Archived News - 1999-2007

School of Electronic Engineering

Archived News 1999 - 2007

  • Dec 2007: Congratulations to Nicolas Sezille, Dr. Kevin Robinson and Prof. Paul Whelan (VSG, CIPA) who won the DCU INVENT(ICT/Engineering Section) Invention Disclosure Award for 2007 for their CAD-CTC patent. http://www.cipa.dcu.ie/
  • Dec 2007: Congratulations to Dr. John Mallon and Prof. Paul Whelan (VSG, CIPA) on their Enterprise Ireland (Industrial Research and Commercialisation Committee (IRCC)) Technology Development grant. http://www.cipa.dcu.ie/
  • National Biophotonics & Imaging Platform - The Centre for Image Processing & Analysis (CIPA - http://www.cipa.dcu.ie/), in conjunction with the Biomedical Diagnostics Institute at Dublin City University has been award funding under the HEA’s Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI IV) scheme as part of the National Biophotonics & Imaging Platform (NBIP).The mission of the NBIP is to provide an integrated national access and training infrastructure in research, education, technology development and industry collaboration for the State’s investment in Biophotonics and Imaging. The total value of the funding awarded to this platform (consisting of researchers from RCSI, DCU, NUIM, NUIG, UCC, UL, DIT and CNRS (France)) in 2007 was € 30 million (€7 Million to DCU). CIPA will be the Image Processing and Analysis Facility within the Imaging Technology core of the NBIP. See http://www.nbip.dcu.ie/ for additional details.
  • November 2007 - DCU Open Day - The School of Electronic Engineering recently had very successful open days, when many visitors were attracted to the amazing demonstrations and also to the joint engineering talks on . The demonstrations covered optical communications, robotics, plasma generation, optical illusions, plus many more areas. As always the 'Van de Graaff' generator proved a major attraction with no shortage of volunteers wanting to make their hair stand on end.  Picture shows an open day visitor grappling with the 'Virtual Pig' optical illusion toy.
  • Nanomaterials Processing Laboratory News 2007
    NPL Researchers successful in HEA PRTLI bid. Collaborative effort entitled NANOTEIRE. For more details please seehttp://www.dcu.ie/news/2007/aug/s0807e.shtml .  NPL Project entitled “300 mm wafer analytical capabilities for non invasive evaluation of thermo-mechanical properties in Low Power Strained Si CMOS Integrated Circuits”, was granted 2 years' funding under the Science Foundation Ireland Industry Research Partnership Supplement Scheme.  Prof. Patrick McNally elected by all users of the ANKA Synchrotron (Germany) to the ANKA International Users Committee (AIUC). Chairing AIUC 2007-8. Fpr more information please seehttp://ankaweb.fzk.de/aiuc/aiuc_members.php
  • November 2007 - Graduation - The 2006/2007 Ericsson medal and prize (E1,000) in telecommunications engineering was won by Victoria Robyn Hatt, for her final-year project in the DCU Mechatronics Engineering degree. Navigating through a University career is the theme of a prize-winning web game written by Victoria, she feels that a game is a more effective way of learning the third-level ropes than traditional talks and handbooks. The player is taken from initial registration through library familiarization to submitting assignments, getting to lectures and labs, all the way to sitting final exams! Her project was short-listed because, being a Java-based game, it is well-suited to implementation on a mobile phone. Pictured at the prize ceremony are Victoria Robyn Hatt, Dr Gabriel-Miro Muntean (project supervisor), Anthony Briody and Paddy O'Leary both from LM Ericsson International, based in Dun Laoghaire.
  • August 2007 - CIICT 2007 - The recently successful CIICT 2007 conference was officially opened by Prof. Ferdinand von Prondzynski President of DCU, and Mr. Zhang Xinsen Chinese Ambassador to the Republic of Ireland.  CIICT2007 produced proceedings in excess of one hundred papers contributed by researchers from China, Ireland, and other parts of the world. Topics ranged across the spectrum of Information and Communications theory and technologies from Circuits and Systems, Signal Processing to Artificial Intelligence and Information Systems. All involved were very positive with the outcome of the conference, and the aims  to strengthen science and technology research collaboration between China and Ireland were further enhanced. More information, www.ciict.org .  Group photo of delegates are pictured outside the Engineering Building following the opening ceremony.
  • June 2007 - St. Patrick’s National School Drumcondra visit - The School of Electronic Engineering recently hosted over 200 pupils from the local St. Patrick’s National School, Drumcondra. This visit event organised by Dr Stephen Daniels saw the 6 -7 year old pupils enjoy themselves immensely, by having an interactive part with many activities, such as mobile robotics, paper airplane launching and sending secret messages using light. All pupils received a goodie bag and DCU 'Engineer Your Career' baseball cap. Feedback from the teachers indicated it was a very special occasion for the pupils and the School of Electronic Engineering will look forward to the future when this loyal army of 6 year come to study engineering at DCU. Pictured are some of the pupils having fun launching paper airplanes at over 50km/h speeds.
  • May 2007 - 1986 & 1987 Friends-Electronic Engineering Reunion - This evening turned out to be an opportunity for friends from the Electronic Engineering Class of 1987 and 1986 to reunite 20/21 years after graduation. Many of those who attended travelled from various parts of the world and for some it was the first time to meet in many years. All enjoyed a wine reception in the Engineering building and tour of its facilities, before dining the night away in the 1838 club and reminiscing about their college days in NIHE. 
  • May 2007 - Remote Control Car Fabrication - First year engineering students recently displayed the fruits of the work !  This 'Remote Control Car Fabrication' module spanned both Semester 1 and Semester 2, where the students involved worked in teams to design and build using both electronic and mechanical concepts. Their efforts reached the ultimate climax of competition in 'The Venue' where each team received the opportunity display their cars ability and compete against each other on the pitch. An enjoyable event for the large audience who attended, and congratulations to the winning team for their successful design 'Ciarzy Wiarzy'.   Dr Noel Murphy presents the winning team  with first prize, members are Issraa Alhiti, Adam O Toole, Una Hally, and Ciaran O Neill.
  • March 2007 - Mobile Robotics - This annual event recently took place,  where the 3rd mobile robotic designs competed and the efforts of all teams involved showed a very high standard. Congratulations to the winning team, and many tanks to our sponsor Farnell Ireland for their continuing support. Winning team members Peter Omorogbe Osahon, Tony Marrero Barroso and Xin Wang, are pictured receiving their prize from sponsor Mr Stephen Mortimer ( Farnell, Ireland ).
  • February 2007 - Engineered - A Week of Wonder -  The School of Electronic Engineering recently participated in the "Engineered - A Week of Wonder" event.
    Country wide this event was organised by the Institution of Engineers of Ireland's for the first time, and it attracted about 500 children (8 to 14 years) on both days to DCU, with the aims of educating and interesting children in the fields of engineering and technology.  Be an Engineer for the day was the theme and the children participated in activities like, send a secret message using light, build a MindStorms robot, make a paper airplane and launch it at 50 kilometres per hour, who wants to be and engineer quiz, engineering magic show, along with many interesting demonstrations. More information on this event at, www.weekofwonder.ie
  • November 06 - Graduation 2006 - Congratulations to all recently graduated students from the school of Electronic Engineering and the School of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering. A reception for graduants and their guests was held in the Engineering building, during which the top students in each graduating class received an award, along with the Ericsson medal and prize for best final year project.  Pictured following the prize ceremony, Back (l to r) Micheal McCann, Alan Kennedy, Brendan Bryne, Brian Henry, George Corcoran. Front (l to r) Niall Manning, Evelyn Campbell, Robin Blanford, and Kevin Collins.
  • June '06 - Young Scientist Award
    Ms. Gomathi Natarajan, a PhD student in the Nanomaterials Processing Laboratory and supervised by Dr. Stephen Daniels, was awarded the Young Scientist Award at the European Materials Research Society (E-MRS) 2006 Spring Meeting, May 29 - June 2, 2006 at the Acropolis Congress Centre, Nice, France. Her presentation, entitled "Optimization of room temperature UV emitting CuCl thin films: Temperature dependant optical properties" appeared in Symposium R : Advances in Transparent Electronics : from materials to devices.
  • China-Ireland Conference 2006
    The first CIICT conference is being jointly sponsored and organized by Hangzhou Dianzi University and Dublin City University, and will be held in Hangzhou Dianzi University in the autumn of 2006. It is hoped that the conference will include participation from a number of Irish and Chinese universities, and from researchers in other countries. For more details please visit the China-Ireland Conference (CIICT06) website.
  • March 2006 - Mobile Robotics Competition - Congratulations to winning team in the recent School of Electronic Engineering 3rd year 'Mobile Robotics Competition'.  This 3rd year Mobile Robotics module involved students working in teams to design and constructed a microprocessor based mobile robot. The mobile robotic designs competed against each other where they mimicked the task of a TAXI,  where the would pick up a passenger and drop them off at a specified destination.  Shown are the winning team members,  Jay Galligan, Ronan O'Hart and Saqib Mumtaz receiving their prize from Dr Noel O'Connor and Dr Sean Marlow.
  • March, 2006 The Irish Machine Vision and Image Processing Conference 2006 will take place from the 30th of August 2006 to the 1st of September 2006. The 2006 Irish Machine Vision and Image Processing (IMVIP) Conference will be hosted by the Vision Systems Laboratory, RINCE, Dublin City University, bringing together theoreticians and practitioners, industrialists and academics, from the numerous related disciplines involved in the processing and analysis of image-based information. (more details)
  • March, 2006 - Workshop The School of Electronic Engineering here in DCU is running a workshop on 'Career Awareness in Electronic, Information and Communications, Mechatronic & Digital Media Engineering' on 10th and 11th May. The 2 day workshop is designed to facilitate a 'hands on' engineering experience that will give participants an exposure to new technologies. It includes building their own electronic product while sampling a little of university life.  The workshop is open to transition year students. It is preferable that the students are taking Honours Maths for their Leaving Certificate. For queries please contact Ger Lardner at (01) 700 5604 or email: workshop@eeng.dcu.ie
  • February 2006 - Flashes of Brilliance - The Cutting Edge of Irish Science 
    This new book by Dick Ahlstrom published by the Royal Irish Academy is the first book to highlight the breadth and depth of scientific research in Ireland today. The book features Professor Barry McMullin and his work on the 'Artificial Cell' which was originally published in the Irish Times on 2nd September, 2004
  • January 2006 - HP Invent Award 
    DCU student, David Noonan, who graduated with a First Class Honours BEng in Mechatronics Engineering this year, has been awarded a Joint Runner-Up Prize in the 2005 Hewlett-Packard Invent award. The prize was awarded by the Minster of Education, Mary Hanafin, T.D., at a ceremony in HP’s manufacturing plant in Leixlip, Co. Kildare on 1 Dec 2005.  This award recognises the best Final Year Projects in undergraduate science and engineering programmes on the island of Ireland. David’s project, supervised by Prof. Patrick McNally in the School of Electronic Engineering, focused on the use of advanced x-ray analytical techniques for evaluating the impact of the removal of lead (Pb) from solder interconnections in silicon microchips. As a result of European Union legislation, toxic lead metal is being phased out of integrated circuit semiconductor device production. David analysed the feasibility of using Nickel as an alternative solder metal and his work will help pave the way for future efforts in this regard. Prof. McNally noted that “David’s work is of such high quality that we will be publishing it in an international journal in 2006”.  Shown below, at the award ceremony, are (left to right): Minister Mary Hanafin, Mr. Lionel Alexander, vice president and general manager of HP Manufacturing Ltd., and Mechatronic Engineering Graduate Mr. David Noonan. 
  • November 2005 - Ericsson Medal 2005 
    The winner of the 2005 Ericsson Medal for best final year project is Steven O'Callaghan for his project "Performance Comparison of Wireless Technologies when Streaming Multimedia" supervised by Dr. Gabriel-Miro Muntean. The award was presented at a ceremony at School of Electronic Engineering, DCU on Tuesday 1st November 2005 by Traoloch Collins, Head of the Systems Integration Department at Ericsson Global Services Delivery Centre in Dublin. 
  • September 2005 - Recent Promotions
    In recent months, the School of Electronic Engineering and RINCE have been successful in having two of their academics appointed to Professorial positions. In April of this year, Professor Paul Whelan was awarded a Personal Chair by the University and more recently Dr. Barry McMullin received an Associate Professorship. 
  • August 2005 - Journal of Electronic Imaging Cover Story
    A Vision Systems Group Paper entitled 'Computational approach for depth from focus' by Ovidiu Ghita, Paul F. Whelan and John Mallon (2005), featured on a recent cover of the Journal of Electronic Imaging 14 (2), April 2005, 023021 (1-8).
  • July 2005 - Kevin Robinson, winner of 'SFI Best Student Paper' Award 
    Kevin Robinson, PhD student with the Vision Systems Group in the Faculty of Engineering and Computing at DCU, was recently awarded the `SFI Best Student Paper Award' at the the 18th IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems held at TCD in June 2005. 

    In conjunction with his supervisor Professor Paul Whelan, Kevin submitted and presented a paper on the "Analysis of the Pancreato-biliary System from Magnetic Resonance Cholangiopancreatography (MRCP)".  The ultimate goal of Kevin's research is to develop effective techniques in the analysis of the biliary tree, using computer-aided diagnostic tools. The data currently obtained from MRI scans for the detection of gall stones is comparatively low-resolution and the process itself is noisy. However, using the latest imaging techniques, the process becomes more effective, easier and less time-consuming for the radiologists. More importantly, using image processing, the diagnosis of gall stones and other pancreato-biliary conditions is likely to become more robust. Kevin's research was jointly funded by the Department of Radiology in the Mater Hospital, and through an Albert College Senior Fellowship.  For more details, the paper can be found here.
  • January 2005 - RINCE Pioneers Research Skills Transition Year Programme at DCU - RINCE pioneered a transition year programme focusing specifically on Research Skills. The idea behind the scheme was to allow second level students to understand what electronic engineering research entails, what its application is and how it affects the world we live in. 

    Five students from Scoil Chaitríona, Glasnevin worked for 2 days in December on a one-to-one mentoring basis with researchers from five different leading-edge RINCE laboratories. After a brief introduction to the research being carried out in the areas of Vision Systems, Speech Processing, eAccessability, Video Media Processing and Radio and Opticals, students opted to work in the laboratory of their choice. After two days of laboratory practice in a laboratory situation each student gave a short presentation and demonstration of the work they had carried out. It is hoped to repeat and expand on this scheme in the coming year.
  • Nov 29nd 2004 - Prof. McNally elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics - Prof Patrick McNally of RINCE's Microelectronics Research Laboratory has been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (FInstP). Prof. McNally was only one of two newly elected Irish fellows out of a grand total of 74 in 2004. The other newly elected fellow was also a DCU faculty member, Dr.John Costello, School of Physical Sciences.  This senior class of membership is bestowed on members of the Institute of Physics and indicates a very high level of achievement in physics and an outstanding contribution to the profession.
  • November 1 2004 - The 2003/2004 Ericsson medal and prize for final year projects in telecommunications engineering was shared by John Diskin and John Fitzpatrick, graduates of Telecommunications Engineering.  They collaborated on an investigation of MIMO radio systems, supervised by Dr. Conor Brennan, (director of the RINCE RF Modelling and Simulation Group.) The medals and prizes were awarded after the engineering graduation ceremony, by Orvar Hurtig, Manager of Ericsson Global Services in Dun Laoghaire. Both prizewinners are now working towards Ph.D. degrees. The Telecommunications Engineering degree at DCU is a part of RINCE's educational mission. 
  • Nov 22nd 2004 - Collaboration with DCU - Prof. Bin Liu, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China recently visited DCU to work with his RINCE collaborators Drs Xiaojun Wang and Martin Collier on their research on Optimized Processing in Network Processor for High-Performance Routers (more)
  • October 2004 - RINCE Research Seminar Series - A Seminar entitled: ‘Acceleration algorithms for computational electromagnetics’ Will Be Presented by Dr.Conor Brennan, RF Modelling & Simulation Group, RINCE, DCU onFriday,October 15th, 2004 at 3.00 p.m in S209
  • June 2004 - RINCE researchers Drs Darragh O’Brien and Ronan Scaife of the RINCE Speech Laboratory have been awarded a 2004 SFI Basic Research Grant for an investigation into "New Distance Measures for Concatenative Speech Synthesis" To date, no one has come up with a distance measure that accurately and consistently models human auditory perception of speech in this context. The RINCE team of O'Brien and Scaife will work on the search for a better distance metric. Not only will this project contribute to better automatic high quality speech synthesis, but it will also advance our understanding of human hearing.
  • June 2004 - RINCE researcher Robert Sadleir of the Vision Systems Group has been awarded the best presentation prize at the Association of Physical Scientists in Medicine 2004 Annual Scientific Meeting on June 11th 2004. His award winning presentation was on the 'Automatic detection of colorectal polyps at CT colonography using shape information'.
  • June 2004 - RINCE's Dr. Barry McMullin is involved in a new 8.5M euro integrated project to evolve programmable artificial cells. The European Commission has approved an Integrated Project (PACE) that will create the foundation for a new generation of embedded information technology using programmable, self assembling, artificial cells. A consortium of some 13 partners and 2 cooperating groups from 8 European countries, including Ireland and several USA organizations will pioneer this new approach under the IST-FET section of the 6th Framework Program (FP6).  Dr. Barry McMullin, who leads the Artificial Life Laboratory at RINCE, DCU states that a multidisciplinary consortium is vital for addressing these issues. The PACE partnership currently includes partners with competencies in Complex Systems, Embedded Systems, Robotics, Evolution, Statistics, Chemical Kinetics, Physical Simulation, Microfluidics, Organic and Bioorganic Chemistry, Computer Interfaces, Control Systems, as well as with Standards and Learning Services. (for more information)
  • June 2004 - The 2004 EE & RINCE sponsored John Holland Undergraduate Student Research Scholarships were awarded to 2nd year Electronic Engineering student Gao Zhi and 3rd year Mechatronic Engineering student Ronan McKitterick at an award ceremony on Friday June 11th, 2004.  Gao Zhi will work under the supervision of Prof. Charles McCorkell on a project entitled 'Design of dynamic simultator for the evaluation of microscale machines'. Ronan McKitterick will work under the supervision of Dr. Noel O'Connor on a project entitled 'Automatic Identification and Indexing of Vehicle Registration Plates from CCTV'.
  • April. 2004 - RINCE's Microelectronics Research Laboratory (MRL), directed by Prof. Patrick McNally has just been awarded funding for a new project at one of Europe's leading large scientific institutions.  The work will be carried out in collaboration with the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (FzK) Germany, which is one of the biggest science and engineering research institutions in Europe.  (more details)
  • Feb. 2004 - RINCE Researchers Drs. Xiaojun Wang and Martin Collier have been successful in winning a Royal Irish Academy/SFI grant under the China-Ireland Research Collaboration Fund. This grant has been awarded for their Research on Optimized Processing in Network Processor Units for High-Performance Routers. The award will enable close collaboration between Drs. Wang and Collier and Professor Bin Liu group in Tsinghua University, China. This furthers the Irish/Chinese academic linkages already established by Dr. Wang.
  • CIVR2004 - The 3rd International Conference on Image and Video Retrieval (CIVR2004) will take place in Dublin City University on 21st-23rd of July 2004, hosted by the Center for Digital Video Processing.  CIVR2004 will be a 3-day event with 2 days devoted to a research track and 1 day devoted to a practitioner track.  Proceedings will be published by Springer-Verlag. 
  • July 2003 - Discover Science Programme 
    Lisa Burke from Electronic Engineering was chosen among twelve other Irish Graduates to embark on a truly amazing experience with the Florida Space Institute this summer.  At the Institute they will experience at first hand NASA's Space Programme.  They will further their studies in science while working alongside some of the world's leading scientists during a specially designed six week course in space engineering and science.  The highlight of the programme will be the launch of a Super Loki sounding rocket carrying a payload built by the Irish participants. 
  • March 2003 - IBM Scholars Program 
    Emira Dautbegovic from the School of Electronic Engineering was awarded a winner of the prestigious IBM PhD Fellowship 2003/2004. The IBM PhD Fellowship is an annual program and is intended to honor exceptional PhD students in disciplines of mutual interest, including: chemistry, computer science, electrical engineering, materials science, mathematics, mechanical engineering, physics, e-Commerce, nanotechnology and computational sciences. The Fellowships are awarded annually worldwide and may be renewed for up to three years, based on the Awardee's continued exceptional academic standing, progress and achievement.    
  • Dec. 2002 - Ericsson Telecommunications Medal Award 
    This year's Ericsson medal and prize for the most outstanding project in telecommunications engineering at DCU has been awarded to Ciaran Craughan, a graduate of the School of Electronic Engineering.  Ciaran, who was awarded a first class honours B.Eng. degree in November 2002 also receives a prize of 1,000 euro for his project "Design and Development of a Generic Protocol/Test Coverage Tool Suite".  More details available at DCU News
  • Oct. 2002 - SFI funding success for the Vision Systems Group 
    Prof. Paul F. Whelan (Vision Systems Group, Dublin City University) in conjunction with Dr. Helen Fenlon (Department of Radiology, Mater Hospital) and Dr. Padraic Mac Mathuna (Gastrointestinal Unit, Mater Hospital) have been awarded a SFI Investigator Programme Grant for their work in medical imaging.

    This research programme will focus on the automated computer analysis of Computed Tomography (CT) Colonography image data sets for the detection of colorectal cancer using standard and low-dose radiation CT acquisition. The project will take place over an 4 year period. 

  • June 2002 - The following School staff were successful in the Enterprise Ireland-funded Advanced Technology Research Programme 2002:  Dr. Noel Murphy & Dr. Noel O'Connor - "Linked Objects & Events for User-drived Video Retrieval; Dr. Liam Barry - "Innovative Photonic Devices for Optical Signal Processing" (TCD collaboration); Dr. John Murphy - "Performance Optimisation of Components" (UCD collaboration); Dr. John Murphy - "A Multimedia Streaming Application For Evolving Heterogeneous Mobile Networks" (UCD collaboration).  The total funding for these projects (pending contract negotiation) exceeds 1.4M euro. 

  • June 2002 - The Center for Digital Video Processing has been awarded €451,782 under the Enterprise Ireland-funded Advanced Technology Research Programme 2002.  The objective of project entitled "Linked Objects & Events for User-driven Video REtrieval" or L’OEUVRE is to produce one of the world’s first MPEG-7 compliant digital media asset retrieval systems serving MPEG-4 encoded content which supports sophisticated content-based user interactions. This work will put the DCU Centre for Digital Video Processing at the forefront of digital media technology development worldwide, enhancing Ireland’s reputation as a leader in this strategically important emerging field. 
  • May 2002 - Prof. David Cameron together with Dr. Patrick McNally (RINCE) and Dr. Louise Bradley (TCD) has obtained funding of €190,000 from IRCSET for research into novel optoelectronic materials. 
  • May 2002 - Dr. Noel O'Connor of the Visual Media Processing Group (VMPG) has been awarded funding of €161,000 from the Enterprise Ireland Research Innovation Fund for research into power efficient hardware accelerators for MPEG-4 mobile multimedia applications. The award will be used to support both postgraduate and postdoctoral research. The project will run over a two year period and will expand the Group's activity in this fast growing field.
  • March 2002 - Mr Valentin Muresan of the Visual Media Processing Group has been awarded an Albert College Junior Fellowship by the DCU Research Committee. The fellowship will be used to acquire Advanced RISC Machine (ARM) integration platforms and development kits. This equipment will support the implementation and integration of ARM-based soft IP-cores for power efficient hardware accelerators targeted to MPEG-4 mobile multimedia applications. These cores are the expected output of a bigger project sponsored by Enterprise Ireland through a Research Innovation Funding that has recently been awarded to Dr Noel O'Connor. 
  • March 2002 - A paper presented by Yvonne Kavanagh and Prof. David Cameron at last years International Conference on Metallurgical Coatings and Thin Films (ICMCTF2001) in San Diego, USA "Zinc sulfide thin films produced by sulphidation of sol-gel deposited zince oxide" - Y. Kavanagh and D. C. Cameron has been awarded the Bunshah award for papers of meritorious quality.  Only three papers were given this award last year out of a total of over 500 papers. 

  • February 2002 - EU funding success: Prof. Paul F. Whelan, Vision Systems Group, has been awarded 61,800 euro under the EU's Fifth Framework Programme (IST: Accompanying Measures). This project (entitled OSMIA) will focus on the development of Open Source Medical Image Analysis software in conjunction with two universities and one industrial partner. The total value of this project is 252,000 euro, and will take place over an 18 month period. This award will be used to support postdoctoral research and will feed into the VSG's existing medical imaging systems research program. 
  • November 2001: Prof. David Cameron of the Thin Film Materials Research Laboratory has been awarded funding of €105,000 from the Enterprise Ireland Research Innovation Fund for research into biocompatible coatings for medical implant devices. This project is in collaboration with Dr. Brian McNamara of the School of Mechanical Engineering and Prof. Richard O'Kennedy of the School of Biological Sciences. 
  • First Joint IEI/IEE Symposium on Telecommunications Systems Research:  
    27th November 2001, IEI, 22 Clyde Road, Dublin 4 
    This symposium gives postgraduate researchers in Irish institutions an opportunity to interact with others working in the broad field of telecommunication systems. It is imagined that the research work presented in the symposium will typically be the first publication for a postgraduate student and hence will often be work in progress. The participants will, therefore have a great deal of common experiences that makes the social aspect of this symposium important. This broad range of topics will allow participants to see a cross section of the many research projects currently underway in Ireland and the growing interdependencies between these different fields, such as:
    Telecommunications Networks, Internet Protocols, VoIP, ATM, MPLS, QOS, Network Security, Network Applications, Wireless Systems (GSM, 2.5G, 3G, 4G), Software Radio, Optical Systems, Multimedia Networking, Software for Telecommunications Systems 
  • October 2001: The Visual Media Processing Group (VMPG) of RINCE has been awarded over 60,000 EUR as a member of the SCHEMA (Content-based Semantic Scene Analysis and Information Retrieval) project. The SCHEMA project is a Network of Excellence funded under the Information and Societies Programme (IST) within the EU's 5th RTD Framework Programme. The Network, which consists of 13 members (9 university and 4 industrial partners) representing 9 different European countries, was awarded a total of 900,000 EUR. The monies will be used to fund common publications, international workshops and a visiting scientist programme aimed at fostering European collaboration in the general field of digital video processing for indexing and information retrieval applications. 
  • March 2001: Dr. Paul F Whelan, Vision Systems Laboratory, has been awarded an Albert College Senior Fellowship by the DCU Research Advisory Panel. The proposed research programme involves the automated processing and analysis of magnetic resonance (MR) images with a view to eliminating potentially hazardous diagnostic procedures. This work will be carried out in conjunction with the Dept. of Radiology, Mater Hospital, Dublin. 
  • April, 2000: Three of the original 1984 graduates from the School of Electronic Engineering returned to DCU for a seminar on network security.  The seminar, organised by Gar Mooney (Enterprise Ireland), was given by Vincent Weafer (Head of Anti-Virus Research Centre at Symantec) and was also attended by another member of the original graduate class, Ger Kenna (Logica). 
  • The Computer Vision Seminars 2001 will be running from the 20th of March until the 1st of May.  These Seminars are being run in association with RINCE (Research Institute in Networks and Communications Engineering), Irish Pattern Recognition and Classification Society and the Vision Systems Laboratory
  • The Vision Systems Laboratory has been allocated funding by the Dept. of Radiology and the GI unit, Mater Hospital (Dublin) to investigate the use of imaging techniques in the morphological analysis of the small intestine.  This award will partially support the funding of a PhD student and will feed into the VSLs existing virtual medical imaging systems research program.  Details of the PhD studentship are available online. (Posted by: Dr. Paul F. Whelan, November 2000) 
  • September 2000: Dr. Barry McMullin has been awarded funding of £100,000 from AIB PLC, to carry out a major research project into the accessibility of Internet and Web facilities for visually impaired users in Ireland. Comments Dr. McMullin: "There is a real danger that the recent explosion in Internet services in Ireland will exacerbate the gap between digital haves and have-nots. This project, generously supported by AIB, is a major opportunity to oppose this trend, and exploit technology for the benefit of all our citizens." (more
  • 'Compromising Emissions from Cryptographic Devices' - This is an exciting area of research that has a particular relevance to information security in the general Computing, Communications and Networking industries.  Students will have the opportunity to complete a Postgraduate degree in association with one of Irelands progressive young Electronics Companies.  Interested students with a good Bachelors or Masters degree or above in Electronics/Electrical Engineering, Applied/Experimental Physics, or Computer Science, are invited to mail or call Prof. Charles McCorkell (email) at telephone (353) 01 7005133 stating interest.
  • The Microelectronics Research Laboratory in RINCE has just carried out the world's first study into the possibility of using x-rays to image the minute bumps produced on the surface of semiconductors when a strained epitaxial layer is grown upon the underlying semiconductor.  A paper entitled "On the Use of Total Reflection X-Ray Topography for the Observation of Misfit Dislocation Strain at the Surface of a Si/Ge-Si Heterostructure" by Patrick J. McNally, G. Dilliway, J.M. Bonar and D. Lowney will appear in the next few weeks in Applied Physics Letters. 
  • The Centre for Digital Video Processing has been successful in securing funding under Enterprise Ireland's IP2000 scheme.  The centre is a collaboration between the Visual Media Processing Group (VMPG) of the School of Electronic Engineering and the Multimedia Information Retrieval Group (MMIR) of the School of Computer Applications.  The funding obtained, amounting to £410,000 is for a new three year project which aims to significantly enhance the functionality of theFISCHLAR video browsing system.  The FISCHLAR project developed a system which can record and store a broadcast TV programme and play it back to users on demand.  The project developed techniques to analyse the visual aspects of digital video and choose representative frames which can be presented to users in a non-linear browsing interface.  An extension to this work (in collaboration with NUI Dublin) allows user personalisation of programme choice for recording and for playback.  The new project will extend this work via the development of analysis techniques using a number of different information sources such as audio, video, teletext (closed caption material) and program metadata.  The resulting descriptions will facilitate content-based operations on recorded material such as: interactive search, filtering, alerting and summarisation.  In addition to this analysis work, a number of different delivery mechanisms will be investigated, focusing mainly on emerging mobile technologies.  More information available at the VMPG, MMIR andFISCHLAR home pages.
  • Dr. Jennifer McManis of the Performance Engineering Laboratory has been awarded an Albert College Junior Fellowship by the DCU Research Committee.  The fellowship will support a postgraduate student for two years, starting in September 2000.  The research project will study performance issues that arise in electronic commerce (ECommerce) Web-based systems, and in particular how to design and operate ECommerce systems so that their customers receive satisfactory service.  The Performance Engineering Laboratory is located within the School of Electronic Engineering, and is concerned with analysing and modelling the performance of computerised systems and networks.
  • Book Announcement : The Vision Systems Laboratory announces the forthcoming publication of P.F. Whelan and D. Molloy (2000), Machine Vision Algorithms in Java: Techniques and Implementation.  Springer (London), 298 pages,  ISBN 1-85233-218-2, Due. Aug. 2000.  

    Machine Vision Algorithms in Java provides a comprehensive introduction to the algorithms and techniques associated with machine vision systems.  The Java programming language is also introduced, with particular reference to its imaging capabilities.  See the books WWW site for further information. 

  • Based on an application to the University's Research Committee, Dr. Noel O' Connor of the Visual Media Processing Group has been awarded a Junior Albert College Fellowship.  The fellowship will support a Ph.D-level postgraduate student for a period of two years.  Research will focus on developing a new approach to visual object segmentation and tracking using combined colour/texture and motion analysis.  
  • On the 29th March 2000, the top three groups from the undergraduate EE309-Object Oriented Programming module traveled to Logica to present their third year projects.  The students presenting were from both the Electronic Engineering and Telecommunications Engineering undergraduate programmes.  The project involved developing client/server 'pseudo' SMS applications to demonstrate their knowledge of OOP and Java after completing a 6 week course in their third year module.  First prize in the presentations went to Keith Sweeney, Adam Neary and Keith Critchley who received £250 travel vouchers each.  Full details of the other winners, the Logica tour and copies of the presentations are available here
  • The annual Mobile Robotics (RoboCab) competition  took place in the Larkin theatre on Wednesday the 15th of March.  The competition was sponsored by Farnell with a first prize of £160, trophy and medals and a second prize of £90.  The winning Mobot was called Beowolf) and was designed by Barbara Keane, Michael Moriarty, Darragh McKeon and Edward McMahon.  Second place was taken by Dastardly and was designed by Louise Newman, Margaret Swan, Mary Furlong and Fariza Basir. 
  • The School's innovative RACeE Programme is enjoying continuing success.  The programme enables students to access career relevant high level courses on an individual topic basis, via the Internet.