The Hamilton Institute is a multi-disciplinary research centre at Maynooth University, named after William Rowan Hamilton, arguably Ireland's most distinguished mathematician.
Parent institution | Maynooth University |
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Established | 2001 |
Director | Prof. Ken Duffy |
Location | , |
Coordinates | 53°23′06″N 6°36′06″W / 53.3849°N 6.6016°W |
Website | https://www.hamilton.ie/ |
The Hamilton Institute was formally established in November 2001 under the first round of funding,[1][2] by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). It was officially opened by Bill Harris, SFI Director-General with the inaugural lecture being given by Kevin Warwick. Since 2001 the institute grew to a size to around 45 full-time researchers in 2008.[3] From 2001 until 2014 the institute Director was Prof. Douglas Leith. From 2015 to 2017 Prof. Fiona Lyddy was director and in 2017, Prof. Ken Duffy became the Institute's director.[citation needed]
Since its founding, the institute has been successful in winning a number of large research grants, in addition to the original seed funding grant from SFI, including the €4.7M National Communications Network Research Centre,[4] a €2.5M Systems Biology initiative,[5][6] the €2.7M Next Generation Internet project,[7] the National Biophotonics Platform[8] and the €2.2M Network Mathematics initiative.[9][10][11] The institute was also a partner in the €5.8M SFI funded FAME strategic research cluster announced in 2009.[12][13] It hosts Maynooth University's students for the SFI Centre for Research Training in Data Analytics[14][15] and Damien Wood's DNA computing group.[16]
The Hamilton Institute's stated aim[17] is to provide a bridge between mathematics and its applications in ICT and biology. It has organised a number of high profile inter-disciplinary workshops including a successful series of biannual International Workshops on Non-negative Matrices & Their Applications,[18] (run in 2004,[19] 2006[20] and 2008[21]) and a series of International Workshops on Systems Biology (in 2006[22] and 2008[23]). The Hamilton Institute has also hosted workshops such as the International Symposium on Positive Systems (POSTA),[24] the International Workshop on Multiple Access Communications (MACOM)[25] and the Traffic Measurement and Analysis Conference.[26]
The Hamilton Institute robotic soccer team were RoboCup World Champions in 2008,[27][28] and have regularly fielded Robocup teams since.