new methods and formats to encourage meaningful consumer and audience participation in the production, consumption and interpretation of design.

Current research includes managing and coordinating the Task Furniture in Education (TFE) project, a €1.33 million Marie Curie FP7 research project, since 2012. He is also the Principal Investigator for two recent Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Fund projects, with funding totaling in excess of €250k.

He co-founded the Claystation design collective, and his creative and research work has been exhibited at numerous international venues including Designers Block Milan, ICFF New York, 100% Design London, IMM Cologne, London Architecture Biennale, and INDEX: Copenhagen.

He has a proven track record of developing and managing projects, including designing installations for ‘The Scottish Show’ at The Lighthouse, Scotland’s Centre for Architecture, Design and the City, Glasgow and MUDAC, Lausanne, curating and designing ‘Remodelling Home’, an exhibition commissioned by Sust, the Programme for Sustainable Architecture, Architecture + Design Scotland, and designing an innovative seating range for Outgang.

A member of the Institute of Designers in Ireland, he has written, edited and contributed to a number of books and publications including ‘Product Design’ (Laurence King, 2011), ‘Thinking Inside the Box, a reader for Interior Design in the 21st Century’ (Middlesex University Press, 2007) and ‘Phaidon Design Classics’ (Phaidon, 2005). His most recent book ‘Research Methods for Product Design’ co-authored with Paul Rodgers will be published by Laurence King in October 2013.

He is an external examiner at a number of UK universities, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Plymouth. Alex is also the Conference Chair for the Cumulus Dublin 2013 conference, entitled ‘More for Less – Creativity in an Age of Austerity’.

before retiring from NCAD in 2013.

He was awarded a National University of Ireland PhD in 2004 for his research into Seating Design for Orchestral Musicians. His design research interests are broad but his particular research activity is in the area of practice-based research in the design and development of task seating. He worked as an Industrial Design consultant before joining NCAD in 1987 and between 1993 and 1999 he was the co-founder of and a partner in OMOS Ltd, design consultancy.

He has won many awards for his work including the 1998 Institute of Designers in Ireland – Designer of the Year, and taught industrial design as a visiting lecturer and presented research papers in various institutes in Ireland, Europe and the USA. He has acted as External Examiner for the Degree in Wood Technology at Letterfrack GMIT and External Examiner for the Degree in Industrial Design at Carlow, Institute of Technology. From 2007 to 2011, he was the co-academic coordinator of the Cumulus network on behalf of NCAD.

Since completing his PhD he was involved in a number of initiatives associated with the development of postgraduate studies including the establishment of The Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM). He was an Associate Fellow of GradCAM, developed the User-First Design research agenda at NCAD, and was a member of the Executive Committee of the National Digital Research Centre. In 2009 he was appointed acting Head of the Department of Industrial Design at NCAD. Dr. Ó Conchubhair has published several papers and his work has been exhibited widely.

involved investigating the world of games and the older adult. In January 2011 she began her Phd studies with the TFE research group.

Research Interests
Caoimhe is excited by the possibilities of participatory design and is looking forward to working in a multidisciplinary team with academic and industry partners from around the world.

In 2009 Brian joined Designing Dublin, an independent learning initiative that looked to effect change through multidisciplinary teams and design methodologies in a city environment. Over a two year period, he worked firstly as a team member, collaborating as part of a large interdisciplinary team, and later as a team leader, helping to lead a second team through a six month project that involved engaging, concepting and prototyping with established communities in Dublin’s inner city. During this time Brian developed a deep understanding of group facilitation, alternative design methods, stakeholder management, ethnographic research and community identity.

In 2011 Brian was selected as a fellow with Design Impact who partnered him with the NGO Manav Sadhna, situated in the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, India. For six months, he worked with Earn n Learn, a programme that provides local children with an alternative source of labour and education. Brian’s goal was to strengthen the identity of the programme. As part of his strategy, he engaged the children and programme co-ordinators with a set of creative processes that enabled them to explore and connect the different pieces of Earn n Learn, resulting in an increased sense of ownership and clearer sense of self.

In addition to his work with Earn n Learn, Brian hosted a short fellowship programme in the Gandhi Ashram as part of the Unbox festival and exhibited work in Delhi.

for more natural, physical and social free play, moving the focus away from screen based interaction. Since graduating Emma has been working as a freelance creative on a variety of projects including digital media design and development, research, design and development of a concept for an educational mobile app, self-led research and writing on the subject of play and technology, freelance writing for an online social media site, website development and graphic design for print. During this time Emma has also given talks and has presented and exhibited her interactive work at several events. Since graduating she continued her research on the subject of her Masters dissertation and in the summer of 2010 presented a short paper and poster of this work at the International Interaction Design and Children Conference in Barcelona.

Research Interests
Emma’s main research interest is on the subject area of play and it’s importance in the lives of both children and adults alike. This research interest is driven by the decline in free play today. The main focus of her research to date has been the investigation of open-ended play materials and music making as a way of encouraging free play. Emma is currently interested in the importance of encouraging play and creativity among children as a part of learning, beyond early childhood education. She is also interested in collaboration, movement and tangible interaction as ways of supporting more engaged learning.

Her master thesis in lighting design was published in Italian Design Magazine Case Da Abitare, October 2008 and then the prototype, created by La Murrina of Murano, debuted at EUROLUCE 2009 as part of the Salone Internazionale dei Mobili in 2009 and 2010. Previous experience includes working for NEST in workspace, retail and resort planning interior design in Milan Italy, interior and furniture design in London, and corporate office space design and management in Tampa FL. In 2009 Kelli was sole designer and project manager for a 2.3 million dollar “green” renovation of a 1960s warehouse into Class A office space in Tampa. She was recognized by Tampa Mayor, Pam Iorio, as an influential individual in the City of Tampa ‘Green City’ Initiative in 2010. As an avid painter and social justice advocate she is involved in many community and charity arts initiatives in the UK and USA. She believes strongly in the power of arts in education, community growth and sustainability. Kelli is passionate about investing time and energy into the research design and development of more positive, healthy learning environments and furnishings with lifelong positive consequences on health, performance, learning and behavior.

products to be used in dialysis units. He has also experience in teaching both English and Product Design. His research interests in interaction carry on from his work done in DHS and his experience in the classroom. The introduction of new technologies and resources help both the teacher and the student to teach and learn in different ways. This development in student teacher interaction in the classroom is something that Conor will be focusing on in his MA. The opportunity for a more inclusive and student led classroom environment has huge scope for the development of the physical surroundings in the classroom, this will led to a more user centred designed environment.

a newborn bassinet, with it’s target company, Bloom, who propose to bring the design to market. She has also been working freelance, developing a gift line of products for Chicco, another leading baby products company. Natalie’s research interest stems from her experience in industry, which entailed designing spaces for people. This will be the focus, in relation to her core interest in emotional design. With these interests combined, Natalie will be focusing on Architectural spaces to improve educational outcome.

The subject of her master thesis was the impacts of an stochastic resonance training on the gait abilities of an patient with an incomplete spinal cord injury. After graduating, Susanne gained practical work experience in the areas of sitting and complexity. Beside posture, ergonomics and complexity of sitting her main researsch areas are among others Parkinson’s Desease, multiples sclerosis, Motor Neuron Disease, neuropathy, spinal cord injury, postural control, locomotion and gait ability, muscular ability of activation, electromyographics, stochastic resonance therapy (SRT) , vibrationtraining, differential gait therapie  and self- directed movement theraphy.

Research Interests

• complexity of sitting, posture, ergonomics, learning environment and behavoir of children in schools
• the evaluation of an optimal “Signal to Noise Ration” in case of differential learning
• training of behaviour of neurological patients
• clinical and biomechanical analysis of postural controlmechanisms of Parkonson’s Desease
• conventional and recent methods of gait analysis of neurological desease patterns
• impacts of motor- driven trainings-stimuli on the manual motion control in centralnerval disorders
• analysis of the effects of mechanical vibration stimuli on the postural control in Parkinson’s Desease
• effects of SR-stimuli on spinal cord injurys
• adaption of MS patients to motoric training stimuli
• interaction of propriozeptive and coordinative performance of athletes
• interaction of propriozeptive and coordinative performance in Parkinson’s Desease
• analysis of the effects of mechanical vibration stimuli on motor- driven symptoms (UPDRS Motor Score) in Parkinson’s Desease
• evaluation of strategies of rehabilitation of spinal cord injury patients