The Atlas of Irish Mathematics: Louth (Jun 2022)
Our 31st bi-monthly regional Irish focussed blog highlights mathematical people associated with Louth, following on Donegal, Wexford, Armagh, Limerick, Westmeath, Mayo, Belfast, Wicklow, Kerry, Galway, Monaghan, Tipperary, Sligo, Carlow, Down, Cork, Cavan, Laois, Londonderry, Meath, Leitrim, Dublin, Clare, Offaly, Tyrone, Kilkenny, Longford, Belfast (again), Kildare, and Fermanagh. (Three counties remain to be treated: Warerford, Antrim and Roscommon.)
This month we also feature people originally from elsewhere who have taught at notable institutions in Louth, including Dundalk Grammar School and Dundalk RTC (which dates from 1971 and became Dundalk Institute of Technology, aka DKIT, in 1998).
As usual, there are probably Irish maths (or maths ed or stats or actuarial or theoretical physics) people missing from this blog because while we know about them we don't yet know they are from Louth.
Comments, additions and corrections are, as always, welcome. As are more photographs.
Thanks to Olivia Bree (SPD), Shane Dowdall (DKIT) and Tom Laffey (UCD) for valuable input. Last updated 5 Dec ember 2022.
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01. Physicist Nicholas Callan (1799-1864) was born 22 December in Darver, Louth, andwas educated at Maynooth (BA 1813), and at La Sapienza in Rome (1926). He lectured at Maynooth for 4 decades (1926-1864). Electricity and magnetism were his specialities, and his is most well known for his invention of the induction coil. |
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02. Henry Finney/Finny (1830-1865) was born 14 Feb in Dunleer, Louth, and was educated at Queen's College, Cork, and at TCD (BA 1851+). His short career was spent as a clergyman in England. |
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03. Thomas Finch (1863-1916) was born in Armagh and educated at TCD. His career (-1885-1916) was spent teaching at the Dundalk Educational Institution (later known as the Dundalk Grammar School) which he had attended himself. |
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04. Henry King (1830-1897) was born 16 Aug in Drogheda, Louth, and was educated at TCD (BA 1852). His career was spent as a surgeon in India (1856-1884). |
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05. William Jeffares (1833?-1898) was born in Rathespeck, Wexford, and was educated at TCD (BA 1856?). His career was spent teaching, first at Portora in Enniskillen (1857-1869), then at Dundalk Grammar School (1869-1871), where he also served as headmaster. His last 2 decades were at St Peter's (1878-1898) in Wexford. |
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06. Robert Baile (1839-1914) was born in Castlebellingham, Louth, and was educated at TCD (BA 1878, MA 1882) in his late 30s. He taught "mathematics, electricity, and magnetism" (among other subjects) for over 30 years (starting in 1878) at the Ranelagh School in Athlone, Westmeath, where he also served as headmaster. Baile (sometimes recorded as Bailie) is credited with contributing to the book Elements of Plane Trigonometry fot the Use of School, and Students in Universities (Alexander Thom & Co, 1885) by TCD graduate Issac Warren. |
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07. John Atkinson (1844-1932) was born 13 Dec in Drogheda, Louth, and was educated at Queen's Galway (BA 1861, LLB 1865, MA & LLD 1882). He lectured in maths at Queen's Galway until switching to law. His career included stints as Solicitor-General for Ireland and Attorney-General for Ireland. Later, he pursued politics in London and Ireland. |
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08. Christopher Graham (1851-1927) was born 28 Sept in Killeeshil, Tyrone, and brought up there and in Darver, Louth. He was educated at TCD (BA 1873, MA 1877) and at Cambridge (Gonville & Caius, 3rd wrangler & Smith's Prize? 1878, MA 1881). He taught at Girton for 15 years, and then served for many years as inspector of schools in Ireland. Cambridge / Link / 1901 Census / 1911 Census |
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09. William Wilkins (1852-1912) was born 21 Aug in Zákynthos, Greece, and grew up in Dublin and Dundalk, Louth. Family circumstances delayed his entrance to TCD, where he excelled at literature and maths (BA 1878). His career was spent as headmaster of the High School in Dublin. He is mentioned in Joyce's Ulysses. |
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10. William Dilworth (1863-1922) was born in Louth and was educated at TCD (BA 1886, MA 1890). His career included terms at the Training College Comm National Education (1894-1901), where he served as head, and as the secretary for the Board of Nat Education (1903-1922). He authored the book A New Sequel to Euclid (1898). |
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11. Astronomer David Kennedy (1864-1936) was born 27 Apr in Lyttelton, New Zealand, and was brought up there and in Dundalk, Louth. He was educated at UCD on St Stephens Green (RUI BA 1886) and later at the Pontifical Gregorian Univ in Rome (DD 1892?). His career included spells at Marist College, Dundalk (1886-1888), Marist Seminary, Napier (1893-1909), St Patrick's College in Wellington (1909-1917) and finally Greenmeadows Seminary (1918-1920). His 1891 book Natural philosophy for junior students ran to at least 10 editions. He was ordained soon after it was published, and used royalties it generated to build an observatory back in NZ. |
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12. James Cullen (1867-1933) was born 19 Apr in Drogheda, Louth. He studied maths at TCD but left and later became a Jesuit priest. He taught maths in England, and published about numbers of the form n (2<sup>n</sup>+1), which are now known as Cullen numbers. Are there infinitely many such numbers which are prime, such as when n = 1, 141, or 4713? This is still an open question. |
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13. Lillie Geale (1872-1949) was born in Drogheda, Louth, and was first educated at Kelvin House, Belfast (RUI BA 1900). She then taught in Belfast, first at Belmont Ladies College (1900-1901) and then at Girls' High School (Orrington House, 1901-1915-?), which she founded with her sister Edith. She was assistant to AC Dixon on the QUB maths staff (1921-1925), being awarded MA (1923) for a thesis on "The Elastic Curve". Around the same time she was examiner for the Intermediate Examination Board. From 1925 on, she was a tutor for several years. She was the first woman on the maths staff at QUB. |
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14. James Reay (1875-1937) was born 8 Jun in Ardee, Louth, and was educated at TCD (BA 1898+). His career was in law, in the civil service in Malaya. |
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15. Statistician Stanley Lyon (1882-1975) was born 16 Nov in Dublin and grew up there and in Drogheda, Louth. He was educated at UCD (BA 1906), having already worked in the civil service. He continued such work in both Dublin and London until 1922, following which he stayed in Dublin. He served as the second Director of Statistics (1931-1947) in what was later known as the CSO. |
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16. Marjorie J. Long (1886-1937) was born 16 Jul in Arklow, Wicklow, and grew up there and in Mullingar, Dundalk, and Belfast. She was educated at Girton, earning 4th wrangler status, and receiving RUI degrees (BA 1908, MA 1909). In 1910, she submitted the paper "On Geiser's Method of Generating a Plane Quartic" to the Proceedings of the LMS. She taught at Bedford College for at least a decade. She translated the influential book Lezioni di calcolo differenziale assoluto (Alberto Stock Editore, 1925) by Tullio Levi-Civita, ed by Enrico Persico, as Absolute Differential Calculus (Blacktie & Son, 1927). She worked in the library of International Labour Office in Geneva, Switzerland, in the 1930s.
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16B. Engineer Thomas McLaughlin was born 14 June in Drogheda, Louth, and grew up there and in Down and Dublin. He was educated at first at UCD (BSc 1916, MSc in physics 1918), and then moved to UCG (BEng 1922, PhD 1923). Having spend time with Siemans in Germany, he spent the bulk of his career at the ESB, playing a major role in its development of hydroelectric power for the fledgling state. |
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17. Hyman (Hemy) Ruben (1898-1976 ) was born 11 Feb in Dundalk, Louth, and grew up there and in Banbridge, Down. He was educated at TCD (BA 1920). His career was spent teaching. |
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18. James Yates (1915-1957) was born 22 October in Drogheda, Louth, and grew up there and in Belfast. He was educated at TCD (scholar 1936, BA 1938). He was in the physics dept at TCD for several year, and then moved to Cambridge. |
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19. Brendan Steen (1921-2015) was born 29 Nov in Ardee, Louth, and was educated at UCD (BA 1944). A Vincentian priest, he was considered to be one of the giants of maths education in Ireland. Over his long career, he taught at Castleknock College, St. Paul's College, Raheny, and St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra. He was Treasurer of the Dublin Branch of the IMTA for 50 years, retiring in 2014. |
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20. Charlie Daly (1929-2000) was born 11 Jan in Dublin, and grew up in Drogheda and Dundalk, Louth. He was educated at UCD (BSc 1950). His entire career was spent in the met service, and he was a familiar sight giving TV weather forecasts in the 1960s. |
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21. Don McQuillan was born in Dundalk, Louth, as was educated at UCG (BA 1954, MA 1955) and at Johns Hopkins University (PhD 1961), his thesis on "A Generalisation of a Theorem of Heck" being done with Jun-Ichi Igusa. He lectured at UCG, but most of his career was spent at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (1964-1973) and at UCD (1973-1999), where he served as dept head and later dean. He then spent many years as a sought after expert on quality assurance, most recently at the Vatican. |
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21B. Seán McDonagh was born in Westport, Mayo, and grew up in Galway. He was educated first at UCG (1959 & 1960), where he earned an NUI Travelling Studentship Prize. His 1965 PhD "On Some Problems in the Theory of Numbers" was done mostly at Royal Holloway (awarded by TCD) under Heini Halberstam. After some years on the staff at UCG, he was appointed principal (later director) at the Regional College (later the Institute of Technology) in Dundalk, where he worked for 30 years. Then he was Director of the National Skills Initiative Unit (2000-2014) and Director of the Task Force the Supply of Technicians (since 1997). |
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22. Theoretical physicist Maurice Rice was born 26 January in Dundalk, Louth, and was educated at UCD (BSc 1959, MSc 1960) and Camdridge (PhD 1964). His thesis on "blah" was done under Volker Heine. His career was spent at UC San Diego (1964-1966), Bell Labs (1966-1981) and EHT Zurich (1981-2004). His research has been in condensed matter physics,, and he has supervised over 25 doctoral students. The late structural engineer Peter Rice was his brother. |
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23. Brian Smyth was as born in Dundalk, Louth, and was educated at UCG (BSc 1961, MSc 1962) and Brown (PhD 1966). His thesis on "Differential Geometry of Complex Hypersurfaces" was done with Katsumi Nomizu. His career was spent at Notre Dame, where his research has been on the geometry of submanifolds, minimal and complex varieties. |
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24. Michael O'Neill was born in Ardee, Louth, and was educated at UCD (BSc 1961). He lectured for many decades at Kevin St. |
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25. Seamus/Jimmy Jordan was born in Dundalk, Louth, and was educated at UCG (BSc 1962, MSc 1963, HDip). He lectured briefly at UCG, and then for 40 years at Kevin St. |
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26. Theoretical physicist Kevin MacKeown was born in Dundalk, Louth, and was educated at UCD (BSc 1962) and Durham (PhD 1965). His thesis on "The Positive Excess of Cosmic Ray Muons at Large Zenith Angles" was done under Arnold Wolfendale. Most of his career was spent at the Univ of Hong Kong. His books include , |
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27. John Carroll was born in Galway and was educated at UCG (BSc 1973) and at TCD (MSc 1980, PhD 1983). His master's thesis was on "Completely Exponentially Fitted finite Difference Schemes for Some Singular Perturbation Problems" and his doctoral thesis was on "Exponentially Fitted One Step Methods for the Numerical Integration of Some Stiff Initial Value Problems", both being done under John Miller. He lectured at Dundalk RTC (1973-1983) and then at DCU (1984-2016), in time serving as dept head and registrar. He supervised at least one PhD student. |
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28. Brian McArdle was born in Dundalk, Louth, and was educated at UCG (BSc 1973?) and TCD (Msc 1981, PhD 1985). His master's thesis was on "Simulation of Transfer Functions using Active Filter Techniques" and his doctoral thesis was on "A Study of Electronic Encryption", both being done under Brendan Scaife. He spend his career in the civil service, also lecturing part-time in communications at Kevin St (1995-2002). |
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29 Paul Farrell was born in Dublin and was educated at TCD (BA 1974, MSc 1978, PhD 1983). His master's thesis was on "" and his doctoral thesis was on "Uniformly Convergent Difference Schemes for Singularly Perturbed Turning and Non-Turning Point Problems", both being done under John Miller. He started his career at Dundalk RTC (1981-1983) and Kevin St (1983-1985) before settling at Kent State Uni in Ohio, the CD dept. He supervised 2 PhD students there, and co-authored the book Robust Computational Techniques for Boundary Layers (2000). His interests include parallel and distributed computation, and cluster computing. KSU / ResearchGate |
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30. Padraic Houston was born in Louth and was educated at UCD (BSc 1974, MSc 1975, PhD 1979). His thesis on "An Investigation in the Topics of Operator Product Expansions and Nucleon Form Factors" was done under John Kennedy. His career at Kevin St (DIT). |
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32. Maurice OReilly was born 3 Oct in Dublin, and grew up in Enniskerry, Wicklow. He was educated at TCD (BA 1977, PhD 1983). His thesis "On Uniformly Convergent Finite Difference Methods for Non-Linear Singular Perturbation Problems" was done under John Miller. He worked at Dundalk IT (1981-1998), with a break in Dar es Salaam (1991-1994), and at St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra (now DCU, 1998-2021), where he also served as head. Over the years his interests have turned from numerical analysis to mathematics education. |
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33. Eugene O'Riordan was born in Dublin and was educated at UCD (BSc 1977, MSc 1978) and TCD (PhD 1982). His thesis on "" was done under John Miller. His career started in Waterford RTC (1982-1985?) and Dundalk RTC (1985?-1992) and Tallaght (1992-?) before he settled at DCU (?-2019). He supervised 4 PhDs and co-authored the book Fitted Numerical Methods for Singular Perturbation Problems: Error Estimates in the Maximum Norm for Linear Problems in One and Two Dimensions. His interests are in singularly perturbed differential equations, numerical analysis, and Shishkin meshes. |
| 34. John Harte was born in Armagh and educated at Oxford (BA 1977?) and QUB (PhD 1980?). His career was spent lecturing at Dundalk RTC / DKIT (1981-2017). | |
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35. Johnny Burns was born 4 May in Dundalk, Louth, and was educated at UCG (BSc 1978, MSc 1979) and Notre Dame (PhD 1985). His thesis on "Conjugate Loci of Totally Geodesic Submanifolds in Symmetric Spaces" was done under Tadashi Nagano. He lectured at Maynooth and Kevin Street before settling at UCG/NUIG in 1990. His research interests include differential geometry, Lie groups, algebra, Lie algebras and group theory. He has supervised 2 PhDs. |
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36. Physicist Brian MacCraith was born in Dundalk, Louth, and was educated at UCG (BSc 1978, MSc 1979, PhD 1986). His thesis on "Optical Spectroscopy of Chromium-doped Crystal" was done under WHO. His career was spent in the physics dept at DCU, where he supervised 15 PhDs and later served as president. His research interests included optical chemical sensors and biosensors, biomedical diagnostics and nanobiophotonics. He has also played a visible role in national policy making, and in COVID relief measures. DCU / Wikipedia / ResearchGate |
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37. Gerry Gallagher was born in Ballyhaise, Cavan, and was educated at Maynooth (BSc 1979, MSc 1980). After teaching in Raheny, he joined the staff at Dundalk IT in 1994, where he currently heads up e-learning. |
| 38. Eugene Kernan was born in or near Drogheda, Louth. He lectured at Carlow RTC (later IT Carlow) 1980-2014. | |
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39. Aongus Ó Cairbre was born in Drogheda, Louth, and was educated at Maynooth (BSc 1980, MSc 1982) and at Berkeley (PhD 1987). His thesis "On Unitary Equivalence of von Neumann Algebras Generated by Weyl Operators on Fock Space" was done at Berkeley under Marc Rieffel. His career has been spent at Kevin St / DIT. |
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40. Fiacre Ó Cairbre was born in Drogheda, Louth, and was educated at Maynooth (BSc 1981, MSc 1982), where he earlned an NUI Travelling Studentship Prize, and at Berkeley (PhD 1987). His thesis on "Ergodic Actions of SU(2) X T on Operator Algebras" was done under Vaughan Jones. His career has been spent at Maynooth. Maynooth |
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41. Pól Mac Aonghusa was born in Dundalk, Louth, and was educated at UCD (BSc 1983, MSc 1984). He lectured at Maynooth before settling in the CS dept at TCD. Since 2006, he has worked for IBM. His 2019 PhD on "Personal Privacy and Online Systems" was done at TCD. His interests include data privacy from the consumer perspective and application of artificial intelligence to healthcare. TCD / GoogleScholar / LinkedIn |
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42. Liam Donohoe was born near Ardee, Louth, and was educated at UCD (BSc 1983, MSc 1984) and Brown (1990+). His thesis on "Generalized Castelnuovo Inequalities" was done under Robert Accola. His career started at Kevin St (1990-1992), and the Univ of Dar es Salaam 1992, then he settled at Providence College in Rhode Island, USA. |
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43. Mathematical physicist John Gough was born 20 May in Drogheda, Louth, and was educated at UCD (BSc 1987, MSc 1988, PhD 1992), his thesis on "Large Deviations and Occupation Measures in Statistical Mechanics: Applications to the Spherical Model and Bose-Einstein Condensation" being done under Joe Pulé. After a few years at Maynooth, Rome and TCD, he settled at Aberysthwyth. He co-authored the book Quantum Fields and Processes A Combinatorial Approach (Cambridge, 2018). He also composes music. |
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44. Seamus Bellew was born in August in Castleblakeney, Galway, and was educated at first at Maynooth (BSc 1988, MSc 1990) where he was awarded an NUI Travelling Studentship. After 2 year at the Univ Maryland College Park, he taught at the North West Regional College (Londonderry, 1993-1999), and since then has been at Dundalk IT. He also has a 2003 MSc from DCU done under Eugene O’Riordan. |
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45. Fiona Lawless was born in Louth and was educated at DCU (BSc 1988?, PhD 1993). Her thesis on "Exponential Asymptotics and Spectral Theory for Optical Tunnelling" was done under Alastair Wood. Her career has been spent at DKIT, where she currently serves as chair of computing and maths. |
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46. Eleanor Walsh (née Meehan) was born in Dungarvan, Waterford, and was educated at first at Maynooth (BA 1988, MA 1989). She lectured at SPD (1991-1992) and DKIT (1992-1996), then at Limerick (1996-2001). Along the way she did a PhD on "Some Results on Matrix Spectra" (1998+) with Tom Laffey at UCD. She now works in STEM outreach at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. |
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47. Patrick Murphy was born in Termonfeckin, Louth, and was educated at first at UCD (BSc 1988, MSc 1990). He commenced doctoral studies under John Kennedy, who sadly died, following which he worked for the CSO. , PhD 2004) and at Institute. His thesis on "" was done under Pawitan at Karolinska |
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48. Tony McVeigh was born in Oldham, England, and grew up in Dromiskin, Louth. He worked in the engineering industry in Ireland (1979-2008), along the way earning a diploma in mechanical engineering from DKIT, and Open University degrees (BSc 1990, MSc 2008). He then did his doctorate on "Interactions Between Fluid Flows and Cylinders" under Lawrence Crane at the Institute of Numerical Computation & Analysis in Dublin, awarded by the Univ of Buckingshire (DPhil 2011). Since then, he has worked in the supply chain industry in Dublin. |
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49. Pádraig Kirwan was born 18 Mar in Dundalk, Louth, and was educated at UCG (BSc 1991, MSc 1992, PhD 1997) and at Kent State Univ in Ohio. His thesis on "Complexification of Multilinear and Polynomial Mappings on Normed Spaces" was done under Ray Ryan. Most of his career has been spent at WIT/SETU, where he has served as dept head. His expertise now includes analytical chemistry and polymers. |
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50. Shane Dowdall was born in Dublin, and was educated at DCU (BSc 1992, MSc 1996), his master's thesis on "Spacelike Surfaces of Constant Mean Curvature having Continuous Internal Symmetry in Minkowski Three Space" being done with Michael Cleary. He has lectured at DKIT since 1994. His current research is in AI and game development. |
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51. Rachel Quinlan was born 25 Jul in Drogheda, Louth, and grew up there and in Galway city and county. She was educated at UCG/NUIG (BA 1993, MA 1994) and at the University of Alberta (PhD 2000). Her thesis on "Irreducible Projective Representations of Finite Groups" was done under Maziar Shirvani. She taught at UCD for 5 years and has been at NUIG ever since, where she has supervised 5 doctoral theses. Her interests include linear algebra and its interactions with group theory, combinatorics, and field theory. She also enjoys mathematical origami, especially creating tessellations of the plane by folding paper. |
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52. Kevin McDaid grew up in Limerick city, and was educated at UCD (BSc 1991, MSc in stats 1992) and TCD (PhD 1998). His thesis on "Deciding How Long to Test Software" was done under Simon Wilson. After working in the CSO, and Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art & Design, he settled at DKIT where he now lectures in CS and data analytics. He has supervised 6 PhD students there so far. His current research focus is on the application of statistical modelling and computer vision techniques in sports analytics. While on leave from DKIT he was CSO for Statsports and also co-founded the sports analytics company PlayerTek. |
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53. Damien Raftery was born in Dundalk, Louth, and raised there and in Sligo town. He was educated at UCD (BSc 1994, MSc 1995) and has been lecturing at IT Carlow since then. He has pursued additional degrees at WIT (MA Edu, 2003) and at Sheffield (MA Edu, 2017). He lectures in the dept of business and has served as eLearning Development Officer. |
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54. Actuary Mary Hall was born in Louth, and was educated at first at Heriot-Watt (BSc 2000?). She worked as an actuary and lectured at UCD until 2015, earning her PhD there in 2013. Her thesis on "Analysis of Irish Mortality for Actuarial Applications" was done under Shane Whelan and Nial Friel. She is now at DCU. |
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55. John Loane was educated at TCD and NUIG (PhD 2007+). His thesis on "Polynomials on Riesz Spaces" was done under Ray Ryan. His career has been spent at DKIT. |
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56. David O'Keefe was born in Mitchellstown, Cork, and was educated at Maynooth (BSc 2002?) and NUIG (MSc 2003?, PhD 2009). His thesis on "The Hochschild Cohomology Ring of a Quadratic Monomial Algebra" was done under Emil Sköldberg. His career has been spent at DKIT. DKIT |
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57. Anne Brosnan was born in Dundalk and was educated at Maynooth (PhD 2007). Her thesis on "The Teaching of Mathematics at Post-Primary Level in Ireland: A Review of Traditional Patterns and an Exploration of Future" was done under Pádraig Hogan. For many years she has been a leader in Project Maths. |
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58. Andrea Kealy (née O'Brien) was educate at WIT (BSc in CS 2005) and DKIT (PhD 2015), her thesis on "Use of Ambient Sensors for the Longitudinal Profiling of the Nocturnal Behaviour of Older Adults in their Homes" being done under Kevin McDaid & John Loane. She has lectured at DKIT since 2011. DKIT / ResearchGate / LinkedIn |
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59. Joe Barry was born in Drogheda, Louth, and was educated at Maynooth (BSc 2006) and TCD (PhD 2010). His thesis on "Simulations of the Structure and Rheology of Foams" was done under Stefan Hutzler. Since then, he has worked in industry, first for EMBL (Heidelberg, 2010-2015) and then ??. |
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60. Statistician Damien McParland was born in Louth and educated at UCD (BSc 2009, PhD 2014). His thesis on "Model Based Clustering Methods for Data of Mixed Type" was done with Claire Gormley. He lectured at UCD for 3 years, then switched to industry. |
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61. Biostatistician Siobhán Connolly (Connolly-Kernan) was born in Castleblayney, Monaghan, and was educated at Maynooth (BSc 2012) and TCD (PhD 2016). Her thesis on "Investigating the Parental Role in Autism Spectrum Disorder" was done with Eleisa Heron. She now lectures at DKIT. |
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62. Jack McDonnell was born in Castleblayney, Monaghan, and was educated entirely at Maynooth (BSc 2013, MSc 2014, PhD 2018+). His thesis on "Predicting Grass Growth at Farm Level to Adapt to Changing and Volatile Weather Conditions" was done under Caroline Brophy & Deirdre Hennessy. After a postdoc at the Met Service he joined the staff at DKIT. His current research focus is on modelling and visualising Gaelic football data and multi-species grassland experiments. |
