Royal Irish Academy Gold Medals for Professor Alan Smeaton and Professor Philip Lane

Each year, the Royal Irish Academy awards two Academy Gold Medals to individuals who have made a demonstrable and internationally recognised outstanding scholarly contribution in their fields. The medals were established in 2005 to acclaim Ireland’s foremost thinkers in the humanities, social sciences, physical & mathematical sciences, life sciences, engineering sciences and the environment & geosciences. Professor Philip Lane and Professor Alan Smeaton were awarded the Academy Gold Medals for 2015 at a ceremony held at the Royal Irish Academy this week.

The medals, which are sponsored by the Higher Education Authority, were presented by Robert-Jan Smits, Director-General of Research and Innovation with the European Commission who said that “each of these awardees have demonstrated through their outstanding contributions to academia and the impact of their research the intersection of research, scholarship and ‘real world’ application. Ireland, and Europe as a whole, can be proud of such achievements.”

Announcing the awarding of the Gold Medals to Professors Lane and Smeaton, President of the Royal Irish Academy, Professor Mary Daly, said “the Academy Gold Medals recognise two of Ireland’s leading scholars whose work has a demonstrable social impact. The Academy, with the generous support of the Higher Education Authority, is delighted to honour both outstanding recipients.” 

Professor Alan Smeaton, a board member of the Irish Research Council, has been a Professor of Computing at Dublin City University since 1997. He leads a team of over 80 researchers at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics at Dublin City University, where he is Director. His research interests broadly cover the development of computing technology to help people find information, whether that is text, image, video, or any combinations of media.  His work has been published in International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition, the Journal of the American Society for Information Science, and Machine Visions and Applications along with a host of contributions to international conferences and resulting publications.

Professor Philip Lane is the Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, taking office in late November 2015. From 1997 to 2015, he was a member of the academic staff at Trinity College Dublin and he remains affiliated with the university as Whately Professor of Political Economy (on leave). Philip is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and an Irish Research Council award holder. Prior to his current role, he also chaired the Advisory Scientific Committee of the European Systemic Risk Board and was Director of the International Macroeconomics and Finance Programme at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). His research interests include financial globalisation, macroeconomics of exchange rates and capital flows, macroeconomic policy design and European monetary integration. His work has been widely published in journals such as the American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Economic Perspectives and other international publications of note.