In Memory of Cormac Duffy

We recently got to know about the untimely and tragic death of a fellow sensornets researcher Cormac Duffy. Cormac was working towards his PhD at Univ. College Cork, Ireland and his representative works include “Adding Preemption to TinyOS” (EmNets’07) and “Improving the Energy Efficiency of the MANTIS Kernel” (EWSN’07). He was an extremely lively person and had many friends in the sensornet research community, who are shocked by his death. Cormac died on Aug 17th 2007 in a car accident in Poland. The picture below is from the Dagstuhl Summer School on WSN. Cormac is on the floor, signing and reading lyrics projected on the roof of a Dagstuhl Castle room in Sep 2005. The lyrics read:

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

Rest in peace Cormac, you will be deeply missed by your friends and colleagues in the sensornet research community.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 11:19 am and is filed under wsn-general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “In Memory of Cormac Duffy”

Tiago Camilo
January 24th, 2008 13:54
1

It is really a great lost
I hope you are happy on your new home..

Stay in peace!
Philip Levis
January 24th, 2008 14:30
2

I just read this now. How terrible. I corresponded with Cormac several times about his work, and met him in person in June. He will be sorely missed.
Sadhbh Duffy
January 28th, 2008 13:56
3

Cormac’s sister here, just to let you all know that on the 12th December, we received Cormac’s Doctorate on his behalf from UCC. He was completing his thesis when he died but had done enough to get his PHD. We are all so proud that he achieved his dreams and hopefully added some valuable information to the field of wireless sendor networks.
Muneeb Ali
January 29th, 2008 04:03
4

Thanks for letting us know that he received his PhD. We are proud of him. He was one of those people that you just remember even if you met them only once. I met him for the first time in 2005 at Dagstuhl and we stayed in touch ever since. The above picture is also from Dagstuhl. I last saw him in Netherlands in Jan 2007. He surely will be missed.
Urs Bischoff
January 29th, 2008 04:46
5

It was terrible news when I was told last August that he had died in an accident. I had met him a few times last year. I remember him as an energetic and eloquent person.
Simon McNally
January 29th, 2008 04:46
6

Hey guys and galls, I am Cor’s cousin and would love to get hold of this pic in high rez, does any one know how I could go about that or maybe you could simply email it to me. Also if any of you have not already heard I have taken the words from Cor’s bebo site and composed a song with some friends. Its a song from everyone who new him so if anyone would like it I can email it on. Unfortunetely Cor’s intelligence was not blessed to all of us so maybe one of you know how to put it on his bebo page or this one for all to hear.
Rockin in heaven’ thats my man
David Merrill
January 29th, 2008 06:42
7

Hi Simon,
You can find a high-res version of the guitar pic (or one very similar, at least), along with a few others from the summer school that include Cormac, in a zip that I’ve put online at:

http://www.media.mit.edu/~dmerrill/cormac.zip

There are also still some photos up from others in our group, online at:

http://cse.yeditepe.edu.tr/dagstuhl/

What a loss to our community – I am happy to hear that UCC granted Cormac’s doctorate, in any case. take care everyone.