Michael  initiated the Higher Diploma in Applied Science(Modelling & Numerical Computing) in 1991,  recruited an able co-director in Diarmuid O Riordan and jointly directed the course until the early noughties.  Our internal application for being included in the 98/99 program and the external advertisement for candidates give a succinct overview. The course was subsequently morphed into a master's program and continues to this day.

Youthful  witness to what seemed to be an never-ending series of formulaic mathematical manoeuvers underpinning (resp. )method for particular(resp. complimentary) solutions to elliptic field equations inculcated a determination to avoid the same.

A   on the subject concluded that the main difficulty incurred whilst investigating the method was undoubtedly the amount of tedious algebra involved.

Continuum mechanics with a focus on solid propellants provided a  diametrically opposite career path in the USA and ultimate return to UCC. In a related lecture on at Champagne-Urbana, the sponsor's computer guru told of noisy arguments preceding the  release of Mathematica 1.0.

A dormant subliminal familial interest resurfaced on realizing that it should be possible to write programs in Mathematica that write the formulae intensive procedures needed  to implement both the λ and edge function methods. The succession of Mathematica releases from version 2 has more than confirmed that expectation.  

The software system Easytrim has been under yearly license to Analog Devices since 1996.   The legacy Fortran constructs used in Easytrim were  updated to take full advantage of modern Fortran. The software system Easytrim 2 is a shared library that services a client system at the binary level through exported C functions. A Java(resp. Mathematica )client that accesses  these exports using the Java Native Interface(resp. WSTP) protocol were developed.  The original version of Easytrim with an xWindows user interface was replaced by Easytrim 2 and its Java based user interface in 2004.
The company engaged in the design of thin films resistors with a distribution of floats that achieve a set of preassigned voltages.  A float is a contact whose net current rather than voltage is prescribed. The overall solution has to be determined before the float voltage is known. The distribution of floats had to be adequately separated and have current densities on their surfaces less than prescribed values.
The shared library was extended to deal with floats. The presence of a number of floats results in that number of extra right hand sides in the matrix equation that enforces the boundary conditions. The solutions corresponding to the various right hand sides are then combined to deliver the prescribed net float currents. This technology was Incorporated in Easytrim 2.

While the target software does not require any proprietary software, all aspects of its development are orchestrated by Mathematica.