Prof Brian Fitzgerald, the new director of Lero. Image: Alan Place/Fusionshooters
Lero, the Limerick-based software research centre, has announced that its new director will be Prof Brian Fitzgerald, replacing Prof Mike Hinchey.
Lero has revealed that, after completing his eight-year term, Prof Mike Hinchey will step down as director of the Limerick-based software research centre, to be replaced by Prof Brian Fitzgerald.
The Roscommon native was formerly Lero’s chief scientist. He has been involved with the Science Foundation Ireland-supported national research centre since its inception in 2005, apart from a spell as vice-president of research at the University of Limerick (UL) from 2008 to 2011.
Before his move into academia, Fitzgerald worked in the software industry for over a decade in a variety of sectors, including finance, telecommunications, manufacturing and bespoke software development in Ireland, Belgium and Germany.
Having now completed his term, Hinchey will retain his role as professor of software engineering at UL. He will continue to be involved with Lero as a co-principal investigator and leader of research in autonomous and adaptive systems.
Hinchey remains involved in a number of international roles, including as the current president of IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing), which was established in 1960 under the auspices of UNESCO.
High praise
Commenting on Fitzgerald’s appointment, UL’s president Prof Don Barry said: “Brian brings to the role valuable industry, as well as academic, experience.
“He is a pioneer in research into open source software and is widely recognised as a global leader in the study of software development processes and methods.”
Hinchey and Fitzgerald had recently worked together to compile a report commissioned by the EU to address how to maximise the benefit of European software research funding under the €80bn Horizon 2020 programme.
The report found that software has reached a ‘Software Crisis 2.0’ bottleneck due to an explosion in demand across most industries from medicine and healthcare to automotive and mobile telephony, as well as the increased complexity involved in serving these sectors.
