Lisa Looney

An tOllamh/Professor Lisa Looney, BA, BAI, PhD, CEng.

Leas-Uachtarán um Ghnóthaí Acadúla | Cláraitheoir | Ollscoil Chathair Bhaile Átha Cliath     

Vice President for Academic Affairs | Registrar |  Dublin City University

Professor Lisa Looney is DCU Vice President for Academic Affairs and Registrar and a member of the DCU senior management team. As well as having responsibility for units within Academic Affairs, Lisa leads both the DCU Futures project and the Student Information System project: two very  significant transformational projects underway in the university.

Prior to taking up this role, she was Executive Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Computing (2017-2020), Dean of Graduate Studies (2011-2016), and a founding member of academic staff in the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering in DCU.

In her role as Executive Dean, Lisa championed strategic curriculum renewal, broadening the programme portfolio to include fully online delivery for postgraduate learners in key technology areas, infrastructure development to support innovative pedagogy and transnational partnerships for the provision of master’s programmes in PNU (KSA) and Wuhan university (China). Her focus on growing capacity by making academic appointments in strategic prioritised areas, has laid the foundation for a significant the renewal of the staffing profile and underpins succession planning for research capability of the Faculty, which is home to three large Science Foundation Ireland -funded research centres; Insight (Data Analytics), ADAPT (next generation digital content) and I-Form (additive manufacturing) among others. She has been a champion for women in STEM over a number of decades. 

As Dean of Graduate Studies in DCU, and was particularly active in the European Universities Association Council for Doctoral Education. She was heavily involved in drafting the Irish National Framework for Doctoral Education, and led the development of Ireland’s Framework of Good Practice for Research Degree Programmes published in 2019.

Lisa’s disciplinary background is mechanical engineering, and her research expertise includes areas of materials processing, particularly biomaterials. She is a very experienced doctoral supervisor and research examiner and a Chartered Engineer. She undertook her PhD in the Netherlands as a sponsored fellow of the European Commission and has a first class honours degree in Mechanical Engineering from Trinity College Dublin. She has also lived and worked as a researcher in New Zealand. Lisa has had a particular interest in issues relating to women in her profession: attracting women to it, retaining them within it, and studying their career experience.