Trinity and SETU host CONNECT conference

Posted on: 13 September 2022

Trinity College Dublin and South East Technological University’s Walton Institute, jointly hosted CONNECT’s first in-person conference since 2020.

CONNECT, hosted by Trinity College Dublin, is a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) research centre for Future Networks and Communications and brings together world-class expertise from ten Irish academic institutes to create a one-stop-shop for telecommunications research, development and innovation. The centre engages with over 50 companies including large multinationals, SMEs and start-ups.

Prof Dan Kilper, Director of CONNECT, welcomed over 130 delegates from across ten of Higher Education Institutes including Trinity College Dublin, CONNECT’s host institution, as well as partner institutions Munster Technological University (MTU), Dublin City University (DCU), Maynooth University (MU), Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin), Tyndall National Institute (TNI), University College Cork (UCC), University College Dublin (UCD), University of Limerick (UL) and Walton Institute, South East Technological University (SETU).

Prof Veronica Campbell, President of SETU and former Bursar/Director of Strategic Innovation in Trinity, attended to talk about engagement across the network and welcomed the conference to the region.

Keynote speakers Prof Ryan Camacho, the US research lead of CoQREATE, a €3million US-Ireland centre to centre programme for quantum networks, and Prof Simon Cotton, Director of the Centre for Wireless Innovation (CWI) at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) addressed the topics of ‘The Quantum Future’ and ‘Building an inclusive connected future across the island of Ireland’. These topics align with SFI’s mission to use technology to shape our future.

Prof Dan Kilper reflected on how important human centred approaches to technology research are in all the topics discussed across the two days of the conference saying that “it was great to see human centred approaches to technology research as a common thread through talks today, from a quantum internet to 6G wireless”.

CoQREATE was launched at the conference by Prof Dan Kilper and Prof Ryan Camacho from the Centre for Quantum Networks (CQN) in the University of Arizona who will lead CoQREATE along with Prof Mauro Paternostro from QTeQ at Queens University Belfast. This is a US-Ireland research and development partnership to investigate technologies that will form the foundations of a quantum internet. Quantum computers require quantum internet for connectivity and researchers will collaborate to learn from existing networks to accelerate the creation of quantum internet.

A CONNECT Award’s ceremony also took place. The prestigious awards were presented by Professor Dan Kilper to:

• Mubashir Husain Rehmani in the Education and Public Engagement category for his research outreach work and for being a spokesperson for achieving a work-life balance for a career in research.
• Grace D’Arcy and Sadhbh Nevins who won the Education and Public Engagement Award for their Early Career Research work for the Academy of the Near Future project
• The CONNECT Impact Award went to Conor Dowling for his work on SMART Dun Laoghaire which has reached audiences outside of Ireland.
• The Tom Brazil Excellence in Research Award went to Madhusanka Liyanage who is a Funded Investigator (FI) whose contribution to CONNECT has been exemplary.
• Early Career Research recognition has been given to Abel Zandamela, PhD candidate who has demonstrated resilience over the course of his research studies on smart and secure small devices.

We wish these and all researchers within the SFI-CONNECT community the very best for the academic year ahead in striving to achieve excellence in their research goals.

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