Inclusion, Co-Design, Inclusive Software Development

Games, Mathematics Anxiety, Problem-Solving, Education

Happy Maths is a research and engagement project for primary schools. The project aims to evaluate the potential of digital games to support mathematics learning. The project seeks to investigate the impact that games can have on teachers’ practice, students’ maths performance, and their levels of mathematics anxiety, a condition of negative emotional reactions that affects learning and self-confidence. The project includes the implementation of two games developed by our team: Once Upon a Maths, an online graphical adventure mixing History and Maths, and Seven Spells, a digital card game stimulating problem-solving. Both games were designed based on 5 years of research into STEM game-based learning and the feedback of 700+ teachers.

The Happy Maths project is funded by TU Dublin, SFI, and the Irish Research Council and it's a partnership between TU Dublin, d-Real, National University of Ireland Galway, University College Dublin, and Åbo Akademi University. Dr. Pierpaolo Dondio, Dr. Mariana Rocha, André Almo, Vjacheslav Gusev, Ryan Flood, and Chris McHugh are collaborating on the project.

If you have any questions about the project you can email pierpaolo.dondio@tudublin.ie.

• Visit the Happy Maths website

Blended Learning, Education, Teaching and Learning

Digital Ethics, Education, Open Educational Resources

Ethics4EU is a HEA Erasmus+ funded transnational project that explores issues around teaching ethics in Computer Science. Ethics4EU is developing new curricula, best practices and learning resources for digital ethics for computer science students.

By the end of 2022, Ethics4EU will develop

• A research report on European values in Ethical technology
• A research report on State of the Art of Teaching Ethics in Computer Science programmes
• A comprehensive curriculum for Teaching Ethics in Computer Science programmes
• An open access online learning resources database of teaching and assessment strategies for teaching ethics in computer science
• An instructor guide to aid the delivery of material from the online resources database
• An online community of practice to facilitate discussion and experiences in delivering computer science ethics which will complement the online resource database and instructor guide
• Staff training and development programmes in Computer Science ethics for staff in Computer Science faculties using the HubLinked Global Labs model

Ethics4EU is a partnership between TU Dublin (Leading Organisation), Informatics Europe, DLEARN, Télécom SudParis and Mälardalen University.

Several staff members for the School of Computer Science Grangegorman are contributing to the project: Dr. Dympna O'Sullivan (P.I.), Anna Becevel, Damian Gordon, Yannis Stavrakakis, Brendan Tierney, Andrea Curley, Michael Collins, Emma Murphy, John Gilligan, Paul Bourke, Peter Manifold, William O'Mahony.

If you have any questions about the project you can email ethics4eu@gmail.com. 

Visit the Ethics4EU website

Twitter | YouTube | Newsletter | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook

Gender Equality, Best Practices, Women in STEM

Education, Internship, International Partnership

In the aftermath of COVID-19, remote working has become the norm, and graduates now need an even wider range of skills that traditional classrooms and domestic internships don’t always emulate. Working in multiple time zones, within global multi-cultural teams, and only ever meeting colleagues through online technology are just some of the challenges which require a new type of global graduate. Transversal skills including leadership, collaboration, innovation, digital, green, organization, and communication skills are critical. The disruption from COVID-19 also presents unprecedented opportunities to develop more inclusive approaches to internships and international experiences, to level the playing field for students with special needs, from underrepresented groups or with caring commitments.

To respond to these needs the Erasmus+ funded project Global Innovation Teams will:

• Design a Global Innovation Teams format. Global Innovation Teams will be a structured learning experience within an international team of students tasked with working on a substantial technology-driven innovation challenge. The GI Teams model will be designed to help learners develop their transversal skills in a multidisciplinary international multicultural context.
• Implement at least 4 Global Innovation Teams modules in 4 European HEIs.
• Provide guidelines for HEIs on how to implement Global Innovation Teams in their institution.
• Accredit a CPD module for teachers and industry mentors focused on how to run a GI Teams module.

Several staff members are contributing to the project, including Dr. Brian Keegan (P.I.), Anna Becevel (PM), Iseult Kelly, Elisabeth McKeever, Dympna O'Sullivan.

• If you have any questions about the project you can email anna.becevel@tudublin.ie.
• Visit the Global Innovation Teams website

International Partnership, Enterpreneurship, International Mobility, SMEs, Open Educational Resources

Global Entrepreneurial Talent Management 3 (GETM3) is an international, interdisciplinary research and innovation project funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 stream to the tune of 950k euros over four years.  

The project focuses on young talents as a key driver of future development. Despite a widely recognized importance of young talent, its potential remains largely untapped. Young talents are educated and entrepreneurial, and yet experience instability in employment. At the same time, employers report skills mismatch and difficulties with attracting, managing and retaining young talent. To tackle this paradoxical situation, an innovative, multi-perspective approach is needed. 

The final aim of the project is to improve employability of global talent and talent management practices to support economic development through the cooperation of 3 stakeholders: employers (including MultiNational Corporations & Small-Medium Enterprises), universities and students/graduates. Our Consortium includes 15 partners that form a transnational, inter-disciplinary, inter-generational, gender balanced and inter-sectorial research team.  

The project is global as it connects academic and business partners from the Ireland, Poland, Slovenia, United Kingdom, and South Korea. Sandpits are organized quarterly by academic partners across the globe to connect international and domestic researchers, exchange knowledge and ideas, and make progress towards fulfilling GETM3 research objectives. 

Women in STEM, Gender Equality, Underrepresented Groups, Internship

The SAER Mentoring programme will assist 120 students in finding meaningful paid internships in ICT-related fields which will ultimately result in rewarding careers upon graduation from TU Dublin. The 120 students will be from groups that are traditionally underrepresented in the ICT sector, including women, those from areas of social disadvantage, and students with disabilities. 60 trained industry mentors will support them.

The project, funded by Salesforce, is managed within the School by Iseult Kelly and Leslie Shoemaker.

• For more information on the project, email iseult.kelly@tudublin.ie.

LinkedIn 

University-Industry Collaboration, Higher Education, Internship, Higher Education

Convene is a collaboration between the Technological University Dublin and UCD Innovation Academy that seeks to transform university-enterprise engagement.  

Through a genuine partnership between higher education and enterprise, Convene will create programmes that deliver the priority skills and innovation necessary to reinvigorate business and to fast-track a resilient and enduring economic recovery as Ireland moves forward from the unprecedented disruption caused by Covid-19.  

Convene is part of the Irish Government's Human Capital Initiative, one of the largest investments ever in Irish higher education. The Human Capital Initiative will enable the Irish higher education system to meet the challenges and opportunities of the 4th Industrial Revolution and respond rapidly to changes in both skills requirements and technology. 

Several current and ex staff members are contributing to the project, including Dr. Deirdre Lillis, Iseult Kelly, Leslie Shoemaker, Paul Doyle, Anna Becevel, Peter Manifold, William O'Mahony.

• Visit Convene's website
• Twitter  |  Facebook  |  YouTube  |  LinkedIn  | Instagram 

Mentoring, Internship, Industry Engagement

The Huawei TECH4HER scholarship at TU Dublin demonstrates Huawei’s commitment to Diversity and Inclusion in the Tech sector. The scholarship recognizes 8 students with a financial award of €3,000 each and the opportunity to engage in a mentoring programme with representatives from Huawei. Huawei mentors will receive mentor training at TU Dublin.

• For more information on the project visit the dedicated page or email iseult.kelly@tudublin.ie.

Health Informatics, Co-Design, Internet of Things

Enabling Self-Care and Shared Decision on Making for People Living with Dementia is funded by the SFI - Frontiers of the Future Programme.

Dr. Dympna O’Sullivan, alongside her Co-Investigator, Dr Julie Doyle, Director of NetwellCASALA at Dundalk Institute of Technology are developing cutting edge technology to support persons with dementia to live independently in their own homes by self-managing their care. The Alzheimer's Society of Ireland and tPOT Research Group also collaborate on the project.

Currently there is limited involvement of people with dementia in the design of technology to support their care and we believe strongly that persons with dementia should be at the centre of decision-making about their care. This project aims to develop a computerized solution to support people with dementia to remain healthy and live independently. The solution will be developed in collaboration with persons with dementia and the Alzheimer's Society of Ireland. It will integrate techniques from Human-Computer Interaction to develop an intelligent user interface specifically designed for persons with dementia, from the Internet of Things to create an activity monitoring framework for the home environment and from Machine Learning to implement models for human activity recognition.  

The research will have wide societal impact in Ireland where an estimated 55,000 people are currently living with dementia. The impacts will be twofold, an abundance of research shows that persons with dementia are better off at home - by maintaining the ability to be in control of their own care for as long as possible, persons with dementia remain healthier for longer. Homecare allows persons with dementia to prosper while at the same time frees up hospital beds and saves healthcare costs.”

• For more information on the project, email dympna.osullivan@tudublin.ie.

Visit the Enabling Self-Care and Shared Decision on Making for People Living with Dementia website

An explanation of CNNs that can fully un-box CNNs and explain each feature that CNN detects is still missing. Our hypothesis is that understanding CNN features will help with downstream tasks, such as image captioning or model explainability. This project aims to answer the follow:

• Is it possible to label the visual features of a CNN using an external Knowledge Base?
• How to evaluate the labeling system?
• What techniques can be applied to improve the labeling system?
• How can this labeling system be used in real-world problems?

The Using Knowledge Bases to Expand Understanding Of CNNs and Improve Performance on Visual Tasks project is funded by the SFI Centre for Research Training in Machine Learning (ML-Labs).

Dr. Susan McKeever is the supervisor of this 4 year-long project started in 2019. Xuehao Liu is also collaborating to the project. 

• For more information on the project, email susan.mckeever@tudublin.ie.

This project investigates techniques for determining human actions in video, using machine learning.  A particular focus of the project is how to do this, whilst reducing reliance on training data.  This would enable a model to identify actions that are difficult or expensive to capture training data for (e.g. surveillance/security scenarios)  - and more generally, to investigate how the accuracies zero shot learning can be enhanced for this domain. 

The Zero Shot Learning for Human Action Recognition in Video project is funded by a Fiosraigh Scholarship. Dr. Susan McKeever (supervisor) and Dr. Luis Miralles are working on this 4 year-long project started in 2018, together with the PhD candidate Kaiqiang Huang.

• For more information on the project, email susan.mckeever@tudublin.ie.

The goal of this project is to make self-monitoring of heart health more accessible by developing affordable diagnostic solutions which do not require medical knowledge and skills to operate. This involves assessing the potential of using the mobile phone as a low-cost and pervasive technology with a high penetration rate for self-monitoring of heart health - with initial diagnostics through analysis of heart signals which can be captured by mobile phone sensors such as microphone and accelerometer

The Self-Monitoring of Heart Health Using Consumer Devices project is funded by the Science Foundation Ireland Centre for Research Training in Digitally-Enhanced Reality (d-real) and it's a collaboration between TU Dublin and UCD.
Dr. Susan McKeever and Dr. Andrew Hines (UCD) are working on this 4 year-long project started in 2019, together with the PhD candidate Davoud Shariat Panah.

• For more information on the project, email susan.mckeever@tudublin.ie.

Currently, people with visual impairments find it difficult to navigate when walking, due to a lack of information on street junctions, pavements, pedestrian traffic lights and other street level information. This project is about gleaning useful urban information from satellite images - where these features are relevant to navigation for people with visual impairment.  

The Determining Urban Features for Navigation Aids for Visually Impaired project is funded by the Science Foundation Ireland Centre for Research Training in Advanced Networks for Sustainable Societies (ADVANCE CRT) and it's a collaboration between TU Dublin and the National Center for Biotechnology Information.
Dr. Susan McKeever, Jane Courtnery and  (supervisors) are working on this 4 year-long project started in 2019, together with the PhD candidate Fatmaelzahraa Eltaher.

• For more information on the project, email susan.mckeever@tudublin.ie.

Enabling delivery by autonomous drone through the use of deep learning technologies for advanced computer vision applications

Unmanned aerial vehicles commonly termed “drones” are increasingly being used to enable and support applications by increasing safety, reduction of environmental impact, and being more efficient as a result of air access. Examples of how drones can be used include rescue zone investigation, agricultural crop, and livestock monitoring, and as in the case of this project, delivery of products.

This project focuses on the routing, flight, landing, and dropping loads aspects of using drones for the delivery of fast food to customers. To support these use cases, drones need to be able to chart their own course from point of origin to destination, as well as more generally be able to figure out the most efficient path with the least cost. Such a drone must avoid fixed obstacles, such as buildings and trees, and moving obstacles such as birds and other drones, all in a variety of weather conditions.

Also, automated drones require high precision control of positioning, especially during landing and take-off. Computer vision supported by the application of deep learning techniques is at the heart of enabling this autonomous behavior. Secondment partner, Manna, provides an industry view of the problem and access to real-world data. This collaboration allows to overcome the gap between the research results and industrial needs and allows the testing of the prototypes in real situations to get accurate feedback.

The Autonomous Drone Delivery project is funded under the Enterprise Ireland Career Fit funding scheme and The European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement. It's a partnership between TU Dublin, Manna Drone Delivery and CeADAR Technology Group.

Dr. Susan McKeever is the Principal Investigator and academic mentor of this 3 year-long project started in 2021. The project also involves Alan Hicks as industrial mentor and  Dr. Assem Ahmed Alsawy Abdul Hak as research lead. 

• For more information on the project, email assem.abdelhak@tudublin.ie.

Edge-Assist looks at the application of next-generation image processing methods for the optimization of on-site buildings management services. The project accounts for data privacy and distributed processing requirements while optimizing systems efficiency and performance. 

The Edge-Assist project is funded by Enterprise Ireland and Acacia Ltd. 

Dr. Robert Ross is the Principal Investigator of this 18 month-long project started in 2021. Eren Aktas and Jayadeep Sasikumar are also collaborating to the project. 

• For more information on the project, email robert.ross@tudublin.ie. 

The Fidelity Investments Conversational Intelligence project is a collaborative project between Fidelity Investments in Ireland, Trinity College Dublin and the Adapt Centre to investigate next generation natural language and conversational assistance systems to support business optimization and integrated project automation. The project, led by Dr. Robert Ross, is structured across multiple phases and supports postdoctoral and research engineer work. 

The Fidelity Asset Management Conversational Interface project is funded by Science Foundation Ireland and Fidelity Investments.

• For more information on the project, email robert.ross@tudublin.ie. 

Twitter | LinkedIn

Access2CS: Inclusive Computer Science Education at TU Dublin 

Transforming Education for All 

Access2CS is a project lead by Claudia Rivera at the TU Dublin School of Computer Science. It aims to create a centre of excellence to support and recruit students with different disabilities and abilities. 
 
The project focuses on: 
- Transforming modules 
- Improving facilities 
- Changing assessment methods 
- Enhancing teaching practices 
- Better communication between learners and staff 
 
This helps students with disabilities to successfully complete their studies. 

Tailored Support and Resources 

Access2CS develops: 
- Guidelines 
- Training programs 
- Resources 
 
These are specifically designed to support students with different disabilities. This proactive approach ensures the educational environment is welcoming and accessible for everyone. 

Continuous Improvement 

The project uses an iterative and incremental design process. This means the project: 
- Continuously improves based on feedback and evaluation 
- Incorporates lessons learned from each cycle 
 
This approach ensures ongoing refinement and adaptation to meet the needs of students with disabilities effectively. 

Commitment to Accessibility 

Through initiatives like Access2CS and its service "Access2CS – Try Me!", the TU Dublin School of Computer Science shows a strong commitment to making STEM education accessible to all students. This ensures everyone has the opportunity to succeed in their studies. 

This text has been written following the European standards for making information easy to read and understand. 

For more information contact Claudia.Rivera@tudublin.ie