RTI – Defence Organisation
Comdt Jay O’Reilly
DefOrg Liaison
Principal Researchers

Tim McCarthy (TMcC)
Earth Observation, Drones & Geocomputation

John McDonald (JMcD)
AI, Robotics, Computer Vision & SLAM

Stephanie Keogh (SK)
CoPilot Team Coordination

Charles Markham (CM)
Computing, Vision Systems,  Modelling, Instrumentation

Rozenn Dahyot (RD)
AI, Machine Learning, Visualisation, Mathematics

Rowan Fealy (RF)
Climate Modelling, Land-Atmosphere Interactions

John Dooley (JD)
Wireless Communications

Lars Pforte (LP)
Mathematical Modelling

Research Team

Postdoc (Data Fusion) Postdoc (ML) Geospatial Web Developer App Developer
Airborne/Drone Operations Team

DroneSAR (Leo Murray)
Drones for Emergency Response

GeoAerospace (Fearghus Foyle)
Advanced Aerial/Drone Mapping & Monitoring


The Maynooth University (MU) interdisciplinary team comprises seven principal researchers, recognised nationally/internationally as leaders in their respective research fields; Earth Observation, Drones, Computer Vision, Robotics, Machine Learning (ML), Electronic Engineering, Mathematics and Climate/Weather disciplines. The team will work closely with the DefOrg Liaison Officer during both Concept and Seed phases of the project. The MU team have met and discussed this project over past number of weeks and members are already actively collaborating on various R&D projects, inside/outside the University, in areas which are directly relevant to the proposed research areas detailed in this submission. The principal researchers will be supported (secondments/new recruits) by 2 X Postdocs (ML & Data Fusion) as well as 2 X Geospatial Web/App Developers. Two external Irish-based Aerial/Drone Technology Startups, have made contact and wish to join the team and collaborate in this project, taking part in a real wildfire event and support field-based Drone Operations and advanced aerial mapping & monitoring R&D.