High speed software puts firm on fast track

A SOFTWARE product founded by Irishman Walter O’Brien has won the aerospace and security technologies category of the annual Connect awards in San Diego, California.

ScenGen is a software programme which generates solutions for any given situation at very high speed. The technology, which is aimed at companies and agencies who want to reduce risk, is a model-based system which generates 1.6 million test scenarios per second. It also determines single point of failure (SPOF) in systems, and delineates optimisation scenarios, by finding the shortest path to a particular need.

Its applications include finance management, cyber security and exhaustive training aimed at systems with a high amount of downtime, such as air traffic and nuclear plants or credit card and trading transaction systems.

The technology, which was developed by O’Brien’s company Scorpion and is also sold through business consultancy companies in the US, is used by military, navy and army agencies, including the US navy. Scorpion also sells direct to credit card companies, insurance companies, banks and healthcare companies.

Born in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, O’Brien grew up in Kilkenny, and represented Ireland in the field of high-speed computer problem-solving in the 1993 International Olympics in Informatics.

After graduating with a degree in computer science and artificial intelligence at Sussex University in the UK, he moved to the US, where he set up a number of companies, including Scorpion.

The company has developed a range of software products, mostly in the field of artificial intelligence. According to O’Brien, the products have not been patented, as doing so would require disclosure of the source code behind each invention.

Previous winners of the aerospace and security Connect award are Trex Aviation System’s Fod Finder, which detects, catalogues and removes foreign object debris (Fod) on airport surfaces such as runways, ramps and taxi areas.