Professor Vinny Wade, director of the ADAPT Centre, issued the following statement about Professor Seamus Lawless on May 24, 2019: "I am so sorry to report that the search for Shay has been unsuccessful. While the experienced search team has made every effort to locate Shay, the extremes of operating at high altitude and the sheer range of the search area ultimately proved too difficult and based on expert advice the Lawless family have decided to call off the search rather than risk endangering anyone's life in the treacherous conditions.
"The tragic death of our friend and colleague, Séamus (Shay) Lawless, has come as a huge shock to all of us. On behalf of everyone at Trinity College Dublin and ADAPT, I want to offer our condolences to his wife, Pam, and their daughter, Emma, and to his large family, all his friends, students and colleagues.
'Enormous legacy'
"At ADAPT we are mourning the loss of one of our rising research stars, an inspirational colleague, and a much loved and valued member of our family. Shay’s legacy is enormous. An expert in information retrieval, his peer-reviewed publications, his supervision of cutting-edge doctoral research, and his leadership of internationally acclaimed research projects have transformed the boundaries of the discipline.
"As a colleague and as a friend, Shay’s enthusiasm, his creativity and his approach to his work was inspirational. In the months ahead we will gather to pay tribute to his remarkable scholarship and his contribution to ADAPT and Trinity College Dublin and it will be an opportunity for friends and colleagues to remember someone who will never be forgotten. We are heartbroken at this news and will be making no further statement at this time. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis."
About Professor Séamus Lawless
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Prof Séamus Lawless[/caption]
A rising research star internationally, Prof Séamus Lawless was assistant professor at Trinity College Dublin, principal investigator (PI) at the
ADAPT Centre, and a leading researcher.
He headed up the research in personalised information retrieval and within the School of Computer Science at Trinity, he took responsibility for the suite of taught master's programmes in computer science.
Passionate about education and teaching, Prof Lawless graduated with a gold Mmdal for his first class degree (BSc) in computer science and was also awarded a PhD as well as a postgraduate diploma in Statistics from Trinity College Dublin.
He had successfully supervised 10 PhD students to completion. Appointed an Ussher Assistant Professor in Intelligent Digital Content in 2012 he received accelerated promotion, and led a team of international research fellows, postdocs and postgraduate students.
Prof Lawless led multiple European and national research projects and was pioneering research in digital humanities as the co-PI on projects such as Beyond 2022, a project which aims to digitally recreate the Public Record Office of Ireland, destroyed in 1922.
Internationally respected for his innovative and groundbreaking research, Prof Lawless's personalised multimodal interaction for information retrieval and exploration had won numerous awards and was shaping the field.
He had published more than 100 scientific papers in international journals and conferences, had been nominated for many innovation, teaching and research excellence awards, and had won several best paper scientific awards in international scientific conferences.
Prof Lawless had also been responsible for many highly successful industry collaborations including work with Ryanair focused on next-generation recommender systems.