Keynote Speakers

Biography:

Cathal Gurrin (@cathal) is a Full Professor at the School of Computing, Dublin City University, deputy director and DCU institutional lead of the national ADAPT centre for Digital Content Technologies, and the Assistant Head of the School of Computing for International Engagement. The highly interdisciplinary research in Lifelogging advanced by his group integrates computer science, cognitive science and data-driven healthcare analytics to generate next-generation digital records of the individual. He is the founder and co-organiser of the ACM Lifelog Search Challenge, the NTCIR-Lifelog participation workshop and the annual Video Browser Showdown at the MMM conference. He has been the general co-chair of many high-ranking computer science conferences, such as ACM ICMR 2020, ECIR 2023, ACM MM 2025 and will be the general co-chair of ACM Web 2027 (The Web Conference). He is also the 2025 Failte Ireland Conference Ambassador of the year.

Abstract:

In recent years, supporting the Memex vision has become possible and has emerged as a new challenge and opportunity within the multimedia research community. A lifelog is a comprehensive digital record of an individual’s daily activities, captured through wearable cameras, other wearable sensors, mobile devices, and software logs. In this talk I will introduce the challenges of organising and supporting effective access to multimodal lifelogs, while also highlighting many of the promising use-cases of the technology. I will explore the progress made as a result of various international challenges, such as the ACM Lifelog Search Challenge (LSC) and highlight the evolution of lifelog retrieval techniques, system architectures, user interfaces, and evaluation methodologies developed by the community. By examining the insights gained from multiple years of progress, this talk will offer a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art in lifelog retrieval and discuss the implications for future research at the intersection of multimedia, human memory augmentation, and AI-driven personal data organisation. We will take a forward-looking perspective on the opportunities and open questions that lie ahead within this emerging field of research.