IVI Staff
Leadership and Administrative
Professor Markus Helfert
Paul Heynen
Carol Connolly
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.
Email:Markus.Helfert@mu.ie
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.
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
Dr Marco Alfano
Caroline Creamer
Professor Martin Curley
Professor Brian Donnellan
Professor Piero Formica
Dr Edgar Galván
Dr Emmanuel Kypraios
Dr Tadhg E. MacIntyre
Dr Peter Mooney
Professor Fabiano Pallonetto
Dr Zohreh Pourzolfaghar
Dr Patrick Rigot-Müller
Dr Joe Timoney
Dr Hao Wu
Person-Driven, Health & Wellbeing Cluster Lead
Dr Marco Alfano
Dr. Marco Alfano is a Senior Researcher at the Innovation Value Institute (IVI), Maynooth University, and leader of the IVI Person-Driven, Health & Wellbeing research cluster. He is also affiliated with Lero, the SFI Research Centre for Software, and receives SFI funding for his research. He is currently working on responsible use of AI in health and well-being by facilitating person/patient empowerment and seamless communication within the healthcare system (http://cohealth.ivi.ie/). His research interests include Responsible AI, Digital Health Transformation, Patient Empowerment, Human-machine communication, Data analytics, Semantic Web, Smart cities, Cybersecurity, and Open Data/Big Data. He has authored more than fifty peer reviewed articles for journals, books, and conferences. He has participated in several European projects and has received grants from international bodies, such as the European Union (under the FP7 and H2020 framework programs), and national bodies, such as Science Foundation Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, and the National Research Council of Italy.
Director of the International Centre for Local and Regional Development (ICLRD)
Caroline Creamer
Caroline Creamer is Director of the International Centre for Local and Regional Development (ICLRD) and a Research Fellow with the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA) at Maynooth University.
Caroline has worked in a research and management capacity on a number of EU funded projects over the past 16 years; namely the Four Cities Project (Urban Regeneration, Planning and Community Participation) with Maynooth University; EQUAL at Work (Inclusive Employment and Recruitment Practices in the Irish Labour Market) with the Dublin Employment Pact; SPAN (Strategic Planning and Multi-level Governance) with Maynooth University; and more recently, CroSPlaN (the Cross-Border Spatial Planning Development and Training Network) with ICLRD. She has led on various action research programmes, co-designed and delivered capacity building training with Councils across the island of Ireland, and created learning networks for different sectoral interests. A qualified town planner, her research interests include spatial planning practice and policy, leadership in place-making and place-shaping, regional and local development and regeneration, collaborative and participative decision-making, and inter-territorial and cross-border development.
Caroline holds a Diploma in Environmental Resources Management from Dublin Institute of Technology, an MA in Geography from Maynooth University, an MA in Town and Country Planning from University of the West of England / Open University, and is currently a part-time PhD candidate in Maynooth University.
Professor of Innovation at Maynooth University and Digital Health Lead at IVI
Professor Martin Curley
Martin Curley is Professor of Innovation at Maynooth University. Most recently, Martin was Director of the Digital Transformation and Open Innovation at the Health Service Executive (HSE), helping enable the digital transformation of Ireland’s health service and also served as Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the HSE. Prior to joining the HSE Martin was Senior Vice President and group head for Global Digital Practice at Mastercard. Previously Martin was vice president at Intel Corporation and Director/GM of Intel Labs Europe, Intel’s network of more than 50 research labs which he helped grow across the European region. He also served as a senior principal engineer at Intel Labs Europe leading Intel’s research and innovation engagement with the European Commission and the broader European Union research ecosystem. Prior to this Curley was Global Director of IT Innovation and Director of IT Strategy and Technology at Intel. Earlier in his Intel career, he held a number of senior positions for Intel in the United States and Europe. He also worked in research and management positions at GE in Ireland and Philips in the Netherlands.
Martin has a bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering and a master’s degree in business studies, both from University College Dublin, Ireland. He received his Ph.D. in information systems from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Curley is the author of eight books on technology management for value, innovation and entrepreneurship. He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, fellow of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland, the British Computer Society and, the Irish Computer Society. Martin is co-founder of the Innovation Value Institute at Maynooth University, a unique industry-academia collaboration driving research and development of advanced IT and Digital maturity frameworks. He was previously a visiting scholar at MIT Sloan Centre for Information Systems Research and a visiting research fellow at the CERN Open Lab in Geneva. He was the inaugural winner of the Engineers Ireland Innovation engineer of the year in 2006 and was jointly awarded European Chief Technology Officer of the year for 2015-2016.
Professor of Management Information Systems, Maynooth University
Professor Brian Donnellan
Professor Brian Donnellan is Professor of Management Information Systems at Maynooth University.
Previous senior management positions in Maynooth University include Vice President of Engagement and Innovation, Vice President and Dean of International Affairs and Academic Director of the Innovation Value Institute. He is active researcher in four Science Foundation Ireland research centres.
A native of County Clare, he graduated from University of Limerick with a B. Engineering in Electronic Engineering, an MBA and PhD (Computer Science and Information Systems). Prior to becoming an academic, Brian spent 19 years working in the IT industry, where he was responsible for Computer-Aided-Engineering for New Product Development.
Author, One Health
Professor Piero Formica
Professor Formica has published extensively on knowledge economics, entrepreneurship and innovation. Ideators: Their Words and Voices (2022),
One Health: Transformative Enterprises, Wellbeing and Education in the Knowledge Economy (2023), Sciencepreneurship: Science, Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Economic Growth (2023), published by Emerald Publishing Group, and Human Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence: Exhibition at the Mind Gallery (2024, Edizioni Pendragon) are his most recent books.
For his contribution to modern innovation policy, he received the 2017 Innovation Luminary Award from the Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group under the aegis of the European Union and the 2023 Magister Peloritanus Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship from the Accademia Peloritana dei Pericolanti of the University of Messina, Italy.
Machine Learning Cluster Lead at IVI
Dr Edgar Galván
Dr. Edgar Galván leads the IVI Machine Learning Cluster and is a Senior Researcher in the Department of Computer Science, Maynooth University. Prior to this, he held multiple research positions in Essex University, University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin and INRIA Paris-Saclay. He is an expert in the properties of encodings, such as neutrality and locality, in Genetic Programming as well as a pioneer in the study of Semantic- based Genetic Programming. His research interests also include applications to combinatorial optimisation, games, software engineering and deep neural networks. Dr. Edgar Galvan has independently ranked as one of the all-time top 1% researchers in Genetic Programming, according to University College London. He has published in excess of nearly 70 peer-reviewed publications. Edgar has over 1,900 citations and a H-index of 25.
Assistant Professor of Management, School of Business, Maynooth University
Dr Emmanuel Kypraios
Emmanuel Kypraios is a Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Management at Maynooth University School of Business.
Emmanuel’s research interests lie at the intersection of economic sociology, sociology of finance, organization theory and strategic management, with particular focus on sustainability and the socio-cognitive mechanisms that underlie decision-making processes.
His previous academic appointment was visiting Professor of Strategy at the Ecole Hoteliere in Lausanne, Switzerland. Emmanuel earned his PhD at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI)/University of Lugano, Switzerland. He studied at Johns Hopkins University, MD, USA and holds a MSc (Financial Management) from SOAS, University of London, UK, and a BA (Economics) from Bard College, NY, USA.
Before joining academia, Dr. Kypraios spent 12 years in the financial industry as a senior trader and broker of equity derivatives working for different financial institutions such as BNP Paribas, Hypovereinsbank, hedge fund groups such as Integrated Asset Management and wealth management companies in Munich, Frankfurt, London, Paris and lately in Lugano, Switzerland.
Associate Professor of Environmental Psychology at Maynooth University
Dr Tadhg E. MacIntyre
Tadhg E. Maclntyre is an Assistant Professor in Environmental Psychology at Maynooth University. He is a member of the MU based Assisted Living and Learning Institute (All). Tadhg is a funded investigator with Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and a funded investigator with Insight Centre for Data Analytics. He is also a visiting Professor Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences and member of theTECHpa research group (2022-2025). He has been a visiting lecturer of Technical University of Munich (2019-2020). Tadhg has done his PhD in ‘Motor cognition in action: Exploring kinaesthetic imagery in sport’ in UCD (2007). During 2024 to 2028, Tadhg will be the Coordinator European Commission Horizon Europe HORIZON-HLTH-2023 ENVHLTH-02: GoGreenNext: Promoting Future Health in Cities which is awarded €6 million. He was the Coordinator European Commission Horizon 2020: LC-CLA-11 Visionary and integrated solutions to improve health in cities and GOGREEN ROUTES €10.48 million awarded (2020-2024). Tadhg also got other fundings from EASME: Erasmus +Sport Collaborative Partnership. Dual Career Athletes. BE LIKE AN ATHLETE (7 partner consortium and at UL: Dr MacIntyre & Dr Norma Bargary) (2020-2022) and EASME: Erasmus +Sport Collaborative Partnership. Ethics in Sport. FIX THE FIXING (8 partner consortium and at UL: Dr MacIntyre & Dr Deirdre O’Shea) (2016-2017). He also got reviewer ERC Consolidator Award 2019, Leverhulme Awards 2020, H2020 M-S awards 2021-2023. Tadhg got rich experience in NBS projects. He was a member of Network Nature task forces and a member of advisory board of RE-Nature Project. He was a contributor to proGIreg online MOOC material on Nature Based Urban Re-Generation and an invited expert for seminars and workshops for Connecting Nature project. Apart from that, Tadhg has got great editorial experience. He has been a member of Editorial Board of PLOS ONE and Associate Editor of International Review of Sport & Exercise Psychology since 2008. He is now a Guest Editor for Frontiers in Environmental Psychology and was an Invited Lead Guest Editor for Frontiers in Psychology for three years (2016-2017, 2019-2020, 2020-2021). Tadhg was an external examiner for 4 PhD candidates and has supervised 9 doctoral students to completion, currently supervising six PhDs, and all students had received scholarships.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Maynooth University
Dr Peter Mooney
Peter Mooney is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Maynooth University, Ireland. Having received his PhD in Computer Science from Maynooth University Peter moved away from academia and worked for over 10 years as a Research Fellow with the Environmental Protection Agency Ireland specialising in open data access for scientific, environmental and geospatial data at national and European levels. He returned to academia and took up his current post in 2016. Peter’s main areas of research lie at the intersection of Computer Science and Geocomputation with particular emphasis on applying computational models and approaches to working with volunteered, user generated, and citizen collected geospatial data and information. In recent years his work and that of his research group has broadened and expanded to include smart farming, the integration of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) in problems within the geocomputation domain, and computational/AI processes within circular economy transformations. Peter is a passionate advocate and educator for the widespread use of open data, open science and open-source software and has been consistently actively involved with the FOSS4G (Free and Open Source Software for Geomatics), OpenStreetMap and open geodata communities globally for many years.
Head of International Strategic Partnerships & Sustainable IT Cluster Lead at IVI
Professor Fabiano Pallonetto
Fabiano has a wide experience in the energy, IT and transport sectors working as an entrepreneur, data scientist and researcher across different industries and disciplines. My academic background in Computer Science and Engineering and my industry experience in Energy, Sustainable Mobility, Data Analytics, Control Algorithms and Optimisation makes me a pivotal asset for research based and commercial data centric projects. My goal is bridging academic research to industrial needs applying my multidisciplinary industry and entrepreneurship experience to build solutions and solve technical challenges for the deployment and integration of the smart grid and its associated carbon footprint reduction and promoting Sustainable Development Goals.
Digital Construction Cluster Lead
Dr Zohreh Pourzolfaghar
Zohreh Pourzolfaghar is Assistant Professor for the School of Business in Maynooth University. She is a members of Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software. Zohreh formerly has been Research Fellow at Innovation Value Institute (IVI), Maynooth University’s digital transformation research centre. She is a senior research member of the Business Informatics Group. She is the theme lead in a project investigating the application of Enterprise Architecture in Smart Cities, funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). She has been Principle Investigator for an Industry Fellowship Programme, funded by SFI. Zohreh presented her work at international conferences and has published research in Journals and Conference Proceedings. Zohreh is also leading research within the Cost Action CA16222 (WISE-ACT), a European-wide network. She has been thematic lead in a successful European Marie Curie PERFORM project. She is a member of the supervisory board of the EU project PERFORM, that focuses on Digital Retail. She has been awarded the SFI industry fellowship (2018) working with industry on topics related to Smart Cities and Building Information Management. She is the Co-PI for submitted H202 Techland proposal. Zohreh received her Ph.D. in Project Management in design process of building projects. Zohreh has years of experience working with project-oriented construction companies to improve organisatioanal productivity and their work processes.
Supply Chain Management Cluster Lead
Dr Patrick Rigot-Müller
Dr. Patrick Rigot-Müller is a lecturer in Operations and Supply Chain at Maynooth University School of Business. His research interests include Maritime Transport, Supply Chain Digitalization and Sustainability. He has previously worked for Normandy Business School and Newcastle University (School Of Marine Science and Technology). He has published articles in conferences and peer-reviewed academic journals such as, Transportation Research Part A, Energy Policy or Technological Forecasting and Social Change.
He has delivered graduate and executive education courses for more than 10 years for many institutions such as Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne, HEC Paris, Imperial College London, ESSEC, Ecole Centrale Paris, and Ecole des Ponts ParisTech.
He has an extensive industry background with more than 20 years of consulting in Supply Chain and applied research in Digital Manufacturing. His projects covered the areas of industrial strategy, logistics strategy, network design, shipping plan optimization, outsourcing, warehouse operations, forecasting and S&OP process design, investment analysis, production plant and warehouse design… for a wide range of companies and organizations such as Total, L’Oréal, Solvay, Nespresso, Lexmark, Sephora, Alcatel-Lucent, Ministère de la Défense, Ministère des Transports, Novartis, Veolia, Vallourec, Essilor and Renault.
Head of Department of Computer Science, Maynooth University
Dr Joe Timoney
Dr Joe Timoney joined the Dept. of Computer Science at Maynooth University in 1999. He teaches on undergraduate programs in Computer Science and in Music Technology. His research interests are based in the areas of Software Engineering and Audio signal processing, with a focus on musical applications. He has supervised a number of PhD students. In 2003 he spent a 3- month research visit at ATR laboratory in Kyoto, Japan, and in 2010 to the College of Computing at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. He also is a keen DIY electronics enthusiast and has built a number of electronic instruments.
Enterprise Architecture Cluster Lead
Dr Hao Wu
The research on Architecture research at Computer Science Department aims to formalise/generalise architecture models, create automated tools and domain specific languages for manipulating different kinds of models at enterprise level. In particular, we are currently using our unique techniques for solving complex constraints to increase confidence in using Architecture models.
Distinguished International Collaborator
Professor Jan vom Brocke
Professor Jan vom Brocke
Professor Jan vom Brocke is a Distinguished Professor of Process Science at Maynooth University in Ireland. He is the Director of the European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS) and holds the Chair of Information Systems & Business Process Management at the University of Münster in Germany.
Jan has published among others in Management Science, MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Information Technology, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Information Systems Journal, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, and MIT Sloan Management Review.
Jan’s research has been pioneering in many areas, especially in the fields of business process management, design science research, digital nudging and green information systems. He is considered one of the co-founders of ‘process science’, an interdisciplinary field that analyses socio-technical change from different disciplinary perspectives. In particular, digital trace data is analyzed to capture and explain change, and to intervene in change to advance businesses and sustainable societies.
Professor vom Brocke’s work has been recognised with numerous international awards. He has been named a Fellow of the Association for Information Systems (AIS), a Schoeller Senior Fellow of Friedrich-Alexander University (FAU) in Germany, a Fellow of the ESCP Centre for Design Science in Entrepreneurship, and a Digital Leader in his home country Liechtenstein. International rankings consistently place Jan among the top 50 in the world and the top 10 in Europe. In the current Stanford List of World`s Top 2% Scientists, Jan is ranked in the top 0.5% (in the career-accompanying database) and the top 0.1% (in last year`s data set) across all scientific fields.
Jan brings teaching experience from 26 universities in 13 countries on Executive, PhD-, Master and Bachelor-level, incl. many of the FT50 Top Business Schools, such as the University of St.Gallen in Switzerland, the Vlerick Business School in Belgium, the University of Warwick in the UK, Aarhus University in Denmark, and the Smurfit School of Business in Ireland. His students won international prizes like the Accenture Campus Challenge or the SAP DemoJam, and they received prestigious recognitions like the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting Young Researcher Invitation.
Professor vom Brocke has a track record of building impactful academic institutions. At the University of Liechtenstein, he established the Institute for Information Systems, which has become one of the top 40 worldwide with his leadership, the top 5 in Europe and 1st in the competitive Germany-Austria-Switzerland region. He is also the founder and president of the Liechtenstein chapter of the AIS, which has been honored with the ‘AIS Outstanding Chapter Award’ ten years in a row since its establishment in 2014.
Jan served as Vice President for Research at the University of Liechtenstein for two consecutive terms and is currently Vice Dean for Internationalization at the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Münster. He has chaired many international conferences, such as the European Conference on Information Systems in Münster, and is a member of the editorial board of numerous high-ranking journals in the field of information systems and management.
Professor vom Brocke has secured over €50 million in competitive research funding as for example from the European Union (EU), the Liechtenstein Research Foundation, the Swiss Research Foundation, the German Research Foundation, the local government, and industry.
Jan vom Brocke is an invited speaker and trusted advisor to many DAX 30 and Fortune 500 companies as well as Start-ups and supports governments across Europe on their digital transformation journey.
Research
Dr Mansoor Ahmed
Dr Claudia Roessing
Dr Nada Elnahla
Dr Rajibul Hasan
Stephanie Lewellen
Dr Shane McLoughlin
Dr Ali Nazarpour
Sana Kiran
Karthickeshwar Shankaravelu
Andrea Paola
Maryam Nawaz
Leidiane da Silva
Fjolla Berisha
Erica Tegolo
Rozita Hashemi
Dr. Ciara McCormack
Dr Mansoor Ahmed
Dr. Mansoor Ahmed is a distinguished Research Fellow and Principal Investigator at Maynooth University’s Innovation Value Institute, where he leads nationally and EU-funded projects on AI ethics, GDPR-compliant data protection, and responsible data sharing in health and public services. With a PhD in Computer Science and Technology from Vienna University of Technology and over 10 years of academic excellence, Dr. Ahmed specializes in cybersecurity, blockchain technologies, data governance, AI ethics, and regulatory compliance.
Currently holding a prestigious Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Fellowship, Dr. Ahmed investigates privacy implications of AI in public services while developing comprehensive data protection guidelines. His expertise spans data governance, AI ethics and regulatory compliance, information security, and privacy-preserving systems. He has successfully secured competitive research funding, including awards from SFI, MSCA European Commission, and industry partnerships with META.
Dr. Ahmed’s research impact is evidenced by over 75 peer-reviewed publications in high-impact journals. He has supervised multiple PhD dissertations and serves on editorial boards of international journals while maintaining active memberships in ISO/IEC technical committees.
His collaborative work with industry giants like META, regulatory bodies including NSAI and CEN, and contributions to European Health Data Space (EHDS) initiatives demonstrate his commitment to translating cutting-edge research into real-world solutions. He is passionate about leveraging emerging technologies for ethical and sustainable development, He thrives at the intersection of innovation, education, and policy. Whether collaborating on cutting-edge research, shaping academic programs, or driving policy change, he is committed to creating systems prioritizing societal well-being and trust.
Dr 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 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.
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.
Karthickeshwar Shankaravelu
Karthickeshwar Shankaravelu is a PhD student at the Innovation Value Institute, Maynooth University, Ireland. His research topic focuses on representing data value through enterprise modelling focusing on ArchiMate language. His research was conducted with the financial support of Science Foundation Ireland at ADAPT, the SFI Research Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology at Maynooth University 13/RC/2106_P2. He is also part of the VISION project which focuses on reducing the use of virgin materials in the Irish construction industry.
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.
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 holds an MSc in Computer Engineering and is currently a PhD candidate in Computer Science at Maynooth University as part of the ENTRUST Doctoral Network. Her work centres on data sovereignty in agriculture: she designs and tests usage-control mechanisms that let farmers set and technically enforce policies regarding who can use their data, for what purpose, and for how long. By turning these policy-enforcement ideas into practical, easy-to-deploy software, she helps farming communities to be sovereigns of their information while still benefiting from digital technologies.
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).
Rozita Hashemi
Rozita is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Maynooth University, Ireland, supported by the ADAPT Centre. She holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science, an MBA, and an MSc in strategic management. With over a decade of professional experience in data management, she brings a strong industry perspective to her academic work. Her research on data value in the construction industry represents a timely and significant contribution to advancing data-driven practices in the built environment sector.
Dr. Ciara McCormack
Dr Ciara McCormack is an Assistant Professor in Sport Science and Health at Maynooth University and a Clinical Exercise Physiologist. Her research focuses on the role of exercise and digital health in the primary and secondary prevention of chronic diseases, particularly cardiovascular and respiratory conditions. She is passionate about designing, delivering, and evaluating patient-centred, technology-enabled interventions that use physical activity to improve long-term health outcomes and healthcare delivery.
Ciara is currently embedded in the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, where she is leading a national programme to transform pulmonary hypertension (PH) research and rehabilitation services in Ireland. She is the lead researcher on an SFI CONNECT collaboration with Johnson & Johnson, delivered through the Innovation Value Institute (IVI), which is focused on digitising pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) pathways. This project is exploring how digital technologies can be integrated into routine clinical care to enhance patient monitoring, engagement, and access to exercise-based rehabilitation.
Her broader research spans hospital, home, and community settings, leveraging both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to examine how lifestyle and physical activity interventions—supported by digital tools—can impact disease progression, symptom management, and healthcare utilisation. She is particularly interested in creating scalable, technology-enabled models of exercise delivery for adults aged 40+ and people living with chronic diseases, with an emphasis on addressing health inequalities.
Ciara completed her PhD in Clinical Exercise Physiology at Dublin City University, where she developed, delivered, and evaluated a home-based physical activity intervention for PH patients, co-designed with patients and underpinned by behavioural science. This work, conducted in collaboration with respiratory consultants at the Mater Hospital, has informed similar programmes internationally.
She is currently involved in multiple national and international projects on exercise and rehabilitation for people living with pulmonary hypertension, heart failure, and vascular disease, and serves on the GoGreenNext Advisory Board, contributing expertise on inclusive methodologies and the integration of digital and lifestyle interventions into sustainable healthcare initiatives.
Beyond her academic and clinical roles, Ciara is committed to public engagement and health advocacy. She works closely with the HSE on Ireland’s Physical Activity Guidelines and contributes to national efforts to embed rehabilitation and physical activity pathways into chronic disease management. She also represents Ireland on the global Exercise is Medicine Emerging Leadership Programme, supporting the implementation of physical activity as a standard in clinical care.
Her work has been recognised through multiple awards from organisations such as the American Thoracic Society, the European Respiratory Society, and DCU Invent. Ciara regularly contributes to national health campaigns, appears on RTÉ Radio 1 as an expert on physical activity and health, and provides consultancy to healthcare, community, and corporate groups seeking to implement evidence-based, digitally supported physical activity programmes.
Empower
Denise Manton
Lee-Anne Kallam
Executive Officer of Empower
Denise Manton
Denise Manton has 20+ years of multi-disciplinary experience with a focus on innovation driven technology and digital transformation initiatives both in industry and in academic research environments, operating at various levels from software engineering to senior management. In her role as Executive Officer of Empower, she will drive the long-term strategic planning of the research programme and lead engagement and collaboration with diverse stakeholder groups, building a community of practice to overcome the global challenges in the area of data governance. Denise is also responsible for ensuring the key objectives are met and growth of the programme achieved.
Research Programme Manager for Empower
Lee-Anne Kallam
Lee-Anne Kallam joins the team bringing with her extensive experience in financial, project and operations management. In her role as Research Programme Manager for Empower, Lee-Anne will coordinate and manage the newly established multi-million Euro Data Governance Research Programme. Working closely with the four SFI-funded research centres, Lero, Insight, Adapt and FutureNeuro and being member of the Steering Committee, she will oversee, coordinate, consolidate, report, and manage relationships between the operations teams. By bringing her information systems background and executive business management skills to Empower, she is confident that she will make a significant contribution to its success in establishing its external presence.
Collaborators
Dr Viviana Bastidas
Dr Marija Bezbradica
Douglas Cirqueira, MSc
Donal Fitzpatrick
Michael Hanley
Dr Beatrice Heneghan
Gabriel Hogan
Fiona Lynch
Dr Adegboyega Ojo
Priyanka Singh
Dr Gültekin Cakir
Dr Rehan Iftikhar
Dr Viviana Bastidas
Dr Marija Bezbradica
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 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.
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
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.
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
Dr Adegboyega Ojo
Adegboyega Ojo is Full Professor at the School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University, Canada. Prof. Ojo is also Canada Research Chair in Governance and Artificial Intelligence. His research is primarily in the area of digital government. He studies how digital and data technologies can be used to support innovation in government institutions and address societal challenges. Prof. Ojo is keen on understanding the conditions and technical design requirements for the beneficial and ethical use of data-driven innovation, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence-based solutions in different public service and policy contexts.
Before joining Carleton University, he was a faculty at Maynooth University School of Business and earlier a Senior Research Fellow & Head of the E-Government Unit at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, University of Galway, Republic of Ireland. He also worked at the Centre for Electronic Governance, United Nations University in Macao SAR, China, where he supported governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America in developing digital government strategies. Adegboyega is Associate Editor of the Government Information Quarterly Journal (Elsevier), Digital Government: Research and Practice journal (ACM) and also the Information Polity Journal (IOS Press). He holds a PhD in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) from the University of Lagos, Nigeria.
Priyanka Singh
Priyanka Singh is a PhD student in the Business School at Maynooth University.
Dr Gültekin Cakir
Dr Gültekin Cakir is a lecturer and academic programme coordinator at the Faculty of Business, Technological University Dublin, and a member of the Strategy & Leadership Group in the School of Management, People and Organisations. He holds a PhD in Business and Management from Maynooth University and a Master’s degree in General Management from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Dortmund, Germany. He teaches modules on undergraduate, graduate, and executive levels in Strategy and Digital Innovation & Emerging Technologies. Before joining TU Dublin, Gültekin was a Research Fellow at the Innovation Value Institute, Maynooth, where he worked with companies, start-ups, other institutes and collaborators on diverse research projects centred around digital innovation and organisational digital maturity. Gültekin is a member of the Digital Retail Research Cluster at IVI and was a recipient of the EU Horizon Europe Marie Curie Skłodowska scholarship award within “PERFORM”, a European training project focusing on the digital transformation of the retailing industry, where he was also chair of the ESR Committee.
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.
