Strategic Board
Dr Chris Horn
Dr Chris Horn is Chairman of both the External Advisory Board and the Strategic Board. One of Ireland's most successful entrepreneurs, Dr. Chris Horn advises corporations and governments, contributing regularly to high-level discussions about management, technology, and the global economy. He has advised the Irish Government on a range of issues and has served in the following capacities: Chairman of an advisory group on Ireland's future human capital needs; Advisor on national broadband network infrastructure for major cities; Director of Science Foundation Ireland, advising on national science funding policy.
He worked for the European Commission in Brussels on a 10- year program to improve Europe's high-tech industry, later serving as one of the program's leading researchers while an academic member of staff at the University of Dublin. In 1991 he co-founded IONA Technologies, one of Ireland's leading companies, and in 1997 took the company public in what was then the fourth-largest IPO in Nasdaq history. He retired as CEO of IONA in June 2000, but returned to fill the position from 2003 until spring 2005.
Dr David Lloyd
Dr. David Lloyd was awarded his BSc in Applied Chemistry in 1995 and his PhD in 1999, both from the School of Chemical Sciences in Dublin City University . He then spent three years as a post-doctorate in the School of Pharmacy, TCD working on the computer-aided rational design of novel anti-estrogens for use as breast cancer chemotherapeutics.
In October 2001, Dr. Lloyd left TCD to take up a post as Senior Scientist in the Applied Design group of De Novo Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge , UK, where he worked on many therapeutic projects using computational drug design strategies and techniques and headed the company's ligand-based design discovery program. He subsequently returned to Ireland in January 2004 to take up a post in the Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Science, Trinity College Dublin, where he is appointed as Hitachi Lecturer in Advanced Computing and Associate Dean of Research.
Dr. Lloyd's research group, the Molecular Design Group, is focusing on the integration of in silico and traditional wet lab drug discovery techniques, applying chemical biology and rational drug design strategies to a number of key therapeutic targets. Their core computational efforts are in the areas of virtual high-throughput screening and structure- and ligand-based design approaches, where their in silico predictions are validated using wet lab chemistries and in vitro assay.
Mr Kevin O'callaghan
Kevin O'Callaghan graduated from University College Dublin in 1977, after which he worked in the UK and in the US for 10 years, in the radar and automated process control industries. Returning to Ireland in 1987 he joined Alcatel, helping to establish and later manage a Software Development Centre focussed on mobile GSM products. Following this, Kevin gained further management experience in a number of customer oriented operational roles, including a second period of 3 years in the UK, as the Chief Operating Officer of the Alcatel UK and Ireland organisation. Kevin is now the Managing Director of Alcatel-Lucent Ireland, assuming this position in 2007 following the merger of Alcatel and Lucent in December 2006. The company is involved in a number of different activities in Ireland , including Sales and Service for its Irish customers, a number of group oriented Supply Chain and Services functions and the Bell Labs research activity.
Dr Ray O'Neill
Ray O'Neill is an experimental physicist and Vice President for Research at NUI Maynooth. A native of Belfast, he completed a BSc and PhD in physics at Queen's University before joining the department of experimental physics at Maynooth in 1993 first as a postdoctoral researcher, and later as lecturer. His research areas include atomic and quantum physics, and applications of optics for biomedical devices. Since 2004 he has held various positions at NUI Maynooth including Dean of the Faculty of Science, and Dean of Research and Graduate Studies.