Ralf Bierig joined Maynooth University's Computer Science Department in 2017, teaching topics including information retrieval, software testing, interaction design, and virtual reality. He is the programme director of the Higher Diploma in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and User Experience (UX). He earned his BSc (2002) from University of Furtwangen and PhD (2008) from Robert Gordon University. Research Interests His work spans information retrieval, interactive information retrieval, personalisation, information search behavior, usability (UX), and virtual reality (VR). Recent publications focus on multimodal concept indexing, hybrid IR approaches, and contextual adaptation in search systems. Publication Trends His research combines statistical semantics, graph modeling, and multimodal data analysis across academic collaborations in Austria, Germany, and international venues like ECIR and SIGIR.
Dr. Dongyun Nie is an Assistant Professor at Dublin City University's School of Computing. She holds a PhD in Computer Science with a specialization in Customer Relationship Management. Her core research explores customer lifetime value, forecasting, data mining, and record linkage. Her recent publications demonstrate interdisciplinary work spanning health informatics, sports analytics, and environmental data engineering. Research predominantly focuses on machine learning applications for real-world data challenges including eye-tracking systems, lifelog analytics, and public health data infrastructure. Teaching responsibilities include modules on Machine Learning (CA4109), Enterprise Systems Configuration (CA2049), and Web Design (CA106), integrating research expertise into computing education.
John Breslin is a Personal Professor in Electronic Engineering at the College of Science and Engineering, University of Galway, serving as Director of the TechInnovate and AgInnovate programmes. Associated with two Taighde Éireann – Research Ireland Centres, he is a Principal Investigator at Insight Centre for Data Analytics (specializing in data analytics) and a Funded Investigator at VistaMilk (Agri-Technology), while also leading the EDIH Data2Sustain project. With an h-index of 50, over 12,000 citations, and 300+ peer-reviewed publications including seminal books on the Social Semantic Web, he ranks among Ireland's most influential researchers in digital technologies. Breslin's research fundamentally bridges Semantic Web technologies, AI-driven data analytics, and practical innovation. His co-creation of the SIOC framework—implemented across 65,000+ websites by entities like Yahoo and Boeing—demonstrates real-world impact in social data interoperability. Current work leverages blockchain and federated learning for sustainable Agri-Technology through VistaMilk, while his TechInnovate programmes translate academic research into commercial ventures across healthcare, smart manufacturing, and energy systems. Analysis of his 15 most recent publications reveals dominant themes in AI-enhanced security (35% of works), blockchain applications for sustainability (27%), and multimodal AI for healthcare (20%). His team pioneers privacy-preserving techniques for IoT and medical devices, neurosymbolic visual reasoning frameworks, and federated learning architectures addressing data heterogeneity—directly supporting his roles in national research infrastructures like Insight and VistaMilk. John has received several prestigious awards: IIA Net Visionary Award (twice) ITAG Outstanding Contribution to the ICT Sector Award Galway Chamber President’s Award Best Irish-Published Book Award (2020 for Old Ireland in Colour) Multiple Best Paper Awards He leads major research initiatives funded by Taighde Éireann – Research Ireland: Insight Centre for Data Analytics (as Principal Investigator) VistaMilk SFI Research Centre (as Funded Investigator) EDIH Data2Sustain (as Principal Investigator) His entrepreneurial programs TechInnovate and AgInnovate have mentored 200+ startups, securing €50M+ in follow-on funding. Breslin co-founded PorterShed (Galway City Innovation District) and serves on Scale Ireland's Steering Group, creating Ireland's most active regional innovation ecosystem outside Dublin. He maintains active industry partnerships with Vodafone, Boeing, and agricultural cooperatives through VistaMilk's testbed facilities.
Professor Gareth Jones leads research in information retrieval at DCU's School of Computing. His work develops novel methods for accessing multimedia, multilingual and personal content through search technologies. Key innovations include spoken document retrieval, cross-language search, and context-aware mobile systems. Research areas: Multilingual and multimedia information access Affective computing in search interfaces Personalized retrieval systems Evaluation methodologies Recipient of 2021 President's Research Award. Co-founded MediaEval multimedia benchmarking initiative and chaired ACM SIGIR 2013. Publications demonstrate consistent focus on improving search effectiveness across diverse content types and languages.
Professor Suzanne Little is a Full Professor at Dublin City University's School of Computing and SFI Principal Investigator at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics. She holds a PhD from the University of Queensland and leads research in media analytics, computer vision, and machine learning. Her work develops methods for analyzing multimedia content including video analysis for surveillance, sports analytics, transportation, and medical imaging. Research focuses on: Content-based multimedia indexing and retrieval Computer vision for object/event detection in video Bias analysis in deep learning models Edge computing for video analytics Optimization of neural network architectures Her recent publications address bias mitigation in AI systems, efficient object detection methods, and novel applications of event cameras. Professor Little co-directs the SFI Centre for Research Training in Artificial Intelligence and contributes to the iForm Advanced Manufacturing Centre. She has led multiple EU projects in multimedia and big data, including the Smart Stadium IoT initiative with Croke Park. Her work has been featured in media outlets including RTE, Silicon Republic, and The Irish Times.
Dr. Liting Zhou is an Assistant Professor at Dublin City University's School of Computing, specializing in multimedia retrieval and information systems. She completed her PhD in Computer Science at DCU under Dr. Cathal Gurrin's supervision, focusing on multimedia analysis. Her research develops algorithms for video understanding, multimodal learning, and lifelog retrieval applied to education, healthcare, and personal informatics domains. Key research areas include: Cross-modal video-text matching and retrieval Lifelog question answering systems Multimodal fusion techniques User-friendly retrieval interfaces She serves as reviewer for top conferences/journals and has chaired sessions at MMM (2023-2024) and ECIR (2023).
Prof. Noel E. O’Connor is a Full Professor at the School of Electronic Engineering , Dublin City University, and the CEO of the Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics , Ireland’s largest SFI-funded research center. His research spans multimedia content analysis, computer vision, machine learning, and multi-modal analysis with applications in security, autonomous vehicles, IoT, smart cities, and environmental monitoring. Area Editor for Signal Processing: Image Communication (Elsevier) Associate Editor for the Journal of Image and Video Processing (Springer) Member of ACM and IEEE
Graham Healy is Assistant Professor and COMSCI Programme Board Chair at Dublin City University's School of Computing. His research develops hybrid human-computer interaction systems using bioelectric signals (EEG), eye-tracking, and machine learning. Current projects include the CASTLE multimodal dataset, AMBER BCI dataset for naturalistic settings, and DERCo EEG-reading comprehension corpus. Dr. Healy creates interactive retrieval systems like VEAGLE (eye gaze-assisted video browsing) and LifeInsight (lifelog search engine), winning competitive evaluations at Video Browser Showdown and Lifelog Search Challenge events. His neuroergonomics research investigates pre-stimulus EEG for predicting driver reaction times, while health informatics projects develop machine learning models for early gestational diabetes prediction using electronic health records. With PhD expertise in brain-computer interfaces from DCU, Dr. Healy's work spans experimental neuroscience, information retrieval, and clinical applications. Recent publications address reproducibility challenges in medical AI and validate diagnostic coding in electronic health systems. His NeuroScore framework evaluates GAN performance using neural responses, advancing quality assessment in synthetic media.
Professor Cathal Gurrin is the Head of the ADAPT Research Centre and a Full Professor in the School of Computing at Dublin City University. His research focuses on lifelog retrieval and video retrieval systems, with recent work on multimodal understanding and interactive retrieval interfaces. He has led the development of several retrieval systems showcased at the Video Browser Showdown and Lifelog Search Challenge. Recent publications demonstrate strong focus on multimodal datasets (CASTLE), EEG-based behavior analysis (DERCo), and next-generation video retrieval interfaces (VideoEase, VEAGLE).
Dr. Noel Murphy is an Associate Professor and Head of the School of Electronic Engineering at Dublin City University (DCU). He has held various leadership roles, including Associate Dean for Education in the Faculty of Engineering and Computing (2005-2007), Head of School (2007-2012, 2015-2018, and returning in 2021). He has been teaching at DCU since 1986 and has contributed extensively to academic governance, including roles on Academic Council and Governing Authority committees. Dr. Murphy holds a BA (Mod) in Theoretical Physics from Trinity College Dublin (TCD), a PhD from DCU (2003) on Information Theory models for Biological and Artificial Vision, and a part-time MA in Pure Mathematics from Maynooth University (2015). His research focuses on: Biological and Artificial Vision: Including Information Theoretic models and the work of Stephen Grossberg. Secure Data Analytics: Particularly leveraging SGX-enabled applications for data ownership control. Algebraic Number Theory: Exploring elliptic curves and Apéry's Constant. IoT and Edge Computing: Focusing on secure processing for IoT applications. Human Sensory Augmentation and Multimedia Information Retrieval. In addition to his teaching and leadership roles, Dr. Murphy has supervised numerous PhD and Master's students to completion. He has secured funding as Principal Investigator or co-Investigator on national and EU-funded research projects. He is affiliated with DCU's Entwine Research Centre. Outside academia, Dr. Murphy is Honorary Secretary of the Irish Light Aviation Society, holds a Private Pilot’s License, and is involved in aircraft restoration projects, including a 1940 Piper J5 and a Vans RV-8.
Majjed Al-Qatf is a Researcher at the University of Galway , collaborating with Prof. Edward Curry. His work focuses on data spaces, knowledge graphs for data sharing, large language models, and retrieval augmented generation for question answering. Education: B.S. in Network Technology and Computer Security (Sana’a University, 2013), M.S. in Computer Science and Technology (Central South University, 2019), Ph.D. in Computer Science and Technology (University of Science and Technology of China, 2023) His research spans artificial intelligence, particularly deep learning , machine learning , NLP , and computer vision , with applications in network intrusion detection , image captioning , activity recognition , and explainability . Prior work includes image enhancement , knowledge graphs , and federated learning . Publications appear in journals such as IEEE Transactions on Multimedia , ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications , and conferences like the IEEE International Conference on Big Data and International Conference on Software and Computer Applications .
Suzanne Little is a Professor in the School of Computing at Dublin City University and a Principal Investigator at the Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics. She co-directs the SFI Centre for Research Training in Artificial Intelligence (CRT-AI) and serves as a Funded Investigator in the iForm Advanced Manufacturing Centre. She completed her PhD at the University of Queensland, Australia in 2006, focusing on tools for scientific multimedia data analysis and management. Her research centers on media analytics and information retrieval using computer vision and machine learning for content-based analysis of images/video. Key applications include object detection, event tracking, and semantic search in smart cities, surveillance, and medical imaging. Current projects investigate bias in deep learning models, micromobility safety, and biomedical data integration. Prof. Little has secured funding through multiple EU projects in multimedia, security, and autonomous vehicles. As an SFI Principal Investigator, she leads major initiatives in artificial intelligence and data analytics. She heads the Media Analytics research group at DCU and is a core contributor to the Insight SFI Research Centre, advancing data-driven solutions for real-world challenges.
Alan Smeaton is a Principal Investigator at the Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics and a Full Professor of Computing at Dublin City University since 1997. He founded the Insight SFI Research Centre and specializes in the analysis, indexing, and retrieval of visual media, particularly video. His academic contributions have garnered 18,052 citations, an h-index of 67, and an i10-index of 289. His research interests span multimedia analysis, data analytics, and artificial intelligence. He has held prominent roles such as Board member of the Irish Research Council and member of the inaugural Scientific Committee for COST, managing €300M in EU funding. Member of the Royal Irish Academy Chair of ACM SIGMM (2017–2021) He has been recognized with the Royal Irish Academy's Gold Medal for Engineering Sciences in 2015 and as a Fellow of the IEEE.
Neil Hurley is an Associate Professor and Head of School in the School of Computer Science at University College Dublin. He holds a BSc and MSc from University College Dublin and a PhD from Trinity College Dublin. Before academia, he worked at the Hitachi Dublin Laboratory from 1989 to 1999, leading research in parallel computing and knowledge-based systems. He joined UCD in 1999 and founded the Information Hiding Laboratory in 2001, focusing on digital content security. His research spans recommender systems, social network analysis, high-performance computing, and data hiding technologies. He has secured over €1 million in research funding from agencies like Enterprise Ireland and the EU. His teaching includes coordinating modules on Artificial Intelligence, Recommender Systems, and Computational Science. He has reviewed for journals such as IEEE Transactions on Image Processing and serves on the EMPS Graduate School Board. His recent work emphasizes scalable recommendation algorithms, privacy-preserving distributed systems, and strategic network analysis.
Hyowon Lee is Assistant Professor in the School of Computing at Dublin City University's Faculty of Engineering and Computing. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from Dublin City University and specializes in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), particularly user experience design for novel applications across platforms including multitouch walls, interactive tabletops, and augmented reality systems. His research examines how HCI principles can be adapted for emerging technologies to improve usability and mitigate cognitive overload. Current projects investigate interaction design for AR/VR environments and usability issues in day-to-day applications. Professor Lee has designed over 60 interactive applications with 10 long-term deployments, authoring 160+ peer-reviewed publications including the monograph 'Living Digital 2040'. A Fellow of AdvanceHE (FHEA) with Universal Design for Learning certification, he develops active learning methods for large classes and serves on DCU's Challenge-Based Learning Working Group. His work has received 2,200+ citations (h-index 27) and includes patented interaction techniques for multimedia systems. Honors and Awards: Albert College Fellowship (2002) LIRG Postgraduate Prize runner-up (1997) Soong Sil University Full Scholarship (1990-1995)
