Professor Ronan Cahill was appointed Professor of Surgery at University College Dublin and the Mater Misericordiae Hospital in June 2014 before taking over leadership of the Section and Subject of Surgery in UCD in 2017. Ronan graduated MB,BAO,BCh (Hons) from University College Dublin in 1997 and then completed his basic and specialist surgical training in Ireland, gaining both MD by thesis (Health Research Board Clinical Research Fellow) and FRCS by examination. Thereafter, he was a clinical fellow at the IRCAD/EITS Institute in Strasbourg, France from 2007 to 2008 before moving to the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals as senior fellow and then consultant and senior clinical researcher from 2008 to 2010. Ronan returned to Ireland in 2010 as consultant general surgeon (specialist interest in colorectal surgery) at Beaumont Hospital before moving to the Mater and UCD. He is a recipient of both the Bennett and Millen Medals (RCSI Millen Lecturer 2010) and was the ASGBI Robert Smith Lecturer in 2014. He has authored over 150 peer reviewed publications, five book chapters and four National Guidelines. He is an editorial board member of five indexed surgical journals, including Colorectal Disease and the European Journal of Surgical Oncology and is a member of the SAGES Research Committee (SAGES Career Development Award recipient 2009). He has a major academic interest in Surgical Innovation and New Technologies and active basic science, clinical and device development research partnerships both nationally and internationally.
Full Professor of Anatomy, UCD School of Medicine
I am a neuroanatomist interested in autonomic control of the gastrointestinal tract and cardiorespiratory systems. At present I am working collaboratively with colorectal surgeons on the neural control systems of defaecation and the anal canal. Our objective is to refine the medical devices that are used in cases of faecal incontinence. I also have an active research interest in 3D printing in Anatomy, artificial muscles and neural prosthetic interfaces.
Professor, UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Madeleine Lowery is a Professor in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University College Dublin. Her research is focused on using engineering methods to understand the human nervous system as it relates to movement, in health and disease, and to design therapies and technologies to improve impaired motor function. She leads an interdisciplinary research team in the area of Neuromuscular Systems and Neural Engineering.
Her research interests include electromyography, bioelectromagnetics, myoelectric control of artificial limbs, electrical stimulation, deep brain stimulation and neural control of movement. Between 2000 and 2005, Dr Lowery was a Postdoctoral Fellow then Research Assistant Professor at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Northwestern University. She received the B.E. and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University College Dublin, in 1996 and 2000, respectively.
She is a member of the IEEE and a member of the Council of the International Society of Electrophysiology and Kinesiology (ISEK). She is a Funded Investigator in the SFI Insight Centre for Data Analytics and the CURAM Centre for Research in Medical Devices. In January 2015 she was awarded a Consolidator grant by the European Research Council.
Lecturer / Assistant Professor, UCD School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering
Dr. Eoin O'Cearbhaill, BE, PhD, is a Lecturer/ Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the UCD School of Mechanical & Materials Engineering. Prior to joining UCD, Dr. O'Cearbhaill was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School (Harvard-MIT Health Sciences & Technology Division; Dept. of Medicine, Brigham & Women's Hospital), where his research focused on the conception and development of medical devices and the delivery of next generation therapeutics, in the laboratory of Prof. Jeffrey Karp.
Based on his development of a mechanical clutch needle, designed to prevent through-puncture injuries, Dr O'Cearbhaill was awarded 1st prize at the MIT Sloan BioInnovations 2012 conference. He was also part of the team that received the Institution of Chemical Engineers' Innovative Product of the Year Award 2013 for their work on developing a bio-inspired microneedle adhesive. Dr O'Cearbhaill obtained his BE (Biomedical) and PhD from NUI-Galway. His doctorate focused on applying mechanical stimulation to MSCs for vascular tissue engineering applications.
Subsequently, he worked for Veryan Medical, before joining Creganna-Tactx, where he worked in both manufacturing and design service roles, helping to establish their Specialty Needles Division in Marlborough, MA. Dr O'Cearbhaill's interests include: 3D Printing of Medical Devices; Medical Device Innovation, Design and Commercialisation, including minimally invasive devices and delivery systems.
Lecturer / Assistant Professor, School of Computer Science
Dr. Brian Mac Namee received a BA (mod) and PhD in Computer Science from Trinity College Dublin in 2000 and 2004 respectively. In 2015 Brian joined the UCD School of Computer Science as a lecturer. At UCD Brian is the Centre Director for the SFI Centre for Research Training in Machine Learning (http://ml-labs.ucd.ie) and a Funded Investigator at the Insight (http://www.insight-centre.org) and VistaMilk (https://vistamilk.ie/) SFI research centres. Previously Brian was a founding Principal Investigator at the CeADAR centre (www.ceadar.ie) and a Funded Investigator at the Insight centre .
Brian's research focuses on machine learning, predictive analytics, data visualisation, and augmented reality. Brian has published extensively in machine learning, predictive analytics, and information visualisation - a recent highlight is the textbook "Fundamentals of Machine Learning for Predictive Data Analytics: Algorithms, Worked Examples and Case Studies" published with MIT Press in 2015 (www.machinelearningbook.com).
Prior to joining UCD Brian worked in industry as an R & D software engineer for Agilent Technologies, and at the School of Computing at Dublin Institute of Technology as a lecturer where he co-founded the Applied Intelligence Researcher Centre (http://www.ditairc.ie), and developed DIT's successful MSc in Computing (Data Analytics) programme.