Consortium Members
Please find below a list of the consortium members and their primary contacts
Analytics Engines
Analytics Engines enables organisations to easily and quickly adopt Data Analytics as a core part of their business and accelerate conversion of data into valuable business insights. Trusted by national institutions including RTÉ, Innovate UK and The National Gallery London, Analytics Engines' data analytics and AI solutions reduce complexity, optimise performance and build intelligence. The team possesses market-leading capability across AI&ML, data integration, computer vision technology, data science, data management, graph and text analytics, advanced analytics and data visualisations. Analytics Engines has been named by Tech Nation as among the UK’s most innovative AI companies to watch in 2020. The company is also the creator of Big Data Belfast - one of the leading data and technology events in the region.
Dr Scott Fischaber
Lead consortium contact
Dr Scott Fischaber is co-founder and COO of Analytics Engines with over 10 years’ experience in running the company’s operations. Originally from Oklahoma, he moved to Belfast from Colorado, where he worked for the world’s largest programmable logic device company, and spun out Analytics Engines from QUB after completing his PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
Dr Aislinn Rice
Lead consortium contact
Dr Aislinn Rice is Managing Director of Analytics Engines. A graduate of the Executive Leadership Program at Harvard Business School, she is an IoD Chartered Director (CDir) and was awarded the IoD NI Director of the Year Award (Large Company category) in 2011. Aislinn recently served as non-executive director on the board of QUBIS, the organisation which commercialises Queen's University research and development through the formation of spin-out businesses. She holds a PhD in Chemistry from Queen’s University Belfast.
Geoff McGimpsey
Lead communications contact
Geoff McGimpsey is the Head of Marketing for Analytics Engines.
North West Regional College
North West Regional College has 5 main college campuses located in Derry-Londonderry, Limavady and Strabane, and offers more than 500 courses aimed at supporting the learning and career ambitions of school leavers, adult returners, working professionals and the unemployed. The College also has a National award-winning Business Support Centre which supports the re-skilling, up-skilling, R&D, innovation requirements of numerous companies and entrepreneurs across the region.
Fergal Tuffy
Lead consortium contact
Dr Fergal Tuffy is Technology Innovation Manager at the NWRC and manages the NWRC’s Business Support Centre. Fergal leads the NWRC’s policies, programmes and projects to ensure delivery of the College’s priorities for economic development, employer engagement, business skills and innovation.
Fergal spearheads a team of technical consultants in industry focussed projects and manages the engagement with business, locally, regionally and internationally. Leading of externally funded projects which contribute to the income generation / targets for the College, this involves the College’s delivery of Technology Transfer Programmes such as KTP, Fusion, Innovation Vouchers, and the Employment Support Programme as well as industry Skills programmes such as the Department for the Economy’s Skills Focus, Higher Level Apprenticeships (HLA) and Assured Skills.
Fergal oversees the NWRC’s Technology Innovation Centres of Foodovation (Innovation in Food and Drink) and Product Design Centre (PDC) and is planning further developments in industry 4.0 and mixed reality (XR, a mesh of augmented and virtual reality).
The NWRC BSC won the Times Educational Supplement (TES) 2020 award for employer engagement in recognition for supporting 1,300 companies in the past 4 years with bespoke innovation, upskilling and training.
Conor McGurgan
Lead communications contact
Causeway Sensors
Causeway Sensors utilise the power of nanotechnology to unlock new biological sensing applications. Our mission is to provide drug developers with the key performance data, where it can’t currently be collected, that will transform the way new therapeutics are discovered and manufactured. We are a spin-out company from the Physics Department of Queen’s University Belfast, where we were researching next-generation plasmonic nanostructures. We’ve developed a patented chip platform that gives researchers time resolved information into drug binding interactions. The sensor chip can be manufactured using well understood techniques already deployed extensively in the wafer processing industry, proven to scale with high quality and yields. Applying these established processes to the biosensor market will enable previously unseen miniaturisation, cost, and speed benefits, making it achievable to integrate the sensors throughout the drug development process.
Dr Antony Murphy
Lead consortium contact
Dr Antony Murphy is the Chief Executive Officer for Causeway Sensors.
David Kane
Lead communications contact
Cirdan
Established in 2010, Cirdan is a leading provider of innovative medical device solutions that are primarily used in pathology imaging to enhance and accelerate diagnosis. Headquartered in Northern Ireland, with offices in Canada and Australia, Cirdan currently has 100 employees. Cirdan’s systems are helping to increase efficiency and streamline operations in clinical laboratories across six continents. Following the merger with PathXL in July 2020 Cirdan has added digital pathology education software to its product portfolio and enhanced its digital pathology and artificial intelligence capabilities, further strengthening its position as a leader in the pathology market.
Stephen Dunniece
Lead consortium contact
Stephen Dunniece is CTO at Cirdan where he helps lead product design and development, introducing new products and technologies that meet the needs of today’s healthcare service providers. Before helping co-found Cirdan, Stephen worked at Andor Technology as senior R+D engineer leading the delivery of several generations of product which helped underpin Andor’s success. Beyond upcoming new product introductions which improve and extend Cirdan’s offerings in visible and x-ray imaging, Stephen looks forward to the next generation of products which will rapidly provide information directly related to the pathological state of specimens which will greatly aid outcomes in the treatment of cancer.
Rebecca Fitton
Lead communications contact
Digital
Catapult
Digital Catapult is the UK’s leading advanced digital technology innovation centre, accelerating the adoption of new and emerging technologies to drive regional, national and international growth for UK businesses across the economy.
Digital Catapult works with a range of organisations - including startups and scaleups, established businesses, investors, government and public sector, research and academia - to discover new ways of solving industry challenges, increase productivity and open up new markets across a range of technologies that are converging to form an emerging advanced digital technology stack:
Artificial intelligence and machine learning
Future networks: 5G, the internet of things (IoT) and other next generation network technologies
Immersive technologies (virtual, augmented and mixed reality, and haptics)
Distributed systems (distributed ledger technologies, including blockchain)
Digital Catapult designs and delivers specialised innovation programmes that drive UK leadership and economic growth. These take into consideration the important ethical and security implications of using these technologies at scale.
Brendan Lowry
Lead consortium contact
Brendan Lowry is Innovation Partner at Digital Catapult, where he co-leads the accelerator program for SmartNanoNI.
Brendan graduated in Mechanical Engineering from Ulster University, and has a manufacturing background that spans Aerospace, Medical Devices, Electronics, Food and Construction. Brendan has held previous senior roles in Project Management in IT, and New Product Development in Manufacturing. Most recently, he was a founder of a company that had a hardware & software platform in the horse racing industry, giving insights into fitness, health, performance and valuation of race horses.
Thom Conaty
Thom has an undergraduate degree in Nanotechnology and Masters in Creative Technologies from Trinity College Dublin. He has gained experience in business development, product design and international sales as founder and managing director of maker.ie, a learning platform for creative technologies that also sold products to the pro-audio market. He has supported community development across the Island of Ireland for a number of years as a board member of the Fab Foundation Ireland, founder of the Dublin Music Hackspace, and as the project lead, working with Dublin City University to create Dublin's first community makerspace. For the past 5 years Thom has been collaborating with international schools across Europe to design new learning environments, integrate technologies into the classroom, design curricula and provide training to enable inclusive, deep learning and prepare students for the future of work.
Sarah Hughes
Lead communications contact
Queen’s University Belfast
Queen’s University Belfast is a member of the Russell Group UK research-intensive universities, providing world-class education underpinned by world-class research. Founded as Queen’s College in 1845, it became a university in its own right in 1908. Today, it is an international centre of research and education, with a student-centered ethos. With more than 24,000 students and 4,200 staff, it is a dynamic and diverse institution, a magnet for inward investment, a patron of the arts and a global player in areas ranging from cancer studies to sustainability, and from pharmaceuticals to creative writing.
Prof Robert Bowman
Lead consortium contact
Professor Robert Bowman is the Head of the School of Mathematics and Physics at Queen’s and also leads an advanced materials hub, established in 2010, in partnership with Seagate Technology that led to the establishment of an EPSRC Centre for Doctoral in Photonic Integration and Advanced Data Storage along with over a dozen companies that he directs.
Yelo
Yelo, founded in 1983, specialise in the design and manufacture of burn-in and life test equipment for optoelectronic devices. With an experienced team of 50, Yelo has grown to become one of the industry’s leading and most trusted names for burn-in equipment. The company is vertically integrated and possesses full design and manufacturing capabilities. One of Yelo’s biggest strengths is its in-house mechanical design capability which looks after device fixturing and probing for many different types of devices (bare chip, laser bar, chip on carrier, chip on substrate and packaged devices). Another key strength is its Research and Development division which provides solutions for complex issues such as thermal management. By having early discussions in the design phase of a new photonics device, Yelo can advise a suitable approach needed to enable safe, repeatable device testing.
Richard Furey
Lead consortium contact
Managing Director: Richard Furey is an Electronic Engineering graduate of Southampton University (1977) and is currently CEO of Yelo, a company that he co-founded in 1983. He has over 40 years of experience in test, including the design of general instrumentation, test system architecture and test systems for optoelectronic devices. In 2010, he led the management buyout of Yelo from its Canadian parent and is now responsible for corporate strategy as well as product development. He is a chartered engineer and a Fellow of the IET. He is active in the Northern Ireland Science Park where he is an EIR (Entrepreneur in Residence) and helps with the mentoring of start-up companies.
Valerie Lyttle
Lead communications contact
Seagate Technology
Seagate Technology is a world leader in data storage and management solutions for 40 years. The company crafts the datasphere, helping to maximize humanity’s potential by innovating world-class, precision-engineered data management solutions with a focus on sustainable partnerships. Seagate’s Springtown facility is operational for over 25 years and is recognised as one of the foremost 200mm wafer fabrication plants in the world. The site has grown from an initial charter of world class manufacturing in the first decade of operations to adding development and product launch capabilities in the last ten years. The facility employs over 1,600 staff and continues to develop leading community and academic partnerships.
Mark Gubbins
Lead consortium contact
Mark Gubbins is a Director of Development at Seagate Technology and leads a design team with focus on developing transducer technology as a means to ensure hard drive data storage capacity leadership. This involves providing vision for technology in the 12-36-month time frame as well as coordinating technology roadmaps with US and Asia development teams to ensure successful transducer delivery to hard drive products.
Claire Lundy
Lead communications contact
Ulster University
Ulster University’s international reputation for research excellence has received worldwide recognition. International experts have judged Ulster University as being in the top 25% of UK universities for world-leading research based on research power, and 72% of our research activity is judged to be world-leading and internationally excellent. We work with hundreds of businesses annually in the delivery of effective innovative and research-based solutions. Stakeholders can engage the university's researchers to help solve tangible business issues. Our Research & Impact Strategy 2017-2022 supports Ulster University’s vision to deliver globally significant research with local relevance and to make a positive contribution to society.
Liam Maguire
Lead consortium contact
Liam Maguire is Pro-Vice Chancellor Research at Ulster University. He joined Ulster University as a lecturer in 1994 and became a Professor of Computational Intelligence in 2007. Prior to being appointed Dean of the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment, Liam held several senior positions including Head of School and Director of the Intelligent Systems Research Centre. Liam obtained MEng and PhD degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the Queen’s University, Belfast.
Damien Coyle
Lead consortium contact
Damien, Professor of Neurotechnology, is Director of the Intelligent Systems Research Centre and Research Director in the School of Computing, Engineering and Intelligent Systems at Ulster University’s Magee Campus.
He has published over 150 research papers in areas such as computational intelligence/AI, bio-signal processing, computational neuroscience, neuroimaging, neurotechnology and brain-computer interface (BCI) applications and has won a number of prestigious international awards for his R&D including the 2008 IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award, the 2011 International Neural Network Society (INNS) Young Investigator of the Year Award the IET and E&T Innovation of the Year Award 2018. He was an Ulster University Distinguished Research Fellow in 2011, a Royal Academy of Engineering/The Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow in 2013, a Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellow in 2016-2017 and is currently a UKRI Turing AI Fellow 2021-2025.
He is a founding member of the International Brain-Computer Interface Society, a Senior member of the IEEE, chairs the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) UKIreland chapter and is the IEEE CIS representative in the IEEEBrain steering committee.
Professor Coyle leads a number of industry-led data analytics projects through the Cognitive Analytics Research Laboratory (a Derry City Deal Innovation project) and is Founder and CEO of NeuroCONCISE Ltd, an award-winning, AI-enabled, wearable neurotechnology company. With Ulster University colleagues, Damien is delighted to be a member of the Smart Nano NI Consortium.
Dotty Mcllroy
Lead communications contact