Pioneering contributions to the field of hardware security, and the youngest person ever to be inducted into the Irish Academy of Engineering
Professor Máire O’Neill is a Professor of Information Security at Queen’s University Belfast. As the youngest person ever to be inducted into the Irish Academy of Engineering, she is an inspirational figure for young female inventors.
O’Neill studied Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), later taking on a PhD. During her PhD studies, Máire worked with a university spin-out, Amphion Semiconductor Ltd. It was during this time that she developed an optimised integrated circuit design of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) which was used to provide security in set-top box chip sets. The innovation significantly improved efficiency and was successfully commercialised for industrial use.
After finishing her PhD, Máire was awarded a five-year Royal Academy of Engineering research fellowship and became a lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast. Here, she pioneered research on hardware security for electric vehicle charging systems and electronic component counterfeiting. She has also developed practical post-quantum cryptographic architectures and is leading research on security vulnerabilities in QKD systems.
At the age of 32, Máire became the youngest ever Professor of Engineering at QUB. She is currently Director of the Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) at QUB and Director of the UK-wide Research Institute in Secure Hardware and Embedded Systems (RISE).
Máire’s work has earned her numerous accolades both at home and abroad, including a Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal, a Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists and a Royal Irish Academy Gold Medal.
Máire was elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2019.
Professor Máire O’Neill FREng MRIA FIAE
