The Guardian: ‘I’m alive because of the research’: how a cystic fibrosis breakthrough gave me a future

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Scientists at Queen’s University Belfast played a key role in clinical trials that proved that a ‘wonder’ drug really did transform the health of people with cystic fibrosis

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David Benady

Thu 12 Mar 2026 09.53 GMT

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Life has changed beyond recognition for Nicole Adams, 34, who was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis as a child. A gamechanging new treatment for the condition – available thanks to vital research by Queen’s University Belfast – has extended her life expectancy and alleviated many of the worst symptoms.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a genetic disorder that causes the body to make a thick mucus that affects the lungs and digestive system. It is a progressive, life-limiting condition that causes coughing, breathing problems, weight loss and makes patients vulnerable to a range of lung infections.

Adams, from Newtownabbey near Belfast, grew up with an onerous routine of treatments to clear her airways and was always in and out of hospital. To her, making plans for the future seemed futile as she had little clarity on how the disease would unfold.

“I grew up seeing people my age who aren’t here today,” Adams says. “That’s the reality of CF. Back then, we didn’t have the drugs we have now.”

But today, thanks to the transformational treatment Kaftrio – known as Trikafta in the US – Adams’ health has improved and she is making plans for the long term. She has also done what was once unthinkable – had a child of her own. “I’m not just surviving any more,” she says. “I’m living. I can plan things. I can look forward to the future.”

Adams started taking Kaftrio after she was hospitalised in 2019 when her lung function deteriorated due to a serious infection. Things were not looking good. “I thought I would never leave the hospital alive,” she says.

Adams’ doctor, Prof Damian Downey, a clinician and expert in cystic fibrosis research at Queen’s University’s Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine, pushed to put Adams on Kaftrio, even though the drug had yet to gain regulatory approval in the UK. Downey, who has worked with Adams throughout her adult life, believed she should have access to the treatment, given her critical condition.

“When I got the first two tablets, everything changed,” says Adams. “Within 48 hours, I was back on my feet. I got out of hospital. I could breathe again.”

More than 11,000 people suffer from cystic fibrosis in the UK, according to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, and over 100,000 are known to be affected worldwide. For decades the treatment focused on managing symptoms with a range of therapies, but a breakthrough came in 1989 with the discovery of CFTR, the gene responsible for the disease. When it is faulty, it affects the working of a protein that plays a vital role in thinning mucus. For more than 15 years, Queen’s University researchers have been at the forefront of developing and testing therapies to improve the function of this protein.

Prof Damian Downey; CT scan of cystic fibrosis; microscopic view of lungsView image in fullscreen

Prof Damian Downey’s team supported the clinical trials needed to deliver Kaftrio, which has now been approved. Composite: QUB/Science Photo Library/Shutterstock

In particular, Downey and the team at Queen’s played a key role in the European clinical trials for Kaftrio, a transformative treatment developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals that addresses the underlying causes of the illness. It has been hailed as a gamechanger.

The team at Queen’s played an important role in trial design and building the clinical infrastructure needed to deliver the therapies safely and effectively. Kaftrio was approved by UK regulators in 2020 after the trials showed that it addressed the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis in around 90% of people with the condition.

“This is a golden era of CF research,” Downey says. “I feel privileged as a researcher and clinician to be part of the team at Queen’s which has played such a vital role in helping the CF community.”

Today, Adams takes Kaftrio routinely, and it has transformed her life. “I’m alive because of that research,” says Adams. “I wouldn’t be here without Queen’s. They took a chance on me because the evidence was there.

“Damian [Prof Downey] fought for us. He pushed so hard for the CF community to get access to these drugs. He never gave up on us.”

Downey emphasises how important the “active CF community” was in driving the medical trials for Kaftrio. This community comprises patients and their families, clinicians, drug developers and campaigners. “If it was piecemeal and there was no community network, drug development would take longer because you wouldn’t have the coordinated ability to run clinical trials,” he says.

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The European cystic fibrosis clinical trials network, which brings together 68 cystic fibrosis centres across Europe, provided speedy access to trial participants. Queen’s researchers have been deeply involved in managing the network and also in interpreting the clinical data. Downey co-wrote a key research paper, published in the prestigious medical journal the Lancet, that was vital in getting regulatory approval.

“We have seen people change within a matter of days of taking these drugs, which is quite remarkable,” he says. “We see rapid improvement in lung function, and people who might have been in hospital up to 12 weeks a year not being in hospital at all.”

Some 10% of sufferers have genetic mutations that do not respond to Kaftrio. For those people, other treatments are under development.

Cystic fibrosis research at Queen’s stretches far beyond Kaftrio. It continues to develop new drugs for CF and is committed to understanding the challenges of a now ageing population.

Across Queen’s as a whole there is deep involvement in medical research, through the Johnston Cancer Research Centre and the Wellcome-Wolfson Institute, which focuses on respiratory medicine, immunology and vascular medicine. Meanwhile, the Centre for Public Health addresses wider societal health issues.

“I think we have a great infrastructure at Queen’s to engage with patients and families and to drive forward medical research,” says Downey. “Our success is rooted in our culture, which is collaborative rather than competitive.”

A force for change: discover more about the real-world impact of clinical research at Queen’s University Belfast

https://www.theguardian.com/research-to-reality/2026/mar/12/how-a-cystic-fibrosis-breakthrough-changed-my-life#:~:text=Life%20has%20changed%20beyond%20recognition,many%20of%20the%20worst%20symptoms.

The Guardian: Where poetry meets technology: why Queen’s University Belfast is a storytelling hub for the 21st century

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In Belfast, the Seamus Heaney Centre’s literary prestige is aligning with MediaLab’s cutting-edge screen technologies. Together, they’re fostering experimentation in narrative that is reaching far beyond the city

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David Benady

Fri 12 Dec 2025 09.34 GMT

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Belfast’s creative sector is blessed with two state-of-the-art facilities where creators can collaborate, explore storytelling techniques and develop new forms of expression. Run by Queen’s as part of the School of Arts, English and Languages, The Seamus Heaney Centre and the recently opened MediaLab are becoming key contributors to the city’s thriving cultural scene.

The Seamus Heaney Centre celebrates the Nobel-winning poet’s legacy, offering courses in creative writing, staging literary readings and showcasing leading writers from Ireland and beyond. The centre is developing a working relationship with MediaLab, which explores the latest video game and screen technologies, and experiments with immersive storytelling.

Founded in 2003 as a centre of excellence for poetry and creative writing, the Seamus Heaney Centre has recently moved into a spacious new building. This larger footprint gives the centre the room it needs to foster collaboration and cross-fertilisation of ideas between poets, writers, critics and creators.

“So many ideas flow from people being brought under one roof and having the space to spend time together. We want the centre to be a welcoming place,” says the director Prof Glenn Patterson.

Prof Glenn Pattersom and The Seamus Heaney CentreView image in fullscreen

Prof Glenn Patterson, director of the Seamus Heaney Centre

Running creative writing courses for students of English at the university as well as master’s courses, PhDs and fellowships, the centre builds on the legacy of Heaney, who studied and later lectured at Queen’s.

“We are a centre that is concerned with poetry and writing in all its forms,” says Patterson, a screenwriter, novelist and writer for radio, which reflects the centre’s broad literary interests.

“Heaney was a Nobel laureate in literature, he was a poet, essayist, translator and dramatist, as well as a superb broadcaster from very early on in his career,” he says. The centre hosts an archive of Heaney’s work, including his broadcasting archives, and seeks to bring to life all these forms of creativity.

Spread across three storeys, the centre includes The Wolfson Lecture Theatre, teaching rooms and “scriptoriums” where writers can work and draw inspiration from their surroundings. “It’s really important for us that our postgraduate students are able to have places to work on their own writing,” says Patterson.

As a literary hub, the centre hosts established writers who spend time with students and pass on their experience and expertise through workshops, Q&As and masterclasses. Fellows at the Centre have included Louise Kennedy (a graduate of the Centre), whose novel Trespasses has been adapted on Channel 4; Derry Girls writer Lisa McGee; Anna Burns, the first author from Northern Ireland to win the Booker prize with her novel Milkman; and the writers of the BBC series Blue Lights, Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn. “We are very much integrated into the literary life of the city – of the entire island,” says Patterson.

Writers from the centre also collaborate with MediaLab, which opened earlier this year, in a former garage in the grounds of Queen’s University. A research hub engaged in wide-ranging creative technology projects, the facility explores innovations in film, video games, AI and digital twins.

Prof Michael Alcorn and CaptureLabView image in fullscreen

MediaLab founder Prof Michael Alcorn; CaptureLab, a production studio with a motion capture system, is the facility’s centrepiece

Prof Michael Alcorn, a Queen’s academic who founded and runs MediaLab, describes the centre as an interface between creativity and technology.

“We are a multidisciplinary team, and we set out to be a slight misfit within university structures, because I think many of society’s needs and solutions are becoming increasingly interdisciplinary,” he says. “Some universities still struggle with working beyond disciplines – thankfully Queen’s strongly support us to operate across multiple disciplines,” he adds.

The centrepiece of the facility is CaptureLab, a production studio with a state-of-the-art motion capture system, which digitally records the movements of actors and objects and transfers them to 3D models that can be used to create animated films and immersive media.

The MediaLab is also investing in a cutting-edge technique known as virtual production, which uses a large-scale LED screen to generate backdrops and experimental projection that can be added directly into a film shoot. This allows actors to perform in front of the screen, hugely improving realism when filming scenes compared with other green-screen technologies. Within weeks of opening, the MediaLab had collaborated on the production of an immersive feature film called Underscore by new media artist, Hugh McGrory.

Other projects include a virtual reconstruction of key locations which were highly visible during the Troubles, the conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the late 1960s to 1998, creating an immersive experience to help people understand the reality of dealing with life during this period of local history.

The MediaLab has also been working to support local artists and creative practitioners who are keen to understand how new technologies can inform and inspire new forms of creative expression. This includes applications in theatre, acting for video games, visual art, music and experimental film-makers.

It is hoped MediaLab’s connections with the Seamus Heaney Centre will help both centres explore storytelling techniques. “We see the Seamus Heaney Centre as one of our most important partners in developing narrative techniques,” says Alcorn. “You need to be able to pull people in and engage them, and that’s where I think the compelling nature of good storytelling comes in.”

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The collaboration between MediaLab and the Seamus Heaney Centre will make Queen’s a storytelling hub

Storytelling techniques can be applied both to creative projects such as films, and to technical developments such as gamification, which uses the principles of computer gaming for training, prototyping and research in fields such as medicine, construction and industry.

Patterson says there are great opportunities for partnerships between the two. “Both the Seamus Heaney Centre and MediaLab are informed by a boundless curiosity, constantly exploring new ways of making, and thinking about, work, balancing tradition with innovation and experimentation,” he says.

The creative hubs are blending the ancient arts of literature and poetry with the latest innovations in digital storytelling. Together, they are injecting new energy and momentum into Belfast’s cultural landscape.

Queen’s University Belfast ranks among the top 200 universities worldwide in both the QS and THE rankings

Discover how collaboration is driving cutting edge cultural innovation at Queen’s University Belfast at The Seamus Heaney Centre and MediaLab

The Guardian Powering change: the Canadian partnership behind a super-fast battery charger that’s transforming EV infrastructure

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A collaboration between the University of Toronto and startup Jule has produced an EV charger that delivers a full battery in less than half an hour, while drawing power steadily from the power grid to avoid surges

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David Benady

Fri 10 Oct 2025 12.32 BST

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A partnership between the University of Toronto and electric vehicle (EV) charging startup Jule has led to a gamechanging EV battery charger. Thanks to technology developed at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Applied Power Electronics, drivers can fully charge their EVs in under 30 minutes without putting undue strain on the power grid.

Working in close collaboration with Jule, Reza Iravani, a University of Toronto professor specialising in energy systems, and his team overcame a series of engineering challenges to develop the EV charger. Those challenges included minimising surge demand on the power grid when charging; operating and maintaining chargers in remote regions; and ensuring the chargers would work effectively during Canada’s extreme winters. Their solution was an integrated battery energy storage system that’s been so successful Jule charging stationshave now been installed at locations across Canada and the US.

Overcoming surge demand

What makes the charger so effective is the use of a large battery system that trickles charge from the power grid at a slow, steady rate – minimising sudden surges, which could overwhelm the electricity infrastructure. It uses sensors to monitor the battery’s performance so any potential breakdowns can be spotted in good time and resolved before they become critical.

The Jule system is a level 3 EV charger – the most powerful available – which can add 6-12 miles worth of range a minute to an EV. They are typically used in public fast-charging stations on highways and in urban areas. However, the Jule charger can operate on a lower-power grid connection (like a level 2 charger) but then rapidly discharge that stored energy to deliver a high-power level 3-equivalent charge to electric vehicles.

“In some locations, utility companies limit the amount of power that chargers can draw from the grid, so we had to design controls capable of extracting the exact amount allowed,” says Iravani.

Jule fast charging stations installed at the University of Toronto.View image in fullscreen

Jule fast-charging stations installed at the University of Toronto. Photograph: Safa Jinje

Operating in remote locations

“And, of course, you have to minimise the requirements for maintenance, because Canada is huge. When you install these [chargers] at some locations, the distances from urban areas can be hundreds of kilometres,” he adds.

Today, the Jule battery charger is proving popular not only in remote areas but also for public charging in urban locations and shopping centres. A Jule charging point has even been installed in a parking garage at the University of Toronto’s downtown campus.

Iravani says that the concept can be developed for industry-specific applications as well, especially for those operating in remote areas. “For example, in the mining industry, they have many heavy trucks and machinery that can take advantage of this technology in a wide variety of locations.”

Overcoming extreme weather

To meet the original aim of providing charging stations in remote areas of Canada, the team had to overcome the issue of using a battery in very low temperatures. “In Canada, we deal with extreme cold conditions – in some cases, extreme rain and snow. The battery would have to accommodate all these conditions, particularly cold weather,” Iravani says.

“You have to house it within a container, and ensure there is effective air conditioning, heating and cooling, while also adjusting sensors properly, designing adequate spacing between components and proper heat sinks [components that absorb and dissipate heat generated by the charging station].”

This technical achievement was made possible when Jule’s partnership with the University of Toronto expanded in 2018 to include Prof Cristina Amon and Carlos Da Silva. Amon and Da Silva are leading researchers at the University of Toronto’s Advanced Thermofluids Optimization, Modelling and Simulation (Atoms) laboratory. Their efforts helped advance Jule’s technology on thermal management of batteries and power electronics.

From left: Prof Reza Iravani; Jule cofounder Carmine Pizzurro; Dr Carlos Da Silva; Prof Cristina Amon; Christopher Yip, University of Toronto dean of engineeringView image in fullscreen

From left: Prof Reza Iravani; Jule co-founder Carmine Pizzurro; Dr Carlos Da Silva; Prof Cristina Amon; Christopher Yip, University of Toronto dean of engineering

A powerful partnership

Jule embarked on its first research collaboration with the University of Toronto in 2010, a year after its founding, with research assistants from the university testing the design aspects alongside engineers from the company. Several PhD and post-doctoral fellows at the university have also fed into specific design aspects of the technology over the years.

Jule was co-founded by University of Toronto mechanical engineering alumnus Carmine Pizzurro and employs 14 alumni today. Pizzurro says: “We chose to collaborate with the University of Toronto because of its world-class research expertise and commitment to innovation – a perfect match for Jule’s mission to modernise the grid and transform EV charging.

“Since our partnership began, we have achieved several industry-first milestones together, from deploying the world’s first lithium-ion batteries on the electrical grid to advancing cleaner, more resilient EV infrastructure.”

The collaboration with Jule has given University of Toronto researchers hands-on experience in a real-world setting, says Amon. “This partnership has significantly enhanced the learning experiences of our engineering students and researchers, enabling us to co-develop and test industry-relevant battery and charging technologies in ways that are usually limited in university lab settings.”

She adds: “Our partnership with Jule is meeting the demand for groundbreaking energy storage solutions that will not only reduce the charging time but also enhance the safety and longevity of batteries, making electric vehicles more practical and appealing to consumers.”

The development of Jule’s EV battery charger highlights the importance of the University of Toronto’s innovation strategy and, as fast chargers are transforming EV charging infrastructure across North America, it shows how collaboration between universities and industry can spark global innovation.

Meet the extraordinary community at the University of Toronto that’s pushing the boundaries of what’s possible

How will the metaverse change customer experience?

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Technology

Some believe it will offer a cornucopia of heightened consumer experiences; others fear it will become a dystopia. But they’re unlikely to find out for at least another five years

Jan 28, 2022

https://www.raconteur.net/technology/metaverse-customer-experience/

David Benady

Fancy meeting some interesting-looking new people at a virtual coffee shop? You’ll sit at home sipping your own brew, but wear a virtual reality (VR) headset to experience the café and mingle with your new acquaintances as a cartoon avatar. Or how about wearing a waterproof headset and entering a swimming pool to simulate the sensations of space travel? Or letting your avatar walk round a clothes store and try items on for size? Virtual fitting will be an exact process, because your avatar will be measured up for all your vital statistics, from inside leg to collar size. 

These are just a few of the experiences that will be made possible by the metaverse, the giant VR network that the tech industry is constructing. 

“The metaverse proposes to transform the internet, which is largely a transfer of information from a server to a user, into a more immersive and real-feeling experience that can be shared by an unlimited number of users,” explains Doug Stephens, founder of consultancy Retail Prophet.

A space where you can exist as an avatar, character or player, the metaverse offers either an immersive virtual world or enables virtual experiences to be superimposed on to the real world. You’ll probably need to wear a headset, which could be a deal-breaker for some people – 3D cinema has never really taken off because of those irritating glasses. But, for those willing to put up with this, the metaverse promises a profusion of experiences that could vastly improve consumers’ lives. Inevitably, though, there could be some serious downsides. 

“We have rampant problems on the internet, including bullying and fraud, that we haven’t even begun to tackle,” Stephens says. “To simply hurtle forward into a more immersive and persistent version of that would be reckless, to say the least.”

Who’s averse to the metaverse?

Could the metaverse really turn out to be an unwelcoming world of virtual vendettas and 3D thievery? How will its inhabitants be protected from harm? 

Stephens believes that we need to appeal to our “better angels” to create a positive vision of the metaverse. Jonathan Manzi, co-founder and CEO of blockchain provider Beyond Protocol, has just such a vision. He foresees a virtual realm that is autonomous, yet democratic, decentralised and enabling. 

Manzi enthuses about the possibilities for building a better experience than that currently offered by Web 2.0, which has been overshadowed by the dysfunctionality associated with some social media platforms. The metaverse will be part of the next stage of internet development known as Web 3.0, he says. This will use blockchain technology to create the truly egalitarian, participatory internet that was originally envisaged by its inventors.

The latest wave of Web 3.0 hype was triggered by the renaming of the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus from Facebook Inc to Meta Platforms in October 2021. Meta’s co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, gave a presentation showing the possibilities offered by the metaverse, revealing that his company had invested $10bn (£7.45bn) in developing the technology that year alone. 

This sparked an ideological battle between technologists and human rights activists about the nature of the metaverse. Would it be dominated by corporate interests? How would its users be shielded from invasions of privacy and the misuse of data? How could real consumer choice be enhanced?

Manzi says that new blockchain-based unions known as decentralised autonomous organisations (DAUs) will give consumers the power to control their private data and the experiences they have in the metaverse. A DAU would serve as a trusted intermediary, run democratically in the interests of its members, who join it via an immutable blockchain ledger and vote on their relationships with brands and retailers by means of so-called smart contracts.

Imagine that a group of employees are working in a virtual office space and lunchtime rolls around, Manzi says: “You could have those users’ information flow through the DAU, which decides whether it’s appropriate to serve them an advert about the food from trusted restaurants in the area. The ad is served, the food is delivered and money is exchanged to pay for it, all on a smart contract. That’s something that adds value. It’s good marketing – something that’s helpful to my life.”

This contrasts with the invasive advertising practices that have become a characteristic of Web 2.0. Some advertisers use psychological profiling to find people’s weak points and target them with ads for inappropriate or even harmful products and services. 

“The DAU framework has checks and balances inherent in it all the way through –something that has not been possible in Web 2.0,” he says.

When can customers shop in the metaverse?

But such developments are still thought to be at least five years away. The metaverse will be a native world for generations Z and alpha. It will require users to have technological knowledge and an understanding of DAUs, blockchains, cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens, which will act as exchange systems. So it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, sipped virtually or not.

The early indicators of how it will work are already available, though, in meeting apps such as Gather Town and gaming platforms such as Animal Crossing and Roblox. 

Kathryn Bishop is foresight editor of LSNGlobal.com, which highlights trends predicted by The Future Laboratory, a brand consultancy. She points to South Korea as a society that’s already making strong advances in metaverse tech. It offers apps such as social network Zepeto, which uses facial recognition systems to create 3D avatars of users that can already interact virtually. 

Meanwhile, Ralph Lauren has released a collection on Roblox and even runs a virtual coffee shop. The fashion giant and other brands that are getting involved in early metaverse spaces all see this as a way to connect with the next generation of customers.

As a consumer entering such spaces, “you can meet other people and have a completely alternative brand experience to one that you’ve been used to,” Bishop says. “It’s a great way to discover new products or perhaps unlock some kind of loyalty bonus.” 

Stephens acknowledges that the shopping experience could be vastly improved by Web 3.0. In essence, ecommerce is “digital catalogue shopping” in its current form, he says. “It’s not social, it’s not engaging and it’s certainly not fun. The metaverse could change that.”

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David Benady

Middle East’s critical infrastructure faces cyberattacks while digital transformation fuels data theft

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The Middle East, with its patchwork of political rivalries and disputes, is suffering nation-state-sponsored cyberattacks on infrastructure such as utilities, oil and gas and transport hubs. Meanwhile, the move to cloud services and growth of digital commerce is fuelling a worrying rise in the theft of consumer data. Critical infrastructure must segregate and protect networks while Governments must bring forward new GDPR-style data protection.

By David Benady

IDG Connect | MAR 16, 2021 11:30 PM PDT

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Across the Middle East, security teams at critical infrastructure plants are on maximum alert as a wave of politically-motivated cyberattacks targets their operations.

Many of the attacks go undetected and those that are discovered are often unreported, which may disguise the nature and extent of the problem. Attackers target infrastructure such as water systems, oil and gas facilities, transport hubs and manufacturing plants. As Tarek Kuzbari, Middle East and Turkey director for security vendor Cybereason, says: “In the Middle East, the number of politically-driven cyberattacks is very high compared to other regions.

“With all the politics in the region, such as the revolutions of the Arab Spring and tensions between different nations, each country has started to build their own cyber offensive capability and have launched their own operations.”

A series of cyberattacks on Israel’s rural water infrastructure last year which disrupted water supplies is a recent case. Shortly after, a cyberattack shut down Iran’s Shahid Rajaee port for days. A Washington Post report attributed the attack to Israel, in retaliation for the earlier incursions into its water systems. This cycle of tit-for-tat attacks threatens the security of a wide range of industries.

Shamoon 3 virus sabotages oil and gas installations

A report by UAE cybersecurity company DarkMatter in 2019 showed that the oil and gas sectors, finance, transport and utilities have been targeted by state-sponsored groups seeking to undermine the economic and social stability of rival nations. Three quarters of oil and gas companies in the region had experienced cybersecurity breaches.

DarkMatter’s analysis identified eight key “intrusion sets” — co-ordinated attacks — Bitter, Molerats, MuddyWater, Chafer, DarkHydrus, Shamoon 3, OilRig, and DNSpionage. Shamoon 3 in particular has been used to sabotage major organisations.

According to Karim Sabbagh, CEO of DarkMatter Group, the lesson of these intrusions is clear: “Organizations in the region have a short window of time to transform their cybersecurity posture and demonstrate stronger resilience in the face of escalating and increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity threats.”

But as infrastructure providers attempt to boost their protective measures, these are routinely circumvented by attackers, which are developing ever greater expertise in penetrating networks. As Kuzbari says: “The more you evolve as a defender, the cybercriminal will evolve too based on every measure you are taking.” Simply installing more sophisticated protection tools, whether firewalls or end-point protections, is insufficient. Cybereason’s approach involves closely monitoring all network data to identify any unusual activity, and if it is a potential threat, to neutralise it.

Keeping industrial networks segregated from IT

According to Vibin Shaju, director of presales at McAfee for EMEA Enterprise, defenders must avoid complacency. In the past, Operational Technology (OT) networks — the digital communication systems which connect industrial plants and machinery — have been kept segregated from corporate IT networks which interact with the outside world. Cyber attackers will typically try and gain entry to a company’s IT network — for instance through phishing emails — and from there seek to enter the organisation’s OT network which controls critical plant and machinery. Segregating networks has been a key defensive measure to stop attackers finding a way through.

But networks are growing more integrated as Internet of Things sensors are used to collect and emit data about plant and machinery. With the increasing data sharing between OT and IT networks, organisations are becoming vulnerable, he says.

“We need to make sure that every type of security monitoring tool that we have deployed for our enterprise (IT) network is going into the OT network. We need to make sure that there is the same level of monitoring for that OT network as for the IT network, because there is a bridge between them.”

Shaju adds that vendors such as Siemens, which create the OT systems used by critical infrastructure, are investing heavily in security and are partnering with cybersecurity providers to test their tools. Working together, they are creating new security blueprints and building them into critical infrastructure. “They were not looking at security 10 years back, but today they are really looking at those scenarios and providing solutions,” he says.

Consumer data theft on the rise

Politically-motivated cyberwarfare is not the only area of concern when it comes to network security. The region is also experiencing a wave of cyber-crime as its economy undergoes rapid digital transformation. Digital banking is on the rise triggering an explosion of digital launches from takeaway food to taxis. In a few years, Amazon has taken a huge share of e-commerce after buying local online marketplace Souq in 2017. This has been accompanied by a rapid shift to using cloud services, but many businesses are still in the process of developing their cybersecurity strategies.

Regulation and legislation in many Middle East states is lagging western nations – with laws such as Europe’s GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act  – leaving their economies unprepared for the challenges of cybercrime.

As Kuzbari says: “One of our major concerns in the region is that information tends not to go public. There are lots of regulators trying to change that, but currently if any financial institutions, airlines or government bodies gets compromised, they report to the local authority privately and no information goes out to customers.”

Meanwhile, Shaju warns that businesses are rapidly moving data to the cloud and this could create the potential for cyberattacks. “Knowing that this (cloud adoption) is going to be on a high curve for the next two or three years, will be a major area of concern that every CISO (chief information security officer) or transformation architect needs to be looking at,” he says.  

Pull your SOCs up

While tooling up with the latest security technology is vital — deploying firewalls, end- point protections and scans — organisations should not solely rely on these.

“Technology is one part, but I would always say invest in a good Security Operations Centre (SOC) and good people. All those attacks don’t happen in a day or two, they take months,” says Shaju. Attackers target networks over a long period, such as through repeated email scams, until they gain entry to a network. They can then either wait for the opportune moment to trigger an attack or gradually exfiltrate — transfer — data over a period.  

Organisations should create effective cybersecurity operations and SOCs that keep tabs on network traffic and identify any suspicious activity. And for industrial operations, OT and IT networks must be kept segregated as far as possible. The price of cybersecurity failure is too high.

Russia’s AI challenge

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Russia has unleashed a new strategy to boost AI as both a business tool and a military solution. National bank Sberbank has been given a crucial role in building AI strategy and is helping develop a range of supercomputers to aid AI innovation. We look at Sberbank’s launches and assess the future of Russia’s AI industry and its impact across Europe and globally.

By David Benady

IDG Connect | MAR 9, 2021 10:30 PM PST

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Russia is staking its future on Artificial Intelligence as President Vladimir Putin puts the technology at the heart of the nation’s digital transformation. With the US, China and Europe all investing heavily in AI, the scene is set for a global battle for supremacy. As Putin has said, the nation that leads in AI “will be ruler of the world.”

In a speech to the AI Journey Conference 2020 held in Moscow in December, Putin told 10,000 online delegates that AI is “one of the greatest technologies ever created by humanity.” He promised that AI would become deeply embedded into the nation’s infrastructure as part of a new Russian revolution.

Observers have warned about the use of the technology in military and internal security applications amid fears of a new AI-powered global stand-off. Russia has trialled the Uran-9 unmanned robot tank in Syria and aims to have 30% of combat capability powered autonomously by 2030. But it is in the civil sphere that AI promises a profound transformation of everyday life.

During the event, Putin spent two hours expounding on AI, flanked by former economy minister Herman Gref, who is Chief Executive of Sberbank, Russia’s largest financial institution.

Gref plays a key role in Russia’s AI transformation. Sberbank is a 150-year old institution, half Government-owned and with 100 million customers. The bank is undergoing a dramatic re-invention using AI technology. Sberbank is in the process of launching an eco-system of AI-powered consumer services under the Sber brand, spanning ride-hailing, food delivery, digital assistants and automated banking. 

But as Sberbank’s Chief Technology Officer David Rafalovsky explains: “What makes Sber unique in the financial industry is that we are not only users of technology, we are creators of technology.”

Introducing Christofari

Sberbank has built the powerful Christofari supercomputer, unveiled in December 2019, which allows for the fast processing of AI models. 

One of the world’s 40 fastest supercomputers and the most powerful in Russia, Christofari was developed in association with US chip maker Nvidia. It allows users to train machine learning models using neural networks in a matter of days rather than weeks. This is boosting AI areas such as natural language processing, predictive analytics, computer vision and fraud detection.

Rafalovsky says this has greatly improved the quality of Russian artificial language generation, putting it on a par with anything produced by the US tech giants. Christofari’s natural language processing uses GPT-3, the Generative pre-Trained Transformer model that uses deep learning to produce human like text. This is powering Sber’s digital assistants such as a service called Duet. This is comparable to Google’s Duo, a voice assistant that can book appointments over the phone, interacting with humans. “Only Sber and Google, as far as I know, have the ability (for a digital assistant) to maintain a robust conversation and make a decision on our behalf and I am very proud of that,” he says.

Meanwhile, Sberbank’s commercial loan product known as K7M promises to make loan decisions in seven minutes. While it might take a committee weeks or months of deliberation to give credit to a small business, K7M uses AI to make rapid decisions. “That’s down to many years of investment in AI,” says Rafalovsky. “It’s a lot of work but there’s no magic. It is a model we train over a long period of time with a lot of trial and error. It also involved a lot of parallel execution with humans to see if we were making the right decisions before we launched it in real life,” he says.

A significant feature of Christophari is that Sber hires out usage through its Sber Cloud service, which is like a Russian version of Amazon Web Services.

“A small start-up in Russia can in a few clicks have access to this amazing technological platform,” says Rafalovsky. “We are in the midst of a revolution and the access to AI technology is becoming more democratic.”  

AI for everyone

Sberbank is a founding member of the AI-Russia Alliance, a cross-industry initiative bringing together Sber, Gazprom Neft, search and e-commerce giant Yandex, which runs its own AI-powered eco-system of consumer services. Mail.ru, the email and social network operator, and the Russian Direct Investment Fund are also involved. The Alliance aims to promote AI.

“AI cannot be just accessible to large companies with deep pockets, we have passed that point of development. Everything we are doing through the alliance is aligned with that strategy to make it as democratic as possible,” he says.

According to Elena Semenovskaia, a senior researcher at IDC, Russia has been more successful at embedding AI in industrial rather than consumer applications. Twinned with data from Internet of Things sensors, AI is used in the oil and gas industry to simulate and predict extraction processes. There are digital assistants in metallurgical plants, while AI is being used widely in urban infrastructure. “It is in everything that relates to smart cities and the safe city, so image recognition, facial recognition, analysing different movement patterns,” she says. 

AI development requires advanced hardware, highly skilled data scientists and access to high quality data. “The bottom line is it is expensive,” she adds.

A challenge for Russia is a lack of cleaned, reliable data for analysis that can be used for developing algorithms. “They are just starting to combine internal data with external data from website visits, mobile operator data and retail data, it is in the process. I believe that next year there will be more data ready for writing AI properly.”

Russia has a highly-educated workforce of scientists, mathematicians and statisticians. But Semenovskaia says the country lacks advanced business thinking and needs to train and attract more business intelligence consultants.

AI is rapidly developing self-service applications making it easier for non-professionals to create models and build their own digital assistants and predictive analytics. This will be a world where every desktop has a robot and an AI model builder.  

“To understand the whole business process of the company or organisation, you need people who have good problem-solving skills and good logic and development skills and understand the business,” says Semenovskaia.

As ever, knowing how to process data is just the start. To make AI effective, applying it to solve real-world challenges – from speeding up loan approvals to developing chatbots – is the key. Practical business, logistical and management skills will be vital to achieving Russia’s grand vision for AI.

How a new generation is embracing gender diversity in engineering

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How a new generation is embracing gender diversity in engineering

While great progress has been made in the sector over the past few decades, younger people are now leading the charge when it comes to making engineering an inviting field for womenSupported byAbout this content

David Benady

Fri 24 Jul 2020 14.12 BSTLast modified on Fri 24 Jul 2020 14.14 BST

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Stem ambassadors at engineering firm Renishaw
 Stem ambassadors at engineering firm Renishaw

When structural engineer Martin Burden first came to the UK from Australia 30 years ago, the engineering profession was thoroughly male-dominated, he says. In his first UK job, there was just one female engineer out of 50 males, while in Australia he hadn’t worked with a single woman engineer.

“It felt like a gentlemen’s club that didn’t want women to be involved. And as a result, they felt that they couldn’t be,” he says. “It’s hard to put your finger on why. It comes down to not being welcome. With science, technology, engineering and mathematics in universities, women didn’t feel like it was something they were naturally steered towards.”

How times change. Today, the majority of the engineers Burden works with are female. In the design office at engineering and architecture company Ramboll, where he is consulting director, about 15 out of 20 engineers are women. He has witnessed a sea change in female participation.

“For entry level design and engineering at the first three or four rungs on the ladder, gender balance is about 50/50,” he says. “But it drops off past the age of 30 or 35 to around 15% higher up the business.”

Martin Burden
 Structural engineer and consulting director Martin Burden says he has witnessed a sea change in female participation in the profession over the past 30 years

Changing engineering’s reputation as a male preserve and making women feel welcome in the profession requires a transformation in the attitudes of both men and women. Engineering firms are putting in place training in unconscious bias to alert men when their thinking and behaviour may unconsciously discriminate against certain groups, including women.

Attitudes of younger male engineers seem a world away from the archaic approaches of the past. Kristian Goodchild, a graduate software engineer at engineering firm Renishaw, believes everyone involved in engineering should focus on the lack of diversity in the field. “Without prolonged thought on these issues, many male engineers would not take the time to consider the lack of diversity in the workplace and the possible reasons why there is a gender imbalance,” he says.

Diversity training, discussion and constant self-questioning are required to identify and deal with examples of bias, he adds.

He says he has noticed subtle – though probably unconscious – “microaggressions” from senior male engineers about female engineers and their ability to do their job. He concedes that similar comments are also made about male engineers, but he wonders whether women are held to higher standards. Even so, he hasn’t experienced substantial gender imbalance, as about 40% of the engineers in his department are women.

Mind the (pay) gap: how to get more women into senior engineering roles

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Meanwhile, Jesse Mitchell, who since graduating last year has worked on Renishaw’s mechanical engineering graduate scheme, says he was unaware of the issues of conscious and unconscious bias when he first started his job. But his company has been active in training and educating staff to raise awareness of these factors and how staff should act in the workplace to avoid discrimination.

He says that some of his female engineering friends are apprehensive about the gender imbalance in situations such as meetings or idea sharing sessions. Others are unfazed by the imbalance while some actually enjoy the gender ratio.

While engineering firms are waking up to the need to increase diversity, an area that has seen little progress is construction sites, where there are still very few women engineers or workers. “The construction environment is not really tailored to women’s needs,” says Burden. An example is the personal protective equipment of hi-vis jackets, helmets and boots. These invariably do not come in women’s sizes and are not designed to fit women. “Women think if I’ve got to go to the site, I’ve got to go through loops and hoops to actually be able to get a piece of kit that makes me feel comfortable. It’s an unconscious thing. If you’re a woman wanting to go to a site, it’s not inviting. It’s not actually set up for you.”

Even so, in most cases, male attitudes to inclusivity have improved – it will take time for young women to see engineering in the same light as more gender-balanced professions such as medicine, media or education. But with men becoming more aware of the issues surrounding gender bias, the dial is moving in the right direction.Topics

The global lessons the UK can learn about the engineering gender divide

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https://www.theguardian.com/careers/2020/jul/07/the-global-lessons-the-uk-can-learn-about-the-engineering-gender-divide

 

The global lessons the UK can learn about the engineering gender divide

Female representation in engineering tends to be higher in countries where, by many other measures, gender equality lags behind. So what can that tell us about levelling up the field here?

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David Benady

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About half of engineering students in India are female. Photograph: Shruti Mukherjee/Getty Images

Razan al-Lawati is a piping engineer from Oman, which has one of the highest proportions of female engineers in the world. While the UK and many western nations have struggled to attract women into engineering, female representation is substantially higher in countries in eastern Europe and the global south. Just 12% of UK engineers are female. This compares with more than 50% in Oman and Malaysia and three in 10 in countries such as Costa Rica, Vietnam and Algeria, according to figures from Unesco.

Razan al-Lawati, Petrofac
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Razan al-Lawati: ‘There is no such thing as a man’s job or a woman’s job – we are all equal’

Al-Lawati works on the graduate development programme for oilfield services company Petrofac and is based in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. She says that 40% of the 130 engineers on the graduate programme are women, hailing from countries such as Lebanon, the UAE, India, Oman and Jordan. She is not surprised that more than half of Oman’s engineers are women, as she says the country’s government has made strenuous efforts to promote the subject among women and she was encouraged to follow the profession by careers advisers. She says the eagerness to go into engineering is part of an awakening among Middle Eastern women. “Engineering has always been known as a man’s job and this has created a bit of eagerness and curiosity in females to prove that there is no such thing as a man’s job or a woman’s job and that we are all equal,” she says.

Al-Lawati studied for a BSc in mechanical engineering at the University of Cardiff, where there were only a handful of women on the course compared with 140 men. She thinks British women wrongly believe that engineering means impossible mathematics, tricky physics and physically-demanding work on sites. “I think engineering is totally different to what people believe,” she says.

“You can expand your career in so many ways, you don’t have to be a technical expert, there are so many different sectors you can enter such as contracting, supply chain or working on the business side.” Many of the tasks have been made easier with digital communications. “You can access everything through your laptop so you don’t always have to go to the site for hands-on work. Being online and talking to your supervisor makes it a lot easier,” she says.

Meanwhile, in India, there is a high proportion of women studying Stem subjects at university and one report estimates that about half of engineering students in the country are female.