FÍOR ’25 brings industry and researchers together.

On Wednesday 12^th February 2025 four centres, all with close association to the School of Computer Science and Statistics, collaborated to run a day-long event in the Hogan Stand in Croke Park. FÍOR ’25 (Fostering Industry Outreach & Research) brought together 150 researchers (mostly PhD researchers) and 60 members of industry (from 23 companies) together to network, learn and showcase groundbreaking work.

The event was co-organised by four Research Ireland Centres, each with close links to SCSS: the Research Ireland Centre for Research Training in Digitally-Enhanced Reality (d-real), Research Ireland Centre for Research Training in Advanced Networks for Sustainable Societies (ADVANCE CRT), the ADAPT Research Ireland Centre and the CONNECT Research Ireland Centre.

The focus was on research collaboration between universities (particularly PhD researchers) and organisations (companies, civil society groups and public bodies). The hope is to continue to foster links between research in universities and research in companies and other organisations. Some of the companies involved were Huawei Research, IMAX, DELL Technologies, LinkedIn, IBM Research, Qualcomm and Valeo. Civil society groups included Enable Ireland and St John of God. The public bodies Enterprise Ireland, the Irish Universities Association and Smart Dublin.

The event was kicked off by Dr Stephen O'Driscoll, the new Head of Centres at Research Ireland, who spoke about the importance of centres and the Irish research landscape. The four Directors followed, Professor Dan Kilper (School of Engineering), Professor John Kelleher (SCSS), Professor Carol O'Sullivan (SCSS) and Professor Dirk Pesch (UCC). Each gave brief overviews of their centres.

In the foyer, 23 organisations set up and held conversations with researchers about their companies and the work they do. Researchers discussed their topics and about their future research and career objectives. The idea being to build on the already close links between universities and these organisations.

Each of the four centres held showcases to demonstrate the excellent research taking place in their centres, shining a light in particular on current PhD researchers. This included short talks from PhD researchers from SCSS: Dennis McNulty, Delaram Golpayegani, Awais Akbar, Dipto Barman and Breanne Pitt.

The event closed with a keynote speech from SCSS alum, Dr Cormac Driver, who spoke on the topic of ‘What I did next’. Cormac completed his PhD in 2007 with Professor Siobhán Clarke (pictured below) and went on to found a company through Y Combinator in San Francisco, Echodio. He has since moved on to his current role as Head of Product Engineering at Temboo, a software platform for environmental engagement.