Today, our partner LYIT (Letterkenny Institute of Technology) has staged its Annual Research Symposium in the theatre of the university. This conference objective is to promote research at LYIT, encourage interdepartmental collaboration and inspire students at all levels. 

This showcase is presented with three different elements.

In the first place, we had two guest speakers in charge of opening and closing the symposium. The Professor David Rooney from Queens University started speaking about the Research Centre in Sustainable Energy. He also talked about the situation in Northern Ireland and about its connected and committed renewable generation technology mix, highlighting that “there is enough capacity, but it necessitates storage”. On the other side, Mr Pat Dempsey from the National University of Ireland Galway explained what they do in the Insight Centre for Data Analytics. 

The central core of the events consisted in fourteen oral presentation by staff and students and aimed at a cross disciplinary audience. The range of topics was really varied including different fields like humanities and engineering, business, science, nursing, education, design humanities and engineering. 

Dr Eoghan Furey from the Department of Computing talked about the Intelligent and the creativity personal assistants and GDPR, presenting the example of the Amazon Smart Speaker, Alexa. He explained how well our digital devices know us because they save most of our activity like the sleep patterns, contacts, interests, personal health information, dietary requirements, location and travel. With all of this information, he raised the debate on how far can rely on these devices. 

On the other hand, Dr Lynn Ramsey and Dr Eillis Flanagan who are teaching in LYIT emphasized on the 1916 Bursary and the students experience of success in higher education. The main conclusion that they found was to safeguarding access and widening participation in HE, narrowing educational attainment gaps, increasing student success, overcoming academic barriers and agitating for social justice. 

The third element consisted in forty-six research posters created by students and staff referring to all the topics mentioned before and explaining them with different examples. The purpose of this was that anyone interested in any of these issues could read and know more about it.

This conference objective was to promote research at LYIT, encourage interdepartmental collaboration and inspire students at all levels.