Executive committee
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The overall management of the Centre is the role of the Executive Committee. This team sets goals, monitors progress, identifies opportunities and deals with any issues that arise. Every partner institution is represented. Membership is as follows:
Prof. Brian Fitzgerald
Prof Brian Fitzgerald is the Director at Lero. He holds an endowed professorship, the Frederick A Krehbiel II Chair in Innovation in Global Business & Technology, at the University of Limerick, Ireland, where he was also Vice President Research from 2008-2011. He is Principal Investigator in Lero and was Founding Director of the Lero Graduate School in Software Engineering. His research interests, i.e. primarily in software development, encompassing development methods, Global software development, agile methods and open source software.
Prof. Bashar Nuseibeh
Professor Bashar Nuseibeh is Professor of Software Engineering in the University of Limerick and was Chief Scientist at Lero until October 2012. He was also Director of Research in Computing at The Open University (OU), where he continues to supervise students and assist with research direction. His research interests are in software requirements and design, security and privacy, process modelling and technology, and technology transfer.
Prof. Tiziana Margaria
Prof Tiziana Margaria received a Laurea in Electrical Engineering and a PhD degree in Computer and Systems Engineering from the Politecnico di Torino, Italy. She has broad experience in the use of formal methods for high assurance systems. Her current research focuses on advanced service engineering techniques supporting reliability and compliance through a model-driven version of service-oriented development called xMDD (eXtreme Model Driven Design) and the embedding of selected formal methods in the development platform.
Prof. Mike Hinchey
Professor Mike Hinchey is the former Director of Lero and Professor of Software Engineering at the University of Limerick. Prof Hinchey was previously Director of the Software Engineering Laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland. He remains as a consultant to NASA. His work with NASA was implemented in various space projects and will be incorporated in future missions. Particular areas of software research for Professor Hinchey include Formal Methods, Autonomous Systems and Software Reliability.
Prof. Greg Provan
Professor Gregory Provan is a Professor at the Computer Science Department at University College Cork. Before coming to UCC he worked for Rockwell Scientific, focusing on embedded systems for the Space Shuttle and commercial aircraft. His current research interests are in model-based diagnostics and control; large-scale systems modelling; model transformation; component-based model development; embedded systems and embedded code generation.
Dr Jim Buckley
Jim is a Principal Investigator in Lero and leads the TREES (Trustworthy, Responsible, Efficient Engineering of Software) centre of excellence within Lero: a €6 million centre funded entirely by industry. Follow this link to find out more about the centre and the research positions currently available.
Dr Fergal Mc Caffery
Dr Fergal McCaffery is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computing and Mathematics at Dundalk Institute of Technology and is a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Principal Investigator. His current research interests include the development of a software development framework for the medical device industry, software process improvement frameworks and assessments, and global software development. He is involved in several spin-out companies in this area. He has also been appointed to an advisory committee for medical devices by the Minister of Health.
Prof. Kieran Conboy
Kieran Conboy is a Professor in Business Information Systems in the School of Business & Economics in NUI Galway and is a co-Principal Investigator in the Lero Irish Software research centre. He previously worked for Accenture Consulting and the University of New South Wales in Australia. He is also on the board of the Irish Research Council. Kieran teaches information systems innovation, agile and lean project management, portfolio management, and contemporary models such as crowdsourcing and crowdfunding.
Prof. Brian Donnellan
Professor Brian Donnellan is Vice President of Engagement and Innovation, and Professor of Management Information Systems at Maynooth University where he is responsible for Enterprise/Regional Engagement and Innovation. He is also Chairman of the All-Ireland Smart Cities Forum and board member of the Irish Centre for Local and Regional Development. He is Co-Principal Investigator in Lero and the Smart Cities Research Centre, Enable. He is a Funded Investigator in Confirm, the SFI Research Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and in Connect, the SFI Research Centre for Future Networks and Communications.
Brian’s research interests include Technology Adoption, Innovation Management and Data Governance. He teaches in the areas on topics relating to IT-enabled innovation and Technology Management. Prior to becoming an academic, he spent 19 years working in the ICT industry.
Prof. John McCarthy
John McCarthy is Professor of Applied Psychology at University College Cork. He teaches in Human Computer Interaction and Qualitative Research Methods. His research is concerned with understanding the influence of emerging social, personal, and work technologies on people’s lived experience, and using that understanding to inform design of usable and enriching technologies. His particular foci for the last few years have been on experience-centred design of technologies and services for and with people with dementia and their carers, other people with health-related difficulties, as well as technology to support participation in community activity and in digital civics.
Prof. Mike O'Neill
Michael holds the ICON Chair of Business Analytics, is Vice-Principal for Research, Innovation & Impact in the UCD College of Business, and a founding Director of the UCD Natural Computing Research & Applications Group. He was Director of UCD's Institute for interdisciplinary research, the UCD Complex & Adaptive Systems Laboratory (CASL) from 2012 to 2015. One of the inventors of Grammatical Evolution, he is the lead author of the seminal book on this subject, and is independently ranked as one of the top 5 researchers in Genetic Programming.
Prof. Ita Richardson
Professor Ita Richardson is an Associate Professor with the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of Limerick. She leads several Lero work programmes in Software Engineering for Healthcare. She is also an SFI Industry Fellow and a PI in the Applied Research in Connected Health Technology Centre funded by EI and IDA. She leads an IRC Employment-based project and is PI on EU project FESTA: Female Empowerment in Science and Technology Academia.
Prof. Siobhan Clarke
Siobhan is a Professor in the School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin. Her current research focus is on software engineering models for the provision of smart and dynamic software services to urban stakeholders, addressing research challenges in the engineering of dynamic software in large-scale, ad hoc, mobile environments.
Dr Markus Helfert
Dr Markus Helfert is Director of the Business Informatics Group at Dublin City University, and a Senior Lecturer in Information Systems at the School of Computing, Dublin City University. He is Funded Investigator at Lero. His research interests include Information Management, Innovation, Cloud Computing, Service Science, Enterprise Architecture and Smart Cities and Smart Buildings. He advises several small and medium sized Enterprise in relation to Innovation and IT Management. Markus Helfert has authored more than 200+ academic articles, journal and book contributions and has presented his work at international conferences. He is member of international programme committees and reviewer and associate editor of IS journals. Dr. Helfert has received national and international grants from agencies such as European Union (FP7; H2020), Science Foundation Ireland and Enterprise Ireland. Prior to his appointment at Dublin City University, he held a research position at the Institute of Information Management at the University of St. Gallen. Dr. Helfert holds a PhD from the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), an MSc from the University of Mannheim (Germany) and a BSc from Napier University in Scotland (UK).
Prof Edward Jones
Prof Edward Jones holds the BE degree in Electronic Engineering (First Class Honours), and the PhD degree in Electronic Engineering, both from National University of Ireland Galway. His PhD research topic was on the development of computational auditory models for speech processing. He is currently a Personal Professor in Electrical & Electronic Engineering at NUI Galway.
Joe Gibbs
Joe Gibbs is General Manager of Lero, responsible for all the non-research aspects of the Centre’s work. He heads up a central team that manages finance, operations, facilities, outreach, contracts and reporting, as well as the process of bidding for research funding in conjunction with industry and academic partners.
Susan Mitchell
Susan Mitchell is Lero Centre Manager based in the Lero Centre Headquarters in UL. Susan leads the Lero Administration Support Team and EU Project Support. She manages the Lero Centre finances across all Lero HEIs. She has over 20 years’ experience in project management. Prior to joining UL, Susan worked in various roles in project management, training and business analysis in the software industry.
