From left: Dr Sarah Foley, Prof Bashar Nuseibeh, Prof Greg Provan, Lero Director Prof Brian Fitzgerald, Prof Ita Richardson, Dr Noel Carroll and Abeba Birhane. Image: Arthur Ellis.
The annual awards recognising members of the software research centre were presented in person for the first time since the pandemic.
Academics, researchers and students from four Irish universities were awarded Lero Director’s Prizes at an in-person ceremony today (6 September).
This is the fourth year of the annual awards presented by Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland research centre for software. This centre brings together software teams from 12 academic partner universities and institutes across Ireland.
Prizes were presented at the annual gathering of Lero members, which was held in person this year for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Lero director Prof Brian Fitzgerald said that Lero members showed “incredible resilience and creativity” over the past two years.
“Lero researchers are working on and providing groundbreaking solutions to real-world problems in areas as diverse as self-driving cars to upskilling surgeons’ skills in the operating theatres,” Fitzgerald added. “Their skill, dedication and imaginative problems abilities never cease to amaze me.”
Seven Lero members from the University of Galway, University College Dublin, University of Limerick and University College Cork received awards this year for their achievements.
“As Lero continues to grow its global reputation, it is very rewarding to recognise the outstanding contributions to Lero which arise in a myriad of ways,” Fitzgerald said.
Here are the seven winners of this year’s Lero Director’s Prizes.
Research Excellence
The Prize for Research Excellence was awarded to Prof John McCarthy of University College Cork.
McCarthy’s research is focused on understanding the influence of emerging social, personal and work technologies on people’s lived experiences and using that understanding to inform the design of usable and enriching technologies.
Education and Public Engagement
The Prize for Education and Public Engagement was awarded to Dr Noel Carroll of the University of Galway. Carroll collaborated with Microsoft and the Project Management Institute to create a citizen development educational platform to teach students about digital literacy.
Last year, Carroll explained why there is a need to start with the ‘what’, not the ‘how’, when it comes to the first steps of digital transformation.
Diversity and Inclusion
The Prize for Diversity and Inclusion was awarded to Prof Ita Richardson from the University of Limerick.
Richardson has advocated for diversity and inclusion throughout her career, with a focus on women in STEM. She is a role model for women researchers who are early in their career, Lero said, speaking with people in the university, nationally and internationally.
She is an adviser and principal investigator to Johnson & Johnson’s Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Manufacturing & Design (WiSTEM2D) project.
Last year, Richardson spoke to SiliconRepublic.com about her work on software processes for groups in need, such as diabetics, people with mild intellectual disabilities and the ageing population.
Collaboration
The Prizes for Collaboration were awarded to Prof Bashar Nuseibeh of University of Limerick, Dr Liliana Pasquale of University College Dublin and Prof Greg Provan of University College Cork.
They were awarded for their three-way supervision of a PhD student. A joint supervision involving researchers from three universities is a complex task, but Lero said the result was highly successful as the student completed a PhD of high quality, with multiple publications already arising from this work.
PhD/PostDoctoral Contribution
The Lero Director’s Prize for PhD/PostDoctoral Contribution was presented to PhD student Abeba Birhane of University College Dublin.
Birhane’s work has focused on how ubiquitous technologies that are interwoven into our personal, social, political and economic spheres are shaping what it means to be a person. She told SiliconRepublic.com in 2020 that in her native continent of Africa, data harvesting by major companies – largely originating from the western world – has ushered in a new age of imperialism and colonial conquest.
This award recognises Birhane’s incredible work in analysing an extensive image library containing millions of images used to train AI systems. Her research helped uncover how the much-cited 80 Million Tiny Images dataset may have contaminated AI systems with racist, misogynistic and other slurs, which resulted in the database being taken down.
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