role: Students
Andrea Rossi
PhD Researcher
Before joining the SFI Centre for Research Training in Artificial Intelligence, Andrea received a 1H in bot Bachelors in Information Engineering and Masters in Computer Engineering from the University of Padova, Italy. His Master thesis: Machine Learning-based Signal Generation Strategies for High-Speed Optical Transmitters involving the optimisation of the optical fibre transmission by precompensating impairments using neural networks was overseen and carried out at Tyndall National Institute in Cork with the Photonics Systems Group. During the course of his studies, he also taught for three years in his former high school to help prepare secondary school students for the University entrance test and for the local selection of Mathematical Olympiads. “I’m really fascinated by AI and algorithms and in particular on Optimisation and Machine Learning with a broad range of applications, from logistics to finance. My passion for problem-solving always drives me as there are great challenges to overcome.”.
Currently, Andrea is working on predictive models and optimisation for cloud computing resource provisioning.
Supervisor: Professor Ken Brown & Dr Steve Prestwich
PROJECTS
Optimisation and Constraint Programming 2
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Donec odio. Quisque volutpat mattis eros. Nullam malesuada erat ut turpis. Suspendisse urna nibh, viverra non, semper suscipit, posuere a, pede.
OTHER TEAM MEMBERS
Ciaran O’Connor
PhD Researcher
Ciaran is a third year PhD student in the Unit for Time Series forecasting using deep learning at University College Cork where he is supervised by Dr. Steven Prestwich and Dr. Andrea Visentin. His research is in the field of electricity price forecasting using deep learning methods. Ciaran holds an MSc. in computational and financial maths, where his thesis was focused electricity price forecasting using machine learning methods.
Prior to joining the CRT-AI funded PhD programme, Ciaran worked on density functional theory in Queens University Belfast. The project aimed at using hse06 functional to map many body dispersion effects within the domain of quantum mechanics. In his spare time Ciaran enjoys playing soccer and powerlifting.
Supervisors: Dr. Steve Prestwich & Dr. Andrea Visentin
OTHER TEAM MEMBERS
Hriday Sangvhi
PhD Researcher
Hriday Sangvhi was awarded a merit scholarship for his Bachelor studies and holds a B.Tech degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the SRM Institute of Science and Technology in India. In addition, he has completed certified programmes, a Machine Learning course and a six-course specialization in Deep Learning, by Andrew Ng, Stanford University. He has also completed a series of machine learning projects to understand the underlying mathematics behind popular machine learning algorithms.
Hriday has worked on real-life data science projects in two paid internships as a Bachelor’s student. One was at a leading network security engineering company, where he built network security analytics and intelligence applications based on Splunk and IBM QRadar. Another was at a global IT consultancy, where he was selected through a competitive process, and where he developed a recommender system for an e-commerce shopping cart.
Hriday won the best paper award for his Bachelor’s research on Deep Q-Networks Reinforcement Learning. His research paper titled, ‘Damped Sinusoidal Exploration Decay Schedule to improve Deep Q-Networks-based Agent Performance’ is published in the Springer journal ‘Artificial Intelligence and Evolutionary Computations in Engineering Systems’. Hriday is the first author of his research paper, with a faculty member being the only other co-author. Hriday’s PhD research involves bringing innovations to Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning, to analyze real-time granular data from connected autonomous vehicles, for self-organising traffic system optimization.
Hriday combines a unique blend of skills in scientific research and software engineering that focus on Artificial Intelligence.
“I am interested in building advanced Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence systems that push the boundaries of innovation. My goal is to combine cutting edge research with industrial-strength software to solve real-world problems.”
Supervisors: Professor Vinny Cahill
OTHER TEAM MEMBERS
Manh-Duy Nguyen
PhD Researcher
Duy graduated from the Bachelor program of Mathematics and Computer Science from Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City – University of Science as a salutatorian. His artificial intelligence journey started since sophomore year when I was selected for the 1-year student exchange program STEP@TUAT of Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan.
His project is about creating an Android application that can recognise the walking activity of users then change the font size of the user interface of their devices to make them can use smartphones easier while walking. Continuing with this field, he did his bachelor thesis about creating the virtual paper keyboard Android application for smartphones. After graduation, he worked as a research assistant in AISIA Research Lab focusing on applying machine learning techniques to the problem of set inversion.
Duy then joined the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit to study the epidemiology field. His main research was to investigate the burden of Japanese Encephalitis and its vaccination impact. He was also a member of the Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium funded by Gavi, the vaccine alliance and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Beside doing research, Duy used to be a food tour guide in Ho Chi Minh City to fulfil his interest in eating local street food.
Duy currently a PhD student in Dublin City University and funded by SFI Center for Research Training in Artificial Intelligence. His thesis topic has not finally been decided yet but it will be about applying Artificial Intelligence to personal lifelogging data to investigate and discover the interesting insights.
Supervisors: Professor Cathal Gurrin
PUBLICATIONS
OTHER TEAM MEMBERS
Nivranshu Pasricha
PhD Researcher
Nivranshu Pasricha is a fourth-year PhD student in the Unit for Natural Language Processing at the Data Science Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway, where he is supervised by Dr. Paul Buitelaar and Dr. Mihael Arcan. His research is in the field of Natural Language Generation which is a subfield of Artificial Intelligence and Computational Linguistics that is concerned with tools and techniques to produce meaningful texts in a human language such as English from some underlying non-linguistic representation of information. Nivranshu holds an MSc. in Computer Science (Data Analytics) from National University of Ireland, Galway where his thesis was focused on detecting bot behaviour in social media, under the supervision of Dr. Conor Hayes.
Prior to joining the CRT-AI funded PhD programme, Nivranshu worked as a Research Assistant at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics in Galway on the NURS project (Neural Machine Translation in Under Resourced Scenario) in collaboration with the United Language Group in Barcelona. The project aimed to improve the performance of Neural Machine Translation in low-resource and domain-specific scenarios by leveraging knowledge from existing Rule-Based Machine Translation systems.
Supervisors: Dr Paul Buitelaar & Dr Mihael Arcan
PUBLICATIONS
OTHER TEAM MEMBERS
Mahsa Mahdinejad
PhD Researcher
Mahsa is a PhD student in the BDS lab at University of Limerick. Her research interests are Deep learning, Evolutionary Algorithms & Grammatical Evolution, Hybrid-Algorithms and Bioinformatics. She did her Bachelor’s degree in Physics, a field that showed her how she can understand the world by analytical, computational and experimental approaches. She was a member of the Astronomy Society, the Student Union, and the organizing committee of several scientific conferences and charity events.
She also joined the Hybrid Machines group in the Mechanical Engineering department. The other important part of academia that she has loved is doing research. She developed her first research experience during the two final year research projects that she did as part of her undergraduate studies,“Measuring the Intercellular Electromagnetic Interaction” and “Designing and Building a Laser-based Apparatus for Distance Measuring”. To prepare herself for entering a postgraduate program, she committed herself to more experience in different research areas such as data science and computer programming. She has worked as an Intern at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, at University of Limerick. She has published research work in various international conferences and journals.
Away from academia, she has gained invaluable work experience in different areas. She formed a startup which designed and implemented experimental setups for fascinating physics and chemistry experiments. They provided weekly lab classes at primary schools, held weekly lab sessions for children at the Isfahan Physics Center and planed public science exhibitions. She has also tutored high school students in mathematics, worked at the Shahre Ketab bookstores and taught English to children in kindergarten.
PUBLICATIONS
OTHER TEAM MEMBERS
Gosia Gutowska
PhD Researcher
Gosia’s main interests include data, technology and science overall. She has several years experience working with data mining, processing, analysis visualisation as well as leading a data team.
Her PhD research focuses on the explainable aspect of deep learning techniques applied to anomaly detection, in order to support experts verifying machine made decisions where ML or Dl techniques are utilised and where catching potential false positives is essential.
Gosia holds the MSc in Data Analytics from DCU and was awarded best practicum from the Data Analytics major in PwC Msc in Computing Award. The practicum project involved the analysis of time series signals from radio telescopes, for the purposes of classification of signals from potential extra-terrestrial intelligence (as a part of the SETI project). The paper from this research was later published at the Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science.
Before developing the interests towards data science, she entered many side-tracks on her professional development path which touched upon physics, chemical engineering, web technologies and software development.
She also holds the equivalent to Master’s Degree in Medical Physics from Jagiellonian University and in Materials Engineering and Chemistry from AGH university of Science and Technology in Krakow, Poland.
Supervisors: Dr. Andrew McCarren Dr. Suzanne Little.
Alberto Castagna
PhD Researcher
Alberto has always been fascinated by the potential of artificial intelligence and its capacity to amaze. He oriented his academic path to focus on AI more specifically on machine learning.
He began his studies in Milan (IT) at the University of Milano Bicocca where he accomplished a bachelor’s degree in computer science with a thesis named Rule based vehicle pedestrian interaction: focusing on pedestrians. He proceeded his education with a master’s degree held by the same institute where he achieved H1.
Throughout it, he expanded his horizon by doing an intern as R&D for three months in a local company and by pursuing two Erasmus. First one to study one semester at the University of Tromsø. The Arctic University of Norway (UiT) and second, with a length of 6 months, for researching on his master thesis aimed for new mobility services, at the Distributed System Group at the Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, entitled Shared Autonomous Vehicles: A Reinforcement Learning Approach.
Alberto is currently investigating Reinforcement Learning in multi agent context.
Supervisors: Dr Ivana Dusparic
PUBLICATIONS
OTHER TEAM MEMBERS
Ghayadah Alkharusi
PhD Researcher
I have completed my bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering at Dublin City University, graduating in 2019. During my bachelor’s, I was involved in summer projects with my current supervisor Tanya Levingstone, working on different tissue engineering applications such as Hydrogel fabrication and wearable skin tattoo sensors. The wearable skin tattoo study was published in the ‘Analytical Methods’ journal and I was listed as a coauthor. Furthermore, as part of my degree requirements, I needed to apply for an internship related to my study area. Therefore, I worked in a hospital for six months (biomedical department). I was involved in reprogramming and monitoring medical devices, which improved my confidence in applying my engineering skills in a real-world setting. My current Ph.D. work is in 3D bioprinting scaffolds that will be used to treat osteoporosis issues. Artificial intelligence (AI) will play a massive part in my work to optimize the current fabrication methods used in tissue engineering.
Supervisors: Dr. Tanya Livingstone & Dr. Suzanne Little
OTHER TEAM MEMBERS
Bentolhoda Binaei
PhD Researcher
Hoda holds a Ph.D. in Computer Algebra from the Isfahan University of Technology, Iran and Kassel University in Germany. Her doctoral work focused on the structure and computation of involutive bases. During her Ph.D. study, I worked at Shomara company in Iran as an intern where she had the opportunity to work with Time-series data in analysing the stock market data. Her concern has always been about being at the forefront of knowledge. Given the influence of data science on any area of science, particularly in industry and technology, after finishing her Ph.D., she has joined the Centre for Research Training (CRT) in Artificial Intelligence (AI) group at Insight Center for Data Analytics in NUI Galway since October 2019 where my research lies primarily n Data analysis, Machine learning, Deep learning, and their applications. As her background is in mathematics and symbolic computation knowledge, she has focused on conducting research in Neurosymbolic AI, asto address how symbolic AI can assist deep learning, in order to overcome the current black-box nature of Deep Learning.
Supervisors: Dr. Matthias Nickles
PROJECTS
Optimisation and Constraint Programming
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Donec odio. Quisque volutpat mattis eros. Nullam malesuada erat ut turpis. Suspendisse urna nibh, viverra non, semper suscipit, posuere a, pede. Lorem Ipsum Donec nec justo eget felis facilisis fermentum. Aliquam porttitor mauris sit amet orci. Aenean dignissim pellentesque felis. Morbi in sem quis dui placerat ornare. […]
OTHER TEAM MEMBERS
Rory Hennessy
PhD Researcher
Rory O’Sullivan-Hennessy is a Ph.D. student, supported by a Science Foundation Ireland Postgraduate Research Scholarship, currently researching in the area of disruptive technologies and digital health. Rory read law as an undergraduate at Trinity College, having been conferred with the LL.B. degree in 2016 and then the LL.M. in 2017. Rory joined the Privacy and Data Security team of Mason Hayes & Curran, one of Ireland’s leading commercial law firms, in 2018 as a Legal Executive, helping to advise tech clients including Facebook, WhatsApp and Airbnb on their privacy structuring.
In 2019, Rory was awarded a fully-funded, competitive research scholarship of four years’ duration by Science Foundation Ireland’s Centre for Research Training in Artificial Intelligence (CRT-AI). The CRT-AI is Ireland’s dedicated academic hub for doctoral training in AI technology. Under the supervision of Dr. Andrea Mulligan (TCD School of Law) and Dr. Dave Lewis (TCD School of Computer Science and Statistics), Rory’s thesis puts forward proposals for the ethical regulation of artificial intelligence technologies in the healthcare space.
In September 2020, Rory joined the Law School of University College Cork as a Lecturer of Technology Law, delivering modules in Privacy & Data Protection Law, Intellectual Property Law and Cybercrime (as well as the Law Faculty of Griffith College Dublin as a Lecturer of Tort Law). Rory currently delivers seminars in law to Trinity’s LL.B. students, and tutors on the Trinity EthicsLab elective with Professor Linda Hogan of the TCD School of Ecumenics. In 2020, Rory began delivering a series of Ethics and Professionalism workshops in the TCD School of Medicine in the areas of medical ethics, digital health and data protection. Rory also works closely with the bodies governing equestrian sport in Ireland, including Horse Sport Ireland, and acts as the National Children’s Officer for the Irish Pony Club.
Supervisors: Dr. Andrea Mulligan
Priya Rani
PhD Researcher
Priya graduated from Jawaharlal Nehru University with a Bachelor degree in Chinese Language, Literature and Culture study in 2015 and Master’s degree in Linguistics in 2018 She also holds an M. Phill in Linguistics from Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar University in 2019. During the course of her studies she also worked as a senior linguist at Samsung R&D, Banglore, India, and Panlingua Language Processing LLP, New Delhi, India for short term projects. As a Linguist, her research area and academic background lie at the Junction of Linguistics and Computer Science, focusing on Natural Language Processing.
Her Masters thesis: Agreement in Rajbansi, and tries to find out morphological parameters and syntactic structure of the agreement system within Principle and Parameters framework. In her M.phil thesis: A Pragmatic Study of Gender-Directed Offensive and Threatening Language on Social media with Application in its Automatic Detection. It focuses on the pragmatic study of the linguistic structure helpful in detecting offensive language with especial reference to gender in code-mixed languages. In March 2019, She received DAAD fellowship to join International Spring School in Advanced Language Engineering conducted by University of Konstaz, Germany and University of Moratowa, Sri Lanka.
Currently, she is working on Minority languages of India, Magahi and Bhojpuri in particular.
Supervisors: Dr. John McCrae & Dr. Theodorus Fransen
