Gillian Quinn graduated today with a PhD from DCU. “It’s been fantastic, it’s been a long time coming, so I’m very grateful and proud to be here. It was a team effort to come to this day.”
Completing the full house of DCU degrees, Gillian Quinn graduates with a PhD in Psychology. Husband Niall Quinn and their two children already have degrees from the University. “I left school at 14 and so even to do a Leaving Cert would have been aspirational for me at that stage,” said Gillian, “So, I could never have imagined today, ever.”
The sporting family was celebrating Gillian’s success the day after Ireland’s play-off defeat in Prague. “It’s a shame we couldn’t do the double,” said Gillian. Husband Niall Quinn reflected on the positives for Irish football. “They gave us three unbelievable days out there and just missed out, but I think there’s more hope now for the future than ever.”
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Here we go! 🎓
It’s finally time for the Spring Graduation ceremonies!
The first ceremony today is celebrating graduands from the Faculty of Science and Health - we hope you have a wonderful time!
Remember to tag us in your #DCUGraduation photos today, and to keep in touch with us through dcu.ie/keepintouch 📸
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DCU Alumni Awards Profiles: Eddie Wilson is the CEO of @ryanair DAC where he has been part of the company’s dynamic and fast growth oriented senior leadership team since 1997.
From Templeogue in Dublin, Eddie was among the first students to study Business Studies at the then NIHE Dublin, specialising in HR. He initially worked in a number of human resources related positions in the financial services sector before joining computer manufacturer Gateway2000 as Human Resources manager.
Eddie joined Ryanair in 1997, a then fledgling airline with just 20 aircraft. His initial role was Head of HR, but given the company's fluid approach to management he quickly got involved in airport deals, ground handling, inflight retail, and the design and the launch of Ryanair.com.
He was subsequently promoted to Director of Inflight Operations, retaining the HR brief and taking on the day-to-day management of thousands of Inflight personnel along with a substantial retail programme.
He was appointed Chief People Officer in 2015 and was pivotal to the process of Ryanair successfully agreeing a relationship with unions in 2017, ending a period of disruption and uncertainty for the business.
He was appointed as CEO in 2019 and has led the company successfully through and out of the pandemic period, when 99% of its flights were grounded, back to a position today of carrying over 200 million passengers in 2025 confirming it as Europe's largest airline group.
Eddie likes to travel and in his spare time enjoys sea swimming, sailing, and mountain biking.
Eddie graduated from the DCU Business School @business.dcu in 1986 with a BA in Business Studies.
Congratulations Eddie! You can read more about Eddie and his fellow alumni award winners by clicking the link in our bio.
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DCU Alumni Awards Profiles: Paula Prunty is the National Operations and Planning Manager for the @ladiesgaelicfootball Association and also holds the Association’s roles of National Children’s Officer, Mandated Person and Data Protection Officer.
Hailing from Monaghan, Paula completed a BSc in Sports Science and Health in 2003 and joined the LGFA as a Games Development Officer later that year.
In 2007, she was appointed as National Games Development Manager. Over the following ten years she shaped the Association’s development strategy, established its nationwide network of Development Officers, and introduced flagship participation programmes such as Gaelic4Girls and Gaelic4Mothers&Others, with LGFA membership doubling to 190,000 in the period. Her early work in coach education and safeguarding also set lasting standards across the organisation.
Paula was appointed to her current role in 2018 and is a key member of the national senior leadership team responsible for both day-to-day operations and longer-term planning.
She is central to delivering the LGFA’s major national projects, from the LGFA Annual Congress and national fixtures to the All-Ireland Finals where attendances now regularly exceed 50,000.
She is also a driving force of the LGFA’s work to modernise governance structures, strengthen internal processes, and guide the organisation through significant change. That includes the development of planning structures and processes for use by all units of the Association.
She remains deeply involved in grassroots sport, coaching underage girls at Whitehall Colmcille, running competitively with Clonliffe Harriers and contributing her experience as a Board Member of Wicklow Local Sports Partnership.
Paula graduated from the DCU Faculty of Science and Health in 2003 with a BSc in Sports Science and Health.
Congratulations Paula! You can read more about Paula and her fellow alumni award winners by clicking the link in our bio.
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DCU Alumni Awards Profiles: Sinéad McPhillips is Secretary General of Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, a role she took up in October 2025, the first woman to hold this post.
Sinéad entered the public service as a school leaver beginning as an Executive Officer in her current department in 1986. She has also worked in the Department of Energy and as a researcher with the Association for Criminal Justice Research and Development.
Returning to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, she served in a range of roles before being appointed as the Department’s Chief Economist in 2015. From 2017 to 2023 she was Assistant Secretary General leading Ireland’s agri-food strategy and sectoral development for the meat, dairy and drinks sectors. In 2024, she became head of EU, UK and International Affairs, leading on policy negotiations at EU level, engaging with the UK and Northern Ireland on agri-food issues, and managing the Department’s overseas representation network.
Sinéad is an enthusiastic life-long learner. After completing a Bachelor’s degree while working full-time, she qualified with a Masters degree in Economics from UCD in 1995. Having worked on agriculture-related development cooperation throughout her career, she completed her DCU dissertation on how progress can be made in realising the right to food in international law.
As Secretary General, Sinéad’s objectives include supporting her 4,000 colleagues to deliver through operational excellence and innovation, building on shared values of teamwork and inclusion, and supporting Ireland’s agri-food and fisheries sector to become more resilient and sustainable - economically, environmentally and socially.
Sinéad graduated from the DCU Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in 2025 with a LLM in International Human Rights Law.
Congratulations Sinéad! You can read more about Sinéad and her fellow alumni award winners by clicking the link in our bio.
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DCU Alumni Awards Profiles: Oonagh McPhillips is Secretary General of the Department of Justice @dept_justice_ireland , the first woman in this role in the department’s 100+ year history. As its most senior civil servant, she leads an organisation of more than 4,000 people with a budget of €2.7 billion at the heart of the wider Justice sector.
Born and reared in Drumcondra, Oonagh began her civil service career directly from school in 1985 in the Department of the Environment before joining the Department of Justice in 1989. She also served as a civilian HR manager in An Garda Síochána and a junior speechwriter in Áras an Uachtaráin.
Within the Department she has served in most policy areas and as private secretary and press officer to successive Ministers. Immediately prior to becoming Secretary General, she headed up criminal justice and security and was part of the senior team who led the transformation and restructuring of the Department.
Oonagh is passionate about public service and believes in fostering leaders at every level. She herself has benefitted from being a mentee and a mentor, including on DCU’s mentorship programme. She also undertook several executive education programmes, specialising in leadership spending time at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government led Oonagh to undertake a master’s degree in DCU. In 2016 Oonagh was awarded an Eisenhower Fellowship in the USA, studying leadership and organisational culture.
Her main goals as Secretary General are strengthening capability and resilience, especially in relation to security, combatting domestic and sexual violence, advancing digital technology, and fostering a positive, effective, inclusive organisational culture.
Oonagh graduated from the DCU Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in 2010 with a MA in Political and Public Communication.
Congratulations Oonagh! You can read more about Oonagh and her fellow alumni award winners by clicking the link in our bio.
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DCU Alumni Awards Profiles: Kevin McGuigan is Professor of Medical Physics in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland @rcsi_irl and Director of the RCSI Solar Disinfection Research Group. Kevin has an illustrious track record as a teacher and as a research leader making a real difference to population health on a global scale.
A native of Drogheda, Co. Louth, on graduating from DCU with a PhD in Physics in 1989 Kevin joined the DCU School of Physics as an assistant lecturer before securing a permanent position in RCSI in 1991.
His research focuses on developing sustainable accessible water treatments, especially using solar technology, for communities in low-to-medium income countries without access to treated water supplies. He specialises in running field studies to evaluate these technologies and has conducted health impact assessments in Ethiopia, Malawi, Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Cambodia. He has also coordinated several large scale EU funded interdisciplinary projects across Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
His current SURG-Water Project, funded under the Research Ireland SDG Prize Fund, is focused on improving access to safe water for maternity wards and delivery rooms in rural healthcare facilities in Southern Malawi.
In 2013, Prof McGuigan was the recipient of the first Higher Doctorate in Science (DSc) awarded by DCU. In 2019 he was awarded the UNESCO-Equatorial Guinea International Prize Laureate for Research in the Life Sciences. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (FInstP), and has published over 100 referred articles in peer-reviewed journals.
Kevin graduated from the DCU Faculty of Science and Health in 1989 with a PhD in Physics.
Congratulations Kevin! You can read more about Kevin and his fellow alumni award winners by clicking the link in our bio.
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DCU Alumni Awards Profiles: Justin Kelly is the Garda Commissioner @gardainsta with responsibility for the overall management, direction, and operation of policing in Ireland.
A native of Dublin, he joined An Garda Síochána in 1992 and has accumulated vast experience across varied areas of policing. That includes service as a frontline Inspector in two suburban Dublin districts, with the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau and with the Garda National Protective Services Bureau.
In 2001 he was seconded to the United Nations in Bosnia Herzegovina, working to monitor and build the capacity of local Law Enforcement.
In 2020 he was appointed as Detective Chief Superintendent in the Garda Special Detective Unit, tasked with leading the Operational Counter-Terrorism Unit.
Two years later, Justin became Assistant Commissioner in charge of Serious and Organised Crime with responsibility for the national policing response in areas of drugs and organised crime, cybercrime, economic crime, immigration and crimes against vulnerable persons.
In late 2024 he was appointed as Deputy Commissioner for Security, Strategy and Governance and in September of 2025 he became the 22nd Commissioner.
In addition to his extensive experience, Justin has made a significant commitment to development through formal education. In addition to his undergraduate Bachelor in Civil Law at UCD and his MBA from DCU, he holds a Masters in Criminal Justice from the John Jay College in New York via the McCabe fellowship, a Masters of Serious Crime Investigation from the University of Limerick, and he has completed a Strategic Command Course with the College of Policing in the UK.
Justin graduated from the DCU Business School @business.dcu in 2018 with a Masters in Business Administration.
Congratulations Justin! You can read more about Justin and his fellow alumni award winners by clicking the link in our bio.
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A massive congratulations to our ten recipients that were honoured at the DCU Alumni Awards 2025! 👏
Here’s a video of just some of the highlights from this special day!
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DCU Alumni Awards Profiles: Ann Jackson is the retired former principal of the Central Remedial Clinic Special School @we_are_the_crc who spent five decades working as an educationalist, consultant and lecturer in Special Education in Ireland.
Having worked initially as a teacher, she developed an interest in emerging technologies to support students with special and additional needs.
Funded by the Department of Education, Ann set up and developed the National Technology and Special Needs Advisory service. In her role as Advisor she provided support and information to educationalists, parents, therapists, colleges, and service providers on the evolving role of Assistive Technology in education and training for students with special needs around the country.
In 2008 she returned to the teaching environment joining the CRC Special School as Principal where she worked until her retirement in 2015.
Throughout her career and into retirement, Ann did part-time lecturing, particularly in the area of Assistive Technology, in many Colleges including DCU.
She also served on many Advisory Boards and Steering Committees. She was an executive member of the Irish Association of Special Education (IATSE) for four decades and secretary of the European Association of Special Education (EASE) for two years. Both organisations provided support, CPD, and research assistance to teachers and other professionals.
After retirement Ann worked for a time as an Assessor of Home-Schooling provision for Tusla. She has done voluntary advisory work in both Kenya and Haiti. She became a Member of the CRC in 2018 and she is serving currently on the Board of the Clontarf Orthopaedic Hospital.
Ann graduated from the DCU Institute of Education @dcu_ioe in 1973 with a National Teacher Diploma, in 1977 with a Diploma in Special Education, and in 1989 with a Bachelor of Education.
Congratulations Ann! You can read more about Ann and her fellow alumni award winners by clicking the link in our bio.
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DCU Alumni Awards Profiles: Niamh Donnelly is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Akara Robotics, a company developing autonomous systems conceived and designed to improve hospital efficiency and enhance patient care through AI-powered sensing and robotics.
A life long problem solver, Niamh’s interest in robotics started with a summer school in DCU when she was just 13. She went on to study Mechanical Engineering and initially worked in web engineering before taking roles in machine learning and computer vision.
At Akara, which was founded in 2022, Niamh leads the development of the software and AI, behind solutions like the Akara AI Sensor, which uses privacy-preserving thermal vision to automatically track key events in operating and procedure rooms, and Violet, an autonomous UV-disinfection robot designed to support infection control workflows.
Niamh has built and deployed technology in healthcare systems across Europe and the United States. She is a frequent speaker on robotics, healthcare innovation, and AI governance and is strongly committed to promoting the safe and responsible deployment of AI.
Niamh has been named a European Commission Rising Innovator and is a laureate of the European Innovation Council, reflecting her leadership in Europe’s research and innovation community.
Her work has received global recognition. Akara’s technology has been featured in TIME magazine’s Best Inventions of the Year (2025), with one of the company’s creations, Stevie, a social robot deployed to work in nursing homes, also appearing on the magazine’s cover. Her work has also been profiled by Forbes, CNN, TechCrunch Disrupt, and other international media.
Niamh graduated from the DCU Faculty of Engineering and Computing in 2013 with a BEng in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering.
Congratulations Niamh! You can read more about Niamh and her fellow alumni award winners by clicking the link in our bio.
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