Etain Kiely
Senior Lecturer in Mathematics & Statistics at Atlantic Technological University, Galway. My career has developed across three connected strands: teaching and student success, research and innovation, and building the programmes and systems that allow both to work at scale.
How do we help people become capable learners and judges?
Over more than two decades in Sligo and Galway, that question has moved from classroom teaching, through learning analytics and intelligent assessment, into programme design, research supervision, policy, AI governance and community-based experimentation.
Noticing Maths is the public expression of that career arc: mathematics as a way to pay attention, build evidence and exercise judgement.
Build competence. Listen early. Act on what you learn.
The first-year mathematics environment has been iteratively redesigned over a decade: mastery-based practice, learner-facing feedback, student voice and increasingly sophisticated evidence about how learning unfolds.
Mastery practice, learner-facing feedback and early support have been refined across successive cohorts.
Large Science and Computing mathematics cohorts make scalability part of the educational problem.
Student voice is gathered while there is still time to change the learning experience.
Design the conditions around learning.
Programme leadership has ranged from online biopharma and enquiry-based curriculum redesign to computational mathematics, integrated Masters design and university-wide accessibility infrastructure.
Mathematics, AI & Quantum Computing pathway
Cross-campus development linking mathematical reasoning, computing, AI and quantum technologies, with access, placement and mobility designed into the pathway.
BComp Computational Mathematics
Co-led with Dr Ian McLoughlin, connecting undergraduate mathematics with computational and research pathways.
Reasonable accommodations infrastructure
Co-developed institutional policy and automated communication infrastructure supporting more than 2,000 students across disability categories.
Biopharma, enquiry-based learning & staff development
Online programme development with RCSI/NIBRT; enquiry-based redesign; validation work; and postgraduate education mentoring for colleagues.
From project to institutional capability.
Across education, analytics and health-related research, the portfolio includes substantial Principal Investigator-led and collaborative funding, alongside cross-institutional and international work.
REAL Analytics
Co-led across faculties and institutional services; HEA national progression exemplar in 2026.
MOCHAS
Postgraduate researcher training and doctoral capability building across multiple ATU campuses.
Clinical AI
Co-supervision and time-series analytics for Type 1 diabetes with HEAL / Sligo collaborators.
From apprenticeship to critical friend.
The supervision approach begins with structure and support, then deliberately transfers intellectual authority to the researcher as their judgement develops.
Across PhD, postdoctoral, research Masters and Masters of Education work.
Alongside postdoctoral supervision and current doctoral researchers across education and applied AI.
Students teach, publish, work with editors and move toward a critical-friend supervisory relationship.
Recognition matters when it points back to useful work.
Awards are included here as evidence of external peer/student recognition rather than as the organising story of the site.
International, national, local.
Professional work spans international mathematics/analytics networks, national policy and evaluation, and community projects where mathematical ideas are made public and participatory.
International
ABACUS mathematics consortium, EU GREEN connections, SURF research infrastructure, LAK and international education conferences.
National
HEA progression work, StudentSurvey.ie, QQI evaluation, sector learning-analytics resources, BT Young Scientist and SciFest engagement.
Community
REAL Living Lab, Annaghdown Community Garden, My World, maths-anxiety outreach and public-facing mathematical experiences.
Bring a good question.
I welcome collaboration around mathematics education, learning analytics, intelligent assessment, human-centred AI, research supervision and REAL Living Lab.
Academic rigour, made useful.
The point of the portfolio is not to make one person look accomplished. It is to make the intellectual through-line visible: mathematics, evidence and humane systems used to widen people’s capacity to understand and act.