Ronan Farrell is a Principal Investigator at CONNECT in Maynooth University.

He is a Senior Lecturer and is currently the Head of Department for Electronic Engineering at Maynooth University. Dr. Farrell’s background is in the area of physical layer radio technologies and microelectronics. He has a specific focus on the issues around digitally-enhanced RF circuits, RF frontend electronics, and the enabling technologies for active antennas and Massive-MIMO.

In 2004, he became a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) theme leader for radio frequency electronics research within the Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain Driven Research (CTVR) and remains active in the SFI CONNECT Centre where his activities are focussed on RF systems. In 2008 he became a strand co-leader for sensors networks in an SFI Cluster on advanced Geotechnologies with a focus on wide area wireless sensor networks and smart cities.

Ronan has published over a hundred peer-reviewed papers. He holds three patents, one of which has formed the basis of a spinout company, Socowave. He is highly interested in innovation and knowledge transfer. He has won several national and university awards for his commercialisation activities. In addition to his university activities, Ronan has served on a number of national committees on innovation. More recently he was a co-founder of the Dublin Region Data-Sharing Innovation Network (Dublinked) of which he was the co-ordinator from 2011-2015 and helped drive its activities in open-data and smart-city activities.