2016 Press Releases
National award for UCC engineers
Embedded.Systems@UCC was recently awarded the Engineering Laboratory of the Year Award and also shortlisted in four categories at the Irish Laboratory Awards 2016
The Irish Laboratory Awards recognise the achievements of Ireland's scientists and engineers in innovation, leadership and collaboration in 20 different categories.
The Embedded Systems laboratory has received over 25 awards and distinctions since the Lab was established in 2005. This includes ‘best paper’ awards, innovation and entrepreneurship competitions and distinctions in student contests.
The Lab has worked with researchers and students from BEES, Applied Psychology, Biology, Medicine and Health, Energy and Civil Engineering, Mathematics, Finance, and Computer Science. In 2011, for example, a student team comprising engineering, business information systems and nursing students received 1st prize in the international IEEE/IBM Smarter Planet Challenge.
Their project iCARE: Improved Health Care Access the students proposed using emerging Body Area Network Technologies and mobile phones to access medical services in disadvantaged areas. In 2013, another team of Engineering, Occupational Therapy and Applied Psychology/Early Childhood Studies students won the second prize in the same competition for the project U-Play: Unified Networks and Interfaces for Interacting with Toys for Children with Disabilities.
Finally, in 2014, another team of Engineering, Biology/Ecology, Food Science and Business students won the 1st prize in the IEEE/IBM Smarter Planet Challenge with a project called To bee or not to bee: from the beehive to the cloud and back. This interdisciplinary project was co-supervised by Dr Pádraig Whelan (BEES), Dr Emanuel Popovici(Engineering/Embedded.Systems@UCC) and Dr Edward Lahiff (Food Business). The project has continued under Fiona Edwards Murphy who is doing a PhD under the joint supervision of Dr Whelan and Dr Popovici with financial support from the Irish Research Council. She is designing a smart bee hive connected to the cloud.
The Laboratory has also had some successful collaborations with European partners in getting research funding under the FP7 programme and recently organised a workshop on George Boole and Claude Shannon as part of UCC’s commemoration of its first professor of Maths, George Boole.
Last year one of the group’s papers on smart lighting systems was distinguished as one of the most downloaded papers in IEEE Sensors Journal history. The paper proposed a novel system which reduced drastically (more than 60%) the cost of LED based lighting. A local company has developed the ideas in the academic paper to full commercial potential.
Emanuel Popovici, the Director of the group said: “We are delighted to have received this national award. It comes in recognition of the hard work of our students and researchers and it would have not been possible without the help of our collaborators both within Engineering and across the University (BEES/ERI, MaREI, Applied Psychology, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics).
The awards were sponsored by Enterprise Ireland, and the Health Research Board among others.
For news, videos, events related to the Embedded.Systems@UCC group: http://sites.google.com/site/embedded0101