Professor Colin Fitzpatrick

Professor Colin Fitzpatrick is a Professor (Personal Chair) and Interim Vice President Global & Community Engagement at the University of Limerick (UL). As a member of the University Executive, he provides strategic leadership for UL’s internationalisation and civic and community engagement activities and leads the development of strategic relationships with universities, governments and other partners around the world.

A member of UL’s Faculty of Science and Engineering since 2001, Professor Fitzpatrick has held a range of academic and leadership positions, including Head of the Department of Electronic & Computer Engineering. He holds a PhD in Electronic Engineering from UL and has been a Visiting Research Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration (IZM) in Berlin.

He has played a leading role in the internationalisation of the University of Limerick. This has included establishing UL’s largest transnational education partnership, the Limerick International College at Henan Polytechnic University in China, developing international joint and dual-degree programmes, and building strategic university partnerships across Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. He also represents UL nationally through the Irish Universities Association Vice Presidents Global group and the Higher Education Authority’s National Committee on International Education.

Professor Fitzpatrick leads the EMERGE European University Alliance, coordinated by UL and bringing together nine universities from across Europe. EMERGE seeks to harness the collective capacity of universities to contribute to more equitable, sustainable and prosperous regions through education, research, mobility and community engagement.

Alongside his university leadership roles, Professor Fitzpatrick has maintained an internationally recognised research career at the intersection of sustainable electronics, the circular economy and energy systems. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed journal papers and 150 conference papers, supervised nine PhD graduates and secured more than €5 million in research funding. His research has influenced European and national policy on electronic waste, repair, reuse and critical raw materials.

His research has also had significant industrial impact, including major collaborations on robotics for materials recovery and the development of remanufacturing and circular-economy solutions for Irish industry. He serves as an editor of Resources, Conservation & Recycling, one of the leading international journals in the field.

Professor Fitzpatrick has a longstanding commitment to sustainability and civic engagement. He chaired the UL Environmental Committee for 12 years, during which he helped establish initiatives including the UL Farmers’ Market and Community Roofgarden and championed sustainable transport, energy management and sustainability education. He was subsequently recognised with the UL Award for Excellence in Service to the Community.

Across these roles, a consistent theme of his work has been the idea of the university as a public good; creating opportunities for students and researchers, contributing to economic and social development, and ensuring that the benefits of international education and research extend to the communities universities serve.