Dr Cathal Gurrin (@cathal) is an Associate Professor at the School of Computing, at Dublin City University, deputy head of the School of Computing, and a co-investigator at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics and the Adapt centre. Gurrin leads a group of ten researchers dedicated to developing assistive technologies using wearable sensors and data analytics. The highly interdisciplinary approach advanced by his group, "lifelogging", integrates computer science, cognitive science and data-driven healthcare analytics to generate next-generation digital records of the individual. The basic idea is to provide a non-invasive, secure and privacy-preserving personal big data archive monitoring and analysing the individual continuously, with a wide-range of positive applications.

He has secured research funding of over €5.2M (from Irish, EU and other international sources), co-authored patents with Samsung, licensed technologies to Irish startups, mentored new technology companies and has graduated 11 PhDs and supervised numerous MSc dissertations. He has a Google H-index of 37 from over 5,000 citations to his research works, and he is the co-author of ‘Lifelogging, Personal Big Data’, 2014. In addition, he co-organises the QS meetup in Dublin and regularly speaks at major international events such as the Global Quantified-Self Conference and partner-events. He is the founder and co-organser of the Lifelog Search Challenge at ICMR, the NTCIR-Lifelog participation workshop and the ImageCLEF lifelog task. Finally he has been the general chair of many high-ranking computer science conferences, such as ECIR 2011 & MMM 2014, ACM ICMR 2020 and he has been the general co-chair of MB2016 & MMM2017, CBMI 2019, and will be the general co-chair of MMM 2022, ECIR 2023 and TPC co-chair of MMM'23. He holds position on numerous editorial boards and conference steering committees.


Ongoing Academic and Outreach Activities (Feb 2022)



Research Team (Feb 2022)
  • Dajung Jung, RA, Ai-mediated social interaction
  • Manoj Kesavalu, PhD Student, Software Engineering
  • Khiem Tu Le, PhD Student, Deep Lifelog Systems
  • Tu Van Ninh, PhD Student, VR-mediated Health Interventions
  • Ahmed Alateeq, PhD Student, Spoken Interactive Interfaces
  • Ly Duyen Tran, PhD Student, Interactive Lifelog Retrieval
  • Duy Manh Nguyen, PhD Student, Personal Knowledge Graphs
  • Nhu Nguyen Thao, PhD Student, Lifelog Systems
  • Mai Boi Quach, PhD Student, Lifelog Systems
  • Naushad Alam, PhD Student, Lifelog Systems
  • Onanong Kongmeesub, PhD Student, Information Logging
  • Aaron Duane, Adjunct Postdoctoral Researcher, HCI



Current and Recent Professional Activities Summary (2010 onwards)


Recent TPC Memberships (2016 to 2021)
  • WSDM 2021, PC Member
  • MMM2021, PC Member
  • IAIT 2020, PC Member
  • ACM SIGIR 2020, PC Member(s)
  • AH 2020, PC Member
  • ACM MM 2020, Senior PC
  • ICMR 2020, PC Member
  • IJCAI-PRICAI 2020, PC Member
  • ECIR 2020, Senior PC Member
  • MMM 2020, PC Member
  • SITIS 2019, PC Member
  • EPIC 2019, PC Member
  • ICME 2019, , PC Member
  • ACII 2019, Reviewer
  • ACM MM 2019, Senior PC Member
  • ACM ICMR 2019, PC Member
  • MMM 2019, PC Member
  • ECIR 2019, Senior PC Member
  • ACM ICMR 2019, PC Member
  • DPH 2019, PC Member
  • SITIS 2018, PC Member
  • ACM ICMR 2018, PC Member
  • HUM 2018, PC Member
  • DH 2018 , PC Member
  • PRCM 2018, PC Member
  • ISCW2018, PC Member
  • MMM 2018, PC Member
  • SAC-IAR 2-18, PC Member
  • HUM 2018, PC Member
  • AH 2018, PC MemberDH2018, PC Member
  • ACM SIGIR 2018, PC and SPC Member
  • ECIR 2018, PC Member
  • MMM 2018, PC Member, VBS Co-chair
  • ICME 2018, PC Member
  • MMHealth 2017, PC Member and co-organiser
  • AH 2017, PC Member
  • DH 2017, PC Member
  • JCDL 2017, PC Member
  • CBMI 2017, PC Member
  • LTA2017, Co-Organiser and PC Member
  • SAC-IAR 2017, PC Member
  • ACM SIGIR 2017, PC Member and Workshops PC Member
  • ECIR2017, PC Member
  • ACM ICMR 2017, PC Member
  • MMM2017 PC Member and co-General Chair
  • AH 2016, PC Member
  • ACM SIGIR 2016, PC Member
  • DH2016, PC member.
  • CVU 2016, PC Member
  • ICME 2016, PC member
  • ACM CHI 2016, PC Member
  • DH 2016, PC Member
  • HealthWare 2016, PC Member
  • ICMR 2016, PC member
  • SAC-IAR 2016 PC Member
  • IRLLD 2016, Chair, PC Member
  • ECIR 2016, Senior PC Member
  • HealthRecSys 2016, PC Member
  • MMM 2016, PC Member, Demos Chair
  • Pervasive Computing 2016, PC Member


Editorial and Review Boards
  • Information Processing & Management (15-...)
  • World Wide Web Journal (13-...)
  • IEEE Transactions on Multimedia Review Panel (11-..)
  • International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction (09-..)
  • MultiMedia Tools and Applications Review Panel (08-..)
  • Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK (2011)
  • NWO: Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, Expert Reviewer (2010)


Recent Invited Talks & Keynotes (2013 onwards)
  • “Beyond Quantified Self - The Promise of Lifelogging as an Assistive Technology”. Keynote talk at HealthWear2016, Budapest, Hungry, 14th June 2016.
  • “Lifelogging - Personal Data for Human Measurement”. Keynote at MB2016, the 10th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research, Dublin, Ireland, 26th May 2016.
  • “Lifelogging - Surrogate Memories and Recorded Lives”. Invited talk at Hochschule Luzern‎, Luzern, Switzerland, 15 May 2016.
  • “Personal Data, beyond Facebook and Instagram”. Invited talk at Irish Distillers, Dublin, Ireland. October 2015.
  • “Lifelogging, a new era of Personal Data”. Invited talk at BioHackers Summit 2015, Helsinki, Finland. September 2015
  • “Extreme Personal Data”. Invited Seminar at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. August 2015.
  • “Tracking your Life - Self Quantification & Endless Data”. Invited talk at EnterConf 2015, Belfast, Ireland. June 2015
  • “15 Million Image Lifelog - Thoughts and Experiences”. Invited speaker at the Quantified Self Global Meetup, San Francisco, CA. June 2015
  • “Lifelogging - Data Challenges”. Invited talk at National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland. May 2015
  • “Lifelogging - Challenges and Opportunities for a New Era of Personal Data”. Invited Seminar at Reykjavik University, Iceland. May 2015.
  • “Lifelogging - The Era of Archived Lifetimes”. Evening Lecture at the Science Gallery, Dublin, Ireland. March 2015.
  • “Lifleogging and the Internet of Me”. Invited Speech at IGQIE 2014, Dublin, Ireland. November 2014
  • “Lifelogging - A New Big Data Challenge”. EU Delegation to Japan, Tokyo, Japan. November 2014
  • “Play, Pause, Rewind - The Era of Archived Lifetimes”. Invited Speaker at Mayo2040, Mayo, Ireland. November 2014.
  • “Lifelogging - Data Analytics for the Individual”. Keynote talk at VadConext 2014, Lille, France. Octover 2014
  • “Lifelogging, a technical Summary”. Invited talk at the University of Tsukuba, Japan, June 2014
  • “Lifelogging, creating The Personal Digital Assistant”. Invited talk at NII, Tokyo, Japan. June 2014
  • “Gathering and Organising Lifelogs, A new information retrieval challenge”. Invited talk at the University of Kyoto, Japan, May 2014
  • “Personal Life Archives: Challenges and Opportunities”. Invited talk at USCD, CA, 14 Nov 2013.
  • “Lifelog, an Awareness Engine”. Invited talk at the Ubiquitous Computing group, UCSD, CA, 12 Nov 2013.
  • “Lifelog Semantics from Wearable Computing”, Invited talk at ISTAS 2013, Toronto, Canada, June 2013.
  • “Experiences of a LifeLogger: Tasks and Challenges”, Keynote talk at: Lifelong User Modelling workshop at UMAP 2013, Rome, Italy. 14th June 2013.
  • “Personal Sensing and Lifelogging: Little-big data”, Invited talk at University of Tromso, Tromso, Norway. 10th June 2013.
  • “Seven Years of Lifelogging: Experiences and Solutions”, Invited Speaker at Quantified Self EU 2013, Amsterdam, Netherlands. 12th May 2013.
  • “Lifelogging: An Information Retrieval Challenge”, Invited talk at RMIT, Melbourne, Australia. 19th April 2013.



Recent Press Coverage (2011 onwards


Recent Videos