22nd December 2003

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Northern Ireland must harness its internationally-leading talent in Aerospace, Computing Information and Telecommunications to seize new multi-million pound opportunities emerging in the US defence and aerospace industries, a University of Ulster academic said today.

Professor Gerard Parr, from the School Computing and Information Engineering at Coleraine, was speaking after being appointed to the Editorial Board of the prestigious Journal of Aerospace, Computing Information and Communications, by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Professor Parr said aerospace imports to the US have increased from $13bn in 1996 to $33bn in 2001 and many of the imports have come from Europe. Northern Ireland has the talent to cash in on these new technologies.

He added: “As well as components, many of these contracts relate to complex software management and network control systems. For half a century, the needs of aerospace and defence have sparked the most important IT advances - from communications satellites to the Internet to the Global Positioning System.

Think about it:
• The Boeing 777 has 4 million lines of software, and uses 1280 embedded processors.
• Spacecraft have led the way in embedded computing for 40 years.
• Air traffic control relies on networks of state-of-the-art computers.
• Cyberspace is now the fourth theatre of war, offering strategic advantages in every other facet of military operations.
• Unmanned air vehicles will rely heavily on onboard computing, information systems, and communication systems.

“This level of activity represents major research and development, investment and market opportunities for companies and research institutes within Europe.

“As part of my research activities within the Internet Technologies Research Group at the University of Ulster I am supporting Invest NI’s vision to establish a Northern Ireland Defence Resource Cluster in the province that will target some of these opportunities in the Defence Aerospace sector.

“With the recent bad news regarding company closures in the traditional sectors of textiles and manufacturing, we must harness the internationally-leading capabilities that we have in aerospace, computing information and telecommunications to create new growth industries and sustainable job opportunities for our talented graduates and existing workforce”, he said.

Professor Parr received the invitation to join the editorial board of the journal from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics which has been the principal society of aerospace engineers and scientists for more than 70 years.

The journal publishes qualified peer-reviewed papers in areas such as real-time systems, computational techniques, embedded systems, communication systems, networking, software engineering, software reliability, systems engineering, signal processing, data fusion, computer architecture, high-performance computing systems and software, expert systems, sensor systems, intelligent systems and human-computer interfaces.

Professor Lyle Long, who is editor-in-chief of the journal and Director of the Institute for High Performance Computing Applications at Pennsylvania State University said he hoped Professor Parr’s appointment would bring an important European perspective to the workings of the journal.

Professor Parr has been engaged in on-going work with the USA Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, particularly with their MILCOM Event which is due to be held in Monterey California next year and is also senior guest editor for a special edition of the COMNET Journal devoted to advances in military communications technologies.

For further information, please contact:

Press Office Department of Communication and Development
Telephone: 028 9036 6178
Email: pressoffice@ulster.ac.uk