Staff Profiles

I received an honours B.Sc. degree in Information Technology from NUI Galway in 2006. I received an M.Sc. degree in Applied Computing and Information Technology from NUI Galway in 2010 as part of a collaborative project between NUI Galway and UCD. This work involved developing a One-Sided Classification toolkit and carrying out experimentation on high dimensional spectroscopy data. This work resulted in a single publication which won a best paper award at a national AI conference. I received a  Ph.D. from NUI Galway in 2016. My Ph.D. research involved designing and implementing multiple reinforcement learning architectures in Java to automate the control and adaption of non-player characters in a commercial first-person shooter game. I helped to set up the ComputerDISC programming support service in NUI Galway in 2010 and I managed, as well as tutored, in the centre for five years under a HEA funded teaching scholarship. My Ph.D. work resulted in four peer-reviewed papers being published including an international student best paper award. Upon finishing my Ph.D., I began work as a software engineer for Analyze IQ™ Limited and this involved designing and developing software applications for performing data analytics and library search on spectral data. Specifically, my role involved collaborative work on a European project to develop a forensic toolbox. The GIFT project includes over 20 collaborate partners and is funded under the Seventh Framework Programme of the EC. I took up the post of Below the Bar Lecturer in the School of Computer Science in August 2016. In 2018, I took over the role as the academic coordinator of the Computer Drop-In Support Centre. In 2020, I began a part-time consultancy role as a Leaving Certificate Computer Science Associate with the Professional Development Service for Teachers (PDST).