Dr. Karl Mason

I am a tenured Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the School of Computer Science at NUI Galway. Previously, I held appointments as:

• Postdoctoral Researcher in the CIREGS lab at Cardiff University, UK, working with Dr. Meysam Qadrdan. This work was funded by the EPSRC.
• Postdoctoral Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA within the ACES Research Group, directed by Prof. Santiago Grijalva, in collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories. My work was funded by Sandia National Laboratories and the National Science Foundation.

Before this, I completed my PhD in Computer Science at the National University of Ireland, Galway. My PhD research primarily consisted of developing methods to evolve neural networks and to apply these algorithms within the energy sector for tasks such as: wind generation forecasting, electricity generation dispatch, etc. This PhD dissertation was nominated for the 2018 European AI PhD Dissertation award.

My research broadly falls under the heading of machine learning, but explores multiple topics including: neural networks, evolutionary computing, reinforcement learning, multi-agent systems and swarm intelligence. I’m also interested in applications of machine learning methods to problems including: renewable energy, smart homes, infrastructure planning, smart grid, robotics and cloud computing.