David Aspinall
Senior Lecturer in the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Over the last few of years I've become increasingly involved in commercialisation efforts for some of my research. As UK researchers know, this is a strategic priority for the UK EPSRC which is the main funding agency for computer science.
I was PI on an EPSRC Follow-On Fund award, Resource Enhanced Static Analysis which completed in 2010. This builds on some of the research ideas originated in the ReQueST project, although it is not oriented towards e-Science. The Follow-On project certainly got the technology nearer to a usable prototype, although it is a serious challenge to scale to a real programming language.
I was technical leader of a series of contract research studies provided by University of Edinburgh to ITI Techmedia during 2007-9, leading up to and during their Software Integrity Engineering Programme. This research involved applied studies of software tool technology for error detection and correction in mainstream programming languages such as Java. I lead investigations by a team of up to 15 technical people. The output of the work is currently still being developed within ITI and is the subject of license negotiation by commercialisation partners.
Together with Mike Just, I am pursuing funding for work on ideas for Advanced Knowledge-Based Authentication. We have held discussions with various interested parties and presented at two showcase events. Please contact me for details.
In 2009 I co-founded a spin-out company Contemplate Ltd together with Don Sannella.
Contemplate is working on programming tools for improving software quality and employs a small number of talented researchers and engineers recruited from University of Edinburgh and beyond. Some of the activites we've taken part in during 2010 include:
I am CTO of Contemplate, responsible for the technical direction of the company.
We are lucky that the School of Informatics has an excellent dedicated commercialisation team, contributing on a great variety of mechanisms to support entrepreneurship, business development, and help organise, host and advertise formal within the start-up and wider business community. Here are some useful pointers to pages describing some of the activities:
Further afield within the University of Edinburgh, there is also strong support for commercialisation. This is mainly coordinated by Edinburgh Research and Innovation (ERI).
