Research

The School has a strong research culture with projects funded by European Framework, Enterprise Ireland, Strand III Core Research Strengths Enhancement Programme, Strand 1 research scholarships, DIT Abbest scholarships, Health Information Quality Authority, and PRTLI.
The School's Research Mission Statement

Established research groups within the School include the following;

• Control Systems and Robotics
• Electrical Power Research Group
• Biomedical Engineering, Assistive technology and Health Informatics
• Audio Engineering and Speech Processing
• Engineering Education and Teaching & Learning Pedagogy
• Information and Communications Security Research Group
• Sustainable Design And Research

Students interested in studying for a postgraduate degree by research at the DIT School of Electrical Engineering Systems should in the first instance contact Head of School or one of our project group leader to discuss the subject area, the projects on offer and the potential level of financial and/or grant support. Positions, when available are also advertised on our web pages and in the national press.

Audio Research Group

email: dan.barry@dit.ie
phone: +353 1 402 2862
web: http://www.audioresearchgroup.com

Researchers: Dan Barry, Mikel Gainza, David Dorran, Eugene Coyle, Joey McKay, Mark Leddy, Martin Gallagher, Cillian Kelly, Alan O'Cinneide, Gordon Reynolds, Brendan Coburn

The digital audio research group is headed by Eugene Coyle, with Dan Barry, Mikel Gainza and David Dorran forming the core team. The group has completed the highly successful project DITME, has published widely and has a licensed patent on novel research in sound source separation. Current projects funded by European FP6, Enterprise Ireland and DIT Abbest scholarship, include EASAIER, IMAAS, SALERO, and VOCAL.

Electrical Power Research Group

email: michael.conlon@dit.ie
web: http://eleceng.dit.ie/eprg

Researchers: Dr Michael Conlon, Dr Malabika Basu, Mr Kevin Gaughan, Mr Michael Farrell, Mr Joseph Kearney, Dr Eugene Coyle, Mr Keith Sunderland, Mr Kevin O'Farrell, Mr Iurie Axente, Ms Jayanti Ganesh, Mr Asim Mumtaz, Jim Brunton

The School's Electrical Power Systems and Renewable Energy research group aims to develop a world class energy interface facility at DIT and to sustain and advance leading research in power quality conditioning and in integration of wind and solar energy to the network. The group comprises two postdoctoral, two principal researchers, four PhD and two MPhil research students. Current projects include an Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation funded project in Unified Power Quality Conditioning and a number of Strand 1 projects in generation adequacy of electricity supply and transmission planning and integration of wind energy. A further project, funded by the DIT CaBS award scheme, involves design, construction and testing of a clean energy interface equipment bench as a smart grid technology platform (CEnIEq). This research is in collaboration with Professor Prasad Enjeti of the Power Quality Laboratory at Texas A<M University. The group has also established an international research consortium in fuel cell engineering, with partners from the Hochschule Darmstadt (University of Applied Science: Dr Heinz Schmidt-Walter), Gaskatel (research company) and the University of Wisconsin (Professor Jim Hamilton). A number of challenging design issues in alkaline fuel cell technology have been addressed by the group. In a further development the School's fuel cell team has entered partnership with colleagues from other centres at DIT, including Dr David Kennedy of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dr John Cassidy of the School of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Science, and Dr Tony Betts of CREST (Centre for research in Engineering Surface Technology). This team is partner to a Leonardo Da Vinci (second phase of the Community vocational training action programme 2000-2006 Sciences) team project in fuel cell engineering (www.fuelcellknowhow.com), with the University of Bremen as lead partner.

TEAPOT

Teapot's Existance Advances People Oriented Technologies

email: ted.burke@dit.ie
web: http://teapot.dit.ie

Researchers: Dr Eugene Coyle, Dr Richard Hayes, Dr Edward Burke Mr Bill Grimson, Mr Damon Berry, Mr John McGrory, Dr James Condron, Mr Kevin Sullivan, Dr Jane Courtney, Mr Kevin Gaughan, Mr Johnalan Keegan

The School is research active on a number of fronts in biomedical engineering. This research is underpinned by signal processing, applied computing, instrumentation and circuit design. The research falls under two categories; the first incorporating physiological signal analysis and applications of signal processing techniques to assistive technology and biofeedback, the second concerning health informatics.

Health Informatics: The School also hosts a specialist research team in Health Informatics. The group has partnered in several European Framework projects

Control Systems and Robotics

email: aidan.odwyer@dit.ie

Researchers: Dr Aidan O'Dwyer, Mr Gerry Caffrey, Dr Eugene Coyle, Dr Michael McKeever, Dr Michael Conlon, Dr Richard Hayes, Mr Dermot Breen

The control engineering group is researching in time delay estimation (identification and control of processes with delay), robust control, signal processing, and robotics. The group's principal researcher, Dr O'Dwyer is author of a book titled "PI and PID Controller and Tuning Rules", edited by ICP Imperial College Press. Dr McKeever is researching in design, modeling and simulation of rotary kilns in collaboration with University of Leeds and National University of Ireland Maynooth.

The group has established links with a comparable signals and control research team from the Department of Electronic Engineering at Cork Institute of Technology and has held a number of research seminars at both CIT and DIT. This has been a useful framework for exchange of ideas by MPhil and PhD researchers and supervisors at both Institutes and will act as a platform for developing cooperative research proposals going forward.

Engineering Education

email: kevin.kelly@dit.ie

Researchers: Dr Cecilia Chan, Mr Gavin Duffy, Mr Kevin Kelly, Mr David Berber, Dr David Dorran, Mr Tommy Nugent, Dr Malabika Basu, Dr Edward Burke

Research in engineering education is an area of growing importance to the School. Several staff members avail of and contribute to a range of programmes offered by DIT's Learning and Teaching Centre (http://learningandteaching.dit.ie/index.html,) including Certificate, Diploma and Master's degrees in Third Level Learning and Teaching. The Head of learning and Teaching within the Faculty of Engineering is currently completing a PhD in Academic Change in Higher Education. Dr Eugene Coyle, Dr Mike Murphy and Mr Bill Grimson were chapter authors to a book titled "Philosophy in Engineering", under a Socrates Transnational Cooperation European Erasmus Consortium in Higher Education, PROG/MOD 2005-6. School staff lecturers Mr Tommy Nugent and Mr Derek Kearney were awarded the President's Award for Teaching in 2004 and 2006, respectively. Mr Nugent is leading a School team in developing changes to programme delivery using WebCT. Dr Cecilia Chan and Ms Leslie Shoemaker have engaged in creative research in student participation and retention. This has resulted in much improved retention of students registered on programmes within the School.

Information and Communications Security Research Group

email: Jonathan.Blackledge@dit.ie
web: http://eleceng.dit.ie/icsrg/

Researchers: Prof Jonathan Blackledge, Prof Eugene Coyle

The Information and Communications Security Research Group was established in 2008 with funding being provided by the Science Foundation Ireland. The Group is headed by Stokes Professor J M Blackledge who has over ten years industry experience in the field of Cryptology. The current research interests and expertise of the Group include the following:
* Data encryption using novel algorithms
* Coding and data compression
* Information hiding and Steganography
* Data authentication
* Printed document authentication using texture coding
* Forensically inert software engineering
* Covert encryption methods
* Management of encrypted information
* Software solutions for security applications
* Network security and internet modeling
* Digital Rights Management
* Risk management and economic security
* Data security for Cloud Computing
* Novel biometric identification technologies

Sutainable Design And Research

email: kevin.kelly@dit.ie
web: http://eleceng.dit.ie/sdar

Researchers: Kevin Kelly, Keith Sunderland, Kevin O Farrell, Martin Barrett, Derek Kearney, Tony Kealy, John Harkin, Tom O Connor, John McGrory, Ken Beattie and Jonathan Blackledge.

The SDAR* research group emerged from developments in the Department of Electrical Services Engineering in conjunction with the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) and the Society of Light & Lighting (SLL). Research includes PhD studies, Masters research and industry led and funded research competitions in Sustainable Building Design and Lighting. This group works in close association with both CIBSE and SLL.