PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Alan Smeaton

Also known as Alan F. Smeaton

Alan Smeaton is an emeritus professor at Dublin City University and a member of Ireland's AI Office board. After completing his PhD at University College Dublin, he joined DCU in 1987, co-founded TREC in 1990, and became Full Professor of Computing in 1997. He co-founded TRECVid for video retrieval in 2001 and became a founding director of Insight's data analytics centre in 2013. He received the Royal Irish Academy Gold Medal in 2016, shared the PAMI Mark Everingham Prize in 2018, and received ACM SIGMM's Technical Achievement Award in 2022.

Now at
Dublin City University and AI Office of Ireland Board
Works
828
Citations
15,355
h-index
55

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 15 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1987–1997

    Joining DCU and TREC

    After completing his PhD at University College Dublin, he joins DCU in 1987. He co-founds TREC's text-based information-retrieval activity in 1990 and becomes Full Professor of Computing in 1997.

  2. 2001

    Video retrieval at TRECVid

    He co-founds the TRECVid benchmarking campaign for video retrieval in 2001 and helps secure video content from the BBC, Sound and Vision, and the Internet Archive. Those collections become standard datasets used by many.

  3. 2013

    Founding Insight

    He becomes a founding director of the Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics, established in 2013.

  4. 2016

    A Royal Irish Academy Gold Medal

    He receives the Royal Irish Academy Gold Medal in Engineering Sciences in 2016.

  5. 2018

    The PAMI Mark Everingham Prize

    He shares the 2018 IEEE Computer Society PAMI Mark Everingham Prize with Wessel Kraaij, Paul Over, and George Awad.

  6. 2022

    An ACM SIGMM technical award

    He receives ACM SIGMM's Award for Outstanding Technical Contributions to Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications in 2022, for his work in multimedia information analysis and management.

  7. As of October 2026

    Ireland's AI Office board

    In August 2026, the government approves his appointment to the AI Office of Ireland Board, which oversees the Office's work implementing the EU AI Act. As of October 2026, he is an Emeritus Professor of Computing at DCU.

Sources and credits

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  1. DCU Water Institute - People dcu.ie. Checked 15 October 2026.
  2. Prof. Alan Smeaton - Insight insight-centre.org. Checked 15 October 2026.
  3. ACM SIGMM Award for Outstanding Technical Contributions to Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications sigmm.org. Checked 15 October 2026.
  4. Governance - Insight insight-centre.org. Checked 15 October 2026.
  5. RIA Gold Medal for DCU Academic dcu.ie. Checked 15 October 2026.
  6. George Awad Received the 2018 IEEE Computer Society PAMI Mark Everingham Prize nist.gov. Checked 15 October 2026.
  7. Minister Burke approves appointment of members to Oifig IS na hÉireann Board enterprise.gov.ie. Checked 15 October 2026.
  8. Our Board - AI Office of Ireland aioffice.gov.ie. Checked 15 October 2026.