Lecturer

Email: Robert.Smith@tudublin.ie

Tel: +353 1 220 7395

Robert Smith holds a permanent lecturing position at Technological University Dublin where he is a member of the HLT and the DRIVE research groups. In addition to this role, Robert is chairperson of the IDRN and recently held an adjunct associate professor post at CDS, TCD. 
After a number of years working in the computer industry, with companies such as Siemens and Data Electronics, Robert took a technical lead role at the Irish Deaf Society (IDS) where he gained an interest in sign languages and first learned Irish Sign Language (ISL). Upon leaving the IDS in 2009, Robert began a full-time post as a research fellow at the Center for next generation localisation (CNGL) at Dublin City University (DCU). At DCU, Robert was part of a team that created a multimodal corpus with content in ISL video, English text, HamNoSys and computer-generated ISL through avatar technologies. During the same period, Robert began lecturing at the School of Informatics & Engineering, TU Dublin – Blanchardstown campus (previously ITB). He has delivered a range of modules on General Computing and Creative Digital Media programmes at TU Dublin as well as delivering a Sign Language Linguistics module at CDS, TCD. 
Robert completed an M.Sc by research, which investigated the role of emotional and facial expressions in synthesised sign language avatars. Now undertaking a PhD, Robert continues his linguistic investigation of non-manual features of ISL through corpus analysis techniques and machine learning methods.