Sensor Network Consortium to Bring Top Academic and Industry Players Together Nov. 18th
On Nov. 18, the Boston University Sensor Network Consortium (SNC) will hold its first symposium and open house, bringing together many of the world’s leading academic, industry, and venture-capital members of the sensor networking community. Expected to draw over 150 attendees, the BU Emerging Technologies and Best Industry Practices symposium will focus on the theme of “What’s Real and What Lies Ahead” for sensor networking and its enormous potential to revolutionize products and services in the global marketplace.
The event’s host, the SNC, is a partnership of start-up technology innovators, corporate giants, and researchers doing leading-edge work in sensor networking. As the only consortium of its kind in Boston— a global hub of emerging technology ¾the SNC brings together these diverse constituents. The Nov. 18 event will expose their work to the broader scholarly and business communities.
The symposium kicks off on Nov. 17 with SNC’s semi-annual, members-only meeting, devoted to “some of today’s hot-button issues as sensor network security and implementation as well as the changing business models that sensor networking introduces” explains SNC Associate Director Linda Grosser. “Overall, these meetings give members the opportunity for in-depth discussion, in a neutral setting, about the technology and its current challenges” she adds.
The public symposium on the 18th will feature keynote address “Sensor Networks—the Next Tier of the Internet” by David Culler, Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Industry powerhouses such as BP, IBM, Ford, and Honeywell will talk on strategic areas such as industrial and building automation, as well as enterprise solutions, healthcare, and homeland security. Wrapping up the day will be a panel on “crossing the chasm”¾exploring when and how the promise of sensor networking will play out.
SNC member Anoop Mathur, Senior Technology Manager of Wireless Technologies and Embedded Control at Honeywell, says “The theme of this year’s symposium is great because sensor networking is a hugely transformative—and thus hugely disruptive—technology. For us at Honeywell, the SNC helps us identify, even anticipate, concerns with the evolution of this space. Ultimately, the SNC helps play a role in setting the technology agenda for the sustainable development of this industry. And that means continuing to focus on the requirements. If you don’t understand the requirements, then you cannot bring useful technology to the consumer.”
On the startup side, Thomas Cunneen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Millennial Net, adds, “The SNC really adds value to a company like Millennial Net. Although many players involved in a consortium like this—such as the Honeywells, the IBMs—are companies we would be reaching out to independently through traditional business channels, having this extra exposure adds that much more value to us for building strategic relationships.”
SNC Academic Director Yannis Paschalidis, Associate Professor of Engineering at Boston University, explains, “SNC industrial partners bring real-world problems. As researchers, we bring the research innovation. Together, we can launch joint projects that provide strategic benefit in sensor networking, and, that meet the immediate needs of the marketplace.”
For more information, visit www-test.bu.edu/systems, or contact Linda Grosser at (617) 358-1295, lgrosser@bu.edu.