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Smart and Energy Efficient Buildings and Communities

Enable investigators and industry partners present the latest research into energy efficiency, automation systems and technology for buildings, smart-buildings and communities.

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  • About
  • Research
  • Industry
  • People
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  • Contact

Connecting communities
with smart urban
environments through
the Internet of Things.

  • About
  • Research
  • Industry
  • People
  • News
  • Contact
Trinity College Dublin Ireland's European Structural and Investement Fund Programmes 2014-2020 European Regional Development Fund Science Foundation Ireland CONNECT Lero Insight

About

In collaboration with industry partners and via citizen engagement, ENABLE is addressing the challenges that currently limit the potential benefits of IoT for communities. This involves a focus on enabling smarter buildings, more efficient transportation/ mobility, better handling of environmental issues, stronger data privacy, and enhanced cyber and infrastructure security.

Enable researchers work in

DCU Maynooth University NUIG Trinity College Dublin UCC University of Limerick

Research

ENABLE has three research strands supported by a cross-cutting theme of Citizen Engagement, reflecting ENABLE’s human-centric approach of engaging people in the co-design of technology solutions that will affect their daily lives.

Three Strands

Sensing + Actuation

01 Sensing + Actuation

This strand deals with research questions relating to the ability to actuate on the environment for the good of communities on the basis of data from dynamic, urban-scale IoT sensor networks, sensed in an integrated and robust manner.

Connected Decisions

02 Connected Decisions

This strand addresses the research challenges of making decisions at scale to drive this actuation: how to make decisions in a coherent/connected manner for multiple stakeholders from a large number of dynamic, conflicting and noisy data sources.

Privacy + Security

03 Privacy + Security

This research strand will focus on the confidentiality, integrity, availability and provenance of data and its management by people and applications in the environment.

Test-beds

ENABLE has access to a range of test-beds that allow our technology to be deployed outside the laboratory. These test-beds allow us to combine, assess and evaluate results from our three research strands. This is vital to ENABLE’s mission of closing the sense-analyse-actuate loop and measuring impact on real people.

  1. Smart Building

    Smart Building

    We will research smart services that improve energy usage, increase sustainability, track occupants and objects, and make buildings more resiliant. Integrated sensing, actuation, decision support and IoT infrastructure in building/clusters of buildings will be registered.

  2. Smart Town

    Smart Town

    Mallow Urban and Rural Community Test-bed (MURCT) - provides volunteers willing to participate in tests and pilots, providing ongoing feedback to the researchers.

  3. Smart Stadium

    Smart Stadium

    Croke Park, Ireland’s premier stadium - a smart cities test-bed with a focus on electricity and water consumption, crowd flow monitoring; and traffic management.

  4. Smart City

    Smart City

    The Irish Financial Services Centre (IFSC) - with access to smart building and smart mobility research prototypes in collaboration with Dublin City Council.

Industry

ENABLE is structured to work in close collaboration with our industry partners. This collaboration will focus on four domains:

Smart Buildings

01 Smart Buildings

We will research smart services that improve energy usage, increase sustainability, track occupants and objects, and make buildings more resilient. Integrated sensing, actuation, decision support and IoT infrastructure in buildings/clusters of buildings will be required.

Smart Mobility

02 Smart Mobility

We will address mobility challenges facing urban communities including congestion management, parking management and resulting air pollution.

Smart Environments

03 Smart Environments

We will address a broad range of challenges focused on water management, air pollution, and contamination.

Smart Networks

04 Smart Networks

We will concentrate on the underpinning network technology, e.g., resilient, optimised, scalable, secure and privacy-aware edge network community service enablement.

People

  • Role
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    • Associate Investigator
    • Deputy Director & Principal Investigator
    • Director & Principal Investigator
    • Executive Director
    • Funded Investigator
    • Principal Investigator
  • Institute
    • View All
    • Dublin City University
    • Maynooth University
    • Munster Technological University
    • Trinity College Dublin
    • University College Cork
    • University College Dublin
    • University of Limerick
    • Search

Private: Lydia Arce

 
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Private: Lydia Arce

Institute
Trinity College Dublin
Email
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Lydia Arce is a visiting research assistant under supervision of Emma Leahy at ENABLE in Trinity College and Edward Emmanuel of Enable’s targeted project ‘Smart Docklands’.

Lydia has just completed her studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with honors, studying Intensive Psychology. During her time at UC Santa Cruz, she served as a lead undergraduate research assistant for the Spontaneous Communication Laboratory. She also held positions as a peer advisor and fundraiser for the UC Santa Cruz Psychology Department.

 

Lydia’s main interests are in I/O psychology and behavioral science. Her hope is to better understand how IoT and big data can address challenges faced in cities.

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Mélanie Bouroche

Principal Investigator
 
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Mélanie Bouroche

Principal Investigator
Institute
Trinity College Dublin
Email
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Mélanie Bouroche  graduated from INP Grenoble, France, in 2003, and was awarded an M.Sc. in Computer Science (2003) and a PhD (2008) from Trinity College Dublin.

Mélanie is a lecturer and manager of the Future Cities Research program in the School of Computer Science and  Statistics at Trinity College Dublin. She has over 15 year experience in research key programming abstractions for urban-scale reliable context-aware applications, in conjunction with a number of indigenous and multinational companies, as well as public bodies, including Intel Labs, Bell Labs, and Dublin City Council.  Her research addresses many aspects of Distributed Systems, in particular Middleware for Future Cities, Participatory Sensing and Smart Vehicle Coordination.

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Ken Brown

Principal Investigator
 
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Ken Brown

Principal Investigator
Institute
University College Cork
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Ken Brown is a Principal Investigator and member of the Steering Committee of Enable.

He is also a Principal Investigator on Insight, the Deputy Director of Insight at University College Cork, and is a Professor in the School of Computer Science in University College Cork.  

His research interests are in the application of AI, optimisation and distributed reasoning, with a particular focus on smart mobility and wireless networking, with applications in smart cities, manufacturing and transport. 

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Brian Caulfield

Funded Investigator
 
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Brian Caulfield

Funded Investigator
Institute
Trinity College Dublin
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Dr Brian Caulfield is a Funded Investigator at CONNECT in Trinity College Dublin.

Dr Brian Caulfield is an Associate Professor and Head of Discipline in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, Trinity College Dublin. He has been active in transport research for over 10 years and to date has attracted €3.4m in research funding from both National and EU funding sources. His research focuses upon the optimisation of transportation networks with the goal of reducing emissions and meeting our climate change targets.

In 2017, he addressed the Irish Citizens Assembly on Climate Change, providing evidence on what low carbon transport options Ireland could adopt to meet emission reduction targets and in 2020 provided evidence to the Climate Change Advisory Authority on transport and climate change. In 2021, he addressed the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Action twice on this this topic. He is currently a member of the steering group for the update and renewal of the Greater Dublin Area transport strategy for the National Transport Authority.

Dr Caulfield has published 80 peer-reviewed journal papers on the topic of transportation and is an Editor of Transport Policy (Impact factor: 4.674 ) and a Senior Editor of Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (Impact factor: 14.982).

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Siobhán Clarke

Director & Principal Investigator
 
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Siobhán Clarke

Director & Principal Investigator
Institute
Trinity College Dublin
Email
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Siobhán Clarke is the Director of Enable. She is also a Principal Investigator at CONNECT in Trinity College Dublin from where Enable is led. She is also a Principal Investigator with the Insight and Lero Research Centres.

Siobhán is also Professor in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin. She joined Trinity in 2000, having previously worked for over ten years as a software engineer for IBM. Her current research focus is on software engineering models for the provision of smart and dynamic software services to urban stakeholders, addressing challenges in the engineering of dynamic software in ad hoc, mobile environments.

She has published over 150 papers and is a Science Foundation Ireland Principal Investigator, exploring an Internet of Things middleware for adaptable, urban-scale software services.

Siobhán is also the founding director of Future Cities, the Trinity Centre for Smart and Sustainable Cities, with contributors from a range of disciplines, including Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering, Social Science, Geography, Law, Business and the Health Sciences.

She leads the School’s Distributed Systems Group, and was elected Fellow of Trinity College Dublin in 2006.

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John Connolly

Funded Investigator
 
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John Connolly

Funded Investigator
Institute
Dublin City University
Email
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John Connolly is an assistant professor in the School of History and Geography at Dublin City University and a Funded Investigator at Enable.

He is an Environmental Protection Agency funded principal investigator and was awarded a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship in 2011. He has published 16 peer reviewed publications. He was recently invited to be a guest editor for the open access journal Frontiers in Earth Sciences. His research focuses on the use and application of Earth Observation and GIS to study: terrestrial carbon dynamics in Temperate, Boreal and Arctic peatlands; land use and land cover change; environmental degradation in peatlands and urban solar prospecting. 

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Federico Cugurullo

Associate Investigator
 
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Federico Cugurullo

Associate Investigator
Institute
Trinity College Dublin
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Federico Cugurullo is Assistant Professor in Smart and Sustainable Urbanism at Trinity College Dublin and an Associate Investigator at Enable . His research is positioned at the intersection of urban geography, political philosophy and experimental urbanism, and explores how ideas of sustainability are cultivated and implemented across geographical spaces, with a focus on projects for smart and eco-cities. 

He is currently researching how artificial intelligence is impacting on urban governance and planning. 

Federico has done extensive empirical research in the Middle East and Southeast Asia where he has investigated the sustainability performance of supposedly experimental cities such as Masdar City in Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong. His work has been used by the United Nations and the United Kingdom’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to foresee future urban challenges and develop preventive policies. 

Building upon empirical grounds, Federico’s main theoretical aspiration (also the subject of his forthcoming book) is the development of urban equations for a sustainable urbanism. Other theoretical contributions include the concept of urban eco-modernisation, and the theory of de-composed urbanism and Frankenstein cities. 

Before joining Trinity College Dublin, Federico held positions at the University of Manchester, King’s College London and the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

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Private: Mathieu d’Aquin

Funded Investigator
 
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Private: Mathieu d’Aquin

Funded Investigator
Institute
NUI Galway
Email
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Mathieu d’Aquin is a Funded Investigator at Enable and Professor of Informatics specialised in data analytics and semantic technologies at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics of the National University of Ireland Galway.

He was previously Senior Research Fellow at the Knowledge Media Institute of the Open University, where he led the Data Science Group. 

Mathieu d’Aquin engages in leading research and development activities around the meaningful sharing and exploitation of distributed information. He works on applying the technologies coming out of his research, especially Semantic Web/Linked Data technologies, in various domains including medicine, education especially through learning analytics, Smart Cities & the Internet of Things, personal data management, etc. 

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Anna Davies

Principal Investigator
 
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Anna Davies

Principal Investigator
Institute
Trinity College Dublin
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Anna Davies is Professor of Geography, Environment and Society at Trinity College Dublin, where she directs the Environmental Governance Research Group. She is also a member of the Royal Irish Academy.

With undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from The University of Cambridge, Anna is widely published with more than 100 publications and leads diverse research projects at the intersection of environmental governance and sustainability science. She has advised the Irish Government as an independent member of its National Economic and Social Council and Ireland’s National Climate Change Advisory Council, as well as being a Board Member of the European Roundtable on Sustainable Consumption and Production and a founding member of Future Earth’s Knowledge Action Network (KAN) on Systems of Sustainable Consumption and Production, where she co-chairs the working group on social change beyond consumption. Anna was also the founding Chair of Future Earth Ireland and is an elected Governing Board Member of the International Science Council.

A keen supporter of grassroots sustainability initiatives, Anna has been a long-standing Board Member of The Rediscovery Centre in Dublin, a creative space connecting people, ideas and resources for greener living in Ireland. Anna currently holds a European Research Council grant entitled SHARECITY, which is examining the practice and sustainability potential of urban ICT-mediated food sharing initiatives and leads the citizen engagement research within the ENABLE SFI Spoke.

Anna received the Irish Research Council’s Irish Researcher of the Year in 2018.

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Brian Donnellan

Principal Investigator
 
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Brian Donnellan

Principal Investigator
Institute
Maynooth University
Email
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Prof. Brian Donnellan is Vice-President and Dean of International Affairs at Maynooth University.

He is Professor of Information Systems Innovation at Maynooth University and is Co-Director of the Innovation Value Institute. He researches and develops unifying frameworks and road-maps to deliver IT enabled innovation whilst validating that these frameworks/tools have a broad applicability across differing industries and contexts. Prior to becoming an academic he spent 20 years working in the ICT industry.

He is also the chairperson of the All Ireland Smart Cities Forum (AISCF), which represents the seven cities on the island of Ireland. It is focused on the advancement of cities in both Ireland and Northern Ireland through the deployment of, and value creation from, technology enabled urban services. The members include Dublin Local Authorities, Cork City Council and Cork Smart Gateway, Waterford City and County Council, Limerick City and County Council, Galway City Council, Derry City and Strabane District Council and Belfast City Council.

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Linda Doyle

Funded Investigator
 
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Linda Doyle

Funded Investigator
Institute
Email
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Linda Doyle is Trinity’s Dean of Research and Funded Investigator at CONNECT. She is Professor of Engineering and The Arts in Trinity College Dublin, and served previously as the founding Director of CONNECT.

Prof. Doyle was also the Director of CTVR, the precursor to CONNECT. Her expertise is in the fields of wireless communications, cognitive radio, reconfigurable networks, spectrum management and creative arts practices. Much of her research is currently focused on the OMG group.

She has raised over €70 million in research funding in the past decade and has published widely in her field. Prof. Doyle has a reputation as an advocate for change in spectrum management practices and has played a role in spectrum policy at the national and international level. She is a member of the Ofcom Spectrum Advisory Board in the UK.

Prof. Doyle is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. She is on the Board of the Festival of Curiosity – a STEM outreach activity for children based on a city-centre yearly science festival. She is also a judge in the BT Young Scientist, Ireland’s premier science competition for school children. She is on the Boards of the Douglas Hyde Gallery and Pallas Studios. Prof. Doyle is a Director of Xcelerit and SRS, two CTVR/CONNECT spin-outs.

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Ivana Dusparic

Principal Investigator
 
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Ivana Dusparic

Principal Investigator
Institute
Trinity College Dublin
Email
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Ivana Dusparic is an Ussher Assistant Professor in Future Cities and the Internet of Things in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin. Prior to taking up this position in 2016, she has been an Assistant Professor in University College Dublin (2015-2016), and a Research Fellow in Trinity (2010-2015).

She obtained her PhD from Trinity College Dublin in 2010.

Her research interests lie in the use of Artificial Intelligence (machine learning, intelligent agents and multi-agent systems) to achieve autonomous optimization of large-scale heterogeneous infrastructures, with particular focus on smart cities applications and sustainable urban mobility.

Visit Ivana’s profile page on the School of Computer Science and Statistics website, which includes a link to publications.

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Breiffni Fitzgerald

Associate Investigator
 
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Breiffni Fitzgerald

Associate Investigator
Institute
Email
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Breiffni Fitzgerald is an Ussher Assistant Professor in Energy Systems in the School of Engineering at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and associate investigator at SFI Enable and CONNECT. 

Prior to his appointment at TCD in 2016 he was a Lecturer in the School of Civil Engineering, Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT). He received his PhD from Trinity College Dublin in November 2013 and following this he was a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at TCD. 

Dr Fitzgerald’s research interests lie in the areas of dynamics and control with application areas in wind energy and renewable energy systems. 

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Bidisha Ghosh

Funded Investigator
 
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Bidisha Ghosh

Funded Investigator
Institute
Trinity College Dublin
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Bidisha Ghosh is a Enable Funded Investigator and Associate Professor in the School of Engineering at Trinity College Dublin (TCD).

She received B.E. in Civil Engineering from Jadavpur University, India, in 2003 and received her PhD in Engineering in 2008 from TCD. She is the current Chair of the Irish Transport Research Network (ITRN). Bidisha leads the research group, QUANT in TCD, which is active in diverse research topics related to computing & sensing in Civil Engineering.

Bidisha is an expert in traffic and emission modelling using fundamental physics, time-series analysis and artificial intelligence. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and a book in the field of traffic forecasting, sensors, cycling, real-time and predictive emission modelling, video data analytics, autonomous vehicles, safety and health impact assessment of urban mobility.

She is also the PI of multiple national and European research projects in the area of intelligent and sustainable transport, emission monitoring and modelling. Bidisha is a member of IEEE and its Intelligent Transport Systems Committee.

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Private: Landon Holben

 
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Private: Landon Holben

Institute
Trinity College Dublin
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Landon Holben is a visiting research assistant at the ENABLE research programme, headquartered at Trinity College Dublin.

Landon is an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. There he majors in foreign affairs with an intended second major in media studies and a minor in Russian and East European studies. He is a member of the executive board of the Wilson Journal of International Affairs and serves as the publication’s media manager. Outside of ENABLE he is also interning with the Smart Dublin team at Dublin City Council.

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Private: Ali Intizar

Associate Investigator
 
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Private: Ali Intizar

Associate Investigator
Institute
NUI Galway
Email
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Dr. Ali Intizar is an Enable Investigator and Adjunct Lecturer, Research Fellow and Head of the research unit for Reasoning, Querying and Real-time Data Analytics at the Data Science Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway.   

His research interests include Big Data Analytics, Real-Time Data Analytics, Data Integration, Internet/Web of Things (IoT), Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Knowledge Graphs. He is actively involved in various nationally and internationally funded research projects aimed at providing IoT-enabled adaptive intelligence for smart city applications and smart enterprise communication systems. Dr. Ali Intizar obtained his Ph.D. (with distinction) from Vienna University of Technology, Austria in 2011. 

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Private: Georgios Iosifidis

Funded Investigator
 
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Private: Georgios Iosifidis

Funded Investigator
Institute
Trinity College Dublin
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George Iosifidis is a CONNECT Funded Investigator and the Ussher Assistant Professor in Future Networks at Trinity College Dublin.

He obtained his PhD degree from University of Thessaly in Greece in 2012. He also holds a Diploma in Avionics Engineering. George worked previously as a Postdoc researcher at CERTH in Greece and Yale University for 2 years respectively.

His research interests lie in the area of wireless network optimization and network economics. Recent topics of focus are mobile edge and fog computing, SDN/NFV solutions, wireless caching systems, and sharing economy applications.

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Private: Aleksandra Kaszubowska-Anandarajah

Associate Investigator
 
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Private: Aleksandra Kaszubowska-Anandarajah

Associate Investigator
Institute
Trinity College Dublin
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Dr Aleksandra Kaszubowska-Anandarajah is a Research Fellow at CONNECT in Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin.

She was awarded a PhD from Dublin City University (DCU) in 2004 for work in the area of broadband access networks using hybrid radio/fiber systems.

Subsequently, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at DCU, focusing on Radio over Fibre networks as well as the application of fast tunable lasers in an optical packet switched systems.

In 2008, Dr. Kaszubowska joined an Irish start-up company Intune Networks Ltd, as a senior optical Engineer, where she worked on developing the world’s first optical packet switched network. She returned to academia in 2014 when she joined the CTVR/CONNECT group at Trinity College Dublin as a strategic research coordinator. Currently, she is working as a principal investigator on a Science Foundation Ireland funded grant.

Her main research interests include spectrally efficient modulation formats, flexible optical networks, real-time programmable transmitters and THz transmission systems. She has published over 70 articles in internationally peer reviewed journals and conferences.

She is a reviewer for journals such as IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology, IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics and IET Communications. She has also been involved in reviewing several of the European Union Framework 7 STREP and Horizon 2020 projects.

Dr Kaszubowska is also a member of the IEEE.

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Martin Klepal

Funded Investigator
 
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Martin Klepal

Funded Investigator
Institute
Munster Technological University
Email
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Dr Martin Klepal leads the People Behaviour & Technology Integration group at Nimbus Research Centre, Cork institute of Technology, specializing in the development of next generation cloud based applications, systems, products and solutions specifically designed to encourage people engagement and improve urban spaces. He is also a Funded Investigator at Enable.

Martin holds patent on the self-calibration mechanism of localisation systems and co-founded the spinout company Showguider Ltd,  a campus company to commercialise research in people engagement technologies.

He is currently coordinating the E2District EU H2020-EE-2015-RIA project on energy efficient optimised district heating and cooling (2016-2019) and managing Moeebius, the H2020, EeB-07-2015 project  aiming to improve district energy performance predictability by people behaviour and demand modelling to facilitate new ESCO business models (2015-2019).

Martin has been also a scientific and technical manager in number of FP7 projects such as the LocON project on safety systems for critical infrastructure protection.

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Private: Emma Leahy

Executive Director
 
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Private: Emma Leahy

Executive Director
Institute
Trinity College Dublin
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Emma Leahy is the Executive Director of the ENABLE research programme, headquartered at Trinity College Dublin.

She has over ten years’ research management experience and holds a Primary Degree in Public Administration, a Postgraduate Diploma in Business, and a Master’s Degree in Business Management. She has experience of grant preparation and management for national, international and European funding applications for a vast number of international funding agencies. Over the last three years Emma has supported over 280 research funding applications for researchers at different levels from project concept, budgeting, award negotiation, project management and final reporting. The funding applications ranged from €10,000 to €13m, engaging with multiple partners from industry and academia. 

Emma joined the Enable team from the AMBER research centre, a Science Foundation Ireland research centre in Trinity College Dublin, where she was involved in securing over €40m in research funding mainly from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 (FP8) and Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) Coordinated Projects. She supported proposals across a number of fields including ICT, Energy, NMBP, Health, Factories of the Future and the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Awards and Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions (MSCA).

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Suzanne Little

Funded Investigator
 
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Suzanne Little

Funded Investigator
Institute
Dublin City University
Email
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Dr Suzanne Little is an assistant professor (lecturer) in the School of Computing at Dublin City University and a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Funded Investigator at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics working in the area of media analytics, information access and retrieval across a variety of application domains. She completed her PhD at the University of Queensland, Australia (2006) in the analysis and management of scientific multimedia data. She has worked on a number of EU projects in the areas of multimedia, technology enhanced education, security, autonomous vehicles and big data. Dr Little is a Principal Investigator in the SFI ENABLE Smart Communities Spoke and the technical lead for the Smart Stadium for Smarter Living project with Intel, Microsoft, Croke Park and Arizona State University developing an Internet of Things testbed. She is also part of the EU H2020 funded Cloud-LSVA and VI-DAS projects in utilising big video and sensor data from instrumented vehicles. Her expertise is in video analysis, semantic search and data integration.

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Alan McGibney

Associate Investigator
 
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Alan McGibney

Associate Investigator
Institute
Munster Technological University
Email
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Alan McGibney is an associate Investigator at Enable and was awarded his PhD in Electronic Engineering from CIT in October 2008. 

His current research focus is on the convergence of digital technologies such as IoT, Blockchain and Machine Learning to support digital transformation.  The objective is to bridge the gap between the digital and physical worlds through enabling technologies that support the deployment, integration, management and verification for large-scale distributed applications in industrial sectors such as Smart Cities, Industry 4.0 and Energy. 

He leads EU funding acquisition and has held scientific and technical management roles in H2020 programme projects including H2020 TOPAs (creating an IoT based Open Building Management System), and INSPEX (Context-Aware Interaction for Visually Impaired and Blind). He is currently co-PI on the SEAI funded project project called DigiBlocks which is focused on the application of Distributed Ledger Technology as a governance structure for future Smart Energy Communities. 

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Kevin McGuinness

Funded Investigator
 
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Kevin McGuinness

Funded Investigator
Institute
Dublin City University
Email
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Dr. Kevin McGuinness is an Assistant Professor in the School of Electronic Engineering at Dublin City University and SFI Funded Investigator at Enable and in the Insight Centre for Data Analytics.  He has a B.Sc (Hons) in Computer Applications (2005) and a Ph.D in Computer Vision (2009) from Dublin City University. Since 2009 he has been a postdoctoral researcher at the CLARITY Centre for Sensor Web Technologies, a Research Fellow at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, and is currently teaching graduate-level data analysis and machine learning for the School of Electronic Engineering. He has 60+ peer-reviewed publications including 14 journal articles and 2 book chapters. His research is currently focused on deep semi-supervised and multi-task learning in computer vision. 

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Gabriel Muntean

Funded Investigator
 
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Gabriel Muntean

Funded Investigator
Institute
Dublin City University
Email
munteang@eeng.dcu.ieCopied to clipboard
 

Gabriel Muntean is a Funded Investigator at Enable.

POSITIONS

  • Associate Professor – School of Electronic Engineering, Dublin City University, Ireland
  • Co-Director – Performance Engineering Laboratory, Dublin City University, Ireland
  • Consultant Professor – Beijing University of Posts & Telecommunications, China

RESEARCH

  • Quality-oriented Adaptive Multimedia Streaming
  • Performance of Mobile and Wireless Networking
  • Energy-aware Networking
  • Performance-aware Technology-enhanced Learning Systems

EDUCATION

  • Ph.D. (2003) School of Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Computing and Engineering Dublin City University, Ireland
  • M.Eng. (1997) and B.Eng. (1996) Computer Science Department, Computer Science and Control Engineering Faculty“Politehnica” University of Timisoara, Romania
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Alessandra Mileo

Funded Investigator
 
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Alessandra Mileo

Funded Investigator
Institute
Dublin City University
Email
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Dr. Alessandra Mileo is an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in the School of Computing, and a Funded Investigator in the INSIGHT Centre for Data Analytics and a Funded Investigator in the I-Form Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, Dublin City University. Before moving to Dublin City University (DCU), she was a Senior Research Fellow in the NUIG site of INSIGHT, where she has acquired funding from both the EU and Industry to built and led a team of post-doctoral researchers and postgraduate students. She has been a co-PI in the EU FP7 project CityPulse (www.ict-citypulse.eu<http://www.ict-citypulse.eu>) and  a PI in several Targeted Projects funded by Cisco Systems around semantic stream processing of IoT data in Enterprise Communication Systems.

Dr. Mileo joined the School of Computing in DCU in 2016, where she continues to be part of INSIGHT, bringing in complementary expertise and opening up new opportunities for synergies across the Centre’s sites and across different scientific communities. As part of her engagement within the Centre, she has been actively involved as a Funded Investigator in preparing the proposal for a second phase, ‘Insight-2’, which builds up the achievement of Insight-1 across research, industry collaboration, education and public engagement.

Dr. Mileo has advanced the state-of-the-art in designing and implementing techniques to handle the variety and velocity aspects of Big Data, becoming a pioneer researcher in the areas of Stream Reasoning. Her expertise and contribution focuses on investigating the trade-off between scalability and expressivity of stream reasoning for Big Data and proposing new solutions which, among others, rely on the combination of qualitative (knowledge-driven) and quantitative (data-drive) approaches to reasoning and learning. In 2018 she received a direct research donation from Nokia Bell-Labs for exploring new methods to enhance deep neural representations with external knowledge.

She is currently an active PC member of more than 40 conferenes including AAAI, IJCAI, KR, ISWC, ESWC, ICDE and EKAW among others, and high impact Journals including the SEmantic Web Journa (IOS), the Journal of Web Semantcs (Elsevier), Internet of Things Journal (IEEE) and Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (Cambridge University Press). She is a steering committee member of the Web REasoning and Rule Systems Associatin (RRA), member of the Assiciation of Logic Programming (ALP) and member of the Italian AI Associatin (AI*IA).

In the last 5 years, Dr. Mileo has been involved as Program Chair, organiser, panelist and PC Member of several conferences, tutorials, workshops, Doctoral Consortium tracks and summer schools in the are aof Stream Reasoning and Semantic Data Analytics. Recent relevant events include: ESWC 2015 where she chaired the RDF Stram Processing Workshop and organised the tutorial on Semantics for Smart Cities; RR2015 (Int’l Conference on Web Reasoning and Rule Systems) where she acted as a chair and lecturer and the co-located Summer School; ISWC 2015 and ISWC 2017 where she has co-chaired a series of tutorials on Stream Reasoning; EU ERA conference 2015 where she acted as a panelist at the Open Science and Society panel session. Dr. Mileo is also registered to the EC Research and Innovation participants portal as an expert (ID: EX2015D232419), acting as an Evaluator to assist the Commission in the implementation of Horizon 2020 across several programmes.

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Bashar Nuseibeh

Principal Investigator
 
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Bashar Nuseibeh

Principal Investigator
Institute
University of Limerick
Email
b.nuseibeh@open.ac.ukCopied to clipboard
 

Bashar Nuseibeh is Professor of Software Engineering at the University of Limerick, Funded Enable Investigator and the Chief Scientist of Lero – The Irish Software Research Centre. He was Director of Research in Computing at The Open University (OU), where he continues to head its Software Engineering and Design research group. His research interests include security and human behaviour, privacy and digital forensics, and engineering adaptive systems.  Many of his 250+ publications are available on Google Scholar. 
 
Bashar is the recipient of a Royal Society-Wolfson Merit Award, a Philip Leverhulme Prize, a Senior Research Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and two European Research Council (ERC) grants, including an ERC Advanced Grant in Adaptive Security and Privacy. 
 
He is a Fellow of the British and Irish Computer Societies, a Fellow of the UK Institution of Engineering and Technology, and a Member of Academia Europaea.

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Noel O’Connor

Deputy Director & Principal Investigator
 
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Noel O’Connor

Deputy Director & Principal Investigator
Institute
Dublin City University
Email
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Noel E. O’Connor is Deputy Director of Enable. He is a Professor in the School of Electronic Engineering at Dublin City University. He is CEO of the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, Ireland’s largest SFI-funded research centre. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed publications, made 11 standards submissions, filed 6 patents, spun off one company and mentored two others. He is an Area Editor for Signal Processing: Image Communication (Elsevier) and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Image and Video Processing (Springer). He is a member of the IEEE, Engineers Ireland and the IET. 

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Donna O’Shea

Associate Investigator
 
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Donna O’Shea

Associate Investigator
Institute
Munster Technological University
Email
Donna.OShea@cit.ieCopied to clipboard
 

 

Donna O’Shea is Head of Department of Computer Science (acting) at Cork Institute of Technology, associate investigator at SFI Enable and CONNECT group lead of Ríomh – Intelligent Secure Systems research group and member of Nimbus Research Centre  

Donna’s research expertise lies in the area of enterprise security (i.e. SDN and NFV security) and network and service management with a specific focus on the design, analysis and optimisation of wired and wireless communication systems, networks and services. During her PhD she made a significant contribution in the area of service provisioning for Beyond 3rd Generation (B3G) networks. On completion of her PhD she spent five years working for IBM and this work exposed her to the rigorous design discipline that is a prerequisite for the successful development of large, complex systems across several sites, multiple design teams and various target platforms. The work in IBM also deepened her technical knowledge in the area of network and service management for mobile and Cloud based services. 

Donna has been a central figure in establishing the IDA funded National Cybersecurity Cluster called Cyber Ireland the goal of which is to ensure that Ireland is well positioned both to service the already significant activities in the area of cybersecurity research and innovation and to build excellence and talent that will enable further growth in this expanding field. 

Donna is director of IT@Cork a not-for-profit independent business organisation representing the interests of the IT industry in Cork, is chair of the Computing Department’s research studies committee and is a committee member of IEEE UK Ireland Women in Engineering and is an IEEE Senior Member. 

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Dirk Pesch

Principal Investigator
 
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Dirk Pesch

Principal Investigator
Institute
University College Cork
Email
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Dr Dirk Pesch, is a Funded Investigator and member of the Steering Committee of Enable. He is a Principal Investigator at CONNECT, and is Professor at the School of Computer Science and IT at University College Cork. Previously, he was head of the Nimbus Research Centre at Cork Institute of Technology.

Dirk’s research interests focus on design and performance characterisation of algorithms, protocols, and services for wireless and mobile networks and low power wireless network design for Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of Things. He has over 25 years research and development experience in both industry and academia and has co-authored over 200 scientific publications including three edited books/paper collections. He is also an SFI-funded Investigator.

He is currently on the editorial board of the International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, Springer Wireless Networks and Elsevier Pervasive and Mobile Computing (PMC) journals and served previously on the editorial board of IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine. He is also involved in conference organisation through membership of several technical programme committees of conferences such as IEEE VTC, IEEE PIMRC, IEEE Globecom, IEEE ICC, IEEE World Forum for the IoT, and several workshops co-located with IEEE PerCom. He was the TPC chair of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference Spring 2007 in Dublin and the TPC- co-chair of ACM Buildsys 2010 in Zurich, Switzerland.

The research centre he leads at Cork Institute of Technology, the Nimbus Centre, focuses on research and innovation in Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of Things with major applications in energy and water resource management, smart cities and the built environment, future manufacturing and Industry 4.0. Dirk is also involved as advisor to startups spun-out of Nimbus.

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Francesco Pilla

Funded Investigator
 
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Francesco Pilla

Funded Investigator
Institute
University College Dublin
Email
francesco.pilla@ucd.ieCopied to clipboard
 

 

Dr Francesco Pilla is a Funded Investigator with Enable at University College Dublin.

His area of expertise is geospatial analysis and modelling of environmental dynamics, which involve the development of environmental pollution models (air, noise, water) and decision support tools using a GIS platform, in order to facilitate the interoperability of input data and research outcomes between the client/final user and the research team.

His work focuses on understanding complex environmental phenomena in order to preempt the impacts resulting from interactions between the human population and the environment.

His approach integrates models for environmental pollution with a GIS platform: this is used to assess and predict impacts from built-environment interventions which have the potential to provide population-wide effects.

He uses a range of pervasive and community sensing applications as a means of calibration and validation of GIS models and decision support tools. He is currently exploring the use of these GIS based tools as a way to integrate co-design (as part of Living Labs) in urban planning and pervasive sensing (static and mobile as part of citizen science initiatives) to improve city life from an environmental pollution perspective.

This will be explored as part of the work planned in iSCAPE, the H2020-SC5 project of which he is coordinator.

Francesco is also currently working on several Irish Environmental Protection Agency funded projects which involve the creation of GIS tools to analyse and model environmental phenomena. He acquired considerable experience in networks of environmental sensors for urban environmental monitoring during his collaborations with two different research laboratories in MIT as part of a Fulbright/EPA TechImpact award (2015) and his PhD (2011) research work.

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Susan Rea

Funded Investigator
 
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Susan Rea

Funded Investigator
Institute
Munster Technological University
Email
susan.rea@cit.ieCopied to clipboard
 

Susan Rea is an associate investigator at Enable and a principal investigator at the Nimbus Centre at Cork Institute of Technology where her current research interests focus on IoT & CPS, specifically embedded infrastructure management using distributed ledger technology and cybersecurity for large scale next generation networks. Susan is an Athena Swan champion and advocate for the the promotion of women in STEMM and is actively engaged with a wide network across the HEI sector to support her commitment to leading and advancing gender inequality in CIT. 

Susan holds a PhD in Electronic Engineering from Cork Institute of Technology. Her thesis was entitled “Dynamic Route Management Strategies for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks” and a MENG from Cork Institute of Technology having investigated “Uniform Random Number Generation Using Pseudorandom Binary Sequences”.

She also holds a Diploma in Project Management, from Cork Institute of Technology, a MSc in Information Theory, Coding & Cryptography, University College Cork, (1999) and a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronic Engineering, Cork Institute of Technology (1998).

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Fiona Regan

Funded Investigator
 
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Fiona Regan

Funded Investigator
Institute
Dublin City University
Email
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Fiona Regan is Professor of Chemistry at Dublin City University and Director of the DCU Water Institute. She is also a Funded Investigator at Enable. Fiona studied Environmental Science and Technology and later completed a PhD in analytical chemistry in 1994. Following postdoctoral research in optical sensing in DCU, in 1996 she took up a lecturing position at Limerick Institute of Technology.  

In 2002 Fiona joined the School of Chemical Sciences, DCU as a lecturer in analytical chemistry, in 2008 she became senior lecturer and in 2009 became the Beaufort Principal Investigator in Marine and Environmental Sensing. Fiona led the establishment of SmartBay Ireland and the National Infrastructure Access Fund until 2016.  

Fiona’s research focuses on environmental monitoring and she has a special interest in priority and emerging contaminants as well as the establishment of decision support tools for environmental monitoring using novel technologies and data management tools. She has mentored > 30 PhD and MSc students, published > 100 peer reviewed manuscripts, chapters and books and has a H-index of 30 (google scholar citations Aug 2019). Fiona is a member of the Royal Irish Academy committee on Environment and Climate Change and a WaterJPI Irish representative Scientific Advisory Board Member. 

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Pat Reidy

Executive Director
 
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Pat Reidy

Executive Director
Institute
Trinity College Dublin
Email
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Pat Reidy is the Executive Director of the ENABLE research programme, headquartered at Trinity College Dublin.

Pat joined Enable from the CONFIRM Centre for SmartManufacturing a Science Foundation Ireland research Centre hosted by the University of Limerick, where he held the role of Business Development Manager and is experienced in building and maintaining strong client relationships between key stakeholders in Academia & Industry. In his role with CONFIRM Pat worked with companies across multiple sectors to develop research projects in relation to Industry 4.0 and specific challenges companies are facing around smart/advanced manufacturing and the key enabling technologies involved.

Prior to joining CONFIRM Pat worked with a number of Irish SMEs and a large UK based plc and held management roles in both national and international markets and developed an extensive knowledge base across various industry sectors through continual research and evaluation of markets.
Pat recently joined NSAI’s TC45, which is the Standards Committee that contributes to Innovation Management Standards in Ireland. He is also a member of MTU’s REEDI Steering Committee.

Pat holds an MA in Business Management, Postgraduate Diploma in Business Administration and a Bachelor of Technology in Wood Science & Technology all awarded by the University of Limerick.

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Marco Ruffini

Principal Investigator
 
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Marco Ruffini

Principal Investigator
Institute
Trinity College Dublin
Email
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Marco Ruffini is a CONNECT Principal Investigator at Trinity College Dublin.

He received his MEng in telecommunications in 2002 from Polytechnic University of Marche (Italy) and, after working as a research scientist for Philips in Germany, he undertook studies at Trinity College Dublin in 2005, where he received his PhD in 2007. Since 2010 he has been Assistant Professor (tenured 2014) at Trinity.

He is currently technical coordinator of O’SHARE, and previously served as technical coordinator of the FP7 DISCUS project. He is also a holder of a Science Foundation Ireland Principal Investigator award.

He has authored more than 60 international journal and conference publications and 10 patents. His research focuses on flexible high-capacity fiber broadband architectures, next generation PON testbeds, Software Defined Access Networks, and access network virtualization.

Marco is also a member (via Trinity College Dublin) of the Broadband Forum, a non-profit industry organization focused on engineering smarter and faster broadband networks.

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Alan Smeaton

Funded Investigator
 
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Alan Smeaton

Funded Investigator
Institute
Dublin City University
Email
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Alan Smeaton is Professor of Computing at Dublin City University (appointed 1997) where he has previously been Head of School and Executive Dean of Faculty, and is also a Founding Director of the Insight Centre for Data Analytics at DCU.  He was a member of the Board of the Irish Research Council with a Ministerial government appointment from 2012 to 2018. He was also a member of the COST Scientific Committee which oversees the disbursement of COST’s budget of €300m during the lifetime of Horizon 2020 between 2015 and 2018.

His research work focuses on the development of theories and technologies to support all aspects of information discovery and human memory, allowing people to find the right information at the right time and in the right form. He is internationally recognised for his work on information retrieval — particularly multimedia retrieval — and on automatic video analysis and multimedia benchmarking. He is founding coordinator of TRECVid, the international benchmarking evaluation campaign on information retrieval from Digital Video, run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the US annually since 2001.  Over the last 18 years TRECVid has involved contributions from over 2,000 research scientists across 5 continents and almost 200 Universities, Research Institutes and companies.

Alan Smeaton has more than 600 peer-reviewed publications on Google SCHOLAR with over 15,700 citations and an h-index of 62. This represents one of the highest publication metrics for Computer Science in Ireland.

Alan has been a scientific reviewer for research project proposals research councils in Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Switzerland, EPSRC (UK), Royal Society of Edinburgh, European Research Council, Niels Stensen Stichting (the Netherlands), Dutch Technology Foundation (STW), IWT-Vlaanderen, Nuffield Foundation, National Science Foundation (US), Ontario Research Fund (Canada), the AHRB (UK) and the EU.  His contribution as an international reviewer can be seen on his Publons profile.

Alan is an elected member of the Royal Irish Academy, the highest academic distinction that can be awarded in Ireland. Within the Academy he was chair of the Engineering and Computer Sciences Committee from 2014 to 2018  In 2016 he was awarded the Academy’s Gold Medal for Engineering Sciences, an award given once every 3 years for his “world-leading research reputation in the field of multimedia information retrieval”.  In 2017 he was elevated to Fellow of the Insttutite of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) for his “outstanding contributions to multimedia indexing and retrieval”.

Further details on Prof Smeaton and his work can be found here

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Cormac J. Sreenan

Funded Investigator
 
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Cormac J. Sreenan

Funded Investigator
Institute
University College Cork
Email
cjs@cs.ucc.ieCopied to clipboard
 

 

Cormac J. Sreenan is a Full Professor of Computer Science at University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland, Deputy Director of CONNECT, and Principal Investigator at Enable.

Prior to joining UCC in 1999 he was on the research staff at AT&T Labs-Research, Florham Park, NJ, USA and at Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ, USA. At UCC he directs the Mobile & Internet Systems Laboratory (MISL), which is a group of 15 research staff and students with research activity in multimedia and wireless networking and systems.

Recent projects have focused on wireless sensor networks, heterogeneous mobile networks and video streaming, and have been funded by industry, the EU and Irish state agencies, including Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). Prof. Sreenan is an SFI Principal Investigator and is a Co-PI on the CONNECT Centre for Future Networks and Communications involving 10 academic institutions and 37 sponsor companies.

He is currently on the Editorial Board of  ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks. In the past he has served on the Editorial Boards of

IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, Computer Networks and ACM/Springer Multimedia Systems Journal and as Guest Editor for Communications of the ACM, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications and IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine.

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Hitesh Tewari

Funded Investigator
 
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Hitesh Tewari

Funded Investigator
Institute
Trinity College Dublin
Email
htewari@cs.tcd.ieCopied to clipboard
 

 

Hitesh Tewari is a Funded Investigator at Enable working on smart cities research programme in Trinity College Dublin. 

Dr Hitesh Tewari is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin. His research interests are in the areas of network security and applied cryptography. He is currently very active in the area of Blockchains/DLT with a strong interest in advancing the state-of-art of the fundamental building blocks of the technology, and has published a number of papers in the area. He has also co-authored a book on Electronic Payments which is currently in its second edition. 

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Latest News

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Smart Networks Webinar

22 Oct 2020
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Smart Networks Webinar

22 Oct 2020

24th September 2020

Communication networks have become our lifeline during the Covid-19 pandemic, allowing many people to work from home and keeping us connected with friends, family and colleagues when we cannot meet them in person or travel. While networks have already seen increased traffic volumes due to video and multimedia services, Covid-19 has added a new dimension with huge volumes of video conference traffic and extra on demand video and entertainment services. At the same time, new technologies such as 5G, fibre to the home, enhanced cable broadband and Internet of Things networks are being rolled out. These new networks provide for a wide range of new connectivity services and applications such as connected smart homes and buildings, connected vehicles, smart manufacturing and logistics, eHealth, etc. These new services require networks to become smarter to facilitate this new range of services as they do not only need more bandwidth but also much improved performance in terms of communication delay and reliability. The management of such networks to deliver on enhanced performance promises has become a significant challenge for the industry.

The Enable Smart Networks event aims to address this challenge and will provide an overview of recent research advances in network architectures, service provision and industrial technology developments for future and smart networks. The webinar will feature speakers such as Enable academic investigators and industrial leaders.

ENABLE is a research programme which aims to connect communities with smart urban environments through the Internet of Things (IoT). In collaboration with industry and local authority partners and via citizen engagement, it will address the challenges that currently limit the potential benefits of IoT for communities.

Event Programme

Dirk Pesch, University College Cork (Moderator)
Ian Wheelock, COMMSOPE
Prof. Cormac Sreenan, University College Cork
Kevin McConnell , Huawei
Prof. Marco Ruffini, Trinity College Dublin
David McDonald, Danalto
Dr Donna O’Shea, Cork Institute of Technology

ENABLE is funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and is co-funded under the European Regional Development Fund. It is a partnership of three SFI research centres: CONNECT, Insight and Lero.

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Smart and Energy Efficient Buildings and Communities

18 Jun 2020
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Smart and Energy Efficient Buildings and Communities

18 Jun 2020

 

Thursday 18th June 2020

We all spend most of our time in buildings, either at home or at work – although much more at home these days due to the Covid-19 pandemic. For this, we want our home to be a comfortable and safe shelter, our work environment to be attractive and stimulating, and most of all, we want our buildings to be energy efficient and environmentally safe. Buildings are what shapes our towns and cities. Having a smart and energy efficient living and working environment within energy efficient communities is important to all of us. Sustainable Cities and Communities has been prioritised by UN as one of the 17 global sustainable development goals for 2030. One of the key pillars of sustainable cities are smart and energy efficient buildings and communities as nearly 30% of global CO2 emissions come from heating and powering our buildings.

Smart and Energy Efficient Buildings and Communities will give an overview of ongoing research in which Enable investigators and industry partners have been engaged, presenting research including latest developments in building energy efficiency and automation systems technology, energy efficient community technology, and smart buildings.

ENABLE is a research programme which aims to connect communities with smart urban environments through the Internet of Things (IoT). In collaboration with industry and local authority partners and via citizen engagement, it will address the challenges that currently limit the potential benefits of IoT for communities.

Event Programme

Dirk Pesch, University College Cork (moderator)
Susan Rea & Alan McGibney, Cork Institute of Technology
Ken Brown, University College Cork
Diarmuid McSwiney, Analog Devices
Brian Cassidy, Cork City Council
Ciaran Gilsenan, Dogpatch Labs Dublin

ENABLE is funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and is co-funded under the European Regional Development Fund. It is a partnership of three SFI research centres: CONNECT, Insight and Lero.

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Siobhán Clarke speaking at ‘Forging a Sustainable Path to 6G’

25 Feb 2022
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Siobhán Clarke speaking at ‘Forging a Sustainable Path to 6G’

25 Feb 2022
Siobhán Clarke speaking at ‘Forging a Sustainable Path to 6G’

Prof. Siobhán Clarke, Enable Director and CONNECT Principal Investigator at Trinity College Dublin, is giving a talk on connected communities as part of the VMware sponsored ‘Forging a Sustainable Path to 6G’ workshop coinciding with Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The workshop is free to attend and takes place 09:00 – 18:00 on Thursday, 3 March 2022 at Hotel 1898, La Rambla, 109, 08002 Barcelona, Spain.

Register here. 

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Vacancy: Smart Docklands Programme Manager

22 Jul 2021
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Vacancy: Smart Docklands Programme Manager

22 Jul 2021
Vacancy: Smart Docklands Programme Manager

There is currently a vacancy for Smart Docklands Programme Manager to lead the Smart Docklands Team.

Core to this will be leading the development and growth of the Smart Docklands programme. This will include enhancing the existing testbed programme, scaling the community engagement activities and co-ordinate opportunities between Dublin City Council, CONNECT and Enable.

Smart Docklands is an initiative of Dublin City Council and CONNECT, funded via the ENABLE research programme. It provides a range of stakeholders with opportunities to trial and test technology in an urban environment.

Deadline for applications: noon, Sunday, 15 August 2021. 

Job description and application details are available here (pdf).

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News

In Focus: Cork Smart Gateway

28 May 2021
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In Focus: Cork Smart Gateway

28 May 2021
In Focus: Cork Smart Gateway

CONNECT’s Vanessa Pulgarin is coordinator of the Cork Smart Gateway. She tells us more about the initiative, which is co-funded via Enable.

So, what is the Cork Smart Gateway?

The Cork Smart Gateway is an initiative established in 2016 by Cork’s local authorities and academic partners – Munster Technological University, Tyndall National Institute and University College Cork – to support the development of Cork as a smart, sustainable, and inclusive region. Technology, data, and digital tools are a key focus for the Gateway’s projects.

In particular, the Cork Smart Gateway aims to develop an innovation ecosystem which increases economic activity, provides better public services, promotes collaboration and engagement, and enhances the quality of life for all who live, work, and visit the county and city. The Smart Gateway also supports citizen engagement and collaborations by actively participating in international and national initiatives.

What excites you about it?

While we have faced some challenges and delays because of COVID-19, the pandemic has also been an “eye-opener” for many people. I think there is a greater realisation now of the critical importance of connectivity and digital tools. As a result, it is very exciting to notice people’s growing interest in technologies such as AI, IoT and Cybersecurity and the effort made to better understand and discuss their potential and how they can be applied to different businesses areas or city services.

So, I am excited by the opportunities this will lead to.

What challenges are emerging?

The HSE ransomware attack demonstrated the importance of cybersecurity for organisations and businesses and has also prompted new conversations about the cyber vulnerabilities we face as individuals.

Our most recent webinar was on “The importance of Cyber Security in SMEs”. It was our best attended event and had the strongest engagement from the audience.

But we should not wait for a crisis to focus on an issue, so we have an ongoing programme in the Smart Gateway to foster digital inclusion, enabling individuals and communities as a whole to access digital literacy.

Three years from now, what will be different in Cork because of the Smart Gateway?

The digital strategies of Cork’s local authorities are to be delivered within three years and the Smart Gateway will continue to support those priorities. (See Cork City’s Digital Strategy and Cork County’s Digital Strategy)

I would love to see a range of initiatives which would allow citizens to deepen their understanding of emerging digital technologies, while also being able to see concrete examples of how these technologies can transform services and businesses.

As local communities emerge from the pandemic and smart projects regain momentum, I think there will be a renewed focus on problem solving and I hope that this will result in a smarter Cork and smarter services for citizens.

Do you have any message for companies interested in learning more?

Cork is home to a fantastic research community, which has extensive experience of working with industry partners to co-design research projects. If a company is interested in exploring a challenge, the first step is the contact us and we can connect them to an appropriate research team, and discuss funding mechanisms.

The Cork Smart Gateway is supported by CONNECT – the world leading Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Future Networks and Communications – and its team of researchers in UCC, MTU and Tyndall are working on several topics relevant to smart cities. CONNECT also has a dedicated research programme, ENABLE, which focuses on smart buildings, smart mobility, and smart networks. ENABLE includes two other SFI research centres: Insight and Lero, so there is tremendous expertise available.

This is an exciting area, and my message to companies is that there are many research funders supporting this kind of work: SFI, Enterprise Ireland, Irish Research Council, Health Research Board, European Commission and others.

Are there opportunities for the public to be involved?

Active citizen participation is an important part of developing a successful Smart Cork. The local authorities Public Participation Networks allow us to get closer to the citizens’ ideas and recommendations. This is a key element to plan and deliver projects aimed ultimately to address the needs of communities.

The Cork Smart Gateway has delivered several webinars focused on emerging digital technologies with the objective of raising awareness of their potential and informing the public on their use. Anyone is welcome to join us and suggest forthcoming webinar themes.

We are always open to meet and greet stakeholders from different organisations and backgrounds, and discuss the opportunities that technology brings to Cork as a smart region.

The Smart Gateway team participates in the monthly meeting of the All Ireland Smart Cities Forum.

And what about you: what’s your background?

I did my MSc in International Public Policy and Diplomacy in University College Cork and have worked with a broad range of local, national and international organisations to develop cities and communities.

I started my career at a local government and this enabled me to work with policy makers as well as the beneficiaries of local projects. Then, from an international organisation I was able to support the development of regional climate adaption actions and worked with local and regional governments around the world representing their voice at working groups and high-level events.

My interest in local government and communities continued to grow as I realised how important and rewarding is to be close to citizens and jointly search for solutions. In this sense, I also enjoy being part of multiple stakeholders groups where I can contribute with ideas, exchange information, argue my positions on any issue and of course, learn from others.

What attracted you to working on this project?

The Smart Gateway Steering Committee has members from different backgrounds but all of them share a keen interest to see Cork as a smart region.

Cork is a fantastic region with urban and rural areas and great engagement from the city and county local authorities. This means the Smart Gateway can inform the decision-making processes that pave the way to a more sustainable and liveable Cork, attracting talent, investment, and business.

What does the future hold for smart city developments?

I think a people-centred approach will increasingly be a focus for smart cities. We need to protect people’s rights and interests, ensure the safety and privacy of their data and provide upskilling opportunities. The European Commission is determined to make this Europe’s “Digital Decade”. So, projects of this nature are being supported.

I also think we will see smart city developments as a key contributor to efforts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

For these purposes, digital twin cities are gaining ground and could help monitor, diagnose, and provide predictions to optimise asset performance.

Aside from technological advances, the common factor in any successful smart city development will continue to be the commitment and willingness of companies, residents, local authorities, and academia to discuss the region’s challenges and jointly find innovative and suitable solutions.

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Prof. Bidisha Ghosh receives 2021 Reed and Mallik Medal

24 May 2021
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Prof. Bidisha Ghosh receives 2021 Reed and Mallik Medal

24 May 2021
Prof. Bidisha Ghosh receives 2021 Reed and Mallik Medal

CONNECT investigator Prof. Bidisha Ghosh (Trinity College Dublin) is among a team of researchers to win the prestigious Reed and Mallik Medal awarded by ICE Publishing for their publication “Estimating environmental exposure of cyclists in Cork using limited sensing capabilities“.

The paper presents a study on individual exposure of cyclists in Cork, Republic of Ireland, to air and sound pollution, along with vibration from cycling using relatively simple sensors.

The award is presented each year to authors from industry and academia who have produced work judged by their peers to be of exceptional quality and benefit to the civil engineering, construction and materials science community.

Bidisha works on CONNECT’s Enable research programme in the School of Engineering in Trinity.

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Michael Guerin is a City Light

09 Apr 2021
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Michael Guerin is a City Light

09 Apr 2021
Michael Guerin is a City Light

Michael Guerin, Programme Manager at Smart Docklands, talks about his work and vision for Smart Cities in this interview with Smart Cities World.

Smart Docklands is an initiative of Dublin City Council and CONNECT, funded via the ENABLE research programme. It provides a range of stakeholders with opportunities to trial and test technology in an urban environment.

 

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Smart Sandyford celebrates one-year anniversary

18 Jan 2021
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Smart Sandyford celebrates one-year anniversary

18 Jan 2021
Smart Sandyford celebrates one-year anniversary

Registration is now open for Smart Sandyford’s one-year anniversary showcase on Thursday, 21 January, from 11 am.

Register here.

Una Power (Cathaoirleach, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council) will open this public event that will bring together major Irish players in the smart city space to showcase the progress made over the last year and detail their plans for 2021.

Smart Sandyford is is a partnership between Dun-Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, the ENABLE research programme, the Sandyford Business Improvement District, and Smart Dublin.

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Research Highlight: Shared Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand

05 Dec 2020
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Research Highlight: Shared Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand

05 Dec 2020

Here’s a recently published paper by Ivana Dusparic, Enable investigator in Trinity College Dublin.

Paper title: Shared Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand: Learning-based approach and its performance in the presence of traffic congestion
Authors: M. Gueriau, F. Cugurullo, R. Acheampong, I. Dusparic
Journal: IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine,

What’s this paper all about?
Ride sharing and car sharing systems consisting of shared autonomous vehicles are expected to improve the efficiency of urban transportation through reduced vehicle ownership, reduced number of trips made, and reduced parking demand. This paper develops a novel reinforcement learning-based decentralized algorithm for matching vehicles with passengers, as well as positioning of vehicles to meet daily fluctuations in demand. Further, it is the first paper to evaluate the efficiency of such a shared mobility system in a full mobility simulation,  investigating the impact that shared vehicles have on the overall congestion by varying the numbers and the ratio of shared vehicles and private vehicles in the simulation.

What exactly have you discovered?
Our proposed algorithm improves the performance of a car and ride sharing system in terms of passenger metrics (a shorter waiting time) and the vehicle/driver metric (an increased vehicle occupancy resulting in increased profits), at the expense of number of requests served. Therefore, potential real-world deployments of ride and car sharing algorithms will require a fine-tuned balance between these metrics that could be achieved by using more sophisticated multi-objective optimization strategies.

The second conclusion arising from the results is that the shared fleet exhibits a similar general behaviour in both the naive simulations and the realistic mobility framework using a real road network and genuine congestion.

However, the impact of traffic congestion is clearly visible. For instance, while a fleet of 200 vehicles was sufficient to serve nearly all requests in the original framework, a significant proportion of requests (roughly 10%) are  now missed by the fleet.

So what?
The implications of our results are twofold. Contrary to the standard in the current literature, this article shows that the evaluation of shared mobility needs to take congestion into account to accurately estimate achievable levels of service. In addition, the results highlight the need for vehicle assignment and rebalancing algorithms to be congestion-aware, in order to be able to finely balance the goals of 3 sets of entities involved in ridesharing systems: passengers/customers, individual vehicles, and fleet operators.

For further information, please contact Ivana.Dusparic (at) scss (dot) tcd (dot) ie

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Kapal Dev joins Editorial Board of IET Quantum Communication

10 Nov 2020
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Kapal Dev joins Editorial Board of IET Quantum Communication

10 Nov 2020

Kapal Dev, ENABLE researcher in the CONNECT Centre at Trinity College Dublin, has joined the Editorial Board of IET Quantum Communication.

IET Quantum Communication is an Open Access journal that publishes novel research and original survey articles in quantum wireless communication.

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Vacancy: Enable post-doctoral researcher

29 Oct 2020
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Vacancy: Enable post-doctoral researcher

29 Oct 2020

Enable is currently seeking a post-doctoral researcher working in Maynooth University in the area of mobility as a service.

The successful candidate will work as part of a team under the supervision of Prof. Brian Donnellan. The team’s research focuses on economy and innovation-related issues relating to Internet of Things (IoT) in industrial (Industry 4.0) and city (Smart Cities) environments.

Full details here. (PDF)

Deadline: 20 November 2020.

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Vacancy: Engagement and Project Manager, Smart Docklands

29 Sep 2020
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Vacancy: Engagement and Project Manager, Smart Docklands

29 Sep 2020
Vacancy: Engagement and Project Manager, Smart Docklands

Smart Docklands has a vacancy for an Engagement and Project Manager.

More information on the role and details of how to apply here. 

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Smart Networks – webinar

18 Sep 2020
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Smart Networks – webinar

18 Sep 2020
Smart Networks – webinar

Registration is now open for Enable’s third Smart Cities & Communities seminar on ‘Smart Networks’ on Thursday 24 September from 9am.

Register here.

Enable is CONNECT’s smart city research programme.

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The reality of sustainable transport – webinar

08 Sep 2020
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The reality of sustainable transport – webinar

08 Sep 2020

Registration is now open for Smart Sandyford’s webinar ‘The reality of sustainable transport ’ on Tuesday 15 September from 11am.

Register here.

The webinar will include insights An Cathaoirleach Una Power, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, and Director Robert Burns, Infrastructure and climate change, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council.

Smart Sandyford is is a partnership between Dun-Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, the ENABLE research programme, the Sandyford Business Improvement District, and Smart Dublin.

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IoT: What does it mean for business? – webinar

13 Aug 2020
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IoT: What does it mean for business? – webinar

13 Aug 2020
IoT: What does it mean for business? – webinar

Smart Sandyford hosted this webinar on IoT and business with insights on CONNECT’s Pervasive Nation from Dr Diarmuid Collins, and Will Ferguson, COO at VT-IoT.

The webinar is part of a monthly series on smart cities hosted by Smart Sandyford, a partnership between Dun-Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, ENABLE , the Sandyford Business Improvement District, and Smart Dublin.

Watch the full webinar here.

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Smart and Energy Efficient Buildings and Communities seminar

10 Jun 2020
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Smart and Energy Efficient Buildings and Communities seminar

10 Jun 2020

Registration is now open for Enable’s second Smart Cities & Communities seminar on ‘Smart and Energy Efficient Buildings and Communities’ on Thursday 18 June from 9am to 11am.

Register here.

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Prof. Siobhán Clarke leads new journal on Smart Technologies and Cities

04 Jun 2020
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Prof. Siobhán Clarke leads new journal on Smart Technologies and Cities

04 Jun 2020
Prof. Siobhán Clarke leads new journal on Smart Technologies and Cities

Prof. Siobhán Clarke is leading Frontiers in Sustainable Cities’ new section on Smart Technologies and Cities.

The Smart Technologies and Cities section publishes fundamental and applied research in all aspects of technology that contribute to solutions to cities’ sustainability and livability challenges.

Siobhán Clarke is a Principal Investigator at CONNECT in Trinity College Dublin and is the Director of Enable, CONNECT’s smart city research programme.

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Smart technologies in our cities

05 May 2020
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Smart technologies in our cities

05 May 2020
Smart technologies in our cities

Siobhan Clarke, Director of ENABLE, writes about the role of smart technologies in our cities for ‘Frontiers in Sustainable Cities’.

 

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In Focus: Smart Sandyford

01 May 2020
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In Focus: Smart Sandyford

01 May 2020
In Focus: Smart Sandyford

The recently launched Smart Sandyford programme is a partnership between Dun-Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, the ENABLE research programme, the Sandyford Business Improvement District, and Smart Dublin.

Conor Mark Dowling is the programme manager, and tells us more…

Smart Sandyford launched recently: what’s it all about?
The Smart Sandyford programme will address some of the largest challenges facing cities today from transport to climate change. We work directly with local companies and residents to test real-world solutions. Successful solutions can then be scaled across Dublin.

We have conducted workshops with residents and local businesses and identified priority challenges. Projects are now being developed to address these. The primary focus of these projects is around sustainable mobility, which involves the development of technologies to facilitate commuters using public transport and other sustainable transport modes (WeMove). Current Smart Sandyford projects including the use of European Space Agency satellites to monitor the quantity and quality of accessibility parking spaces in the district (Access Earth). Climate monitoring is also underway.

What excites you about it?
The sheer variety of projects and the immediate impact that they will have as part of this real-world test bed. We have monthly taskforce meetings with local tech companies so we have constant communication and feedback from them. This means that projects can be reviewed and improved to meet the needs of the target audience on an ongoing basis.

At this early stage, what looks promising?
The high density of people working and living in the district (30,000 in an area of just 2km2) makes it an ideal location to test technology that would not be possible elsewhere. Sandyford is also home to some of the leading tech and telecom companies in Ireland including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Mastercard, Vodafone, Huawei and Cellnex to name a few. Working with these companies is already leading to exciting new opportunities, collaborations and projects around IoT.

What challenges are emerging?
We launched Smart Sandyford on 27 February. The following day Ireland announced its first case of Covid-19. While this has been challenging it has also been rewarding to be able to facilitate projects that make a big difference in the local area at this challenging time. We are working with Moby bikes, for instance, to provide e-bikes for frontline medical staff including the council fleet of mobility hub e-bikes. We connected the engineering department in UCD with the Beacon Hospital to provide necessary PPE, and we are working with an international network of academic researchers who are analysing the response of government at all levels from around the world to the virus.

Three years from now, what will be different in Sandyford because of this initiative?
We hope to make Sandyford a truly smart place to live and work. Our primary aim is to have a measurable impact on the volume of traffic in the area. To start this will be achieved by gathering data and baseline information on the current conditions in the area. From there, projects can be selected and deployed to meet local needs. Over time, the impacts of these projects will be measurable through the data.

In the long term our approach to smart cities will benefit Sandyford through data driven decision making, leading to improved transportation, enhanced citizen-Council interaction, an enhanced internet and telecoms networks, and more efficient public utilities.

At the launch of Smart Sandyford, Conor Battigan, Siobhán Clarke, Conor Dowling, Therese Langan, Alan Murphy

Do you have any message for academics interested in getting involved?

Smart Sandyford offers access to a vast network of potential collaborators in the CONNECT Centre and the ENABLE research programme. We are also currently involved with an international network of researchers from Japan, China, EU and USA working to analyse the responses of governments to Covid-19.

Our projects are leading to the production of a wealth of data: from air quality through to commuting patterns and systems structures. We need help from data scientists to analyse and make sense of this data to help paint a bigger picture.

Any message for industry partners interested in learning more?
Working with Smart Sandyford offers companies an excellent opportunity to test, prove and promote their projects and solutions. We are working with a number of companies in the area to showcase new technologies that will enhance the district for everyone living and working there.

And what about you: what’s your background?
Over the last four years I have been working on my PhD in the area of Urban Resilience in the School of Business in Trinity College Dublin. I designed a resilience management framework which was tested through a case study looking at flooding in Dublin. As part of this research I worked with Smart Dublin and Dublin City Council to deploy a network of Sigfox IoT river-level sensors around the city.

What attracted you to working on this project?
I grew up beside Sandyford and have watched it develop from a busy industrial estate to the modern business district it is today. The development of the M50 and Green line Luas have been transformative but there are a number of challenges facing the district that I believe smart solutions can answer.

Having worked with the Smart Dublin team during my earlier research I jumped at the opportunity to get further involved as  programme manager for the Smart Sandyford project.

What does the future hold for smart city developments?
Smart cities are already here and, on the positive side, they allow us to analyse mass quantities of data which will enable Irish cities to become more efficient and sustainable. However there is a fine line. There are ethical issues such as who owns the data, who this technology should serve, and to what extent citizens should be monitored. For this reason we work to make all our data publicly available and have strict ethics procedures for each and every project. In the future I see these types of ethical questions becoming more prevalent.

Contact: If you would like to find out more or get involved in Smart Sandyford email Conor – conor.dowling@smartsandyford.ie

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Anna Davies and Stephan Hugel publish in WIREs Climate Change

09 Apr 2020
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Anna Davies and Stephan Hugel publish in WIREs Climate Change

09 Apr 2020
Anna Davies and Stephan Hugel publish in WIREs Climate Change

Dr Stephan Hugel and Prof. Anna Davies at Trinity College Dublin have published: Public participation, engagement, and climate change adaptation: A review of the research literature in WIREs Climate Change.

WIREs (Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews) series combines some of the features of encyclopedic reference works and review journals in an online format.

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COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

19 Mar 2020
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COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

19 Mar 2020

The Enable team is working remotely. You can contact the relevant team member by email or for general queries e-mail: info@enable-research.ie

https://www.tcd.ie/about/coronavirus/

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iHabiMap stakeholder meeting

18 Mar 2020
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iHabiMap stakeholder meeting

18 Mar 2020

The first stakeholder meeting for the iHabiMap project was held last week in St. Patrick’s Campus, Dublin City University. This was attended by representatives from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Parks and Wildlife Services, Irish Centre for High-End Computing, Trinity College Dublin and Teagasc.

Dr. John Connolly, project PI, welcomed all to the meeting and introduced the project team. iHabiMap is a technology-focused project with the primary aim to develop algorithms to automatically assess habitats and habitat condition in images acquired from UAV (drone).

iHabiMap focuses on three Annex 1 habitats located in uplands, grassland and coastal areas, with sites in the east and south-west of Ireland. The use of drones will complement ecologists and rangers working on the ground and allow a more extensive areas of land to be surveyed. Current survey methodologies are labour intensive and expensive and are not as spatially extensive.

During the first year of the project, two areas were surveyed: an upland area in Wicklow and several plots at Bull Island in Dublin Bay. This second year of the project, will involve the most extensive field campaign with 12 flights scheduled and at least 12 ecological field survey days. Work will also commence with the Earth Observation (EO) section of the project using the Copernicus Sentinel-2 data.

Jim Martin (BEC) provided an overview of the field campaigns and the methodology being used. Sites selected are all Annex 1 habitats previously surveyed by the team and provide a range of challenges for collection of drone images (e.g. tree shading effects, high winds, steep slopes). Irish Vegetation Classification (IVC) will be used for classifying species.

Jerome O’Connell (Orbas) presented an overview of the UAV remote sensing and AI for Habitat Mapping.

The iHabiMap project is a collaboration between DCU, Botanical, Environmental & Conservation (BEC) Consultants and Orbas and brings together experts in ecological assessment, earth observation and machine learning. iHabiMap is an EPA funded large-scale project, coordinated by Dr. John Connolly which runs from 2019 to 2023.

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Ivana’s AI research featured in Silicon Republic

18 Mar 2020
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Ivana’s AI research featured in Silicon Republic

18 Mar 2020
Ivana Dusparic Ivana Dusparic

For more information on Ivana’s research check out this Irish Times article.

ENABLE Investigator Ivana Dusparic included in this list of ’20 women doing fascinating work in AI, machine learning and data science’.

Her research explores the use of AI for the autonomous optimisation of large-scale urban infrastructures, especially intelligent transport systems. For example, she has studied how to use machine learning on linked systems such as traffic lights to help keep transport and pedestrians flowing efficiently.

Dusparic understands that machine learning requires more than just software and that insights from psychology, education and ethics have an important role to play too.

 

 

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Smart Sandyford Launch 2020

28 Feb 2020
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Smart Sandyford Launch 2020

28 Feb 2020
Conor Battigan, Siobhán Clarke, Conor Dowling, Therese Langan, Alan Murphy
Conor Dowling

Smart Sandyford, Dublin’s new smart city test-bed launched at One Microsoft Place

27th February 2020

 

The Smart Sandyford Programme will seek to deliver innovative research and technology projects that will improve workability and liveability in the Sandyford district.

A partnership between Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council, the Science Foundation Ireland Enable Research Programme and the Sandyford Business Improvement District, the Smart Sandyford initiative brings together the expertise of the local authority, academia and the business community to work collaboratively to solve local challenges.

Speaking about the launch event, Therese Langan, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council Senior Executive Officer said:

“We are delighted to be part of this new, exciting partnership. The Smart Sandyford programme demonstrates Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown’s commitment to innovation; using new technology projects to improve life in Sandyford and future-proof the district”.

This new initiative is one of three “Smart Districts” supported by the Enable Research Programme across the Dublin region under the Smart Dublin umbrella.

Professor Siobhán Clarke, Director of Enable remarked:

“The Smart Sandyford programme will provide an exciting opportunity for real-world, high-impact research; testing and trialling new technology solutions that can deliver positive change for Sandyford.”

Conor Battigan, Sandyford Business Improvement District Chief Executive noted:

“Smart Sandyford will bring tangible value to the businesses and residents of the district, positioning Sandyford as the world-class destination in which to work and live.”

The Smart Sandyford Programme will focus on delivering smart projects that meet the needs of the local community, including in the areas of mobility, environment, public realm and community-building.

For further information please contact the Smart Sandyford Research Programme Manager, Conor Dowling conor.dowling@smartsandyford.ie

 

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ENABLE Sustainable Mobility seminar

06 Feb 2020
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ENABLE Sustainable Mobility seminar

06 Feb 2020

In the face of dramatically increased urbanisation, Sustainable Cities and Communities has been prioritised by the UN as one of the 17 global sustainable development goals for 2030. One of the key pillars of sustainable cities is Sustainable Mobility, with one-quarter of global CO2 emissions coming from transportation of people and goods. This Sustainable Mobility Seminar will give an overview of the state of the art research in which ENABLE investigators and industry partners are engaged, including latest developments in autonomous vehicles and their impact on cities, car and ride-sharing and others.

ENABLE aims to connect communities with smart urban environments through the Internet of Things (IoT). In collaboration with industry partners and via citizen engagement, it addresses the challenges that currently limit the potential benefits of IoT for communities.

ENABLE is a collaboration of three world leading Science Foundation Ireland research centres: CONNECT, Insight and Lero.

Event Programme

8.30am Registration, refreshments, networking.

9.00am ENABLE Overview – Prof. Siobhán Clarke, Director of ENABLE

9.10am Ride-sharing and Mobility – Professor Ken Brown, University College Cork and Dr Ivana Dusparic, Trinity College Dublin

9.20am Autonomous Vehicles – Dr Suzanne Little, Dublin City University

9.25am Cathal Masterson, Head of Tolling, Transport Infrastructure Ireland

9.35am Alan Murphy, Smart Dublin Lead, Smart Dublin

9.45am Enable mobility projects and engagement, Siobhán Clarke

9:50am Questions

10.00am Posters, refreshments and continued discussions

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Smart Docklands Michael Guerin speaks to the Staff Sustainability Network at TCD

31 Jul 2019
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Smart Docklands Michael Guerin speaks to the Staff Sustainability Network at TCD

31 Jul 2019

Tuesday 31 July 2019 

Posted by Lydia Arce 

Michael Guerin, Smart Docklands Programme Manager, talks to the Staff Sustainability Network ran by Michele Hallahan, Sustainability Advisor at Trinity College Dublin on Tuesday 30 July 2019.  

Smart Docklands, a jointly funded project by Enable and Dublin City Council, is a unique smart city testbed in the heart of Dublin’s Docklands area that provides innovators and the municipality an opportunity to fast-track innovation in an urban environment.  

Michael provided an educated talk highlighting Smart Docklands innovative model, its current and ongoing projects and its overall success. To learn more about Smart Docklands, Dublin’s smart city testbed, visit their website HERE.

 

 

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Hitesh Tewari: Blockchain and the Internet in The Conversation

30 Jul 2019
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Hitesh Tewari: Blockchain and the Internet in The Conversation

30 Jul 2019

Tuesday 30 July 2019 

Posted by Lydia Arce 

Could blockchain make the internet more safe and secure? 

Now featured in The Conversation, Hitesh Tewari, an Enable Funded Investigator, writes about blockchain, a transactional system made in cryptocurrency, and its potential to redefine the internet.  

Read the full article HERE 

 

 

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The Irish Times features Dr Ivana Dusparic’s research on AI and Traffic Flow

30 Jul 2019
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The Irish Times features Dr Ivana Dusparic’s research on AI and Traffic Flow

30 Jul 2019

Tuesday 30 July 2019 

Posted by Lydia Arce 

Interested in traffic flows? 

Dr Ivana Dusparic, an Enable Funded Investigator, was recently featured in the Irish Times ‘Research Insights’ series covering her work on Smart Cities and Artificial Intelligence (machine learning, intelligent agents and multi-agent systems). Read about her perspective on ‘Giving smart cities the green light: how AI can make traffic flow’ 

 

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Orienteering Fictions: Blurring the Lines of Truth

29 Jul 2019
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Orienteering Fictions: Blurring the Lines of Truth

29 Jul 2019

The map of the Special Development Zone used in the workshops.

Unauthorized art just outside of the SDZ.

Unauthorized art just outside of the SDZ.

Engineering Fictions, is a writing workshop devised to support transdisciplinary research and communication through wordplay, writing, and conversation and is the brainchild of Maynooth University and CONNECT Centre researcher Dr. Jessica Foley, whose IRC research explores the function of fiction in parsing the worlds of smart technologies. A series of four workshops that showcased the role of fiction in the implementation of technology and data analysis. I, along with several other team members from ENABLE, was lucky to be able to attend the fourth workshop, titled Orienteering Fictions.

After much thought-provoking discussion regarding the potential for discrepancies between personal narratives and the narratives formed through technology, the participants were tasked with going out into the SDZ (Strategic Development Zone) that encompasses the Smart Docklands testbed to locate and pinpoint their own orienteering markers. Dr. Foley left the selection of the orienteering markers up to whatever caught the attention of the group participants. Equipped with maps and smartphone cameras, the participants and I set out into the SDZ. We returned with a variety of features, and for some, the focus was on technology, with Wi-Fi signals showcasing just how interconnected the SDZ is or various smart technologies (waste bins, bicycles, CCTV cameras, etc.) driving home the point that technology has infiltrated daily life. For myself, I chose art installations. I chose to model this through the number of unauthorized art installations, graffiti, within the SDZ and just outside the boundary, as well as the number of authorized art installations, commissioned art, that I happened upon. The results fit the narrative that I was attempting to develop, as unauthorized art was abundant in the areas on the perimeter of the SDZ and there was a noticeable lack of similar, unauthorized art as soon as I entered the SDZ. I found several small graffiti tags hidden underneath electric boxes or on the side of waste bins, but none of the large installations that were so frequent just a few dozen meters away.

Images: Examples of the small graffiti tags within the SDZ.

 

Authorized art was frequent as soon as I crossed the boundary into the SDZ, and most installations were large in scale and prominently featured.

Images: Examples of authorized art installations within the SDZ.

 

The importance of narratives and creative research is undeniable. Public engagement is a major challenge for researchers, and workshops such as Engineering Fictions hope to derive better methods of public engagement and understanding within research communities. In short, Orienteering Fictions allowed participants to view the highly technical research being done throughout Dublin with a more creative and sociological approach.

Landon Holben, June 2019 

 

Landon Holben is a Visiting Research Assistant from the University of Virginia, where he studies foreign affairs.

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Cycling Innovation Comes to Dublin

02 Jul 2019
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Cycling Innovation Comes to Dublin

02 Jul 2019

Warm up pitches at Google EMEA Headquarters Site Visit on Velo-City 2019 kick-off day, 25th of June

Winners of the Smart Pedal Pitch. Left to Right: Jan from Umotional, Kajetan from Nüwiel, Liberatus from Cycl

The highly informative and awe-inspiring cycling conference Velo-City 2019 was held at the Convention Centre in Dublin from Tuesday, 25 June to Friday, 30 June. The Smart Pedal Pitch Programme sought out and delivered the most innovative and market ready smart cycle tech solutions.

Cycling in cities across the world are ready to scale up and this includes Dublin. One of ENABLE’s collaborative projects with Dublin City Council, Smart Docklands, organized and hosted the event with the European Cycle Federation and Cycle Industries Europe. The goal of the Smart Pedal Pitch was to seek technology and data driven proposals that could address short term improvements in either of the following areas: better cycling data, safety, security, and/or intelligent transport systems.

The Smart Pedal Pitch Programme, part of the Velo-City 2019 conference, held a competition by various start-up companies to present their latest, innovative cycling technology. Out of 42 start-ups that applied, 10 were selected by the Smart Dublin team to pitch their latest innovations in smart cycle tech. The 10 participants included:

  • Umotional (Cyclers), a cycling app that leverages big data, AI and crowdsourcing to make riding safer and more rewarding; 
  • IXOW, who combines anti-theft devices by making bikes unusable to thieves; 
  • Boreal Bikes, a bike that digitalizes and integrates V2x and ITS to reduce human error in road accidents; 
  • CYCL, who pitched the Winglight, a handlebar mounted turn signal improving rider visibility when changing directions; 
  • Beryl, shared electric cargo bikes held at bike stations, all unlocking through the Beryl app; 
  • Geovelo, a free GPS application that guides cyclists on bike friendly roads; 
  • ClicksnLinks, virtual reality bikes that allows the rider to experience current or future cycling in the city; 
  • BiKeep, smart bike racks that enable easy and secure bike locking and e-bike charging; 
  • Cyc-lok, the first Smart and IoT individual bike locker system, booked and paid by an app 24/7; and 
  • Nüweil, e-powered cargo bike trailers.  

On the first day of the conference, all ten start-ups got the opportunity to practice their pitch at Google’s European headquarters in Dublin. This gave participants a warm-up round and a good chance to pitch their innovative ideas in front of a local and global tech audience. For the main event, held at the Convention Centre main stage, participants presented their ideas to a panel of 5 judges and three finalists were picked. The final pitch was in front of all Velo-City attendees, and was decided through both audience and judges voting. 

And, the winner? Nüwiel, a Hamburg-based start-up that has developed e-powered cargo bike trailers geared towards last mile delivery and city logistics. These sturdy and durable electric bike trailers can transport up to 200kg of cargo. Nüweil has proven to make urban transport more efficient and sustainable, and they have successfully completed delivery trials with UPS, IKEA, and Airbus. They were not only awarded a grand prize of 10,000 Euros but will also spend at least three months working with Dublin’s Smart City Project Team to pilot their solution right here in Dublin. Second place, Cyclers, received a cash price of 7,500 Euros and third place, CYCL, received a cash price of 5,000 Euros will also get to pilot their solutions with the Smart Dublin teams.

Velo-City 2019 in Dublin demonstrated how cycling as opposed to cars are better for urban cities. Cycling is better for the environment, takes up less space, and is better for our health. Conference events included thought-provoking and stimulating topics on climate change, cycling innovations, road safety, inclusion, and health. 

The upshot is that the conference was a huge success in providing a forum for cycling enthusiasts to address important roadblocks and troubleshoot problems to improve cycling in cities, and many workshops provided an optimistic and innovative set of solutions. Overall, the trend is set to improve cycling and cycling provided services across Dublin and large cities in the world. 

Velo-City 2019 provided a great platform for expert cyclers from around the world to express their concerns regarding Dublin’s cycling infrastructure and safety. The Enable Research Programme focuses on smart city IoT research especially multi modal transport that includes cycling.  Enable is interested in challenges faced by cities and actively engages in collaborative research with industry partners on smart cities and communities. 

The winners of the Smart Pedal Pitch will each bring their smart cycling innovative ideas to Dublin to pilot. 

Article by Lydia Arce

Lydia Arce is a visiting research assistant and intern at ENABLE and Smart Docklands in Dublin. She is an Intensive Psychology major at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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Prof. Anna Davies is Researcher of the Year

12 Dec 2018
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Prof. Anna Davies is Researcher of the Year

12 Dec 2018

Prof. Anna Davies, a member of the ENABLE research team, has won the prestigious Irish Research Council (IRC) Researcher of the Year award in recognition of her work in environmental governance and sustainability. Professor Davies is a CONNECT Funded Investigator and is Professor of Geography, Environment and Society at Trinity College Dublin.

Director of CONNECT, Prof. Luiz DaSilva, said: “On behalf of everyone in the Centre, I congratulate Anna on this award. The calibre of her research, which addresses grand societal challenges, has previously been acknowledged with a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Award. We are delighted to have her on our smart cities research team, particularly as her work includes engaged research – an area of growing importance in CONNECT.”

Professor Davies said: “I was delighted and honoured to receive the Irish Researcher of the Year award. The Irish Research Council has supported my research in so many ways, from small seed funding to large grants. They have also been absolutely pivotal in supporting the internationalisation of my research profile, supporting me to secure a prestigious grant from the European Research Council. I am eternally gratefully for this.”

Read more about Anna’s career path and research interests here.

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Announcement

Welcome Tiffany and Shelby

25 Jun 2018
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Welcome Tiffany and Shelby

25 Jun 2018

.We are delighted to welcome our two summer interns, Tiffany Meng and Shelby Slotter. They will work at ENABLE in Trinity College Dublin helping with our communications work and industry liaison initiatives:

Tiffany is majoring in Urban Studies and Planning at University of California, Berkeley.

Shelby is majoring in Interdisciplinary Studies of Public Policy, Computer Science and Media Studies at the University of Virginia.

 

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ENABLE workshop in Trinity College Dublin

08 Mar 2018
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ENABLE workshop in Trinity College Dublin

08 Mar 2018
ENABLE workshop in Trinity College Dublin

ENABLE researchers from several colleges and universities gathered at Trinity College Dublin on 1 May to provide research updates, and explore potential research opportunities.

Several companies are now exploring collaborative research agreements with ENABLE investigators, and new PhD and postdoc researchers are being hired by a number of ENABLE investigators.

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Press Release

Minister Humphreys launches Enable

31 Jan 2018
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Minister Humphreys launches Enable

31 Jan 2018
Minister Humphreys launches Enable

ENABLE will engage the public in developing Internet of Things solutions for urban environments

Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys, T.D., together with Minister of State for Training, Skills, Research, and Development, John Halligan, T.D., have launched ENABLE – a new €14.5 million Science Foundation Ireland research programme which will examine how the Internet of Things can be used to improve the quality of life for ordinary citizens living in urban environments.

ENABLE’s academic researchers will work in partnership with over 25 companies including large multinationals such as Intel and Huawei, and SMEs such as Cork-based Accuflow.

Co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund, the ENABLE research programme will address a wide range of topics including water management, air pollution, transport congestion, data privacy and cyber security. It will receive €10 million from Science Foundation Ireland and a further €4.5 million through collaborative research agreements with industry partners.

ENABLE will be led by Professor Siobhán Clarke at Trinity College Dublin and will include 60 researchers in three existing Science Foundation Ireland Research Centres – CONNECT, Insight and Lero.  The researchers will be based in Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City University, Cork Institute of Technology, Maynooth University, NUI Galway, University College Cork and University of Limerick.

The Director of ENABLE is Prof. Siobhán Clarke, Trinity College Dublin. The Deputy Director is Prof. Noel O’Connor, Dublin City University. Prof. Dirk Pesch (Cork Institute of Technology) and Prof. Ken Brown (University College Cork) are members of the Steering Committee.

Speaking at the launch of ENABLE, Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys, T.D., said: “ENABLE’s research focus is strategically important. Up to 70% of the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050: this will increase pressure on resources and infrastructure in our towns and cities. Innovative, technology-based solutions will be part of how we address this global challenge and I am glad that this new Science Foundation Ireland funded programme, ENABLE, will explore creative solutions to issues such as air pollution, energy management, flooding, traffic congestion, and data security.

ENABLE will involve significant collaboration with multiple industry partners ranging from large multinationals to SMEs. This engagement will ensure that the research outcomes will have industrial relevance.

I also welcome ENABLE’s ambitious plans to take its research outside the lab by using test-beds such as Croke Park and the Mallow Urban Rural Community Testbed, so ensuring that the research outcomes will find practical applications.”

Also speaking at the launch of ENABLE, Minister of State for Training, Skills, Innovation, Research and Development, John Halligan, T.D., said:

“ENABLE is building on the success of three world leading Science Foundation Ireland Research Centres: CONNECT Centre for Networks and Communications, Insight Centre for Data Analytics and Lero Software Research Centre. These three Centres are world leaders in their respective fields. Between them they have won over €47 million in highly competitive EU Horizon 2020 research funding over recent years, as well as attracting investments in excess of €22 million from industry partners who have collaborated with the Centres on more than 210 targeted research projects. 

SFI programmes such as ENABLE are of critical importance to Ireland’s economy. In addition to world-class scientific research, they also contribute to job creation and the development of a vibrant ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship.

They also provide us with a competitive edge as we seek to win further international funding, attract new research talent into the country, and expand our industry-academia partnerships.”

Professor Mark Ferguson, Director General of Science Foundation Ireland and Chief Scientific Advisor to the Government of Ireland, said: “ENABLE is funded under Science Foundation Ireland’s Spokes Programme. The Spokes Programme allows existing SFI Research Centres to focus on new research priorities, and to expand further by involving new industry partners and new academic researchers.

The high industry cost-share component of ENABLE’s funding reflects the importance and urgency of its research programme to industry.  We expect ENABLE to deliver excellent research results and, through its collaboration with its industry partners, to deliver significant economic and societal impact during its lifetime.

I am particularly pleased to see that ENABLE has included citizen engagement as a core activity. The involvement of the public in academic research will result in solutions which are relevant to solving ordinary, everyday challenges. This ensures that the technology of the future will be placed at the service of the citizen.”

Commenting at the launch, Professor Siobhán Clarke, Director of ENABLE, said: “ENABLE will work with our industry partners and via citizen engagement to address the challenges that currently limit the potential benefits of the Internet of Things for communities. Our research aims to enable smarter buildings, more efficient transportation, better handling of environmental issues, and enhanced cyber security and data privacy. These challenges align with our industry partners’ priorities ensuring economic as well as social impact.

Current solutions for smart cities tend to be siloed and do not share data. This limits the ability to exploit the connectedness of our environments.

ENABLE’s academic-industry consortium will focus on the scientific and engineering problems of developing innovative software services for smarter buildings, smart mobility, and improved environments in urban and community areas.”

Welcoming the announcement, Trinity’s Provost, Dr Patrick Prendergast, said:

“The launch of ENABLE is a significant development for the Internet of Things research landscape in Ireland. Its leadership by the CONNECT Centre at Trinity is testament to our team of exceptional researchers working in the fields of computer science and telecommunications. In addition to excellent scientific output, they are also supporting innovation in this critically important area. The calibre of industry partners who have already committed to working on targeted projects with ENABLE is indicative of the world class research taking place here in the smart cities domain. I wish Professor Clarke well as Director of ENABLE. Her previous work as Director of the Trinity Centre for Smart and Sustainable Cities has contributed to Trinity’s reputation in this field.”

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ENABLE
CONNECT Centre,
Dunlop Oriel House
Trinity College Dublin,
The University of Dublin
Dublin 2
Ireland
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Prof. Siobhán Clarke
Director | Trinity College Dublin
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Prof. Noel O’Connor
Deputy Director | DCU
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Patrick Reidy
Executive Director | Trinity College Dublin
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Prof. Kenneth Brown
Steering Committee | UCC
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Prof. Dirk Pesch
Steering Committee | UCC
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