Recent promotions in The School of Electronic Engineering/RINCE
Friday, 23 September 2005

Prof Paul Whelan and Dr. Barry McMullin

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.

Professor Paul Whelan, known for his SFI funded contribution to research into computer-aided medical diagnosis, (especially in the area of Computer Aided Diagnosis for Computed Tomography (CT) Colonography [CAD-CTC] with the Mater Hospital) currently heads a team of 21 full-time researchers here in DCU. Following an industrial career in the research and development of industrial vision systems Paul joined the School of Electronic Engineering in 1990 where he set up the Vision Systems Group (VSG). The Vision Systems Group currently consists of three key units, namely Vision Systems, Medical Imaging & Visualisation and Neatvision.com. As well as undertaking applied and basic research into a range of imaging problems, the VSG is also involved in the transfer of computer vision techniques from the research environment to Irish industry and hospitals. Over the years, as director of the VSG, he has secured funding from a wide range of sources including SFI, EU, EI, HRB, IRCSET and direct industrial sponsorship for active projects in the areas of Automated Image Analysis & Processing, Machine Vision and Medical Imaging (specifically Computer Aided Detection and Diagnosis). For additional details on the research undertaken by the Paul and the Vision Systems Group see www.vsg.dcu.ie.

Professor Barry McMullin, who is director of both the e-Accessibility and Artificial Life Laboratories is currently involved in three major EU Framework projects. The e-Accessibility laboratory carries out research and outreach on the accessibility of websites and services to users with disabilities. The EU funded Support_EAM project is investigating the establishment of a Europe-wide ‘quality mark’ for web accessibility. His research into Artificial Life includes involvement in an 8.5 million Programmable Artificial Cell Evolution Project (PACE) which aims to construct a completely new life-form or “protocell”. The ultimate goal of this research is new forms of “living technologies” – computers, robots etc. – which can maintain and repair themselves, grow, reproduce and evolve. Similarly the ESIGNET project investigates the possibility of computationally simulating and evolving artificial cell signal networks (CSNs) with pre-specified properties by means of evolutionary computation methods. As Dean of Teaching and Learning in DCU, Professor McMullin contributed to the implementation of best practice and excellence in standards in Teaching and Learning by implementing the Moodle system.

http://wills.gex.gmd.de/bmcmyp/Data/PACE/Public/
http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~mcmullin/home.html
http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~alife/
http://eaccess.rince.ie/
http://www.dcu.ie/electronic_engineering/index.shtml
http://www.rince.ie/