MARCH 2003 BROADSHEET - Secret Science
It is with great sadness that we have to announce that our President, Professor Roger Needham, CBE, FRS, died on 1st March of cancer. He was former head of Cambridge University Computer Laboratory and latterly MD of Microsoft Research. We were much honoured by his interest in the Club and he will be a greatly missed by the computer industry and academia throughout the world. Our heartfelt sympathies are with his widow, Karen.
On Thursday 27th February we at last managed to piece together the Secret Science we were denied by the great blizzard on 30th January. We are sorry for those who couldn't return but many others filled the gap to reach a capacity audience. Two of the casualties were the van Someren brothers, Alex and Nicko, who have had such remarkable success with their company nCipher. Instead their story was ably told by Richard Youell, Operations Director. Since its inception in 1996 nCipher has achieved a significant proportion of the world market in Hardware Security Modules for generating cryptographic keys, essential to the security of internet financial transactions. An FBI survey found that 49% of fraud was perpetrated by insiders reducing the effectiveness of firewalls. Hence the rise of nCipher's popularity with its non-repudiation software, the equivalent to a signature which cannot be denied. With a 27% year on year increase for web servers using SSL protocol, according to a Netcraft survey, this market holds an enviable future for these young brothers. (For more try richard@ncipher.com)
Mike Kemp, CEO of Teraview, then revealed a startling application for a previously unexploited band of the electromagnetic spectrum, between radio and light; 1013-1011 Hz, Terahertz or far-infrared. The Toshiba Lab in Cambridge had been trying it for medical imaging and were looking for other applications. Teraview, spun out of Toshiba with funding from TTP Ventures and others, has now exploited this non-ionising radiation and built a scanning probe which can look into luggage at airports and see non-metallic objects such as Semtex at different depths. It can even focus on to separate sheets of paper in an envelope and read each page without opening it. Spooky! (For more try mike.kemp@teraview.co.uk)
Mike Hunter followed with crime investigation, which is like finding a needle in a haystack. At the scene of a crime nothing can be discarded as irrelevant and consequently incident rooms become hopelessly overwhelmed. This is were Mike's company i2 Limited came to the rescue 12 years ago and is now being used to hunt down sophisticated organized crime and terrorism throughout the world. Even George Bush could be seen studying i2's comprehensive charts pinpointing every coincidence discovered by this amazing piece of software. Using dramatic computer generated star-burst diagrams Mike showed how this analytical tool could be used to home in on the master criminal at the centre of a heist. (For more try MikeH@i2.co.uk)
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