Academic biography

Prof. Noel E. O’Connor is a Full Professor in the School of Electronic Engineering at Dublin City University (DCU), Ireland. He is Director of Rinn Artificial Intelligence, one of seven centres launched as part of Research Ireland’s enhanced national research network. Rinn AI includes 15 Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) - all 13 of Ireland's universities, a research institute and an institute of technology - combining the talents of over 288 co-applicants and PIs. Previously, he was CEO of the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, an SFI-funded research centre. He was Academic Director of DCU’s Research and Enterprise Hub on Information Technology and the Digital Society, with the responsibility of coordinating multi-disciplinary ICT-related research across the university. The focus of Noel’s research is in multi-modal content analysis for applications in security/safety, autonomous vehicles, medical imaging, ambient assisted living, multimedia content-based retrieval, and environmental monitoring. Since 1999, he has published over 600 peer-reviewed publications, made 11 standards submissions, and filed 6 patents. His commercial experience includes a successful spin-out company and mentorship of two others. He was previously an Area Editor for Signal Processing: Image Communication (Elsevier) and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Image and Video Processing (Springer) and has acted as General Chair and Programme Chair for several high-ranking conferences. Noel collaborates widely with international researchers in Uni of California, Irvine, Arizona State University, the University of Oldenburg, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, the University of New England (Australia), among others. In 2010, Noel was awarded the DCU President’s Research Award for Science and Engineering in addition to receiving Enterprise Ireland’s National Commercialisation Award for ICT.