Waterford academic to work in Spain under prestigious postdoctoral fellowship

A Waterford Institute of Technology postdoctoral researcher has won a prestigious Fellowship that will see him spend 18 months at a highly-regarded Spanish university before returning to the Institute.

Dr Alan Davy from the Telecommunications Software & Systems Group (TSSG) has been selected by the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering & Technology (IRCSET) to receive an INSPIRE Fellowship which is co-funded by IRCSET and FP7, the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development.

The Fellowship – one of 26 awarded among 86 applicants - will allow Dr Davy to work for 18 months with a world-class research group at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC-Barcelona Tech). After his period in Barcelona at what is one of Europe’s leading technical universities, he will return to Waterford where the Fellowship will provide for a further 12-month reintegration period.

The research undertaken by Dr Davy centres on how wireless communication technologies can support real-time multimedia services including video and voice – especially important given that the next one billion users will access the Internet and multimedia services using wireless devices. Specifically, Dr Davy continues to investigate innovative measurement-based approaches to enable accurate real-time multimedia services to be provided over technologies such as Wi-Fi, WiMAX and LTE (Long Term Evolution).

Martin Hynes, Executive Director, IRCSET, said: 'the Council is pleased to support Dr Davy with his research on network planning which can now benefit from a wider European perspective. An important part of our remit under the National Development Plan 2007-2013 involves encouraging the most talented researchers to advance their careers in this country. The opportunity that INSPIRE provides for an 18-month period at a host research institution overseas and a subsequent year of experience-sharing in this country is a very effective model for international skills building and knowledge transfer.'

Expressing delight at his selection as one of the first INSPIRE fellows from the Institute of Technology sector, Dr Davy said: 'these Fellowships are all about encouraging greater international mobility among Irish-based researchers in the early stages of their career. From my own perspective, it provides a great opportunity to add a wider dimension to my scientific research experience. It will also further strengthen the existing links between TSSG and other successful European research groups.'

Dr Willie Donnelly, founder and director of TSSG and Head of Research, Waterford Institute of Technology, added: 'we are very pleased to see Alan selected for this prestigious postdoctoral Fellowship which will see his work in Barcelona and back here in Waterford supported over a 30-month period in all. There is fierce competition for this Fellowship scheme and it is testament to the calibre of Alan’s work and TSSG’s earned reputation that he has been successful in the six-month selection process. Europe is currently home to the world’s leading innovators in wireless telecommunications technology, making it particularly opportune that Dr Davy can now partner with other European specialists.'

Dr Davy originally graduated in 2002 from the BSc (Hons) in Applied Computing at Waterford Institute of Technology where he then pursued his PhD within the Department of Computing, Mathematics & Physics, graduating in 2008. His doctoral research titled Measurement-based quality of service control for communications networks was supervised by Dr Brendan Jennings and Dr Dmitri Botvich and his work has also attracted support from Science Foundation Ireland.

Further information available at http://www.ircset.ie/; www.wit.ie and www.tssg.org.