The Centre for Innovation in Distributed Systems (CIDS) was formed as collaboration between the Wireless and Mobility Research Group in the Institute of Technology, Tralee and the MIT Forum for Supply Chain. Dr. Pat Doody is a co-founder and the Director of CIDS which is acknowledged as the RFID Centre of Excellence in Ireland.

The primary research focus is in the area of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and the Internet of Things (IOT) with a particular interest in projects that are applied and industrial in nature. The group has been leading the drive towards RFID and IOT adoption by Irish industry which is proportionally low compared with other EU countries. CIDS are the Irish representatives on a new EU Thematic Network focused on RFID technology originally called the RACENetworkRFID (www.race-networkrfid.eu) but now referred to as RFID in Europe, which was launched in March 2009. Dr. Pat Doody is currently Chair of the Management Board of the network.

Other research expertise covers Artificial Intelligence, Sensor Networks, Reality Mining, Middleware Development, Mobile Software Development among others. The group is currently involved in a project identifying human behavior and interactions from sensor data using artificial intelligence techniques. This data can then be used to predict possible future interactions by that use or users with similar profiles. This project is in collaboration with a telecommunications company who are providing the infrastructure and data. CIDS has also recently worked on projects involving wireless sensor networks, gathering data from sensors applied to wireless moats and then transmitting this data to a data warehouse where analysis was performed on the data providing information for a Management Information System using a web based digital dashboard. The group is also affiliated to the Internet of Things European Research Cluster (IERC) and the Future Internet Assembley (FIA).