BBC R&D and its interactions with academia - Prof. Graham Thomas BBC R&D BBC MMXIII

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BBC R&D and its interactions with academia - Prof. Graham Thomas BBC R&D BBC MMXIII
BBC R&D and its interactions with academia

Prof. Graham Thomas
BBC R&D

R&D                                  © BBC MMXIII
About BBC R&D

• BBC engineers have been at the forefront of developments in broadcast
  technology since the founding of public service broadcasting in the UK
• Approx. 180 engineers/scientists/technologists + support staff
   – 150 based in London (mainly W12)
   – 30 based at MediaCityUK, Salford Quays, Manchester
• Annual budget approx £16M

    R&D                                                             © BBC MMXIII
Project areas in BBC R&D

          Major Workflow                         Description
              Areas

                           • Computer vision & tracking
                                               tracking, 3D
                                                         3D, new audio experiences
           Production      • Transfer commonly through 3rd party licensing
                           • Audience benefit & revenue opportunities

                           • Production processes, archive, analysis & retrieval
             Media
                           • Transfer through 3rd party adoption or spin-out
          Management &     • Cost savings & efficiencies (DMI)
             Archive

                           • Standards, implementation, development, strategy
           Distribution    • Transfer through standards & promoting adoption
                           • Efficiencies (DVB-T2) & audience benefit (HD)

           Audience &      • Accessibility, interfaces, navigation, new content
                           • Transfer through standards & promoting adoption
              U
              User
                           • Development of prototypes
           Experience

    R&D                                                                            © BBC MMXIII
We address these workflow areas through three types of activity

           Work flow area                                            Audience &
                                           Media
Activity
       y type
          yp                Production                Distribution      User
                                         Management
                                                                     Experience

       p
 Development  Activity
                     y
                                           40 45% resource
                                           40-45%
     (0-1 years)

   Applied Research                        40-45% resource
     (1 – 5 years)

  Strategic Research                         10% resource
       ((5+ years)
            y    )

        R&D                                                          © BBC MMXIII
What are we trying to achieve by collaborating with academia?

• To build critical mass in topics of national significance
   – This is encouraged and rewarded by the Funding Bodies so that the
     really big problems that are transformational can be addressed
• To jointly develop IPR that goes into Standards
   – in particular Open Standards in order to drive uptake by wider
     i d t
     industry
• To host research students from universities in order to improve their
  employability prospects in industry and their prospects in academia
   – by giving them a more rounded perspective of research challenges
     being solved in the real world

    R&D                                                            © BBC MMXIII
Our multi-university partnerships

• Partnerships with a core group of “best of breed” universities in the
  relevant field
• Agreed terms for IPR and shared goals for the key work areas
• Collaboration activities include sponsoring / hosting PhD students,
  hosting MSc students, supporting EPSRC proposals (including
  programme grants), seeking EU/TSB funding opportunities, external
  PhDs for BBC staff, guest lectures from BBC staff
• Surrey, Salford, QMUL, Southampton, York:
– BBC Audio Research Partnership – 5-year programme of activities on
  audio technology,
                 gy including g spatial
                                 p      & object-based
                                            j          audio, audio
  semantics
• UCL, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bath, Swansea, Dundee:
– BBC User Experience & Accessibility Research Partnership – 4    4-year
                                                                     year
  programme on new models of user experience, physical interaction
  methods, accessibility, interfaces for programme production technology

    R&D                                                              © BBC MMXIII
Audio Research Partnership ‘Launch’ event

    R&D                                     © BBC MMXIII
Other key partnerships

• UCL: Four-year partnership with 80 co-located staff (including BBC staff
  running our Connected Studio innovation programme)
   – programme of research work that seeks to advance state-of-the-art in
     communications technologies, internet research, content production, user
     experience (UXD) and access services
• Bristol: Working with Bristol Immersive Technology Lab on new video formats
  and compression techniques
   – iCase studentship; BBC staff member on secondment; TSB and EU project
     applications
• Manchester: steering group between Manchester and BBC (not just R&D part)
   – covers graduate recruitment, mentoring, skills development, and public
     policy in addition to identifying opportunities for research projects

    R&D                                                           © BBC MMXIII
Support of Doctoral Training Centres

• Currently work with DTCs at Lancaster, Southampton, Manchester,
  Nottingham
• Letters of support recently written for 11 further Doctoral Training Centre
  applications – expect around 4-5 to be funded

    R&D                                                                 © BBC MMXIII
Other partnerships

• Currently have iCase studentships with York, Salford, Surrey,
  Sheffield
• Links with Cambridge including through Cambridge Wireless (network
  of over 300 companies involved in wireless technology)
• Master’s student projects with various other universities, e.g. Royal
  Holloway

    R&D                                                             © BBC MMXIII
What works well about university collaborations

• Combining in-depth theoretical knowledge from
  academia with practical real real-world
                                    world experiences
  and challenges from BBC
    – Helps academic research meet our practical
        needsd
    – Allows new problems to be addressed
    – Gives academics access to real-world datasets
• Additional resource
    – Increases the number of people and range of
        facilities that we can bring to bear on our key
        challenges: more than we could afford by
        working entirely in-house
• It
  It’ss fun!
    – Broadens network of people that we know,
        learn about related areas, make new friends

    R&D                                                   © BBC MMXIII
What doesn’t work so well about university collaborations

• Teaching duties of academics can make it difficult to schedule meetings
  or get enough of their time
• Time frames for academic research tend to be long (often 3 years)
   – Can be difficult to work with academia on shorter-term problems
• Some universities still see IPR ownership as important, which makes it
  difficult for us to reach agreement
   – But manyy universities now realise that more value comes throughg
       demonstrating impact of their work (helps get more EPSRC funding)
       than through owning the IPR
   – We always freely licence the IPR back to the university for teaching
       & research

    R&D                                                              © BBC MMXIII
Thanks for your attention!

          Graham
          G  h   Th
                 Thomas
             BBC R&D

      graham.thomas@bbc.co.uk
         h   th     @bb     k
           www.bbc.co.uk/rd

R&D                                © BBC MMXIII
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