Three new panellists have been appointed to MATRIX, bringing with them a wealth of experience in their respective fields.

Tom Gray

Tom Gray has been the CTO at Kainos for over ten years and was recently appointed as Chairman of the Institution of Engineering and Technology in Northern Ireland. He is a 25-year technology industry veteran and is the driving force behind many of Kainos’ most successful initiatives, including HealthHackEU and Kainos AppCamp.

He is also Director of the NI Digital Catapult, providing strategic guidance on initiatives and activities. Digital Catapult NI focuses on helping organisations work smarter, more efficiently and ultimately become more productive by realising and implementing innovative digital technologies. It promotes a connected network to spearhead innovation and collaboration and provides access to other organisations in the wider Digital Catapult network.

Tom is also the founder of the BelTech conference which runs annually in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The focus of this event is to give tech practitioners a forum to meet and exchange views with their peers locally and globally, to celebrate achievement in NI Tech, and to engage and inspire the next generation of tech professionals. In addition to founding BelTech, Tom curates the content of the technology sessions.

Jill Cush

Jill has worked in innovation and technology development for 20 years within the high-tech start-up business sector and more recently within the Further Education sector. As manager of the InnoTech Centre, South West College, Jill is responsible for the design and management of a range of technology and innovation support services to SMEs involved in new product development. Recently InnoTech was recognised as the leading college for employer engagement in the UK and has become established as an important support centre to some 1500 businesses who engage with staff to provide support in areas including engineering, design, software and renewable energy. Jill has a particular interest in STEM education and manages Northern Ireland’s first STEM Centre, a state-of-the-art teaching facility focused exclusively on delivering educational and instructional activities in the area of STEM. The centre has led a number of EU funded projects developing best practice STEM and STEAM enrichments across Europe.

Jill is a qualified electronic engineer by profession and has held previous positions within Amphion (SME electronic design house, Belfast and San Jose) and DSiP Laboratories. She holds a PhD in Digital Signal Processing from The Queen’s University of Belfast and has published a number of research papers and journal articles in the area of image and video processing. Jill has also served as a principal UK expert within the UK Imaging Processing Standards committee and is a former member of the Joint Photographics Experts Group (JPEG).

Leo Murphy

Leo Murphy is the Principal and Chief Executive of the North West Regional College having been appointed to the position in 2014.

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.