Posted: 24/05/19
I am so sorry to report that the search for Shay has been unsuccessful. While the experienced search team has made every effort to locate Shay, the extremes of operating at high altitude and the sheer range of the search area ultimately proved too difficult and based on expert advice the Lawless family have decided to call off the search rather than risk endangering anyone’s life in the treacherous conditions.
The tragic death of our friend and colleague, Séamus (Shay) Lawless, has come as a huge shock to all of us. On behalf of everyone at Trinity College Dublin and ADAPT, I want to offer our condolences to his wife, Pam, and their daughter, Emma, and to his large family, all his friends, students and colleagues. At ADAPT we are mourning the loss of one our rising research stars, an inspirational colleague, and a much loved and valued member of our family. Shay’s legacy is enormous. An expert in Information Retrieval, his peer-reviewed publications, his supervision of cutting-edge doctoral research, and his leadership of internationally acclaimed research projects have transformed the boundaries of the discipline. As a colleague and as a friend, Shay’s enthusiasm, his creativity and his approach to his work was inspirational. In the months ahead we will gather to pay tribute to his remarkable scholarship and his contribution to ADAPT and Trinity College Dublin and it will be an opportunity for friends and colleagues to remember someone who will never be forgotten. We are heartbroken at this news and will be making no further statement at this time. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.
About Professor Séamus Lawless
A rising research star internationally, Professor Séamus Lawless is assistant professor at Trinity College Dublin, Principal Investigator (PI) at the ADAPT Centre, and a leading researcher. He heads up the research in personalised information retrieval and within the School of Computer Science at Trinity, Shay takes responsibility for the suite of taught Masters programmes in Computer Science.
Passionate about education and teaching, Shay graduated with a Gold Medal for his first class degree (B.Sc.) in Computer Science and was also awarded a Ph.D. as well as a postgraduate diploma in Statistics from Trinity College Dublin. To date, he has successfully supervised 10 PhD students to completion. Appointed an Ussher Assistant Professor in Intelligent Digital Content in 2012 he received accelerated promotion, and today leads a team of international research fellows, postdocs and postgraduate students.
Shay leads multiple European and national research projects and is pioneering research in Digital Humanities as the Co-PI on projects such as Beyond 2022, a project which aims to digitally recreate the Public Record Office of Ireland, destroyed in 1922.
Internationally respected for his innovative and groundbreaking research, Shay’s personalised multimodal interaction for information retrieval and exploration has won numerous awards and is shaping the field. He has published over 100 scientific papers in international journals and conferences, has been nominated for many innovation, teaching and research excellence awards, and has won several best paper scientific awards in international scientific conferences. Shay has also been responsible for many highly successful industry collaborations including work with Ryanair focused on next-generation recommender systems.
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