ARC Team

Dr Aftab Ali

Lecturer in Computing (Internet of Things)

Professor Christopher Nugent

Head of School of Computing

Chris is the Head of School of Computing and holds the position of Professor of Biomedical Engineering.

Chris received a BEng Electronic Systems and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering both from the University of Ulster.  From 2015-2017 he was the Director of the Computer Science Research Institute at Ulster University and in 2017 he was appointed Head of the School of Computing.  He is currently serving his second term in this role.

His research interests include the development and evaluation of technologies to support pervasive healthcare within smart environments. Specifically, this has involved research in the topics of mobile based reminding solutions, activity recognition and behaviour modelling and more recently technology adoption modelling.

He has published extensively in these areas with papers spanning theoretical, clinical and biomedical engineering domains. He has been a grant holder of Research Projects funded by National, European and International funding bodies.  He is the director of the Pervasive Computing Research Centre and is also the co-Principal Investigator of the Connected Health Innovation Centre.  In 2016 he was awarded the Senior Distinguished Research Fellowship from Ulster University.

Chris has focussed on the development of impact from his research through a number of industrial partnerships in the form of Innovation Centres.  He is Principal Investigator at Ulster for the PWC Advanced Research and Engineering Centre which has a focus on digital transformation, and co-investigator for the BT Ireland Innovation Centre which is developing computational solutions in the domain of the Internet of Things and cyber security.

Since 2008 he has served as an Associate Editor for the Editorial Board of the IEEE Engineering Medicine and Biology Conference,  Healthcare Information Systems Theme and he is currently serving as a member of Ireland’s Commission on Care for Older People.

Dr Ian Cleland

Research Director

My research focuses on creating innovative digital health solutions by combining wearable, pervasive, and mobile computing with data science and artificial intelligence. This work aims to transform healthcare by enabling personalised monitoring and intervention and promoting proactive care.

I have a deep interest in sensor-based activity recognition and synthetic data generation for data driven modelling. These technologies are advancing critical areas like patient monitoring, rehabilitation, and technology enabled care, with future developments aimed at making healthcare even more responsive and predictive.

I received my B.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Ulster University, where I now serve as Research Director for the School of Computing. Previously, as Postgraduate Tutor (2018–2024), I supported the academic journey of approximately 55 PhD researchers each academic year. As the lead for Human-Computer Interaction research within the Pervasive Computing Research Centre, I’m committed to advancing digital health and developing impactful technologies.

I have authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications in top health informatics forums and secured more than £20M in research funding as both Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator. Notably, I am Co-Investigator for the Connected Health Innovation Centre (CHIC Phase 2, £3.36M) and the PwC Advanced Engineering and Research Centre (ARC, £3.13M). I currently serve as Co-Chair for the International Conference on Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI2024) and Vice Chair of the Alzheimer’s Association Technology and Dementia Executive Committee.

Dr Idongesit Ekerete

Lecturer in Computing Science

Idongesit (ID) EKERETE (Member IEEE, IPEM) is a Lecturer in Computing Science at the School of Computing, Ulster University. He currently serves as Lab Manager in the Pervasive Computing Research Centre in the School. He holds the Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) in the UK.

ID is a co-investigator within the £3.3M Advanced Research and Engineering Centre project funded by PWC within the thematic area of FinCrime. He leads the IEEE SMC UK-Ireland Chapter as the Vice-Chair. He also holds several academic awards such as UNIUYO overall best graduating student award and Prof. Hilary’s for best student award, amongst others.

He received the B.Eng. degree in Electrical/Electronic Engineering (First Class Honours) from the University of Uyo, Nigeria, in 2011. From 2012 to 2013, he was trained as an Instrument and Control Systems Engineer at Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria. He received the M.Sc. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom, in 2017. He was a Lecturer at the Department of Electrical/Electronic Engineering, University of Uyo, Nigeria, from 2011 to 2021.

His research interests include privacy-friendly home-based monitoring; unobtrusive sensing solutions; activity recognition and classification; AI-based activity modelling; sensor fusion and data mining. Others include sustainable design and development, digital twins, human-computer interaction, pervasive computing, and control systems engineering.

Dr Ian McChesney

Senior Lecturer

Professor Jun Liu

Professor of Artificial Intelligence

Professor Jun Liu is currently a Professor in Artificial Intelligence and Director of the Artificial Intelligence Research Centre (AIRC) at School of Computing, Ulster University. Before he joined Ulster University, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at The University of Manchester, UK (Feb. 2002 - Dec. 2004), and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK*CEN) (Mar. 2000 -Feb. 2002). He received the BSc. and MSc. degrees in Applied Mathematics, and PhD. degree in Information Engineering from Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China, in 1993, 1996, and 1999, respectively.

He has been working in the field of Artificial Intelligence for many years. His current research is focused on two themes: 1) trust and explainable data-knowledge integrated AI decision model/system with applications in management, engineering, and industry field etc. (e.g., safety and risk analysis; policy decision making; security/disaster management; and heath care and smart home); 2) logic and automated reasoning methods for intelligent systems. In particular: resolution-based automated reasoning methods, algorithm and tools with applications (including software verification and automated theorem proving); lattice-valued logics with focus on handling incomparability, inconsistency and imprecision. He has over 270 publications in these areas.

He has been awarded over £18 Million of research funding from various funding bodies as grant holder and principle co-investigator. He is the current Chair of IEEE CIS Emergent Technologies Technical Committee (ETTC), also the past Chair of IEEE System, Man and Cybernetics (SMC) Ireland Chapter (SMC28). He is an IEEE Senior Member including IEEESMC and IEEECI. He serves as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transaction on Fuzzy Systems, Knowledge-Based Systems, and Human-Centric Computing and Information Sciences, an Area Editor of International Journal of Computational Intelligence Systems, is also an Editor of Information Fusion Journal, Journal of Universal Computer Science, and International Journal of Knowledge and Systems Science. He serves as chairs or co-chairs and program committees of a number of international conferences and workshops.

He is a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy, and teaches at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Dr Matthew Burns

Lecturer in Computing Science

Professor Sally McClean

Professor of Mathematics

Dr Samuel Moore

Global Partnerships Coordination Lead

Dr Zeeshan Tariq

Lecturer in Computer Science

Dr Tazar Hussain

Lecturer in Computing Science

Dr Federico Cruciani

Senior Research Fellow

Orla McHugh

Research Associate - AI & Data

Dr Min Jing

Research Fellow

Jordan Vincent

Research Fellow (AICC)