The Lero Alumni: Where are they now?

Since it was founded in 2005, some of Lero’s researchers have left us to advance their careers in other institutions or to return to industry. We have tracked down some of our Alumni and learned what they are up to.

Alumni Members

• Cormac Driver
• Simon Dobson
• Liam O'Brien
• Martin Krafft
• Ernst Sikora
• Alexandre Bergal
• John Burton
• Gabriel Leen
• Helena Holmstrom Olsson
• Aaron Quigley
• Steffen Thiel
• Eoin O’Conchuir
• Klaus Pohl

Dr Cormac Driver | (Lero@TCD)

Cormac  left Lero to found a technology start-up company called Echodio (http://www.echodio.com/). This involved moving to San Francisco in Jan 2009 as Cormac and his co-founders had received seed investment from Y-Combinator (Paul Graham's start-up incubator based in Silicon Valley). They completed the Y-Combinator program and were invited to launch their product at SXSW Interactive 2009 in Austin, Texas, which was successful and attracted a lot of interest.

"Lero's focus on collaboration made it a great place to conduct research. Structured exposure to practitioners from fields related to my own both improved the quality of my research output and maximised its publication opportunities"

Professor Simon Dobson | (Lero@UCD)

Simon left Lero to become Professor of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews. For more details, see Simon’s web-site.

"Lero has the breadth and potential to do some really game-changing work in evolving and adaptive systems, and to change the landscape of software engineering in Ireland."

Dr Liam O'Brien | (Lero@UL)

Liam left Lero to become a Principal Researcher at NICTA working on the e-Government Initiative. There he leads research in scoping and cost estimation for the SOA project and quality-of-service of service-based systems. He is one of the Technology Leads on the Business Adaptation and Interoperation project. He is also vice-President of the Service Science Society in Australia.

For more details, see Liam’s home page

"Lero was an interesting place to work and has potential to become a world-class research centre".

Dr Martin Krafft| (Lero@UL)

After defending his thesis in October 2009, Martin continues his work in Zurich as a self-employed security consultant and communications coach.

Although Martin's PhD work was conducted mainly away from the Lero centre in the University of Limerick, he enjoyed the welcoming atmosphere on his visits. "Lero welcomed and supported me on my endeavour, which was out of line with the core strands of research. This speaks of inter-disciplinary thinking and flexibility."

Ernest Sikora | (Lero@UL)

Ernest became team leader of the requirements engineering team at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He is working in a large German research project called SPES 2020 that deals with model-based engineering of software-intensive embedded systems. He got used to the Germans again, but not to the German beer :-)

"Lero offers an excellent and unequalled inspiring environment for research!"

Professor Alexandre Bergal | (Lero@TCD)

Alexandre’s moved to the University of Chile. For more details see his home page.

"Lero consists of an incredible amount of positive energies. I will definitely keep an eye on it!"

Dr John Burton | (Lero@UL)

John is now Chief Technical Officer with Vitalograph in Ennis - www.vitalograph.ie.

Dr Gabriel Leen | (Lero@UL)

Details of Gabriel’s activities since Lero can be found at www.TTCAN.com 

Professor Helena Holmstrom Olsson | (Lero@UL)

Since leaving Lero, Helena has become an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IT Faculty in the University of Gothenburg. See her homepage for details.

"Lero is a fantastic research centre in which many SE perspectives are brought together. My time as a post-doc researcher was a great experience in many regards – I was able to work with world leading researchers, I was given the opportunity to collaborate with Irish industry and I got to spend time in a stimulating environment in which researchers from many different countries interact. Lero is a truly inspiring environment and I am grateful for the many opportunities it gave me."

Professor Aaron Quigley | (Lero@UCD)

When Aaron left Lero@UCD he became director of the human interface technology research laboratory and an Associate Professor in the university of Tasmania. On July 1st, 2010, Aaron took up the Chair of Human Computer Interaction as a Professor in the school of computer science St Andrews University.

"Lero is a world class research centre which brings together the core academic and industry research software engineering strengths across Ireland. Such centres are key to the knowledge economy as they act as both a focal point and catalyst for leading edge research. Lero afforded me the opportunity to work on a range of software visualization projects and to build a long term relationship with IBM Ireland from which many other collaborations developed, including the SFI Clique research cluster."

Professor Steffen Thiel | (Lero@UL)

Since leaving Lero early in 2009, Steffen is a Professor of Software Engineering in the Department of Computer Science at the Furtwangen University of Applied Sciences, Germany. His research interests are in the area of Strategic Software Engineering and include Software Product Lines, Software and Systems Architecture, Software Visualisation, and Software Evolution. He is particularly interested in Automotive Software and System Development processes.

For more details, see Steffen’s home page

Dr Eoin O’Conchuir | (Lero@UL)

Since leaving Lero, Eoin has:

• Worked at Digino Marketing in Ballina/Killaloe, specialising in search engine optimisation (SEO). Worked directly with clients to optimise their organic search traffic, including Irish Ferries and Ryanair. Also conducted requirements gathering for ecommerce solutions for several clients.
• Started in October 2009 at the Localisation Research Centre in the CSIS as a web developer on the Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL) project. The project is funded by Science Foundation Ireland.
• Successfully defended his doctoral thesis in November 2009!

Eoin has also set up a blog on web technology that is worth looking at.

Professor Klaus Pohl | (Lero@UL)

Klaus returned to Germany. See  this site for details.

If you have worked in Lero in the past as a researcher, then please contact us so we can add you to this page.