Alison O’Connor is a postdoctoral researcher working on the Explainable Artificial Intelligence for Safety and Security (EXSS) project which is an industrial collaboration between UL and Analog Devices. Her research is focussed on Industry 4.0 applications specifically investigating how explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) can enable the accelerated use of machine learning functions at the computing edge for robotics.
Alison holds a Bachelor of Engineering (UL), a Graduate Diploma in Advanced Materials (UL). She has significant industrial experience including a Young Graduate Traineeship with the European Space Agency and was a Senior Project Leader in Fatigue Integrity Management at an industrial consultancy firm in the UK (TWI Ltd.). She gained her PhD at Imperial College London working with Prof. Kamran Nikbin and Dr Catrin Mair Davies. Alison has collaborated with leading experts across a variety of engineering fields. She is a full member of IMechE and has held Chartered status since 2013.
Alison is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) fellowship alumni (2021) with research on the application of machine learning towards improving engineering analyses. She is the co-principal investigator on a Science Foundation Ireland National Challenge Fund project ALTER actively researching how artificial intelligence can improve patient flow in healthcare environments. Alison also holds a Digital Innovation Flagship award from the Irish Centre for High End Computing (ICHEC).