Willie Donnelly is the Director of the Telecommunications Software and Systems Group (TSSG) and Head of Research & Innovation at Waterford Institute of Technology. He has over 20 years experience working in the Telecommunications and Power industries as a software Engineer and project manager.  Dr. Donnelly has been at the forefront of the European Telecommunications Management research and development industry since 1989. He co-founded the Telecommunications Software & Systems Group at WIT in 1996, which has grown from 3 to 120 people and has received over €70M in competitive funding to date and created 14 spin out companies. In addition the TSSG has established a cluster of High Potential Start-up companies in mobile services at its research centre at arclabs which employs more than 80 people.  He has developed strategic research partnerships with major telecommunications companies such as Ericsson, Cisco, and Alcatel Lucent IBM.

Prof. Donnelly’s main research interest is in telecommunications Network Management with particular emphasis on Autonomic Network Management, Bio-inspired network management techniques and the challenges of managing the future internet. He is presently Principle Investigator of a major national Strategic Research Cluster, FAME, defining next generation communications solutions. He  has played a leading role in the European IST/ICT framework programme since 1989. He has a lead more than 30 European projects including SecurIST, Think-Trust and Cefims. He is the Irish National representative on the Future Internet Member States Forum.  He is the Irish member of the EU Future Internet Forum and chair of the Irish Future Internet Forum.