Posted: 15 Nov 2012
Irish Software Association Outstanding Academic Achievement Award for UCD Professor
Professor Barry Smyth, who holds the Digital Chair of Computer Science in the UCD School of Computer Science and Informatics, has received the Irish Software Association’s 2012 Outstanding Academic Achievement of the Year Award.
“Our future as an industry is all about international scaling, and it is being written in software by the companies represented by ISA. We represent a community of category-winning scaling companies that want to transform, or even disrupt, the markets in which they operate to create the industries of the future,” said Karl Flannery, Chairman, ISA and CEO Storm Technology speaking at the award ceremony.
Pictured at the award ceremony (l-r): Karl Flannery, Chairman ISA & CEO Storm Technology, Professor Barry Smyth, UCD, and Philip Sharpe, Chair, Irish Software Innovation Network.
“It is a great honour to receive this award and recognition from my peers. I have always believed that there is enormous potential for collaboration between academia and industry,” said Professor Barry Smyth.
“Some of the most challenging and exciting problems are faced by industry every day and it is has been a great privilege to work with such a wide range of companies over the years.”
Professor Smyth has published in excess of 400 research papers and received more than 20 Best Paper awards for his research at University College Dublin. His research interests include personalization, recommender systems, case-based reasoning, machine learning and information retrieval.
Over recent years he has secured in excess of €15 million in research funding from a variety of Irish, European, and US funding agencies. During this time he has developed a leading research group in the area of personalisation and recommender systems technologies, graduating over 20 postgraduate students, many at PhD level.
Professor Smyth is also the Director of the CLARITY Centre for Sensor Web Technologies, a SFI funded CSET (Centre for Science, Engineering and Technology) and a joint initiative between University College Dublin, Dublin City University and the Tyndall National Institute.
“Professor Smyth’s academic, entrepreneurial and industry partnership track record demonstrates that it is possible to achieve excellence in research and scholarly publications and at the same time maximise the commercialisation of research output, through the establishment of spin-out companies, and to form collaborative partnerships with industry, which benefit the economy and society,” said Professor Peter Clinch, UCD Vice-President for Innovation congratulating Professor Smyth on the award.
Professor Smyth was a co-founder of the UCD spin-out company ChangingWorlds Ltd., a leading provider of mobile content discovery solutions, which was acquired by Amdocs Inc in 2008 for in excess of $60 million.
He is also the co-founder of another UCD spin-out HeyStaks, the social web-search start-up which he established with Dr Maurice Coyle and Dr Peter Briggs in 2008. HeyStaks is based at NovaUCD, the Centre for New Ventures and Entrepreneurs at University College Dublin. Professor Smyth has worked with a wide range of industry partners including Vodafone, Givaudan, Amdocs, and SkillPages.
The Irish Software Association
The Irish Software Association (ISA) is an association within IBEC and ICT Ireland, which provides a powerful united voice for the software sector to enable companies to build their ability to scale, increase funding levels in the sector and push the sector’s requirements in the political sphere in a coherent and coordinated manner. Its membership base is comprised of over 160 companies actively involved in every area of the software sector in Ireland. www.software.ie
(Produced by UCD University Relations)
