Our people - Tomas Mac Eochagain

Dr Tomás Mac Eochagáin is Director of Academic Programmes for Griffith College. Tomás is a member of the college’s management board and board of directors.

Tomás is an engineering scholar from Trinity College.  He graduated from the university with a BA degree in Mathematics and a BAI degree in Engineering specialising in software engineering.  He later obtained a first class master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from UCD.  In his early career he worked as a software engineer in the US and later in Shannon with Westinghouse Electric.  This work involved the design and specification of large network data capture and control systems for power utilities.   He spent five years working as a senior professional engineering with ESB on international consultancy projects relating to the design and computer simulation of national high voltage systems for Ireland, Saudi Arabia and Lesotho.   He then moved to Landis & Gyr, a Swiss Engineering firm to work on the expert system simulation projects.  During this period, Tomás was an active member of Ireland’s Computer Services Association, then part of IBEC.

Tomás joined Griffith College to establish the College’s academic programmes, starting with the B.Sc. in Computing Science.  As Director of Academic Programmes, he was responsible for designing and securing approval for the Computing Faculty’s undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.  He was appointed by Enterprise Ireland along with a representative of the university and IOT sectors to design funded computing science programmes to fill the shortfall in graduate provision.  This resulted in the College and other higher education institutions securing state funding for computing students for a period of ten years.   

Tomás has been responsible for various teaching initiatives throughout the College, such as the creation of the College’s Teaching and Learning Centre and more recently the formalisation of its research activities.  He was a member of HETAC’s and later QQI’s programme accreditation committee for over ten years.  Tomás chairs the College’s IT Committee with responsibility for the ongoing development of the College’s software and hardware infrastructures.  He retains his interest in computing, completing a doctorate in education in 2015 on the development of online bounded knowledge domains to support mathematics students.