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Dr. Rob Brennan

Visiting Research Fellow (ADAPT)
      
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Dr. Rob Brennan

Visiting Research Fellow (ADAPT)

 RBRENNA@tcd.ie

 


Rob is a Senior Research Fellow in the ADAPT research centre core research activity, focused on data management (Theme E) where he is co-PI of the large industry-collaboration (spokes) project with Ordanance Survey Ireland. Rob joined the Knowledge and Data Engineering Group at the School of Computer Science and Statistics in 2008 as part of the HEA-funded NEMBES (Networked Embedded Systems) project looking at semantic mapping applications to sensor management systems in smart buildings. From 2009-2014 he led the Home Area Networks group in the SFI-funded FAME (Federated Autonomic Management of End to End Communications Services) project. From 2014-2016 Rob created and coordinated the H2020 project ALIGNED on combined software and data engineering. His current research interests include Data Value, Data Governance, Data Quality, Linked Data, flexible distributed systems and network management. Prior to joining TCD Rob worked in the Ericsson Network Management Research centre, a couple of networks/data-comms focused startups and Enterprise Ireland's Teltec telecommunications research centre at Dublin City University. He has extensive experience of both academic and industrial collaborative research projects and international standardization. He is a graduate of Dublin City University (BSc in Applied Physics and PhD in Electronic Engineering) and Queens University Belfast (MSc in Computational Science).
  Computer Science/Engineering   DATA CURATION   DATA QUALITY   Distributed systems   Intelligent agents   Internet technologies   Knowledge and data engineering   Mobile Communications   Network technology, Security   Networks and telecommunications research   Remote sensing
Project Title
 Intelligent Data Quality Centric Recommender System
From
1 Oct 2017
To
30 Sept 2019
Summary
Data quality impacts data's fitness for use for the application at hand. There are a wide range of quality indicators that can be used to quantify quality. However, it is a challenge for consumers to identify the most appropriate quality indicators for choosing a dataset for a specific task. This problem stems from the fact that different domains require different quality indicators to demonstrate fitness for use. Whilst a number of quality assessment frameworks exist, none of these tackle the fundamental challenge of indicator selection. The novelty of this project is that it provides an intelligent recommender system that builds on top of existing quality frameworks in order to assist data consumers by automatically suggesting quality indicators for the task at hand. These quality indicators will then facilitate the task dependent appraisal of datasets on the Web of Data. The goal is to support data consumers and enhance their productivity by finding fit for use data sources for their tasks.
Funding Agency
Irish Research Council
Programme
Postdoctoral Fellowship (Government of Ireland)
Person Months
24
Project Title
 Ordnance Survey Ireland ADAPT Spoke III
From
1/1/2017
To
20/1/2018
Summary
Investigating methods and tools to publish OSi's reference geospatial data for Ireland as Linked Data.
Funding Agency
OSi/SFI
Programme
ADAPT Spokes
Project Title
 ADAPT Centre for Digital Content Technology
From
1/1/2015
To
31/12/2020
Summary
Funded Collaborator in SFI research centre focused on digital data management, quality and interoperability (Theme E within the research centre).
Funding Agency
SFI
Programme
Research Centre
Project Type
Research Centre
Person Months
48
Project Title
 ALIGNED, quality-centric software and data engineering
From
1/2/2015
To
31/1/2018
Summary
The rapid growth of web data creates demand for software engineering methods which can build and maintain applications that extract, process and publish web data. However, converting Big Data sources into high-quality, structured knowledge for use in business processes is usually considered data engineering. ALIGNED will develop models, methods and tools for engineering information systems based on co-evolving software and web data. Tools for model-driven software evolution based on Linked Data sources, runtime data quality analytics, human data curation and process integration will aid more efficient governance, increased agility and higher productivity. The opportunities for web data have recently led to intense research and innovation, but most efforts are siloed in the software or data spaces. Past integration of data and software engineering used formal ontologies rather than Linked Data. ALIGNED will provide lightweight methods for European data and software engineering industries to exploit the new opportunities in web data. Information companies like Wolters Kluwer need better ways to extract web data and build applications on top of it. Public bodies like the UK National Health Service (NHS) need evolving systems for data collection and re-use. Web data publishers like DBpedia need new methods to improve data quality. Scientific publications, industry workshops, training programs, open source tools and engaging the OMG, W3C and ISO standards bodies will transfer ALIGNED outputs.ALIGNED combines world class researchers in model driven software engineering (Oxford are transforming NHS systems), Linked Data quality (Leipzig and Trinity College have published foundational papers) and web systems (Leipzig are co-creators of DBpedia) with innovative enterprises (Wolters Kluwer have Linked Data in production systems, Semantic Web Company lead the world in enterprise Linked Data) and pioneering expert-curated data publishers (Oxford Anthropology and Posnan).
Funding Agency
European Commission
Programme
H2020
Project Type
Research and Innovation
Person Months
122
Project Title
 ValueData ICT16 Co-ordinator support
From
1/1/2017
To
25/4/2017
Summary
This project funds my development of the ValueDate H2020 proposal for value-driven data governance. It includes writing support, consortium meetings and buy-out of my regular research responsibilities so that I can focus on proposal development.
Funding Agency
Enterprise Ireland
Programme
H2020 coordinator support grant
Person Months
2

Page 1 of 3
Details Date
Created the Trinity Access Program (TAP) course in computer science ("Wikipedia") and have presented this course at the TAP summer school each year since. Ireland. 2012-ongoing
External Examiner, National College of Ireland, BSc in Computing, BSc in Business Information Systems, Ireland 2013-ongoing
Editorial Board (Computer Science and Communications area), Scientific World Journal (Impact factor 1.219), Hindawi Publishing, China. 2011-ongoing
Review panel member, Waterford Institute of Technology MSc in Computing (Communications Software) 2006
Review panel member, Dublin City University BEng in Digital Media Engineering degree. 2000
Scientific Evaluator, Enterprise Ireland competitive feasibility fund for SMEs 1999
Reviewer, IEEE Communications Magazine (Impact factor 3.661), USA 2014
Reviewer, The Scientific World Journal (Impact factor 1.219), Hindawi publishing corporation, China 2010-2013
Reviewer, Journal of Network and Systems Management, MDPI Sensors (Impact factor 1.953), Switzerland 2010-12
Reviewer, Journal of Network and Systems Management, Springer, Germany 2009-ongoing
Trestian, R. and Celeste, E. and Xie, G. and Lohar, P. and Bendechache, M. and Brennan, R. and Ta, I., The Privacy Paradox-Investigating People's Attitude Towards Privacy in a Time of COVID-19, 2022, Notes: [cited By 0], Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  DOI
Paul Ryan, Rob Brennan, Harshvardhan J. Pandit, DPCat: Specification for an Interoperable and Machine-Readable Data Processing Catalogue Based on GDPR, Information, 13, (5), 2022, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI  DOI  URL  URL
Ryan, P. and Brennan, R., Support for Enhanced GDPR Accountability with the Common Semantic Model for ROPA (CSM-ROPA), SN Computer Science, 3, (3), 2022, Notes: [cited By 0], Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Basereh, M. and Caputo, A. and Brennan, R., AccTEF: A Transparency and Accountability Evaluation Framework for Ontology-Based Systems, International Journal of Semantic Computing, 16, (1), 2022, p5-27 , Notes: [cited By 0], Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Xie, G. and Lohar, P. and Florea, C. and Bendechache, M. and Trestian, R. and Brennan, R. and Connolly, R. and Tal, I., Privacy in Times of COVID-19: A Pilot Study in the Republic of Ireland, (3470096), 2021, Notes: [cited By 0], Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  DOI
Lohar, P. and Xie, G. and Bendechache, M. and Brennan, R. and Celeste, E. and Trestian, R. and Tal, I., Irish Attitudes Toward COVID Tracker App & Privacy: Sentiment Analysis on Twitter and Survey Data, (3469193), 2021, Notes: [cited By 6], Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  DOI
Hernandez, J. and McKenna, L. and Brennan, R., TIKD: A trusted integrated knowledge dataspace for sensitive healthcare data sharing, 2021, pp1855-1860 , Notes: [cited By 1], Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  DOI
Bendechache, M. and Tal, I. and Wall, P. and Grehan, L. and Clarke, E. and Odriscoll, A. and Der Haegen, L.V. and Leong, B. and Kearns, A. and Brennan, R., AI in My Life: AI, Ethics & Privacy Workshops for 15-16-Year-Olds, 2021, pp34-39 , Notes: [cited By 2], Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  DOI
McKenna, L. and Liang, J. and Duda, N. and McDonald, N. and Brennan, R., ARK-Virus: An ARK Platform Extension for Mindful Risk Governance of Personal Protective Equipment Use in Healthcare, 2021, pp698-700 , Notes: [cited By 2], Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  DOI
Hickey, D. and Connor, R.O. and McCormack, P. and Kearney, P. and Rosti, R. and Brennan, R., The Data Quality Index: Improving Data Quality in Irish Healthcare Records, 2, 2021, pp625-636 , Notes: [cited By 0], Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
  

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Rob Brennan, Joeran Beel, Ruth Byrne and Jeremy Debattista, Preface: The 26th AIAI Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS 2018), 26th Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS, 2018, pp1 - 7, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
Rob Brennan, Kevin Feeney, US Political Violence, 1.03, TCD, 2013, Dataset, PUBLISHED
Rob Brennan, Kevin Feeney, Building and Publishing Social-Science Datasets on the Web with RDF and Linked Data , Digital & Computational Humanities - Tools & Thought, Aarhus University, 14 Nov 2013, 2013, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Rob Brennan, Ontologies in a Federated World, TM Forum Management World convention, Dublin, May 2012, 2012, TMF, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Rob Brennan, FAME Scenario E, Home Area Networks , HOMEWORK annual plenary workshop, Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK, 10 Jan 2011, 2011, HOMEWORK project, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED

  


Award Date
Enterprise Ireland Champion of EU Research 2017
ADAPT Centre Director's Award for EU Research Leadership 2017
Elected Senior Research Fellow by Faculty of Engineering, Science and Mathematics 2014
Excellence Award for the GANDALF Project for outstanding achievements in the CELTIC research program. 2008
High Perfromance Employee, Ericsson 2005
Data value and quality, data curation, semantic mapping, distributed systems, network and service management