Professor Máire O’Neill is widely regarded as one of Europe’s leading cryptography experts and the inventor of a high-speed silicon security chip that is used in more than 100 million TV set-top boxes. Her current work focuses on the design of novel security solutions for communications applications.

She is Director of CSIT and The Research Institute in Secure Hardware and Embedded Systems (RISE), as a Professor in the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Queen’s and serves on the Responsible AI UK leadership team.

She previously held a UK EPSRC Leadership Fellowship (2008-2014), a UK Royal Academy of Engineering research fellowship (2003-2008) and led the €3.8M EU H2020 SAFEcrypto (Secure architectures for Future Emerging Cryptography) project (2014-2018).

She has received numerous awards which include a 2024 Royal Irish Academy Gold Medal, a Blavatnik Engineering and Physical Sciences medal, 2019, and a Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal, 2014. She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a member of the Royal Irish Academy and Fellow of the Irish Academy of Engineering.