Interview: Ubiquity of software poses new ethical dilemmas, Lero director Brian Fitzgerald says

Published by The Irish Times, on Thursday, 27 Feb, 2020

Every business is now a software business in one way or another. That’s the view of Lero director Brian Fitzgerald, who points out that everything from medical devices to lawnmowers now has a software component. “Companies which saw themselves as in the telecommunications, semiconductors or medtech spaces are becoming software companies,” he says.

Lero is the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software. Its overall vision is to establish Ireland as a location synonymous with high-quality software research and development, to the extent that Irish software can enter the lexicon in the same way as German automotive or Scandinavian design.

The centre’s research activity spans a wide range of application domains from driverless cars to artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, fintech, govtech, smart communities, agtech and healthtech.

“We are now 15 years old,” says Fitzgerald. “We started in 2005 with four universities working on the theme of software engineering research. We now have 300 researchers with 10 institutions involved including all the universities along with IT Tralee and Dundalk IT.”

Read the full article with Brian Fitzgerald here.