Professor Patrick McNally

Academic biography

Prof. Patrick McNally served as Head of the School of Electronic Engineering in DCU (2012-2015) and is currently Co-Director of the Nanomaterials Processing Laboratory (NPL) in DCU and is a Principal Investigator in of DCU's Advanced Processing Technology Research Centre (APT) and a Principal Investigator in Ireland's National Centre for Plasmsa Science and Technology (NCPST). He is  also a Funded Investigator in Science Foundation Ireland's Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (I-Form). He is Deputy Editor-in-Chief (Responsibility for Research Integrity, including all Comments, Replies, and Complaints) of Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics, which is published by Springer Nature. He is a member of the International Advisory Committee for the series of International Conferences on Optical and Optoelectronic Properties of Materials and Applications (ICOOPMA). 

He was a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the ANKA-ISS Synchrotron, Karlsruhe and was a member of the X-Ray Topography Workgroup for construction of the ANKA Synchrotron Beamline, Karlsruhe, Germany. Prof. McNally has authored and co-authored more than 300 scientific peer-reviewed papers in international journals and conference proceedings. He is and was Principal Researcher for numerous Science Foundation Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, EU FP6 and FP7 research programmes (e.g. ENGAGE, SmartPM, SIDAM).  He is a world leader in the field of advanced x-ray diffraction imaging technology, non-destructive radio frequency metrology for plasma processing (Radio Emission Spectroscopy) and  copper halide materials and device development. Prof. McNally holds significant IP in the area of radio emission spectroscopy and photoacoustics metrology and the photoacoustics technology was spun out of DCU leading to the establishment (2010) of a new SME, Sonex Metrology Ltd. (of which he was a founding Director, and formerly its CTO). 

Research interests

Radio Emission Spectroscopy techniquesAdvanced x-ray diffraction imaging technology.
Copper halide materials and device development.