colm.oriordan@nuigalway.ie

John Breslin is a Professor in Electronic Engineering at the College of Science & Engineering at the National University of Ireland Galway, where he is Director of the TechInnovate and AgInnovate entrepreneurship and innovation programmes. John is Co-Founder of boards.ie (Ireland’s largest discussion forum website), adverts.ie (classified ads website), and StreamGlider (real-time streaming newsreader app). He is Co-Founder of the Galway City Innovation District / PorterShed and Startup Galway. John is Chair of WestBIC, and on the Steering Group of Scale Ireland. He coordinates the STARTED Erasmus+ Knowledge Alliance. John has taught electronic engineering, computer science, innovation and entrepreneurship topics over the past 20 years. Associated with three SFI Research Centres, he is a Co-Principal Investigator at Insight (Data Analytics) and Confirm (Smart Manufacturing), and a Funded Investigator at VistaMilk (AgTech). He co-created the SIOC, implemented in hundreds of applications (by Yahoo, Boeing, Vodafone, etc.) on at least 65,000 websites with 35 million data instances. He has written 250 peer-reviewed academic publications (h-index of 45, ~9000 citations, best paper awards from IoT, DL4KGS, SEMANTiCS, ICEGOV, ESWC, PELS), co-authored The Social Semantic Web and Social Semantic Web Mining, and also the Irish bestsellers Old Ireland in Colour (2020) and Old Ireland in Colour 2 (2021).

Prof. Michael Madden is the Established Professor and Head of School of Computer Science in NUI Galway. He leads the Machine Learning Research Group that he set up in 2001 in NUI Galway. His research focuses on new theoretical advances in machine learning, motivated by addressing important data-driven applications in medicine, engineering, and the physical sciences. This has led to over 100 publications, 9 publication awards, 4 patents and a spin-out company. He has spent time as a Visiting Research Scientist in University of Helsinki, University of California Irvine, and UC Berkeley.

His research includes: deep learning with data augmentation from virtual environments; learning agents and autonomous robotics; model-based probabilistic analytics for time series data analysis and decision-making; reasoning under uncertainty; Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBNs) for representing medical knowledge and combining it with patient data for improved ICU monitoring; health monitoring using gene expression data.

Prof. Jim Duggan is a Personal Professor at the School of Computer Science, National University of Ireland Galway. Prof. Duggan has held a range of senior roles with NUIG, including Head of Department (two terms), Vice-Dean of Research and Graduate Studies, and has served on the Standing Committee and Academic Council. Prof. Duggan is a member of the Ryan Institute, the Data Science Institute, and is a Funded Investigator at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics. Prof. Duggan is a Managing Editor of the System Dynamics Review, and his research interests span simulation, mathematical modelling and data science, with applications in public health. Prof. Duggan is a member of the Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group (IEMAG), and also a member of the World Health Organisation’s Global Outbreak and Response Network.