Niamh Donnelly has always been determined. As a teen the Dubliner persuaded her parents to let her change school in 5th year to one which, her own research indicated, had a strong reputation for maths and physics, the two subjects she loved.
After her Leaving Cert in 2008 she studied mechanical engineering at DCU, one of only two females in her class. “It was tough to fit in so we stuck together. We’re still friends,” says Donnelly.
In her downtime she taught herself to write code, via YouTube, enjoying it so much that when she graduated she signed up for Springboard, a six-month conversion course. “It’s a really good course for people coming from a different background who want to get into software development,” she explains.
That led to an IT management role with Etsy, the crafts platform. “It’s a really great company to work for. Because I was managing the IT teams there was loads of travel to New York, San Fransisco, Berlin, Paris and London. I loved Etsy and learned so much about how important diversity is to a team,” she says.
Outside of work she had developed an interest in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) so, after two years at her job, she left to pursue it further, taking a Masters Degree in AI and ML at UCD. That led to a job working with a consultancy, but again, she knew what she wanted.
“I had an urge to work at a start-up and to be part of something from the ground up. At Etsy you’d hear a lot about the small team who had started this huge company and I really wanted to be a part of that,” she explains.
Delivery robots and driverless cars were then emerging. “I knew a robotics start-up was what I wanted,” she says.
Some of the most interesting work in the field was coming out of Trinity College Dublin. She joined the start-up Akara Robotics just as it was spinning out of the university and becoming a commercial entity.
“The team was working on a social robot called Stevie but hadn’t implemented the AI and ML much yet, so my work was to build out his autonomous functionality,” she explains.
As we move through to the next phase of the pandemic, we will bring with us a renewed appreciation for innovation
As co-founder and director of AI and machine learning at Akara Robotics, Donnelly began with on the ground research, moving full-time into a nursing home in the US to live with and study how residents interacted with Stevie, gathering feedback from them, and from staff, about the ways in which social robots could assist care home staff.
“It was really fascinating. With aging populations there are a decreasing number of young people and problems finding care workers. There simply aren’t enough. A lot of a care worker’s time is spent running things like bingo, when they could be interacting with people on a one-to-one basis. We found Stevie is a fun way to run games and quizzes,” she says.
“We also found that when Stevie is around he is a great catalyst for group interaction. He brings people together and brings a lot of people out of their shells.”
Such was the US interest in Stevie that he featured on the cover of Time magazine, one of only a handful of Irish 'people' to have ever done so.
Donnelly was busy researching dialogue systems for Stevie, to boost his conversational skills, when the pandemic struck. Immediately the team at Akara responded to the global crisis by looking for a way to help. What caught their attention first was disinfectant systems.
“Nursing homes are hard places to clean, with lots of soft fabrics and visitors coming in and out,” she explains. What’s more, Covid-19 meant that hospital treatment rooms, such as those which hold CT scanners, now needed to be so thoroughly disinfected between patients that it was drastically reducing the number of patients who could use them.
“We began looking at ultraviolet (UV) light disinfectant and developed a new robot, called Violet, who moves autonomously around a room and can clean it 10 times faster,” she explains. Violet is currently being piloted in an Irish hospital.
Donnelly believes that as we move through to the next phase of the pandemic, we will bring with us a renewed appreciation for innovation.
“Innovation is something we underestimate the importance of a lot of the time. The pandemic showed us its importance as we all turned to so many start-ups for new ideas to help, even with things like video conferencing. We really leaned on technology,” she points out.
“At Akara we are always looking to the future, whether it’s a shortage of care workers in nursing homes or a need to improve disinfectants. Afterall, prior to the pandemic, the disinfectant systems in use were the same ones used in the flu pandemic of 1918. We saw a better way of doing things. That’s what it’s all about at Akara - making the future better.”
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