Arjumand Younus

Arjumand Younus is an Assistant Professor at UCD’s School of Information and Communication Studies, teaching and researching in the area of Artificial Intelligence, Society, and Digital Policy.  Prior to that, she was an Assistant Professor at UCD’s School of Sociology, teaching and researching in the area of Computational Social Science. Before these appointments, she worked as a Research Scientist in Afiniti AI, and a part-time lecturer in Technological University Dublin. Arjumand has contributed to SFI-funded projects during her different post-doctoral positions at CONSUS-UCD and INSIGHT-UCD. Arjumand is also serving in the capacity of co-director for Women in Research Ireland which is a volunteer-run registered charity working for better representation of women and under-represented groups in academia. She is also the first Pakistani woman to have had representation in Oireachtas i.e. Irish Parliament where she expressed concerns in relation to the funding of higher education sector in Ireland.

Arjumand received a joint PhD in Computer Science from National University of Ireland Galway (Ireland) and University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy), MS degree in Computer Science from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (South Korea), and BS in Computer Science from the University of Karachi (Pakistan). She is the recipient of Google Women Techmakers scholarship for Europe, Middle East and Africa region. Her research focuses on Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Data Science for Social Good. Arjumand is passionate about the value of artificial intelligence technology to make society better, and at the moment is involved as an academic partner in various AI for Social Good projects.

Recent publications:

Kazemi, A., Younus, A., Jeon, M., Qureshi, M. A., & Caton, S. (2023). InÉire: An Interpretable NLP Pipeline Summarising Inclusive Policy Making Concerning Migrants in Ireland. IEEE Access.

Younus, A., Quereshi, M. A., Jeon, M., Kazemi, A., & Caton, S. (2022). XAI Analysis of Online Activism to Capture Integration in Irish Society Through Twitter. Social Informatics: 13th International Conference, SocInfo 2022, Glasgow, UK, October 19–21, 2022, Proceedings

Younus, A., Qureshi, M. A. (2022). A Framework for Sexism Detection on Social Media via ByT5 and TabNet. Technological University Dublin

James Steinhoff

James is an assistant professor and Ad Astra Fellow at the UCD School of Information and Communication Studies. His research focuses on the political economy of algorithmic and data-intensive technologies, and also draws on resources from media studies, science and technology studies, and labour studies. His recent work has concerned labour/capital relations in the AI industry.  James is interested in data-intensive capitalism and how it exhibits both continuities and changes with previous economic systems. Furthermore, he is interested in both perennial concerns, such as automation, and novel situations, such as the generation of synthetic data in virtual environments. His work combines qualitative methods with systematic theoretical engagement.
He is author of Automation and Autonomy: Labour, Capital and Machines in the Artificial Intelligence Industry (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), co-author of Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence the Future of Capitalism (Pluto, 2019) and has published papers in journals including New Media & Society.
James has previously held research positions at University of Toronto and University of Washington. He holds a PhD in Media Studies from the University of Western Ontario.
Recent publications:

Steinhoff, J., (2023). AI ethics as subordinated innovation network. AI & Society

Steinhoff, J., (2022). Toward a political economy of synthetic data: A data-intensive capitalism that is not a surveillance capitalism?. New Media & Society

Steinhoff, J., (2021). Automation and Autonomy: Labour, Capital and Machines in the Artificial Intelligence Industry. Palgrave Macmillan

Arthit Suriyawongkul

Arthit is a PhD candidate in SFI Centre for Research Training in Digitally-Enhanced Reality (d-real), working on the mapping of accountability requirements for automated decision-making (ADM) systems and the technical capabilities of Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), which is based on Mark Boven’s model of public accountability. He is also a member of Knowledge and Data Engineering Group (KDEG) at Trinity College and a member of the the Digital Governance strand of ADAPT, SFI Research Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology.

Arthit has a background in natural language processing and cultural anthropology. His anthropology master thesis was on cultural politics on social media platforms during a series of protests in Thailand, focusing on the production of internet memes and digital placemaking. He co-founded Thai Netizen Network, a civil society organization promoting human rights and civil rights in digitally-connected environments, and now serves as a member of the Media and Telecommunication subcommittee for Thailand Consumers Council.

His research interests include the relationship between privacy and agency, AI governance, proportionality of content moderation measures, and computational methods of legal and journalistic practices. During his internship at UCD Centre of Digital Policy, he has worked on topic modeling of national AI strategies. He translates personal digital security apps to Thai language in his free time.

 

Recent publications:

Fournier-Tombs, E., Lee, J., Suriyawongkul, A., Raghunath, P., Daily, M., Chatterjee, J., Doneys, P., Sunthorn, W., Thongprasert, S., Villanueva, K., Belda, F. (2023). Gender-sensitive AI Policy in Southeast Asia. United Nations University Institute in Macau

Celeste, E.,  Montgomory, S., & Suriyawongkul, A. (2022). Digital technology and privacy attitudes in times of COVID-19: formal legality versus legal reality in Ireland. Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, 73(2), 283-309

Bandaranayake, R., Ramasoota, R., Natesan, A., Suriyawongkul, A. (2021). Health-Related Information and COVID-19: A study of Sri Lanka and Thailand. LIRNEasia

Marguerite Barry

Marguerite Barry is assistant professor at the School of Information & Communication Studies at UCD, programme director for the MSc in Communication & Media and co-founder of the Human-Computer Interaction research group HCI@UCD.
I am a funded investigator with ADAPT, the SFI Research Centre for AI Driven Digital Content Technology, conducting research into autonomy and responsibility in transparent digital governance. My research currently focuses on creative and practical approaches for supporting ethical design and development of digital technologies. Recent published work includes social expectations and public communication of ethics and AI, ethical design for technologies to support mental health and ethics and computing for secondary school curricula. My interests are in developing a deeper understanding of digital interaction for better and more human-centred communication design.
Recent publications:
Nunes Vilaza, G., Doherty, K., McCashin, D., Coyle, D., Bardram, J., & Barry, M. (2022). A Scoping Review of Ethics Across SIGCHI. In DIS 2022 – Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference: Digital Wellbeing (pp. 137-154).Flynn, A., Healy, D., Barry, M., Brennan, A., Redfern, S., Houghton, C., & Casey, D. (2022). Key Stakeholders’ Experiences and Perceptions of Virtual Reality for Older Adults Living with Dementia: A Systematic Review and Thematic Synthesis. JMIR Serious Games. doi:10.2196/37228

Flynn, A., Barry, M., Qi Koh, W., Reilly, G., Brennan, A., Redfern, S., & Casey, D. (2022). Introducing and Familiarising Older Adults Living with Dementia and Their Caregivers to Virtual Reality. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(23), 16343. 

Páraic Kerrigan

Páraic Kerrigan is an assistant professor and researcher at the School of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin. His research pertains to the dynamics of diversity in the media industry and its production cultures, specifically centred around Ireland’s LGBT community, along with a focus on digital media cultures and platform governance. His current work focuses on the ways in which critical data studies intersects with gender and sexual minorities, in particular through small data such as the birth certificate and big data on social media.

He has just released his first book, LGBTQ Visibility, Media and Sexuality in Ireland (Routledge, 2021). He also co-authored the book Media Graduates at Work (Palgrave 2021). He is currently working on a monograph relating to the inequalities and vulnerabilities that have developed for gender and sexual minorities through new and emerging media. He has written over twelve articles and book chapters on the intersections of identity with media. He has also been a researcher on several television documentaries and radio shows relating to LGBTQ culture.

Recent publications:

Kerrigan, P., McGuinness, C., Fulton, C., Siapera, E., Carrie, D., & Pope, P. (2022). Designing a  Media Literacy Training Programme for Public Library Staff in Ireland: Preliminary Results and Observations of a University Public Library Collaboration. Public Library Quarterly, 2, 1- 22

Kerrigan, P., Liddy, S. O’Brien, A. (2021). Auditing Gender and Diversity Change in Irish Media Sectors. Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. https://www.bai.ie/en/media/sites/2/dlm_uploads/2021/07/Auditing-Gender-Diversity-Change.pdf 

Kerrigan, P. (2020). LGBTQ visibility, media and sexuality in Ireland. Routlegde

Georgiana Ifrim

Dr. Georgina Ifrim’s research focuses on developing scalable predictive models for machine learning and data mining applications. Her current research focuses on the design of efficient and interpretable learning models for sequences (e.g., DNA, time series), and on real-time prediction for streaming data (text mining for news and social media).

 

Recent publications:

Guyet, T., Ifrim, G., Malinowski, S., Bagnall, A., Shafer, P., Lemaire, V. (2023). Advanced Analytics and Learning on Temporal Data. 7th ECML PKDD Workshop, AALTD 2022, Grenoble, France, September 19–23, 2022, Revised Selected Papers

Dhariyal, B., Nguyen, T. L., & Ifrim, G. (2023). Scalable classifier-agnostic channel selection for multivariate time series classification. Data mining and Knowledge Discovery, 37, 1010-1054

Dong, Y., Ifrim, G., Mladenic, D., Saunders, C., Van Hoecke, S. (2021). Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases. European Conference, ECML PKDD 2020, Ghent, Belgium, September 14–18, 2020, Proceedings, Part V

TJ McIntyre

Dr. TJ McIntyre is an associate professor at the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin. His research focuses on issues involving information technology law, cybercrime, and civil liberties. He holds a BCL from University College Dublin, an LLM from University College London and a PhD from the University of Edinburgh. His doctoral thesis was on the topic of internet filtering law and governance. He qualified as a barrister in the Honorable Society of King’s Inns, Dublin, where he achieved the Antonia O’Callaghan Prize for Advocacy, and was later admitted as a solicitor by the Law Society of Ireland. He is also a member of the New York Bar.

He practises as a consultant solicitor with FP Logue Solicitors, specialising in data protection and technology law issues. He is a specialist adjudicator for the .ie Alternative Dispute Resolution Policy. He is chairperson of the civil liberties group Digital Rights Ireland and regularly appears in the national and international media discussing issues of law and technology. Since 2010 he has been the Irish national expert on information society and data protection issues for the EU Fundamental Rights Agency research network.

Recent publications:

McIntyre, TJ. (2020). Regulating the information society: Data Protection and Ireland’s Internet Industry. In D. M. Farrell & N. Hardiman (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Irish Politics (pp. 701–718). Oxford University Press

Farries, E., Cronin, O., Bracken-Roche, C., O’Sullivan, B., Birhane, B., McIntyre, TJ., Madden, M. (2022, May 10). Policing Facial Recognition Technologies. Expert briefing notes  https://digitalpolicy.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Policing-FRT.-10-May-2023-Oireachtas-brief.pdf

Kalpana Shankar

Professor Shankar is professor of Information and Communciation Studies and a fellow of the Geary Institute. She previously was the head of UCD’s School from 2015-2018.

Her research focuses on the uses of data and information (digital and otherwise) in the social sciences, open data, and data archives. Her recent research is on research evaluation and peer review. She takes an interpretive, organisational, and institutional approach to topics that are usually “practical” and atheoretical: data archiving/management and the research enterprise itself. As a former laboratory scientist turned social scientist, she began her academic career by studying the practice of science through the production of documents. These include, for example, laboratory notebooks, data sets, and data entry forms.

“Although my early research focused on paper records (work that is still widely cited and continues to increase in citations), the data-intensive nature of contemporary science (and contemporary life) led me to consider the social life of data more broadly.”

After completing a Ph.D. in library and information science at UCLA, Professor Shanka conducted postdoctoral research in the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing at UCLA and completed a AAAS Science Policy Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health Office of Evaluation. Prof. Shankar was previously an assistant professor at Indiana University-Bloomington’s School of Informatics and Computing before joining the staff at UCD at the School of Information and Library Studies. 

Currently, Professor Shanka is focusing on studying the peer review process with Science Foundation Ireland, funded by SFI itself. This grant is one of the first calls specifically focused on science policy and research on research. It involves conducting mixed methods studies of the peer review ecosystem at SFI in several key programme streams. The project represents one of the first to allow this kind of access over an extended period of time to a funding agency and it is expected to be an exemplar for similar work in other national contexts. She is also a co-PI on a grant from Worldwide Universities Network to learn more about academic workers and well-being during COVID.

Recent publications:

Feliciani, T., Luo, J., & Shankar, K. (2022). Peer reviewer topic choice and its impact on interrater reliability: A mixed-method study. Quantitative Science Studies, 1-44. Published online: 25 August 2022 

Eschenfelder, K.E. and Shankar, K. (2022). The financial maintenance of social science data archives: Four case studies of long-term infrastructure work. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST). Published online: 16 June 2022 

Feliciani, T., Morreau, M., Luo, J., Lucas, P., & Shankar, K. (2022). Designing grant-review panels for better funding decisions: Lessons from an empirically calibrated simulation model. Research Policy, 51(4), 104467

David Coyle

I am an associate professor in the School of Computer Science. My research and teaching focus on Human Computer Interaction, with a focus on healthcare technologies and the application of cognitive neuroscience in system design and understanding. Prior to joining UCD, I was a lecturer and senior lecturer in Human Computer Interaction with the Bristol Interaction and Graphics group at the University of Bristol.

Prior to Bristol, I was a Marie Curie post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Cambridge. I was based jointly with the Computer Laboratory and the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute. I investigated peoples’ experience of agency while interacting with intelligent computer interfaces and on-body technologies. Ultimately I believe this research has applications both in Human Computer Interaction and in understanding the difficulties faced by people suffering from unusual and disabling perceptual experiences.

Much of my prior research has focused on the design of technology to support mental health interventions. From September 2007 to November 2009,I was a post-doctoral research fellow at Trinity College Dublin, where I was the lead interaction designer on the Technology Enhanced Therapy project. We developed a software platform called SilverCloud. IP from the SilverCloud system provided the basis for a spin out company called SilverCloud Health Ltd. In May 2012 this company was named ‘Most Investable Business in Ireland’ at the Irish Software Association Software Investment Forum.

Recent publications:

Thomas, R. J., O’Hare, G., & Coyle, D. (2023). Understanding technology acceptance in smart agriculture: a systematic review of empirical research in crop production. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 189, 122374

Pretorius, C., McCashin, D., & Coyle, D. (2022). Mental health professionals as influencers on TikTok and Instagram: What role do they play in mental health literacy and help-seeking? Internet Interventions, 30, 100591

Pretorius, C., McCashin, D., & Coyle, D. (2022). Supporting personal preferences and different levels of need in online help-seeking: a comparative study of help-seeking technologies for mental health. Human-Computer Interaction, 1-22

Pádraig Cunningham

Professor Cunningham is professor of Knowledge and Data Engineering in the School of Computer Science at University College Dublin. His current research focus is on the analysis of graph and network data and on the use of machine learning techniques in processing high-dimension data.

After completing his PhD, he worked with Digital Equipment Corporation as a software engineer and with Hitachi Europe Ltd. as a research scientist. He joined Trinity College Dublin as a lecturer in 1992. After promotion to senior lecturer and then associate professor at TCD, he moved to University College Dublin in 2006 to take up a full professorship in the School of Computer Science and Informatics.

Moreover, he is a former director of New World Commerce, now New WorldIQ, a Dublin e-commerce IT company. He is also a former director of Prediction Dynamics a Dublin company specialising in software for financial trading. He was also programme chair for PAIS 2004, Prestigious Applications of Intelligent Systems (ECAI applications track).

Professor Cunningham has published over 170 peer-reviewed papers in the general area of applied AI, focusing on machine learning and knowledge based systems for decision support in engineering, e-commerce, finance and medicine. Over the last 10 years, he has brought in over 2.5M in research grants, from industry, EU funding sources and from national funding sources. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Artificial Intelligence Review. He was co-chair for the European Workshop on Case-Based Reasoning in 1998. He also chaired the Irish AI and Cognitive Science conference in 2003, having co-chaired that conference in 1994. Between 2002 and 2004,  he served as Irish Director of ERCIM (www.ercim.org), the European consortium of national ICT research institutions.

 

Recent publications:

Blanzeisky, W., & Cunningham, P. (2022). Addressing Underestimation Bias in Machine Learning Through Multi-Objective Optimization. Workshop on Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence as a part of the ECML/PKDD 22 program, IRT SystemX [IRT SystemX], Sep 2022, Grenoble, France, France. Ffhal-03773367f

Blanzeisky, W., Smyth, B., & Cunningham, P. (2022). Algorithmic Bias and Fairness in Case-Based Reasoning. Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNAI,volume 13405)

Blanzeisky, W., & Cunningham, P. (2022). Algorithmic Factors Influencing Bias in Machine Learning. Communications in Computer and Information Science book series (CCIS,volume 1524)

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