Monday 12 December 2016

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Dr Donnacha Lowney, Head of Aerospace, Mechanical and Electronic Engineering at Institute of Technology Carlow has been appointed a director of the Microelectronics Industry Design Association of Ireland (MIDAS). Dr Lowney is the second academic to be appointed a director of MIDAS since the organisation's formation in 2000 and the first-ever director to be appointed from the Institute of Technology sector. MIDAS Ireland is an industry-led cluster of industry, educational, research and government agencies that work together to assist in the development of the micro and nano-electronics based sector in Ireland. It is a member of Silicon Europe, the alliance of Europe's leading micro and nano-electronics clusters. [caption id="attachment_33787" align="alignright" width="240"] Dr Donnacha Lowney, Head of Aerospace, Mechanical and Electronic Engineering at Institute of Technology Carlow[/caption] “I am honoured to be involved with MIDAS in this capacity at a key stage in the organisation's development. This is the first time a director has been selected from the Institute of Technology sector and reflects the leadership role Institute of Technology Carlow is taking within the microelectronics space. Given the key involvement industry plays within MIDAS, I feel it is an endorsement of the work undertaken by the team in the Institute’s engineering faculty,” said Dr Lowney, commenting on his appointment. Since joining Institute of Technology Carlow in September 2014, Dr Lowney has led the faculty of engineering in the formation of the Engineering Centre of Research and Enterprise (EngCORE). He has been granted eight US patents relating to these research interests since joining the institute. In June 2015, Institute of Technology Carlow hosted the Irish Signals and Systems Conference at which Dr Lowney, as co-chair, facilitated the largest industrial session in the conference’s 27-year history with keynote addresses from multinational companies such Xilinx and Intel. “Part of our research in the area of high performance data converters under the Circuits and Systems theme of EngCORE is in collaboration with the Microelectronics Circuits Centre of Ireland (MCCI)”, he said. “MCCI is a national technology centre funded by Enterprise Ireland and supported by the IDA. It was the brainchild of MIDAS and came into being at a time when I was chair of the MIDAS training committee.” Dr Lowney, who is also chairman for the Electronic Engineering Programmes, said Institute of Technology Carlow electronics graduates are in strong demand from organisations such as the Irish Defence Forces and companies such as Analog Devices, Intel and Microsemi – a great reflection on the institute’s standards. “At Institute of Technology Carlow, our pursuit of excellent is inculcated in our students from day one. For example, under our programmatic review process concluded last academic year, the programme board elected to adopt SystemVerilog for design and verification of digital systems. Other design suites such as Cadence are used in the design of mixed signal application specific integrated circuits (ASICs). Our year four electronic systems students will undertake an advanced embedded systems module to equip them with the necessary skills to develop heterogeneous computing systems using state of the art System on Chip (SoC) devices,” he said. “Our students have been finalists in prestigious competitions such as the Intel Galileo 3^rd Level Technology Competition, recipients of the Engineers Ireland Innovative Student of the Year and only last month one of our students was a finalist in the MIDAS third-level engineering competition. In such competitions year on year, our students are consistently outperforming their IoT and University sector counterparts. Through our continued involvement with MIDAS we hope to build upon our successes for the benefit of our students and community,” he concluded.