Hamilton Institute


The Hamilton Institute is a multi-disciplinary research centre at Maynooth University, named after William Rowan Hamilton, arguably Ireland's most distinguished mathematician.
The Hamilton Institute was formally established in November 2001 under the first round of funding, by Science Foundation Ireland. It was officially opened by Bill Harris, SFI Director-General with the inaugural lecture being given by Kevin Warwick. Since 2001 the institute has grown in size to around 45 full-time researchers in 2008. From 2001 until 2014 the institute Director was Prof. Douglas Leith. In 2015, Prof. Ken Duffy became the Institute's director. In this period the institute has been successful in winning a number of large research grants, in addition to the original seed funding grant from SFI, including the €4.7M National Communications Network Research Centre, a €2.5M Systems Biology initiative, the €2.7M Next Generation Internet project, the National Biophotonics Platform and the €2.2M Network Mathematics initiative. The institute is also a partner in the €5.8M SFI funded FAME strategic research cluster announced in 2009.
The Hamilton Institute's stated aim is to provide a bridge between mathematics and its applications in ICT and biology. It has organised a number of high profile inter-disciplinary workshops including a successful series of biannual International Workshops on Non-negative Matrices & Their Applications, and a series of International Workshops on Systems Biology. The Hamilton Institute has also hosted workshops such as the International Symposium on Positive Systems and International Workshop on Multiple Access Communications.
The Hamilton Institute robotic soccer team were Robocup World Champions in 2008, and have regularly fielded Robocup teams since.