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Name:
Dr Ian R O’Keeffe
Department & University / Company:
Postdoctoral Researcher in Digital Content Translation and Adaptation Technologies
Centre for Next Generation Localisation,
Localisation Research Centre,
CSIS Department,
University of Limerick
Brief Biography:
Ian O’Keeffe embarked on a career in IT after completing a degree in Computer Engineering in Trinity College Dublin. His commercial work experience covers more than 12 years, during which time he worked for Orygen Ireland Ltd. as Senior Software Engineer on the Bank of Ireland Banking Online project; Eircom as an onsite consultant in their facilities management department; Mentec International Ltd. as a Systems Analyst and consultant to the IT department of Coillte; and Electronic Data Systems as a Systems Engineer on the European Aftersales project, working for GM. This involved work around Europe and in the US. At the end of this period he was looking for a fresh challenge, so returned full-time to university to complete an MSc in Music Technology in UL. After completing the Masters he worked for a few more years in IT for PKS/Orygen Ireland and completed a diploma in Java from the Open University. At this stage the ongoing search for work in the areas that interested him demonstrated to him that the only way to pursue his research interests in Ireland was to return to academia. Ian returned to UL to work on an E.I. funded research project in the Interaction Design Centre involving the creation of automated music composition software for video editors, and completed his PhD in the field of emotive musicology, an intersection of the psychology of emotions, cognitive musicology and software development. During this time, Ian was also editor of the IDC Newsletter, an ever-so-slightly irreverent publication reporting on IDC news and events. Ian also worked on a consultancy basis as a software developer and musicologist for the start-up company, Abaltat, which was created out of the research project. A keen musician, having attained Professional Grade on the oboe while still in his teens and been principal oboist with the Irish Youth Orchestra, Ian plays with a wind octet on a regular basis, and also plays oboe and saxophone semi-professionally for shows and musicals. In December 2008 he took up a Post Doc position with the CNGL project in the Localisation Research Centre in UL, as well as teaching the Localisation Engineering module (CS5022) of the Grad Dip in Localisation Technology.
Research Interests:
Ian’s research was initially in the area of music technology and music cognition, creating software to allow the evaluation of the emotive content of music via test subjects; how it affects the listener; if it is possible to isolate specific features that, when combined, instil certain emotions in the listener; and if these findings are universal or driven by environmental considerations. More recently, closer scrutiny of the area of automated music composition, in particular the opposing approaches of heuristics and statistical analysis, showed a striking parallel with a number of other disciplines, such as gene sequencing, speech recognition, and machine translation, and it was the latter that drew his interest to the Post Doc post in the Localisation Research Centre, as it seemed that his music generation/modification research, combined with his commercial IT experience, would dovetail nicely with the work proposed by the LOC section of the CNGL project. Ian believes that localisation can also be applied to music content itself – for commercial websites, for example – to suit the culture of the IP address of the viewer.
Career Highlights:
PhD “Creation and Investigation of an Interactive System for the Emotive Transformation of Music” – University of Limerick 2008
Diploma in Software Development using JAVA – Open University 2000
MSc in Music Technology – University of Limerick 1998
Diploma in Sound Engineering – Sound Training Centre, Dublin 1997
B.A.I. in Computer Engineering – Trinity College Dublin 1992
Professional Grade Oboe with Principals Prize – School of Music, Dublin 1990
[/su_tab] [su_tab title=”Contact”]
w: Homepage
w: Workpage
w: CNGLpage
w: LimerickWindEnsemblepage
w: Abaltat Homepage
w: Ian’s Blog
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