University of Limerick · CSIS · Lero

Biocomputing & Development Systems

A multidisciplinary research group building cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: from Grammatical Evolution, the technique we invented, to explainable AI, digital design automation and computational healthcare.

Meet the Team Our Research
€57M+
Research Funding Secured
1998
Grammatical Evolution Invented
20+
Researchers & Postgrads
Lero
Irish SFI Software Research Centre
About the Group

Who we are

The Biocomputing and Development Systems Group at the University of Limerick is a multi-disciplinary team working with cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning tools. We are based in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems (CSIS) and are part of Lero, the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre.

BDS is led by Prof. Conor Ryan, who invented the widely-used Grammatical Evolution system in 1998 together with two of his PhD students. Since its establishment, and with international partners from industry, academia, and research bodies, BDS has secured funding to the tune of €57 million.

More about BDS The BDS research group at a Lero event
What we work on

Research focus areas

From the theory of evolutionary computation to applied, industry-facing AI systems.

Core Method

Grammatical Evolution

The evolutionary automatic programming technique invented in BDS, now used worldwide across science and engineering.

Explainable AI

Trustworthy & Explainable Systems

Making machine learning models interpretable for safety-critical and industrial applications, including the EXSS project with Analog Devices.

Hardware

AI-Driven Circuit Design

Automating digital circuit generation and verification through the ADDC and AutoCircuit initiatives.

Healthcare

Computational Healthcare

Applying AI and knowledge graphs to patient flow, clinical trials, and healthcare data sharing, including the ALTER project.

Robotics

Human-Robot Interaction

Combining knowledge graphs with robotics to build systems that reason about and interact naturally with people.

Language

Large Language Models

Investigating the use and fidelity of LLMs for tasks such as summarising complex policy documents.

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Funders & Partners

Our sponsors

Interested in joining BDS?

We're regularly looking for PhD students, postdocs and research assistants.

See open positions