CTVR is a ‘virtual’ centre made up from participating researchers from
many different Irish universities and research institutes working in
conjunction with their industrial partners,
coordinated by the centre’s management
team. The research agenda of CTVR is guided by an external advisory board, whilst the strategic development of the centre is overseen by the CTVR strategic board.
Academic Institutions
The centre involves researchers from the following Irish academic
institutions:
The centre’s principal industrial partner is Bell Labs, headquartered at Murray
Hill New Jersey and their Irish subsidiary, Bell Labs Ireland. They have
played a leading role in defining the concept of the centre and the
director of Bell Labs Ireland acts as co-director of the centre ensuring
that the work-programmes of the academic team and their industrial
partners are aligned.
The centre will forge new partnerships with other companies in
telecommunications and other relevant industries to bring in new ideas and
funding and to maximise the impact of the centre’s work.
Centre
Director: Prof. Donal O’Mahony, Trinity College Dublin
Donal O’Mahony graduated with 1st class honours in Engineering from
Trinity College in 1982. After a brief career in industry at the Sord
Computer Systems (a Japanese microcomputer startup company) in Tokyo where
he worked as a researcher on new microcomputer operating systems and at
IBM in Dublin, he re-joined Trinity College as a lecturer in Computer
Science in 1984, completing his Ph.D. in the area of software reusability in
1990. At Trinity, he built-up a successful research group in Networks and
Telecommunications. This group has ongoing projects in a wide range of
areas including electronic commerce, network security and mobile
communications technology and has been very influential in developing the
concept of 4th Generation mobile systems. He spent the year of 1999 as a
Fulbright Fellow at Stanford University, California, before returning to
his present position as professor in computer science at Trinity College.
Prof. O’Mahony is a fellow of Trinity College. He is author of two books,
both of which were best-selling titles including his most recent work on
Electronic Payment systems, which is in 2nd edition and is widely regarded
as the leading text in this field. Prof. O’Mahony has been a founder and
CEO of two technology startup companies and has acted as as an independent
consultant to government and industry organizations across Europe and to
the United Nations on a wide variety of projects involving strategic
networking issues. In July, 2004 he led a team to establish CTVR, a major
multi-university research centre established in association with Bell
Labs. He is now full-time director of this centre.
Chief Technology Officer: Dr. Lawrence Cowsar, Bell Labs
Lawrence Cowsar is the Executive Director of Bell Labs Ireland,
Lucent Technologies. He earned his Ph.D in Computational and Applied Mathematics
from Rice University, Houston, Texas for work on the analysis of domain
decomposition techniques for partial differential equations. He has been responsible
for the Scientific Computing Research and Computing Systems Research Departments at
Bell Labs. Since he joined Bell Labs in 1994, his work has ranged from subsurface
flow simulation to optical fiber design, from the design and analysis of finite
elements to simulation platforms for optical line system control. He brings to
the center extensive experience in telecommunication network equipment design and
product realization. He has over 15 publications and one US patent.
Network Architectures Strand Leader: Dr. Linda
Doyle, Trinity College Dublin
Photonics Strand Leader: Dr. Frank H. Peters, Tyndall, Cork
Frank H. Peters is a member of the Tyndall National Institute and a Lecturer
in the Physics Department at the University College Cork, Cork, Ireland. Frank is
interested in the research associated with the development and integration of photonics
devices. He completed a Ph.D. from McMaster University, Canada where he studied the
optical properties of telecom semiconductor diode lasers. In 1991, he worked as a
Research Engineering in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the
University of California, Santa Barbara in the U.S. working on Vertical Cavity
Lasers and Modulators. From 1993 until 2001 he worked as a research scientist at
Optical Concepts, W. L. Gore and Associates and Agilent Technologies developing and
integrating photonic devices into datacom and telecom applications. From 2001-2005
Frank worked at Infinera in Sunnyvale California, U.S.A. in the development of high
speed photonic integrated circuits. He has authored more than 40 papers and holds
12 patents all concerned with thermal, optical, electrical and systems issues
relating to the design and use of photonic devices.
Wireless RF Strand Leader: Dr. Ronan Farrell, NUI
Maynooth
Test & Reliability Strand Leader: Dr. Jeff Punch,
University of Limerick
Jeff Punch is currently Director of the Micro-Mechanical Engineering Group at the Stokes Institute, University of Limerick (UL), collaborating with the Institute’s partners and clients on a range of research programmes. He has wide-ranging research interests in the analysis of micro-scale mechanical engineering phenomena within the application arenas of electronic and micro-electromechanical systems – with particular emphasis on thermal management and reliability physics. He has a strong track-record in governmental and industrial research programmes, and is currently supervising five doctoral students and mentoring three postdoctoral researchers. He has authored or co-authored over 40 refereed publications and five patents, and has presented more than 50 invited talks on aspects of the thermal management and reliability of electronic systems at venues in Europe, USA, the Middle East, India and Asia-Pacific.
Optimisation & Managment Strand Leader: Dr Ken Brown , University College Cork
Ken Brown is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science
at University College Cork, and a member of the Cork Constraint
Computation Centre. He has a BSc (Hons) in Mathematics from the
University of Glasgow, an MSc in Logic and Computation from the
University of Manchester, and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence in
Engineering from the University of Bristol. He has worked as a
post-doctoral researcher at the University of Bristol and at Carnegie
Mellon University. He was appointed as Lecturer in Computer Science
at University of Aberdeen in 1995, and joined UCC in 2003. His
research is focused on intelligent decision support and optimisation,
applied to resource allocation, scheduling, supply chains, networks
and design and manufacturing, with a particular interest in
uncertain, distributed and competitive domains. He has published over
40 refereed papers, and has collaborated extensively with industry,
including LandRover, Digital/Compaq and Microsoft Research.