Elsewhere on Ulster
Accelerating data futures through collaboration and innovation.
In a world increasingly shaped by data and artificial intelligence, bridging the gap between research and real-world application has never been more critical. At Ulster University’s School of Computing, Orla McHugh, Research Associate in AI and Data Science and Project Delivery Officer for the ARC programme, is helping to do exactly that.
In her role, Orla coordinates a team of 25 research professionals—including academic staff, research fellows, associates, and PhD researchers—delivering a £40 million collaborative research initiative between Ulster University, Queen’s University Belfast, and PwC.
Known as ARC (Advanced Research and Engineering Centre), the project encompasses a portfolio of pioneering sub-projects spanning Natural Language Processing, Generative AI, Synthetic Data, and other emerging technologies.
Orla plays a key role in ensuring effective coordination, communication, and delivery across diverse workstreams—aligning cutting-edge research with real-world business and societal needs.
Within the ARC project, Orla and her colleagues have been instrumental in developing a Know Your Customer (KYC) optimisation tool, designed to streamline decision-making processes in financial services.
This tool integrates advanced decision-support elements to create more efficient, transparent, and sustainable workflows—demonstrating how academic research can deliver measurable impact in industry.
“By bridging academia and industry,” Orla explains, “our research not only advances technological innovation but also promotes knowledge exchange and delivers measurable societal and organisational benefits.”
Orla’s academic expertise lies in decision support systems, with a focus on knowledge- and data-driven modelling, machine learning, and multi-criteria decision-making.
Her work seeks to integrate computational methods with domain knowledge to improve transparency, efficiency, and usability—bridging the gap between advanced analytics and practical decision-making.
Her research has been applied in diverse domains, from sustainable land management to identification and verification systems in financial institutions.
A key focus of the teams work within ARC is tackling pressing challenges in computational research, including:
By embedding these principles into ARC’s research agenda, Orla and her team ensure that innovations are not only technically robust, but also socially responsible and aligned with real-world values.
The ARC partnership exemplifies the power of academic–industry collaboration. By working closely with PwC, the team integrates expert industry knowledge into every stage of research and solution design.
This approach strengthens the rigour, reliability, and relevance of outcomes—ensuring findings are translatable into tangible business applications that drive efficiency and innovation.
Through her leadership and expertise, Orla is helping to accelerate the future of responsible data science—showing how collaboration can turn cutting-edge AI research into real-world impact.
