DrBrendan Spillane

Dr Brendan Spillane is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information and Communication Studies in University College Dublin (UCD) and a Funded Investigator in the Science Foundation Ireland ADAPT Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology. He completed his PhD in the School of Computer Science and Statistics in Trinity College Dublin which was focused on the impact of Bias as a dimension of Credibility on the judgement of news. After completing his PhD, he held concurrent positions as a Postdoctoral researcher on the H2020 PROVENANCE project developing tools to detect and warn users of disinformation, and a two-year Government of Ireland IRC Postdoctoral Fellowship conducting a Systematic Literature Review and Meta Analysis of credibility research to inform the design of new tools and theory to analysis disinformation.

His work is focused on Human Judgement of Information at the intersection of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Behavioural Science and Information Science. Common topics in his work include Bias, Credibility, Misinformation and Disinformation, News, and Information Security. 

Dr Spillane is the Principal Investigator of the 3-year, €4m, 18 partner Horizon Europe VIGILANT project (www.vigilantproject.eu). The exciting project, which kicked off in November 2022, will equip European Police Authorities with advanced technologies from academia to detect and analyse disinformation campaigns that are linked with criminal activities. He is also a partner in a new 3-year, €3.1m, 15 partner, Horizon Europe Research Innovation Action ATHENA project (https://project-athena.eu/) which is focused on countering Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) and disinformation which began in November 2023.