Stephen is a Professor of Electronic Engineering in the School of Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Computing,  Dublin City University.

He has a background in gaseous plasma technology and has lead research teams investigating low pressure plasmas for semiconductor and biomedical device applications, atmospheric pressure plasmas for clinical and food processing decontamination applications, systems engineering and energy systems.

He is a Principal Investigator at the National Centre for Plasma Science and Technology, and the AMBER SFI Centre for Advanced Materials and Bioengineering Research. He is the Director of the Cyber-physical Systems Laboratory and co-Director of the nanomaterials processing laboratory at DCU.