About Me

My main professional academic interest is investigating how Intellectual Property developed through leading edge research can be exploited within an industrial setting.

Research Interests
As a senior Lecturer at Queen's University Belfast, I am particularly interested in the complex fields of optimization, scheduling and timetabling. Related real world environments encompass many characteristics which continue to challenge researchers, users and software providers alike.

Industry/Knowledge Transfer
Commercialisation of research and technology transfer represent areas that I am keen to promote within an enterprise and entrepreneurial agenda. I am CEO and a co-founder of QUB spinout company EventMAP Solutions. EventMAP’s core business is in providing tools and expertise to our clients worldwide to solve even their most complex planning, scheduling and resource management problems.

EventMAP's research-informed range of services and product suite are making huge impact within several key areas e.g. Education, Defence, Policing, Health and Aerospace. Please contact me to learn more on how our research can help deliver efficiency within your organisation

Co-chair of PATAT and MISTA Conferences
I act as co-chair of MISTA and PATAT series of conferences. Both Conferences aim to promote research and practice within the areas of real world scheduling and timetabling.

Research

Research Overview

My main research interest is in investigating why practical implementations of leading edge research techniques are often fraught with difficulty. Within the area of optimisation, the reasons for this are numerous. Understanding the nature of this 'gap' requires application of techniques proven within the research arena to real practical problems drawn from real world and/or industrial settings. In these settings, although implementing optimisation techniques offer much potential, the products currently offered by research often appear to be inadequate. Placing the related issues within a business context provides a driving force which acts as a backdrop to the research.

I believe that technology transfer between Universities and industry is best served by the delivery of leading edge research methods within a dynamic and effective business model. Although this section is devoted to academic publications, please refer to the knowledge transfer section for details of the 'product' of this research.

Profile

Research Profiles

Details of my publications, projects, grants are available on my QUB Research Profile, Google Scholar and Researchgate.

Conferences

Conference Chair

I permanently act as co-chair of MISTA and PATAT series of international conferences. Both Conferences aim to promote research and practice within the areas of real world scheduling and timetabling.

Teaching

Teaching Overview

CSC4008 Digital Transformation: Software Design, Management and Practical Implementation
This group based module is only available to students enrolled on either the MEng in Computer Science, the MEng in Software Engineering or the MEng in Electronics and Software Engineering degree programmes. The course contants include Opportunity Analysis, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Business Planning, Modelling and documenting software design; Software Design principles and patterns; Software Architecture; Modern approaches to software design; Legal Social and Ethical considerations, Software Project and Team Management.
CSC4008 Practical Website

Business Information Technology Final year Project
The principal aim of the project is to allow final year BIT students to work collectively to provide an IT solution to a business opportunity. A secondary aim is to develop the solution within a business framework allowing the central concept to be exploited commercially. This project represents the bringing together of the areas of the BIT degree in an attempt to show that the whole is greater than the sum of the constituent parts. Emphasis has been placed on bringing outside speakers in from InvestNI, industry and financial institutions to ensure the course provides a "real life" experience.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship
The objective of this module is for students to learn and develop entrepreneurship and innovation skills. Entrepreneurship means to make things happen; to change things. This will provide students with practical and academic insights into innovation and entrepreneurship. The material applies to the business, public and voluntary sectors. All organisations have to anticipate and respond to change to be successful. The model that requires a business plan to attract funding for a start up company is only one example of innovation and entrepreneurship.

This module is to provide the following:

Experience of working in teams;
Experience of presentations;
Experience of preparing a business plan;
Experience of developing a product or service
Understanding of Commercialisation

Industry

Knowledge Transfer

Industrial Fellow
I am a visiting researcher/Industrial Fellow to the Automated Scheduling, Optimisation and Planning (ASAP) Group at the University of Nottingham.

EventMAP Solutions
CEO of EventMAP Solutions, a software company whose equity investors include Queen's University of Belfast (QUBIS) and University of Nottingham. EventMAP’s core business is in providing tools and expertise to help our clients solve even their most complex problems. We are planning, resource and management specialists. With 13 years of practical experience and over 20 years at the leading edge of scheduling and optimisation research, we can provide software solutions for scheduling and optimisation that are years ahead of anything else currently available. Our expert consultancy and integration skills provide institutions worldwide with a tailored solution that delivers operational efficiencies.

We've partnered with higher and further education institutions for 20 years to create a suite of products that have the most robust scheduling engine available. The OPTIME product suite delivers dramatic reductions in operation time and enables needs-based timetables, surveys, reports and models – no matter how complex your requirements.

Get In Touch

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