A LEADING Canadian researcher has been appointed to a key role at University of Limerick.
Professor Lionel Briand has been appointed to the role of Director of Lero and Professor of Software Engineering in UL’s Department of Computer Science and Information Systems.
Professor Briand will take up the role in 2024, succeeding Professor Brian Fitzgerald.
Prof Briand has over 30 years’ experience in software and AI research, with his work particularly focused on ensuring the reliability, safety, and security of complex, AI-enabled systems – much of it in collaboration with industry partners.
He is a previous European Research Council (ERC) Advanced grant awardee, the most prestigious individual research funding grant in the European Union.
Professor Briand also has an excellent track record in education and has been the main supervisor of 37 PhD students to date.
He has received many awards across his career including a Fellowship of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Fellowship of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the IEEE Computer Society Harlan Mills award, The ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award, and the Fellowship of the Academy of Science, Royal Society of Canada.
Professor Briand said that Ireland has an “excellent” reputation in this field and he looks forward to bringing the department to new heights.
“Ireland has an excellent reputation for software research and much of that stems from Lero. In a country with such a proportionally large high-tech industry, Lero’s role as a national centre of excellence focused on software research, including AI aspects, is pivotal,” explained Professor Briand.
He continued: “I see Lero’s role as a catalyser for research excellence and impact. I am thrilled, as the new director, to have the opportunity to work with Lero’s excellent network of researchers as well as new and existing industry partners to lead the centre to new heights.”
