Prof Brian Fitzgerald, director of Lero, the Irish software research centre. Image: Sean Curtin/True Media
Irish software research group Lero has achieved international success having been named an award winner by the IEEE Computer Society.
After many years of working to broaden software research, the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) software research centre Lero has been awarded the IEEE Computer Society Technical Council on Software Engineering (TCSE) Distinguished Synergy Award for its efforts to collaborate with industry.
Nominated by the Irish Computer Society, the award is to be presented to the group at the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering in Gothenburg, Sweden, at the end of May.
Garnering international recognition, Lero’s achievement has been amplified by the fact that this is the first time the award has been presented to an Irish research group.
The IEEE Computer Society is the world’s leading membership organisation dedicated to computer science and technology.
Currently, it serves more than 60,000 members worldwide, including researchers, educators, software engineers, IT professionals, employers and students.
Commenting on its decision to award the prize, chair of the 2018 TCSE Awards, Ladan Tahvildari, said: “After considering a strong field of nominees from across the globe, it was Lero’s outstanding collaborative research spanning universities and industry that really impressed the judges.”
‘An honour and tribute’
Lero director Prof Brian Fitzgerald welcomed the news by saying: “This is an honour and tribute to our team and the collaborative software research being conducted in Ireland between academia and industry.
“This includes cutting-edge software research by Irish third-level institutions and our industry partners across a range of critical sectors, from smart cities and driverless cars to cybersecurity and internet of things.”
Now totalling almost 300 researchers, Lero has been in operation for 13 years, with 100 PhD students from Dublin City University, Dundalk Institute of Technology, IT Tralee, NUI Galway, Maynooth University, Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork, University College Dublin and the University of Limerick.
It is funded by SFI as well as by contracts from Irish and international technology corporations.
Its last major announcement in February saw it announce an autonomous vehicles R&D partnership with Valeo, a major automotive supplier headquartered in Paris.
