Engineers Ireland: New president

Bill has spent the majority of his professional career in academia. However, he began his career as a research and development engineer with Ferranti working on electro-optic projects before returning to Ireland to take up a position as a lecturer in what was to become DIT, Kevin Street, and where in time he became Head of the Department of Control Systems Engineering.

Bill’s lecturing duties were focussed primarily in the areas of digital signal processing, image processing, as well as field and circuit theory. His research activities were centred mostly on the application of engineering paradigms to health informatics and he participated in a number of major European projects. Towards the end of his career in DIT he was attached to the Directorate of Academic Affairs heading a special unit charged with changing the academic programme delivery model to one that was both semesterised and modularised.

In recent times Bill has collaborated with both engineers and non-engineers in Europe and North America reflecting on the education of engineering undergraduates and the subsequent development of the professional engineer. He has authored and co-authored a number of book chapters and articles in the field. In addition, Bill contributed to a book, ‘Understanding the Global Energy Crisis’, edited and written by colleagues in DIT and Purdue University and which sets out the nature of the crisis, and examines the technical and policy options facing the development of major conventional and renewable energy sources.

Bill is a past Chair of the Membership and Qualification Board of Engineers Ireland and was also a member of the Board of Examiners. He currently chairs the CPD committee, is a member of Council and the Executive of Engineers Ireland. He served two terms as the Irish representative on the European Membership Monitoring Committee of FEANI (Fédération Européenne d'Associations Nationales d'Ingénieurs.

A graduate in electronic engineering from Trinity College Dublin, Bill also holds a masters from the department of electrical & computer engineering at the University of Toronto where he  studied electromagnetic theory as well as researching the behaviour of antennas in the ionosphere.

Bill has published over 80 journal papers, reports and book chapters in the area of Health Informatics and Engineering Education. He is the Chair of the Health Informatics Standards Consultative Committee of the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI). He took a special interest in the complex and vital role of engineers working in the healthcare domain and acted as sponsor for the working group, comprising members of the Biomedical Engineering Division of Engineers Ireland, which developed ‘A Proposal for a Protocol for Professional Formation and Development of Clinical Engineers in Ireland’.

Bill is a chartered engineer and Fellow of Engineers Ireland who, whilst recognising the grand challenges identified by engineering academies across the globe, recognises the need for engineers to work with society to address those challenges.