, Founder, OSPO++
• Joe Doyle, IP Manager, Enterprise Ireland
• John Whelan, ICT Research Commercialisation Manager, Trinity College Dublin

13:30 - 14:30 - LUNCH

After Lunch - BREAKOUT WORKSHOPS

In the afternoon, attendees will break into two tracks, each of which will have two workshops. The workshops/breakouts are designed for practitioners wishing to go deeper on the topics from the morning presentations. They will provide a chance to get into the details of how to approach open source at your university.

14:30 - 15:45 - Breakout Workshops 1

Choice of:

• OSS Licensing for Universities & Commercialization of OSS
• OSS Security & Responsible Usage of OSS

15:45 - 16:00 - BREAK

16:00 - 17:15 - Breakout Workshops 2

Choice of:

• OSS Education & Skills
• Sustainability of University OSS Projects

17:15 - 17:30 - Wrap up & Event Close

SPEAKER & PANELLIST BIOS

Aoife Tierney, IP Development Manager, Trinity College Dublin

Aoife Tierney joined Trinity College Dublin in 2015 and is currently the IP Development Manager. She has degrees in law and life sciences and has worked with researchers across all academic disciplines to enable knowledge transfer. In her current role, she works with researchers along the research pipeline to understand the IP landscape in their field and to consider how best to translate the results of their research.

Together with John Whelan, she founded Trinity’s Open Source Programme Office. This office supports and promotes the principles of open source and empowers researchers to execute on their open source and open data strategies by providing advice and the tools they need.

Andrew Wichmann, Senior Intellectual Property Manager, Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures

Andrew develops and executes intellectual property strategies and negotiates technology transactions for all significant digital technologies arising out of research at The Johns Hopkins University. In practice this means a lot of machine learning, a lot of digital health, and a lot of open source software. Before joining JHU, Andrew was a patent lawyer in private practice in Baltimore and Washington DC, and in-house counsel for a biometrics software company in Arlington VA.

Brad Topol, Director of Open Technologies, IBM

Dr. Brad Topol is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and Director of Open Technologies who also serves as IBM’s Chief Developer Advocate. In his current role, he leads the global IBM team developing open source technologies and working in open communities. He has overall responsibility for IBM’s open source strategy, upstream development, community building, education, and client initiatives. He leads a development team with responsibility for contributing to and improving several cloud-native and AI open source technologies including Kubernetes, Tekton, OpenTelemetry, Operator Framework, PyTorch, KubeFlow, and KServe/ModelMesh.

In addition to leading a large team, Brad has personally served as an OpenTelemetry, Kubernetes, and Operator SDK contributor, and is a Kubernetes Documentation Maintainer.

He is a co-author of Hybrid Cloud Apps with OpenShift and Kubernetes, a book published by O’Reilly Media in 2021. In addition, he is a co-author of Kubernetes in the Enterprise, a book published by O’Reilly Media in 2018. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1998.

Cindy Chepanoske, Director of Technology Licensing, Carnegie Mellon University

Dr. Cindy Chepanoske joined the Center for Technology Translation and Enterprise Creation (CTTEC) at Carnegie Mellon University in 2012 and is currently the Director of Technology Licensing.

She has most recently been at the forefront of software development in molecular profiling and Big Data analytics as a Senior Application Scientist at Rosetta Biosoftware and as a Program Manager and Director of Informatics Services at Ceiba Solutions (acquired by Pekrin Elmer). With over 10 years of experience in the Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Software industry, Cindy brings her perspective to many processes integral to CTTEC including technology and market evaluation, license negotiation, and marketing of novel technologies created at CMU.

While supporting CTTEC’s licensing efforts, Cindy also works with faculty, staff and students from the Human Computer Interaction Institute (HCII), Lane Center for Computational Biology (Comp Bio), Machine Learning (ML), Language Technologies Institute (LTI), and Institute for Software Research (ISR).

Cindy received her B.S. in Chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Utah. In addition to spending time with her family, she enjoys mountain biking and snowboarding, skiing and cycling.

Clare Dillon, Co-founder Open Ireland Network, OSPO++ Community Organizer

Clare Dillon is the Executive Director of InnerSource Commons, the world's largest community of InnerSource practitioners. Clare also works with the OSPO++ Network to support the establishment of University and Government Open Source Program Offices globally, that can collaborate to implement public policy and trustworthy public services.

In 2021, Clare co-founded Open Ireland Network, a community for those interested in advancing open source at a national level in Ireland. Previously, Clare was a member of the Microsoft Ireland Leadership Team, heading up their Developer Evangelism and Experience Group.

Clare frequently speaks at international conferences and corporate events on topics relating to the open collaboration, future of work, innovation trends and digital ethics.

Jacob Green, Founder, OSPO++

Jacob Green is an open source strategist, community organizer, and distributed systems builder from Baltimore. Passionate about cities, citizens and Open Source, he works with institutions like the City of Paris and Johns Hopkins University, to build impactful new organizational structures, achieve their policy goals, and establish innovative cooperation between government, industry, and academic institutions around Open Source.

Jiří Marek, Open Science Manager at Masaryk University

In 2020, Jiří commenced his role as Open Science Manager at Masaryk University. He is also Head of EOSC-CZ Secretariat where his team is responsible for supporting the implementation of European Open Science Cloud in the Czech Republic.

Jiří is a member of the Czech Open Science community since 2012 and he is leader of a working group focused on Open Science at CZARMA (Czech Association of Research Managers and Administrators).

Together with Lucie , he co-founded a non-profit organization, Open Content, that researches legislation impacting modern technologies. Jiří is also a member of the Board of Open Cities, an organization that helps municipalities with digitization and openness education.

Jiří is now engaged in building a Czech national OSPO and connecting important actors in the field within the Czech Republic and abroad.

Jiří majored in chemistry (with a specialization in hydrogen technologies) and in ICT law (specializing in Open Access, Open Agenda, and copyright law). He is also a tourist guide, interested in the development of modern cities, and finally a citizen of Brno - the city in the heart of Europe.

Joe Doyle, IP Manager, Enterprise Ireland

Joe is IP Manager with Enterprise Ireland (EI). He manages the EI IP Strategy support programme to help Start-ups and SMEs integrate IP strategy with their business strategies. His activities also include IP training and awareness; providing a first line of enquiry on IP matters for EI and Local Enterprise Office staff and clients; and contributing to national IP policy development.

Joe is a member of the global ISO ‘Innovation Management Standard’ Technical Committee (TC279), working mainly on the IP Management Expert Group.

Previously, he worked as a research scientist for 15 years at the University of Limerick where he successfully executed a number of patent filings, licence/assignment agreements and was co-founder of an IP rich University spin-out company. Joe holds a BSc in Materials Science, postgraduate diplomas in Strategy and Innovation and Organisational Behaviour and an MSc in Business Practice.

John Whelan, ICT Research Commercialisation Manager, Trinity College Dublin

John has a PhD in physics and worked as software developer and business analyst in Davy stockbrokers and Daiwa Securities in Tokyo. He is also a founder of a three tech start-ups; two of which raised seven figure venture capital rounds. One of these, Alatto, traded for nine years. More recently, John has been a consultant to Vodafone Ireland.

Since 2008 he has been the Technology Transfer Case Manager at Trinity College Dublin with responsibility for commercialization of ICT research. John set up and ran Trinity College's start-up accelerator LaunchBox, and became Executive Director of Blackstone LaunchPad at Trinity College Dublin. Most recently, he has set up and manages Trinity’s Open Source Programme Office. The mission of this office is to promote and support the principles of open source, and open data in knowledge transfer and industry engagement for TCD researchers.

Also an adjunct Lecturer in NUI Galway, John teaches the Innovation and Technology Transfer module as part of Masters in Technology management.

Besides tech and start-ups John's other passions (in order of importance) are Limerick Hurling, Munster Rugby and Flying Fifteen Sailing.

“As Open as Possible as Closed as Necessary”

Linda Doyle, Provost & President, Trinity College Dublin

Dr. Linda Doyle was appointed the 45th Provost of Trinity College Dublin by staff and student representatives, coming into office on August 1, 2021. The Provost is the Chief Officer of the university responsible to the Board and ultimately to the State for the performance of the university.

She served previously as Trinity’s Dean and Vice President of Research (2018-2020) and was the founding Director of CONNECT – the Science Foundation Ireland research centre for future communication networks. Before that, she was Director of the Centre for Telecommunications Value Chain Research (CTVR).

Prior to her appointment as Provost, Linda was Professor of Engineering and The Arts in Trinity. Her expertise is in the fields of wireless communications, cognitive radio, reconfigurable networks, spectrum management and creative arts practices.

She holds an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering (BE) from University College Cork and an M.Sc., Ph.D., and PGDIP STATS from Trinity College Dublin. She is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin and an Honorary Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford.

Lucie Smolka, CEO Open Cities

Dr. Lucie Smolka holds a Ph.D. and a J.D. in a Modern Technology, IT and IP Law. She serves as a Legal Lead of Creative Commons Czech Republic. In 2017, she founded Open Content, a non-profit organization that researches legislation impacting modern technologies. Lucie also leads Open Cities, an organization that helps municipalities with digitization and openness education.

As an attorney-at-law, she represents companies in web3 and new-tech and prepares strategies and prevents litigation in the field of intellectual property and IT law.

Lucie collaborates on scientific projects dealing with machine learning and the use of AI and the implications for legislation. She regularly lectures, teaches and publishes in the mentioned areas.

Lucie is now engaged in building a Czech national OSPO and connecting important actors in the field within the Czech Republic and abroad.

Michael Nolan, Associate Director, Open@RIT

Mike Nolan is a software engineer and open source community strategy consultant currently helping run Open@RIT as the Associate Director. He also acts as the director of the Federation of Humanitarian Technologists.

With work experience stemming from tech companies such as Amazon and GIPHY to large humanitarian organizations such as the International Rescue Committee and UNICEF, he seeks to develop better ways to create technology that benefits humanity.

Noel O'Connor, CEO, Insight SFI Research Centre for Data

Prof. Noel E. O’Connor is a Full Professor in the School of Electronic Engineering at Dublin City University (DCU) Ireland. He is CEO of the Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics, Ireland’s largest SFI-funded research centre. Noel was previously Academic Director of DCU’s Research and Enterprise Hub on Information Technology and the Digital Society, with the responsibility of coordinating multi-disciplinary ICT-related research across the university.

The focus of his research is in multimedia content analysis, computer vision, machine learning, information fusion and multi-modal analysis for applications in security/safety, autonomous vehicles, medical imaging, IoT and smart cities, multimedia content-based retrieval, and environmental monitoring.

Since 1999, Noel has published over 400 peer-reviewed publications, made 11 standards submissions, and filed 7 patents. He is an Area Editor for Signal Processing: Image Communication (Elsevier) and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Image and Video Processing (Springer). Noel is also a member of the ACM and IEEE.

Richard Littauer, Community Development Manager, Open Source Collective & Community Facilitator, OSPO++

Richard Littauer is the Community Development Manager at Open Source Collective, a community facilitator for the Digital Infrastructure Fund, and an organizer of SustainOSS and the host of the Sustain Podcast. As a full-stack developer and open source community consultant, he has interfaced with hundreds of different projects in dozens of communities. He likes birds.

Sachiko Muto, Chair, OpenForum Europe & Senior Researcher, RISE

Sachiko Muto is the Chair of OpenForum Europe and a senior researcher at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden. She originally joined OFE in 2007 and served for several years as Director with responsibility for government relations and then as CEO. She has degrees in Political Science from the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics and has been a guest researcher at UC Berkeley and TU Delft.

Sayeed Choudhury, Director of Open Source Programs Office, Carnegie Mellon Libraries

Sayeed Choudhury is the Director of the Open Source Programs Office (OSPO) at Carnegie Mellon Libraries.

Previously, he was Associate Dean for Digital Infrastructure, Applications, and Services and Hodson Director of the Digital Research and Curation Center at the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University (JHU). He launched the JHU's Open Source Programs Office (OSPO), the first of its kind within a US university. Sayeed was also a founding member of the Institute of Data Intensive Engineering and Science (IDIES) based at JHU. He was a Fellow in the Provost's office focused on open scholarship.

Sayeed was also the co-chair of the working committee for a major renovation of the MSE Library at JHU.