About Liminal Scientific

International partnerships and multidisciplinary capabilities

How We Deliver

Liminal Scientific is an Irish company with a cross-border delivery capability that lets us take on projects well beyond the reach of a solo consultancy.

Established UK technology partner

We work closely with BolgiaTen – an established UK technology company based in Liverpool. This partnership gives us access to a dedicated development team with deep expertise in remote sensing, data forensics, IoT, and AI – as well as long-standing relationships with ESA, the UK Space Agency, the Satellite Applications Catapult, and major industry partners.

Shared development team

Our working team combines scientific leadership with hands-on engineering experience. The team uses state-of-the-art development workflows, CI/CD pipelines, and integrated project management, which means we consistently deliver above our weight class. Team members contribute across Earth observation, environmental AI, spatial data systems, and full-stack development.

Academic Ties

We also maintain active research collaborations with:

  • University of Sydney: neuromorphic processors, AI onboard satellites, complex systems.
  • University of New South Wales: AI for weather and climate prediction.
  • Liverpool John Moores University: astrophysics, astro-ecology, environmental AI, data forensics.

These academic links keep us at the research frontier, provide access to emerging talent, and add credibility when bidding for research-intensive contracts.

International development network

Liminal Scientific is an industrial partner of the Development in Africa with Radio Astronomy (DARA) Project, contributing mentoring and training in AI and data science to early-career researchers across the African continent.

Who We Are

Dr Cormac Purcell

Founder & Principal Scientist

Cormac Purcell is a scientist and technologist who bridges the gap between frontier research and real-world delivery. He started his career as a yield engineer at Intel before completing a PhD in Astrophysics at the University of New South Wales. Over eighteen years as a professional astronomer (with positions at the universities of Manchester, Leeds, Sydney, and Macquarie University) he built deep expertise in data-intensive science, signal processing, and large-scale analysis, publishing 62 peer-reviewed papers, including work in Nature.

His move into applied AI started with building a shark detection system for the NSW government, then organising the X-Sensing Conference and Australia’s first Bushfire Data Quest accelerated AI research sprint, before co-founding the Sci-Eye environmental AI start-up. As Chief Scientist at Trillium Technologies (2020-2024) he led delivery of FDL Europe, ESA’s accelerated applied-AI programme.

Cormac holds adjunct academic positions at the University of Sydney and UNSW, maintaining active research ties and PhD supervision. He is based in Tramore, Co. Waterford.

Qualifications: PhD Astrophysics (UNSW), BSc Applied Physics (DCU)