Quarterly Newsletter
Issue No 1
May - September 2025
Dear Colleagues,
As we begin another busy academic year, it is timely that we look back at some of the activities across the School since our last quarterly update. Yet again we have seen a great amount of success across all aspects of the School. I know a large amount of research proposals have been submitted and many more are going in over the next few months. Keeping this volume of submissions and successes growing is now key for the School as we move forward. The summer was also a period of huge speculation and change for our University with the transition to a new presidency. We all know how frustrating it has become to even do the basics of our job here at the University, and I can personally guarantee you that our new president Professor Burn is very aware of this and is eager to address it. I look forward to seeing the units that are seen to be agile and proactive like ours being supported much more and ultimately thriving into the future.
As we all know, we have a busy and hectic semester ahead. However, if at any stage you are facing any difficulties or personal challenges, then please do let me know and we can have a chat. I was delighted to hear this week of another one of our academic colleagues has been promoted to Senior Lecturer, and I genuinely hope that we can see many more of these good news announcements. Everyone who is putting in the genuine hard yards across the full spectrum of their contract, over an extended period of time and demonstrating tangible leadership activities deserves to get full recognition of this in our promotion schemes. Congratulations Enda, this was very well deserved, after many years of taking on many challenging and difficult roles in the School. Congratulations also to Michael Schukat, Mamoona Asghar, Frank Glavin, Malika Bendechache, and Adrian Clear on their new roles of responsibility within the School, and of course Mike Madden on his recent election as Chair of AIAI.
Dr Enda Howley, Head of School, School of Computer Science
There has been a promotion and a series of positional changes within our School in the lead up to the new academic year 25/26. We would like to take the time to congratulate all staff on their success and new roles.
Promotion
Dr Enda Barrett has been promoted to Senior Lecturer in Computer Science. Congratulations, Enda.
New Roles
Dr Michael Schukat has been appointed as Deputy Head of School in Computer Science. Best of luck in your new position, Michael. A big thank you to Dr Des Chambers who has served in the role of Deputy Head of School for the past 4 years.
Dr Mamoona Asghar has been appointed School committee Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Good luck in your new role, Mamoona.
Congratulations to Dr Frank Glavin who has been appointed School committee Director of Education and Students. Good luck, Frank.
Congratulations to Dr Malika Bendechache who has been appointed the new Programme Director of the MSc Data Analytics. We wish you the best of luck, Malika. Thanks to Dr Frank Glavin for his great work on the programme over recent years.
Dr Adrian Clear has taken up the role as BA IT 3rd Year Coordinator. Wishing you all the best for the academic year in your new position, Adrian.
Congratulations to Prof Michael Madden who has been elected as the new Chair of the Artificial Intelligence Association of Ireland. This is a huge honour for Mike, and the entire School and will no doubt help us highlight our own critical role to AI activities nationally.
New Members
A Warm Welcome to our new School and School Board members:
- Ronan Timon, Research Assistant. Supervisor: Dr James McDermott.
- Ramin Ranjbarzadeh Kondrood, Postdoctoral Researcher. Supervisor: Dr Malika Bendechache.
- Jerry (Fei) Chen, Postdoctoral Researcher. Supervisor: Prof Michael Madden.
- Liam Caffrey, Research Assistant. Supervisor: Prof Michael Madden.
- Haozhe Ma, Research Assistant. Supervisor: Prof Michael Madden.
- Lavanya Parganiha, Research Assistant. Supervisor: Prof Michael Madden.
- Nadeem Kajla, Postdoctoral Researcher. Supervisor: Prof Michael Madden.
- Mohammad Alibakhshikenari, Postdoctoral Researcher. Supervisor: Dr Takfarinas Saber.
May-July 2025
News
Prof Michael Madden spoke to John Morley on Galway Talks, Galway Bay FM in May 2025, on the importance of companies engaging with employees on appropriate use of AI in the workplace.
To listen, please follow the link where you can here Mike from 64 minutes into the show: Galway Talks with John Morley
The University of Galway hosted the annual Itag Atlantec Festival on 29 May, 2025 in the Bailey Allen Hall.
The School of Computer Science was well represented this year with Dr Mamoona Asghar speaking at the Cybersecurity Forum, whilst the AI Forum had Dr Ihsan Ullah as a panelist, Dr Nazre Batool moderating the presentations, and Prof Michael Madden MC'ing.
A special guest appearance was also made by our robotic pet, "Scratch" - pictured.
Congratulations Eléa
PhD student Eléa Thuilier, under the supervision of Dr Attracta Brennan, was awarded third prize in the University of Galway Threesis Grande Finale, hosted at the O'Donoghue Theatre in July, and did an outstanding job of showcasing our School and her research to a very broad audience. Well done to Ayman Abaid, another of our PhD students, who also presented on the day.
Eléa's research title, ‘Augmented Reality Video Games for Osteoporosis’ , investigates the use of immersive technology and video games for patients with osteoporosis by proposing a novel and engaging technology-based training programme.
Eléa also represented the School and the University of Galway in the national competition ‘Ma thèse en 180 secondes’ where she was runner-up in the competition to present a research project in three minutes in French.
Eléa's Threesis talk can be found here: 2025 Threesis 3rd Prize
August
News
Congratulations Jim
Congratulations to our own Prof Jim Duggan who was the winner of the JW Forrester award at the International System Dynamics Conference (ISDC2025) held in Boston University on 4 August, 2025 for his work using system dynamics for modelling the COVID-19 pandemic.
For more details on Jim's award, you can follow this link:
J.W.Forrester Award for COVID-19 Modelling Work
IEEE-IBCAST 2025
Dr Waqar Shahid Qureshi was invited to present at the IEEE-IBCAST 2025 in August at Ramada Murree, Pakistan.
In the talk, Dr Qureshi highlighed his growing research in Applied AI where he showcased how deep learning can automate large-scale visual surveys while preserving auditability -
“AI should augment - not replace - expert judgment. The real gains come when domain knowledge and machine learning meet in the middle”.
September
News
Springboard+ Programmes
We are delighted to announce that our two new fully funded Springboard+ programmes have commenced teaching as of September 2025. There was a huge level of programme submissions nationally with 629 made, and only 250 programmes being selected for funding.
These are two strategically critical programmes that give us an essential foothold in two distinct markets of fulltime in-person conversion and online professional upskilling.
Huge congratulations to Dr Owen Molloy for the Postgraduate Diploma in Software Development, Cloud Computing & Dev Ops proposal and also to Dr Joseph Lemley and Dr Priyanka Verma on their great team work they put into the Professional Diploma Practical AI for Software Developers programme proposal.
Research Seminar Series
The School of Computer Science Research Seminar Series has recommenced for the new academic year.
Curated by Dr Bharathi Chakravarthi, this series runs from Thursday 18 September to 6 November inclusive. See schedule below:
Sept 18: Dr Amna Shifa: SISSVid: Secure and Intelligent Storage System for Large-Scale Visual Data Analytics
Sept 25: Dr Quratulain Rajput: Semantic Interoperability using Ontologies in the Dairy Farming
Oct 2: Dr Muhammad Sohaib Ayub: Data-Driven Approaches for Context-Aware Sports Performance Assessment
Oct 9: Dr Pádraic Moran: Exploring Computer Sciences approaches for Medieval Studies
Oct 23: Dr Sudhansu Bala Das: Understanding Medieval Manuscript Cultures through Semantic and Network Perspectives
Nov 6: Dr Georgios Petropoulos: Facilitating Dialogical Public Engagement on Societal Dimensions of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence
All talks take place every Thursday 14:00 – 15:00 in CSB-1005.
Please send any questions about the CS Research Seminar Series or expressions of interest in giving a talk in Semester 2 directly to Dr Chakravarthi:
Research Spotlight
Big congratulations to Dr Priyanka Verma for having 7 research publications in top ranked, high impact, peer reviewed Journals, in the past 3 months. You can find her publications in the links below;
1. Revolutionizing Wearable Sensor Data Analysis With an Automated Decision-Making Model for Enhanced Human Activity Detection, IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics.
(Co-author)
2. Cloudlock: secure data sharing using a hybrid cryptosystem in multi-cloud data storage, Cluster Computing, Springer.
(Senior author)
3. A Stochastic Prototypical Network for Few-Shot Intrusion Detection in CAN-Based IoV Network, IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society.
(Senior author)
(First author)
5. A Combined Supervised and Unsupervised Deep Learning Approach for Intrusion Detection in IoT Traffic in an Edge Computing Environment, SN Computer Science, Springer.
(Co-author)
(Senior author)
7. PPFL-DCS: Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning using Neural Transformer and Leveraging Dynamic Client Selection to Accommodate Data Diversity, IEEE Access.
(Senior author)
IRRP Case Studies
We are delighted to announce the publication of three IRRP case studies. The entire process was excellently coordinated by Dr James McDermott and our Research & Graduate studies committee with a variety of volunteers who stepped up to take on extra responsibilities such as writing critical sections and chasing down staff submissions or extra supporting data.
Congratulations to Prof Jim Duggan, Dr Attracta Brennan and Dr John McCrae, who worked diligently on their three impact case studies.
These were identified as an excellent mix of research impact stories that would offer a compelling and representative mix of research from across our School.
These case studies have now gone live as of September 2025 on the University of Galway's Research Impact Toolkit.
Vivas
- Congratulations to Sumana Biswas who successfully defended her PhD viva on 2 May, 2025. Supervisors: Dr Josephine Griffith and Ms Karen Young.
- Congratulations to Felipe Arruda Pontes who successfully defended his PhD viva on 17 April, 2025. Supervisors: Dr Michael Schukat and Prof Ed Curry.
- Congratulations to Junlin Lu who successfully defended his PhD Viva on 2 July, 2025. Supervisors: Dr Karl Mason and Dr Patrick Mannion.
- Congratulations to Ghanshyam Verma who successfully defended his PhD viva on 9 September, 2025. Supervisors: Prof Michael Madden and Prof Dietrich Rebholz-Schuhmann.
Upcoming CS Events
|
Date and time |
Event |
|---|---|
|
October 2 |
BCT Ice-Breaker Event (4pm - 7pm) An ice-breaker event will be held in the back room of SULT (college bar) for our new 1BCT students. Pizza will be served from 4pm followed by a fun speed quiz. All staff welcome. |
|
October 3-4 |
UG Open Day For more information: Open Days - University of Galway |
|
November 10 |
Galway Science & Technology Festival Our School will display a range of interactive zones in this year's Festival. For more information: Galway Science & Technology Festival |
|
November |
PG Student Awards Ceremony School of Computer Science Date and venue TBC |
|
December 1 |
IEEE Cyber Research Conference Ireland This December, the School of Computer Science will host the 4th IEEE Cyber Research Conference Ireland. For more information: Cyber Research Conference Ireland |
Thank you for reading
Quarterly Newsletter
Issue No.4