IVI Staff

Leadership and Administrative

Director

Professor Markus Helfert

Operations Manager

Paul Heynen

Senior Executive Assistant

Carol Connolly

Director

Professor Markus Helfert

Markus Helfert is the Director of IVI and Professor of Digital Service Innovation at Maynooth University. He is also Director of the Business Informatics Group at Maynooth University. He is a Principle Investigator at Lero – The Irish Software Research Centre and at the Adapt Research Centre. His research is centred on Digital Service Innovation, Smart Cities and IoT based Smart Environments and includes research areas such as Service Innovation, Intelligent Transportation Systems, Smart Services, Building Information Management, FinTech, Data Value, Enterprise Architecture, Technology Adoption, Analytics, Business Process Managem ent. Prof. Helfert is an expert in Data Governance Standards and is involved in European Standardisation initiatives. Markus Helfert has authored more than 200+ academic articles, journal and book contributions and has presented his work at international conferences. Helfert has received national and international grants from agencies such as European Union (FP7; H2020), Science Foundation Ireland and Enterprise Ireland, was project coordinator on EU projects, and is the Project coordinator of the H2020 Projects: PERFORM on Digital Retail.

Operations Manager

Paul Heynen

Paul has been working with IVI as operations manager since its formation in 2006. Paul is responsible for the non-research business operations functions in IVI including community, member and partner engement, financial administration, liaison with central university administrative functions, and on-going management and development of IVI-specific IT systems and platforms. Prior to joining IVI, Paul worked in the semiconductor industry for 11 years in various engineering and management roles, most recently as a product manager for an advanced process control software and analytics start-up.

Senior Executive Assistant

Carol Connolly

Carol is a Senior Executive Assistant with IVI coordinating event and outreach management, workshop coordination, digital media communication and day-to-day operations.

Principal Investigators and Cluster Leaders

Research

Dr Mansoor Ahmed

Postdoctoral researcher at VISION project

Claudia Roessing

Dr Nada Elnahla

Dr Rajibul Hasan

Stephanie Lewellen

Dr Adrienne McCann

Dr Shane McLoughlin

Dr Ali Nazarpour

Senior Programme Manager at ADAPT Centre and Maynooth University

Aoife Brady

Sana Kiran

Maryam Nawaz

Leidiane da Silva

Fjolla Berisha

Erica Tegolo

Andrea Paola

Dr Mansoor Ahmed

Dr Mansoor Ahmed did his M. Sc in Information Management from Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), Austria. He was awarded Higher Education Commission (HEC) scholarship for higher studies (PhD) in Austria. In 2009, he completed his PhD degree from TU Wien, Austria.In 2010-2011 he was awarded Senior researcher fellowship scholarship by Indiana University, USA for his Postdoctoral studies. During this period, he worked in Web Science Lab (WSL).  In 2017, he worked as Senior researcher in University College Dublin (UCD).He is member of Editorial Review Board of many International Journals. He is also serving as Associate editor of IEEE Access. Besides this, he has organized number of workshops and also serves as Technical Program Committee member in International reputed conferences. He is also reviewer of good quality journals i.e., Elsevier and Springer. His research interest includes Data Provenance, Blockchain, Semantic Web technologies, Knowledge-based systems, Privacy issues in Health care data, Cloud Computing Security, Information Security and Privacy. He has over 12 years of teaching and research experience.

Postdoctoral researcher at VISION project

Claudia Roessing

Claudia Roessing has completed her PhD at Maynooth University, where she investigated the variations of data lifecycles based on data requirements in the Smart City scenario.
She has years of experience in the software development industry with a background in Business Analysis and Consulting and Computer Science.
She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the VISION project, which is financed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and focuses on reducing the use of virgin materials in the Irish building sector.

Dr Nada Elnahla

Nada Elnahla is a Lecturer/Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Maynooth University School of Business. She holds a PhD in Management/Marketing from Carleton University, Canada, and a PhD in Comparative Literature from Cairo University, Egypt.

Nada’s current research explores the impact of traditional and smart surveillance in the retail sector on the different stakeholders and its ethical implications, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on retailing, specifically on retail workers, loyalty programs, and consumer behaviour. She has presented her work at international conferences and has published research in peer-reviewed academic journals and conference proceedings.

Her teaching experience includes undergraduate and postgraduate education programs in the fields of marketing, digital marketing communications, consumer behaviour, and literature.

Dr Rajibul Hasan

Dr Rajibul Hasan is an assistant professor of marketing and programme director of MSc Marketing at Maynooth University, Ireland. At Maynooth, he teaches Digital Marketing, Social Media, Contemporary Issues in Marketing (e.g., AI in Business and Marketing, AR/VR Marketing). He is the founder of a global research and methodology platform: https://scales4research.com. He also manages an Artificial intelligence and Digital Marketing Platform Website-http://upnotion.com, where he aims to disseminate digital marketing and artificial intelligence knowledge among the members of different societies. Previously, he worked as an Assistant Professor at Rennes School of Business, France. In Rennes, he was a principal investigator of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) consumer behaviour research centre. He completed his PhD from the University of Kent, UK, in the area of marketing. He specializes in understanding digital transformation, digital marketing, artificial intelligence, consumer behaviour and innovation adoption. He has published in academic journals including Tourism Management, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Computer in Human Behaviour, and Journal of Marketing Management and Strategic Change.

Stephanie Lewellen

Stephanie Lewellen is a part-time and remote PhD student at Maynooth University and a Product Manager in the software industry.

Dr Adrienne McCann

Dr Adrienne McCann is the Research Manager jointly appointed by Maynooth University and Age Friendly Ireland, enhancing the relationship between local government and academia in relation to Ireland’s Age Friendly Agenda.

Dr McCann is an Occupational Therapist having worked in the areas of rheumatology and elderly care acute settings in Northern Ireland. She previously worked on the transnational JPND and Alzheimer’s Society UK funded studies on delivering a family carer decision support intervention in long-term care settings across six countries. Additionally she worked on a CHITIN funded randomised control trial, focusing on anticipatory care planning for older adults at risk of functional decline on the island of Ireland. She is co-investigator on “Necessary discussions: Advance care planning for nursing homes in a COVID-19 outbreak” lead by Queen’s University Belfast. She previously lectured on the MSc Professional Nursing Programme at Queen’s University Belfast on Evidence Based Nursing and Dementia modules. Her research interests include older adults, ageing, palliative care and chronic illness.

Dr Shane McLoughlin

Dr Shane McLoughlin is an SFI & Dell EMC funded Post-Doctoral Researcher at LERO, NUI Maynooth. Shane examines innovation, adoption and scaling of disruptive social innovations, e.g. urban IoT, smart farming, and AVs. Shane’s completed his PhD in UCD where he examined the emerging role of ICT in social aspects to human information behaviour, in Ireland’s first eco-community. This work drew on social capital theory and found that affordances of ICT’s helped augment community member’s access and use of social capital. His current research in collaboration with Dell Technologies investigates how digital transformation of the agri-food chain can help achieve Climate Smart Agriculture in order to meet UN SDG goals. Shane is furthermore a collaborator on the SFI SPRING project concerning grant funding (award: ‘17/SPR/5319’) of industry-academic collaborations. He employs a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods in his research and has lectured on socio-cultural and economic aspects of ICT, Human Information Behaviour, HCI, Social Computing & more recently Innovation theory and methodologies.

Dr Ali Nazarpour

Dr. Ali Nazarpour is Assistant Professor in Management at Maynooth University School of Business. Ali has been awarded PhD in Operations and Supply Chain Management from University College Dublin, Smurfit School of Business. He earned his BSc degree in Industrial Engineering and Master’s degree in Business Administration from Iran University of Science and Technology. Prior to his PhD studies, he worked for two years in the construction sector and seven years in the automotive industry where he served as Sales Supervisor, Marketing and Sales Planning Chief, and Inventory Management Project Manager. Parallel to working in industry Ali was also engaged in teaching and research activities. His dual interests in industry and academia lead to undertaking his PhD and subsequent career as a researcher and lecturer.

Senior Programme Manager at ADAPT Centre and Maynooth University

Aoife Brady

Senior Programme Manager at ADAPT Centre and Maynooth University

Sana Kiran

Sana Kiran is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the Innovation Value Institute, Maynooth University, Ireland. Her academic trajectory commenced with the acquisition of a bachelor’s degree in information technology from Pakistan, followed by a master’s in software engineering from China. Sana’s areas of research encompass data quality, open data, smart mobility, smart cities, and data governance.

Her current research project, generously funded by Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software, represents a significant contribution to the field. Lero, globally recognised, holds the distinguished second position among software research centres worldwide for citations. Through her work, she aspires to contribute to the ongoing evolution of software excellence and play a pivotal role in shaping smarter, more connected cities.

Maryam Nawaz

Maryam is a full-time healthcare Ph.D. researcher at IVI, affiliated with the School of Computing at Maynooth University. With a background in Computer Science, she is dedicated to a project on person empowerment in health within the Digital Health Cluster. Maryam’s research emphasizes using conversational agents to facilitate individual health empowerment, additionally brings valuable expertise from her background in software testing within the tech industry.

Leidiane da Silva

Received the B.Sc. degree in business administration from the Universidade Paulista (UNIP), Brazil, and the M.Sc. degree in business analytics from the National University Ireland, Maynooth (NUIM), in 2023. She is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in business with the National University Ireland, Maynooth.

She is a part of the EnTrust Ph.D program and works in the education and research office at Airfield Estate. Her work and interests include data quality and trustworthiness assessment, machine learning techniques, agri-data and business analytics.

Fjolla Berisha

Fjolla Berisha completed her Bachelor and Master studies in Computer Engineering at the University of Prishtina, “Hasan Prishtina. She worked for 4 years as a computer science teaching assistant at the same university. Fjolla is the author of a scientific paper related to neural network algorithms in recommender systems. She is currently pursuing doctoral studies at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth with a focus on digital data ownership.

Erica Tegolo

Erica Tegolo owns Bachelor in Administration and Organisation Science and Labor Consultancy at the University of Palermo. She has received the MBA degree from IAE, University of Bordeaux. She’s currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree at the School of Business, National University Ireland Maynooth (NUIM), representing the awarding institution.

The Ph.D. is part of the EnTrust Doctoral Network, Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship, which aim is to train a cohort of 11 Doctoral Candidates (DCs) to establish a new generation of Data Executives. She is representing DC09 and the objective is represented by the development of a Fair data exploitation principles and framework. The host organisation is Teagasc, the Agriculture and Food Authority in Ireland and I am currently based at the department of Rural Economy and Development Program (REDP).

Andrea Paola

Andrea Paola is currently studying a PH.D. In Innovation Value Institute (IVI) at the Business School in Maynooth University, Ireland. Andrea began her academic career with double background in international business and marketing, followed by a master’s degree in advertising and public relations at RUDN University in Moscow, Russia. Andrea is the author of a scientific paper related to the marketing strategies that influence in the decision making in digital stores. Andrea’s current areas of the research are ethical data governance in artificial intelligence.

Empower

Collaborators

Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure & Construction

Dr Viviana Bastidas

Dr Marija Bezbradica

Data Scientist at the Global Strategic Pricing team at RHI Magnesita

Douglas Cirqueira, MSc

Donal Fitzpatrick

Donal Fitzpatrick

Leads IVI's academic education and professional training & certification programmes

Michael Hanley

Director of ICT at NUI Galway

Dr Beatrice Heneghan

Gabriel Hogan

Gabriel Hogan

Fiona Lynch

Fiona Lynch

GovTech Cluster Lead

Dr Adegboyega Ojo

Priyanka Singh

Digital Retail

Dr Gültekin Cakir

Digital Retail

Dr Rehan Iftikhar

Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure & Construction

Dr Viviana Bastidas

Viviana Bastidas is a research associate in the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC), at the University of Cambridge. Her career interests are in the intersection of business and information technologies in the context of urban planning and smart cities. She is a research collaborator of the Innovation Value Institute (IVI) and the Enterprise Architecture and Formal Modelling (EAFM) research group, at Maynooth University. Viviana’s research has been published in conferences and journals in the domains of the Business and Information Systems Engineering, Knowledge Economy, Digital Transformation, Internet of Things, and System Science.

Dr Marija Bezbradica

I am lecturer in the School of ComputingDCU, specifically allied with several research centres:
Adapt – where I am a Funded Investigator and specifically aligned with FinTech strand. I work on several projects to empower innovation in Financial Services, with a special focus on InsurTech.
ARC-SYM – Advanced Research Computing Centre for Complex Systems Modelling, as part of which I completed my PhD research in 2013. As part of this I am acting as a chair of the Modelling & Scientific Computing Group and as part of it I am an area leader for Social systems, specifically for Smart cities, Environment and Transport.
Lero – The Irish Software Engineering Research Centre where I have several projects in Smart Cities area and behaioural analysis.

Prior to coming to DCU, I obtained a BSc and MSc at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering (ETF)Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Belgrade, Serbia. My research areas are interdisciplinary and include complex system modelling, specifically Cellular Automata (CA) and Agent Based Models (ABM), data analytics, applied mathematics, statistics as well as high performance computing (HPC) and distributed systems.

My current research projects are in FinTech on building models for claims predictions and for explainable AI in Fraud Detection. I have several projects with behavoural analytics focus in the area of evaluation analytics and optimised software usage analytics. In past I developed models that study impact of large urban layouts on pedestrian movement decision-making using ABM with open data sourced from OpenStreetMap.

My past research includes building stochastic models of in vitro drug delivery systems (DDS) by using CA and ABM, in collaboration with Sigmoid Pharma Ltd. My interests also cover HPC optimisations of large-scale models in collaboration with the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC). Since I became a member of DCU, I was involved in lecturing and tutoring of a number of courses for undergraduate and postgraduate students covering statistical data analysis, quantitative methods, probability and statistics, and operating systems.

Data Scientist at the Global Strategic Pricing team at RHI Magnesita

Douglas Cirqueira, MSc

Douglas is a Data Scientist at the Global Strategic Pricing team at RHI Magnesita and a Ph.D. candidate and researcher in Data Analytics at Dublin City University. Douglas has a bachelor’s in Computer Engineering and a master’s in Artificial Intelligence, and he was involved in AI and Data Science projects in universities and companies in Brazil, the USA, and Germany.

Donal Fitzpatrick

Leads IVI's academic education and professional training & certification programmes

Michael Hanley

Michael is involved in IVI’s academic education and professional training & certification programmes. Since 2011, IVI has trained more than 8000 professionals globally, helping organisations digitally transform using IVI’s Capability Maturity Framework. More recently he co-created the MSc in Digital Healthcare Transformation hosted in UL, and ReThink|ReDesign – Maynooth University’s SME digital transformation initiative, supported by Enterprise Ireland’s innovation voucher scheme. In early 2022 he successfully completed a pilot Future Workforce Skills Development Programme for a large public sector organisation. He created the course using an innovative approach he calls Design Thinking for Teaching & Development (DT4TD).

Michael has an MSc in Education & Technology, and he is a Fellow of the Irish Institute of Training and Development.

He will complete his Doctorate in Education Leadership in 2023. His doctoral thesis concerns the impact of digital transformation and disruptive innovation on Irish higher education institutions’ future strategy, business models, and value propositions.

Director of ICT at NUI Galway

Dr Beatrice Heneghan

Dr Beatrice Heneghan is Director of ICT at NUI Galway with responsibility for delivering transformative ICT for the enablement of impactful research, innovation and teaching in an enhanced student learning environment. In her prior role Beatrice served as Head of Information Systems and Innovation at Mayo County Council. Previously, she held posts in ICT and Digital Transformation in Laois and Limerick local authorities.

Beatrice served as Chair of the local government sectoral Architecture and Standards Group (ASG) and on the national ePlanning and Central Data Unit boards. She is a member of Lero – the Science Foundation Ireland Software Research Centre, the Maynooth University Business Informatics Research Group and the Innovation Value Institute (IVI). She is also a member of the International Advisory Board for the Professional Doctorate in Engineering programme at the University of Limerick and contributes as a guest lecturer to the programme. In 2021 Beatrice received the IVI Leadership in Digital Transformation in the Public Sector award.

While having wide experience in the Information Systems (IS) field her particular expertise is in the area of data governance and enterprise architecture with a focus on business/IT alignment in the design and delivery of strategy. Beatrice holds a doctorate in engineering from the University of Limerick and master’s in software engineering from NUI Galway. Beatrice has presented at national and international academic and practitioner conferences and continues to collaborate on research in IS.

Gabriel Hogan

Gabriel Hogan is an IP Manager at the Science Foundation Ireland and a part-time PhD candidate.

Fiona Lynch

GovTech Cluster Lead

Dr Adegboyega Ojo

Adegboyega Ojo is Associate Professor of Management and Government Information Systems at Maynooth University School of Business. Before his appointment at Maynooth University, he was Senior Research Fellow and Head of the E-Government Unit at Insight Centre for Data Analytics, Data Science Institute, National University of Ireland Galway. He is also Visiting Professor of Applied Informatics at Gdansk University of Technology, Poland. His expertise is in the areas of open data strategies and infrastructures, data-intensive public services, e-government Services, infrastructure and governance of smart cities.

Priyanka Singh

Priyanka Singh is a PhD student in the Business School at Maynooth University.

Digital Retail

Dr Gültekin Cakir

Gültekin Cakir is a Researcher at the IVI, Maynooth University, Ireland, and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow in the PERFORM European Training Network, a Horizon 2020 funded project, where he is also chair of the ESR-Committee. He was involved in various consulting projects with SMEs and has a background in Business Management, Digital Retail and Information Systems. His research interest and recent publications deal with strategic and operational challenges retailers face such as the “Retail Apocalypse“, while undergoing the digital transformation process in the industry. Currently, he is investigating the strategic barriers of assortment integration while pursuing an omnichannel retailing approach. With the help of major Austrian and Irish retailers, he explores the underlying factors and new dynamics in assortment decision-making.

Digital Retail

Dr Rehan Iftikhar

Rehan Iftikhar is a Research Fellow at Innovation Value Institute (IVI), Maynooth University and a part of the EU Innovative Training Network, PERFORM. His main research interests include digital retail, digital transformation and technology management. His research has appeared in various journals and conference proceedings including Journal of Global Information Management, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization and Journal of General Management.