December 2016 ICHEC Wins at Irish Software Industry Awards

The Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC), hosted by NUI Galway, has been awarded the ISA (Irish Software Association) Software Award for ‘Outstanding Academic Achievement of the Year’.

ICHEC were recognised for their work in collaboration with researchers at the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland (RCSI) and Dublin City University (DCU) to develop rapid blood tests that measure platelet behaviour. In partnership with research teams at the RCSI and DCU in the Biomedical Diagnostics Institute (BDI), ICHEC has developed key algorithms that allow detection software to track platelets more accurately and measure their behaviour. The ICHEC team has also optimised and automated the data analysis software pipeline to deliver results in minutes.

Commenting on the win, Professor JC Desplat, Director of ICHEC, said: “I am delighted that this collaboration has been recognised by the Irish Software Association. This prestigious award is a reflection of the high impact that key partnerships between technologists, researchers and clinicians can have. It is also indicative of the high-quality stream of innovation that is coming out of our centre.”

Dr Simon Wong, project lead at ICHEC for the winning software and data analysis work, added: “It has been a pleasure for our team to work with our partners, led by Professor Dermot Kenny at the RCSI and Professor Antonio Ricco at DCU and Stanford University, on cutting edge medical diagnostics technology to improve patient care. We believe that software innovations play a critical role in the medical diagnostics industry that often brings together expertise from diverse fields of science, engineering and IT.”

The ISA Software Awards took place on Friday, 25 November in the Mansion House, Dublin. The keynote speaker for the awards was Mark Little, Vice-President of Media EMEA and Managing Director of Twitter Ireland and, founder of Storyful.

ICHEC is Ireland’s national centre for high-performance computing, with world-class expertise in the exploitation of next generation compute platforms. The centre operates the national High-Performance Computing service for academia and through industrial R&D collaboration helps bring the benefits of high-performance computing to business and industry.

ICHEC is partly funded by the Irish State through the Department of Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation and the Department of Education & Skills. It is hosted by NUI Galway, with offices in Dublin and Galway.

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