Our Chair
Robert Hill, Chair of the Northern Ireland Space Leadership Council and the Northern Ireland Space Special Interest Group (NISSIG)
Robert Hill is the Chair of the Northern Ireland Space Leadership Council and the Northern Ireland Space Special Interest Group (NISSIG) hosted by ADS.
He has spearheaded the campaign to bring space sector opportunities to the region and authored and coordinated the development of the Northern Ireland Space Strategy, endorsed by then First Minister Arlene Foster MLA and Economy Minister Simon Hamilton at the inauguration of the Thales Electric Propulsion and Integration Test Centre in Belfast.
Robert holds the position of NI Space Cluster Manager, supported by the UK Space Agency. He is Space Advisor to FD Technologies plc, leading on the Kx for Space program and Trade Advisory Services Space lead for InvestNI, the Regional Business Development Agency, helping companies to navigate the space ecosystem.
Robert is proud to be an Ambassador for Visit Belfast and helped to bring the UK Space Conference to Northern Ireland for the first time in November 2023.
Industry members
Mary McKenna
Mary McKenna is a well networked Northern Irish technology entrepreneur and angel investor. After a long corporate career as a Director of Finance in London and a spell as a Silicon Valley dotcommer she co-founded online learning company Learning Pool in 2006 and successfully exited from the business in 2014 so that she could return to working with earlier stage startups and scaleups.
Since selling Learning Pool 5 years ago Mary has worked extensively with especially first time and female entrepreneurs and she has angel invested in 8 early stage tech startups to date, 4 have female founding teams and 2 are Northern Irish companies.
She is one of the Entrepreneurs in Residence at Saïd Business School (University of Oxford), an advisor to several governments, an EU Horizon 2020 innovation judge, a trustee of a small number of charities and social enterprises including the Centre for Acceleration of Social Technology and the first ever entrepreneur in residence at St Mary’s College, an all-girls secondary school in the working class Creggan area of Derry.
Mary was awarded an MBE by Her Majesty the Queen in the 2014 New Year’s Honours for services to digital technology, innovation and learning.
Tom Gray
Tom is a 30-year tech veteran and is the driving force behind many of Kainos’ PLC most imaginative and successful customer and staff initiatives, including HealthHackEU, Kainos AICamp and Code4Derry.
Tom joined Kainos in 1988 as a Software Engineer and, subsequently took on roles in Support, Pre-Sales and Solution Architecture before being appointed CTO in 2005 and Director of Innovation in 2016.
Tom is also Chairman of the University of Ulster Industrial Liaison Board, founder and curator of the annual BelTech conference, sits on the CCEA Regulatory Advisory Panel and is investor in, and Director of, a number of startups. Previously, Tom has been Director of Digital Catapult NI, Chairman of IET in NI, Industry Liaison for Manchester Connected Health Ecosystem, and a member of the MATRIX Science Panel having co-chaired the MATRIX ICT report.
Tom graduated from Queen’s University Belfast and holds a BSc. in Computer Science.
Stephanie Maher
Stephanie has over 25 years of experience growing and leading software engineering teams to build high-quality, innovative software products. She has extensive experience in financial services having previously held roles with First Derivatives, Lloyds Banking Group and Visa. She is currently a Director at Eagry Consulting.
Stephanie is a project delivery consultant, with a proven track record of successfully delivering complex technology projects across a variety of industries. Stephanie is also a coach and mentor, and partners with individuals to enable them to reach their full potential and successfully achieve their career goals.
Mark Huddleston
Mark Huddleston is Managing Director of jheSOLUTIONS and King & Fowler UK since 2014. Having graduated with a BEng (Hons) in Manufacturing from Ulster University in 1998 he has worked in a range of start-up, SME and multi-national businesses within the Advanced Manufacturing & Engineering sector.
He has been a member of a range of skills panels in Northern Ireland, supporting work around youth training and apprenticeships and was the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Employment & Skills with the UKCES. He is committed to seeing productivity enhancement, not only through skills but also the adaption of technology and innovative solutions both to processes and working practices.
Mark has volunteered for a number of years with Young Enterprise, supporting entrepreneurship with school pupils and a school governor promoting business and education links.
Dr. Rachel Gawley
Rachel is a research leader experienced in building and nurturing collaborative teams to create ethical and impactful solutions to complex problems. Her background is in software engineering and she learned her craft in server-side, web, and native smartphone applications before settling into emerging technologies.
Rachel was the CTO of a MedTech company for over 5 years. She is now the Chief Innovation Officer of Whitespace, focusing on creating new business ventures with global companies
Michael Shaw
Dr Michael Shaw is Managing Director of RPS Ireland Ltd, a business segment within the RPS Group plc. Michael graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Civil Engineering in 1981 and following a 3-year period of research into “Wave- Current Interaction” was awarded a PhD in 1985. In 1996 he became a Partner in a local consultancy firm, Kirk, McClure, Morton, which became part of the 5500 strong Global RPS multidisciplinary consultancy group in 2004. As Managing Director of over 220 staff in NI, Michael now takes a strategic oversight for all operations and projects within the business.
Michael is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a Member of Engineers Ireland, a Member of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, and a Member of the Institute of Directors.
Michael is active within the construction industry in promoting innovative excellence, particularly in the fields of Virtual and Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence applied to design and collaborative solutions.
Rebecca Walsh
Rebecca has a background in Aerospace Engineering with over 10 years’ experience in innovation, human centred design and service design.
Rebecca started her career in Bombardier Aerospace working in aerodynamic design. Very early in her career she was asked to work part-time in the Bombardier Innovation Team on future aircraft design, business efficiency and lean/transformational programmes.
Rebecca set up her own design and innovation consultancy in 2015 and worked with the voluntary and community sector to grow innovation capability as well as working with Equiniti, a leading technology solutions company.
More recently she worked with the Department of Finance Innovation Lab as the first Service Designer in the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS). Rebecca worked across all regional government department as well as local Government to promote service design and in particular human-centred design and design for citizens needs.
Rebecca is currently Design Director at Big Motive. She focuses on the delivery of high quality service and experience design projects for a range of clients in both the public and private sector.
Richard Kennedy
Richard Kennedy Is the Medical Director and Global VP of Biomarker Development at Almac Diagnostic Services and the McClay Professor in Medical Oncology at the Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology, Queen’s University of Belfast. He graduated in medicine from Queen’s University Belfast in 1995. As a post-graduate he trained as a medical oncologist and received a PhD in Molecular Biology in 2004. From 2004-2007 he worked as an instructor in oncology at Harvard Medical School, USA, where he identified novel biomarkers and drug targets for cancer treatment. The associated patent was the basis of a Boston-based start-up company in 2007.
In August 2007 he joined Almac as the Global Director of diagnostics laboratories in the UK and USA. In this role he has been involved in the design and delivery of clinical trial biomarkers on behalf of several large pharmaceutical companies.
In 2011 he re-joined Queen’s University in a part-time role and established an academic/industrial research group focussed on various aspects of personalised medicine. He currently sits on the CR-UK new agents committee, the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine Oncology Expert Group (Royal College of Physicians) and the MRC Stratified Medicine Panel.
Patricia O'Hagan
Patricia O’Hagan is a tech entrepreneur and co-founder of Core Systems, a world leader in prisoner self-service technology. Patricia comes from an engineering and product development background and has over 20 years of Corrections Technology experience.
Patricia led the company through a development and growth programme. The company developed various innovative technology solutions for the custodial sector, raising the standard within the industry.
Patricia served on the Skills for Security Consultation Group for Biometrics and Human Identity, contributing to the development of national occupational standards for the industry. She is active in the local community, encouraging greater female entrepreneurship and inspiring girls and women to consider roles in the technology sector.
Patricia is an international speaker on Corrections Technology and has been invited to present at industry forums, including the ACA Congress (American Corrections Association), the Inter Prison Service Security Group (Her Majesty’s Prison Service, UK) and APPA (American Probation and Parole Association)
Patricia was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s 2013 Royal New Year Honours list for services to the Northern Ireland Economy.
Ex officio members
Liam Mauire
Professor Liam Maguire is the Pro Vice-Chancellor Research at Ulster.
Liam obtained MEng and PhD degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the Queen’s University, Belfast. He joined Ulster University as a lecturer in 1994 and became a Professor of Computational Intelligence in 2007. Liam has been Executive Dean of the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment since 2016. Previously he held a number of senior positions at Ulster such as Head of School and Director of the Intelligent Systems Research Centre.
Liam is the NI representative on the National Council for Professors and Heads of Computing committee. He has recently been invited to join an Invest NI Board Sub-Group on Digital Innovation and is the university representative on the Belfast Innovation partnership and has a leading role in Ulster’s projects in the two City Deals.
Liam’s research interests focus on data analytics and machine learning with particular emphasis on bio-inspired approaches. An author of over 250 research papers, Liam has secured extensive research funding and supervised 20 PhD and three MPhil students to completion. He established the Cognitive Analytics Research Laboratory (CARL) at Ulster and is working with colleagues from QUB to deliver an AI collaboration centre in Northern Ireland.
Liam has a good appreciation of research across the university through collaboration with every faculty in the University either through funded projects or joint research staff/student supervision. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and a chartered engineer with an extensive network of collaborators in academia and the digital/engineering sectors.
Tim Brundle
Tim is Director of Innovation at the University of Ulster and is the CEO of Innovation Ulster Ltd, the University of Ulster’s venturing and investment company. He is a Board member of Invest NI and a non-executive director of 9 technology companies.
Steve Orr
Steve Orr is Chief Executive Officer of Catalyst Inc and serves on the Board of Directors. Before being named CEO in November 2018, Steve was Director and Co-founder of Connect, Catalyst Inc’s not-for-profit network of experienced entrepreneurs, business professionals and top research talent dedicated to the creation and scaling of innovation companies in Northern Ireland.
Connect helps over 800 local entrepreneurs to aim higher and succeed faster each year. Prior to Connect, Steve co-founded Kineticom, Inc a San Diego, California based technical talent firm in 2000. In 2006 Kineticom was ranked #33 on the Inc 500, the list of the fastest growing privately held companies in the US. Previous to Kineticom, Steve worked in Buckinghamshire, UK and San Diego and San Francisco, California for S.Com Ltd and S.Com Inc. Steve earned a BSc in Business Information Technology from University of Northumbria.
Paul Maropoulos
Paul Maropoulos is a professor at the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Queen’s University Belfast. His main research focus in on Smart and Metrology Enabled Manufacturing, combining and linking the process and product verification from the cyber to the physical domains.
Paul has worked with blue chip companies including Airbus, Rolls-Royce, Renishaw, Airbus Defence and Space, Caterpillar, Nissan and Thorn Lighting and created advanced research centres at Durham and Bath Universities. He is a Fellow of IMehE, a Fellow of Higher Education Academy and an Elected Fellow of the International Academy of Production Engineering (CIRP), one of only 180 in the world.
Leo Murphy
Leo is the Principal and Chief Executive of the North West Regional College, one of the six Regional Colleges in Northern Ireland.He took up the position in August 2014.
As Chief Executive, Leo plays an active role in key City and Region Economic and Innovation Forums, in particular with the Regional Councils, Ulster University, Invest NI, Londonderry Chamber and Letterkenny Institute of Technology. The College provides an industry focused Professional and Technical Curriculum and is both a NEF (UK) – STEM Assured College and one of 11 leadership colleges in the UK Creative and Cultural Skills sector.
The College under his direction is active in supporting Invest NI in growing both indigenous industry and attracting foreign direct investment to the City and Region.
He has over 25 years’ experience in the further education sector. He was Vice-Principal in Omagh College from 2000 and in 2008 he took over the role of Deputy Director at South West College based at the Fermanagh campus. He has served on a number of public bodies and forums relevant to education, enterprise and innovation.
He introduced a range of new portfolios in his previous College such as international work, entrepreneurship and supporting economic development.
Brian McCaul
Brian is the CEO of QUBIS, the commercialisation arm of Queen’s University which has a long and strong track–record in creating new technology start–ups, and otherwise helping commercialise leading–edge technology from the Queen’s research base.
Having worked both within technology transfer environments and as an entrepreneur with his own start–up companies, Brian’s experience includes:
- co–owning an aerospace manufacturing business based in the UK and Poland;
- co–founding an innovation software company in the UK and Netherlands;
- establishing the Innovation Commons – a community and shared platform of university TTOs bringing entrepreneurs to work on early–stage projects;
- working on numerous national knowledge transfer initiatives as Chair of the Association for University Research and Industry Links (AURIL).
Michael Bower
Michael is Assistant Director for Student Success and External Engagement for the OU in Ireland and is responsible for ensuring that students achieve their career and educational goals, as well as that the OU is addressing economic and societal needs across Ireland. As a previous Special Advisor to the former Minister for Employment and Learning, Dr Stephen Farry, Michael has been immersed in education, skills and innovation in Northern Ireland for over a decade.
William Revels
A highly regarded technology leader with 25 years’ experience in the fields of software, telecommunications and managed services, William founded both the BT Ireland Innovation centre and the PwC Advanced Research and Engineering centre, both at scale software and technology centres delivering transformational change for the respective organisations.
William also founded numerous start-ups in the fields of quality of service for IP networks and GPS location systems and has been awarded patents in both. One of these, Slever Solutions Ltd, successfully received the Invest Northern Ireland Smart Award for Industry and exited its technology to BT.
William is also a visiting professor at Ulster University and chairs the highly regarded Connected Health Innovation Centre. A chartered member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), he is an enthusiastic advocate for innovation and technology.
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