Professor Luiz DaSilva is new Director of CONNECT Centre

Posted on: 27 February 2018

Professor of Telecommunications at Trinity College Dublin, Luiz DaSilva, has been appointed Director of CONNECT, the €55 million Science Foundation Ireland research centre for future networks and communications. He succeeds Professor Linda Doyle, who has been appointed Dean of Research in Trinity.

The CONNECT Centre is headquartered in Trinity and includes 300 researchers in nine other colleges and universities around the country. The Internet of Things and 5G networks are at the heart of its research focus.

Over 30 industry partners, ranging from SMEs to MNCs, are engaged in collaborative projects with CONNECT researchers. Since its launch in 2015, the Centre has attracted over €10 million in industry investment and almost €20 million in Horizon 2020 competitive funding.

Professor DaSilva has been at Trinity since 2009. Previously, he spent six years at IBM and 17 years as Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech.

Professor DaSilva is the coordinator of several international research programmes involving academic and industry partners in Brazil, China, the US, Northern Ireland, and throughout Europe. He has attracted €3 million of Horizon 2020 and FP7 funding for wireless communications and networks research projects.

Professor DaSilva’s research focuses on distributed and adaptive resource management in wireless networks, and in particular spectrum and infrastructure resource sharing for next generation networks. He is responsible for seminal work on cognitive networks and on the application of game theory to wireless resource management problems. He is currently working on a new architecture for virtual wireless networks orchestrated from resources belonging to heterogeneous technologies and multiple stakeholders.

Professor DaSilva is currently a principal investigator on research projects funded by the National Science Foundation in the United States, Science Foundation Ireland, and the European Commission under Horizon 2020. He has also co-authored two books on wireless communications.

In addition to being a Fellow of Trinity, he is also an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer, and a Fellow of the IEEE in recognition of “contributions to cognitive networks and resource management for wireless networks”.

Professor Luiz DaSilva said: “I look forward to working closely with CONNECT’s talented team of researchers in our ten partner higher education institutes. The Centre has expanded rapidly over the past three years and I am excited about the opportunity to build on this success.”

Provost of Trinity, Dr Patrick Prendergast, said: “We extend our congratulations to Professor DaSilva as the new Director of CONNECT. He is widely recognised as a world leader in the field of telecommunications research, which is one of Trinity’s strategic research themes. Professor DaSilva has been hugely successful at attracting Horizon 2020 funding as well as collaborating with multiple industry partners.”

“I also wish to pay tribute to Professor Linda Doyle who is now our Dean of Research. Her commitment to the growth of CONNECT and its precursor, CTVR, has positioned Trinity as a global leader in the area of networks research.”

Professor Mark Ferguson, Director General of Science Foundation Ireland and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government of Ireland, said: “I am delighted to welcome Professor DaSilva to his new role as Director of the world-leading SFI Research Centre, CONNECT. His outstanding academic record and existing relationships with industry partners are evidence that he is well placed to build on the Centre’s success and Ireland’s international reputation for research excellence.”

“CONNECT’s Internet of Things research is particularly topical as it increasingly becomes a reality in our daily lives. The solutions delivered by CONNECT’s research have huge potential to benefit Irish society and enterprises.”