In 2020, Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software celebrates 15 years of excellence in software research. As one of the longest-established SFI research centres, Lero will mark the occasion over the course of the year by highlighting some of its alumni and people who have had associations with the centre over that time.

“The 15-year milestone offers a good opportunity to reflect on some of the centre’s successes. Of course, we cannot highlight all of the incredible people that have made Lero what it is but we can shine a light on a small and diverse group who form part of the Lero story and who are making an impact in research, academia or industry in Ireland and internationally,” said Professor Brian Fitzgerald, director of Lero.

“Lero has been very fortunate to have had so many superb students, researchers, academics, institutions and industry partners contribute to its success over the past 15 years. The centre was established in 2005 as Ireland’s Software Engineering Research Centre with Professor Hans Juergen Kugler as Industrial Director, Prof. Klaus Pohl as Scientific Director and Prof. Kevin Ryan as Centre Director. I’m not sure they would have predicted that today we would have grown to have 10 academic partner institutes and be ranked joint number one among software research centres worldwide based on SciVal field normalised citations,” he added.

“Today Lero also partners with three of the top 10 technology companies in the world and our researchers engage directly with more than 10,000 members of the public every year. We have also been very successful in the area of education, as well as graduating almost 100 PhDs, Lero introduced new software and computer science programmes in primary and second-level schools, as well as at graduate level,” he continued.

“Lero has also represented very good value for money during its 15 years. An economic impact study published last year showed that every €1 invested in Lero contributes more than €5 to the economy,” he concluded.

Today Lero brings together expert software teams from universities and institutes of technology across Ireland in a co-ordinated centre of research excellence with a strong industry focus. Its research spans a wide range of application domains from driverless cars to artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, fintech, govtech, smart communities, agtech and healthtech.

Hosted by University of Limerick, Lero’s academic partners include Dublin City University, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, Maynooth University, National University of Ireland Galway, University College Cork, Institute of Technology Tralee, Dundalk Institute of Technology, and Cork Institute of Technology.