Professor Barry McMullin received his PhD from the National University of Ireland in May 1993, for his thesis entitled Artificial Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, which deals with evolutionary methods of developing complex artificial systems. His primary research activity is in the domain of Artificial Life. He serves on the organizing committees of both the European and US conferences on Artificial Life, is a member of the Editorial board of the Artificial Life Journal, and has been a visiting researcher at the Santa Fe Institute. He is also active in the domain of accessibility of information
technology systems for users with disability. He has been an invited expert of the W3C web accessibility education and outreach group, and is a member of the Access for All Standards Consultative Committee of the National Standards Authority of Ireland. He has an extensive record of scholarly publication. His current research activities are focused on evolutionary growth of complexity, and emergence of symbolic representations, in artificial computational systems; and tools and techniques for accessibility of electronics books. From 1999-2004 Prof. McMullin served as DCU’s first Dean of Teaching and Learning. He also served as President of the All Ireland Society for Higher Education (AISHE) from 2000–2004, and he continues as a member of the editorial board of the All Ireland Journal of Higher Education (AISHE-J). He was appointed to the rank of Associate professor at DCU in September 2005; and became Director of the Rince Institute (an Irish national research centre specialising in Engineering technology innovation) in February 2010.