Professor Liam Maguire is the Pro Vice-Chancellor Research at Ulster.

Liam obtained MEng and PhD degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the Queen’s University, Belfast.  He joined Ulster University as a lecturer in 1994 and became a Professor of Computational Intelligence in 2007. Liam has been Executive Dean of the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment since 2016.  Previously he held a number of senior positions at Ulster such as Head of School and Director of the Intelligent Systems Research Centre.

Liam is the NI representative on the National Council for Professors and Heads of Computing committee. He has recently been invited to join an Invest NI Board Sub-Group on Digital Innovation and is the university representative on the Belfast Innovation partnership and has a leading role in Ulster’s projects in the two City Deals.  

Liam’s research interests focus on data analytics and machine learning with particular emphasis on bio-inspired approaches. An author of over 250 research papers, Liam has secured extensive research funding and supervised 20 PhD and three MPhil students to completion.   He established the Cognitive Analytics Research Laboratory (CARL) at Ulster and is working with colleagues from QUB to deliver an AI collaboration centre in Northern Ireland.

Liam has a good appreciation of research across the university through collaboration with every faculty in the University either through funded projects or joint research staff/student supervision.  He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and a chartered engineer with an extensive network of collaborators in academia and the digital/engineering sectors.