Aislinn is the CTO for Kainos Digital Services, delivering software solutions to customers across commercial, health and public sector.

She helps organisations transform digitally using Cloud technology, Data and AI and Intelligent Automation.  Her work centers on engineering excellence and tech exploration; helping customers make progressive technology decisions with positive impact.

People are at the heart of this; she focuses on developing a culture of support and challenge.

Danny is the Managing Director of EMEA & Global Programs at SVG Ventures | THRIVE, a leading investor in agri-food tech based in Silicon Valley. He is responsible for expanding their platform in the EMEA region while leading THRIVE’s award winning accelerator programs in Silicon Valley and Calgary. Now based in Dublin, Ireland, he previously spent time in London and New York working in management consulting and corporate innovation before founding two startups of his own. Danny sits on the Advisory Board of the International School of Agri- Management (ISAM) in Spain where he also teaches Entrepreneurship. He has a particular interest in emerging markets where he sees the potential of Agri-Food Tech to transform the lives of at-risk communities. He holds a Masters Degree in Marketing Practice from the Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School (UCD) and a Bachelors of Business Studies from DCU.

Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy

NASA Headquarters, Washington

David Steitz is an aerospace technology policy and strategy consultant in Washington. He provides strategic advice to U.S. Government agencies, aerospace companies and non-profit organizations on technology trends and investment opportunities tied to the new technology economy. After more than three decades of service, Steitz retired from NASA in 2022 as the agency’s Deputy Associate Administrator in the Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy. At NASA, Steitz was responsible for developing and implementing agency-wide policy and strategy, including space technology investment and innovation plans. Steitz also served as the NASA Deputy Chief Technologist, representing NASA’s technology strategy and portfolio as liaison with the White House and other Federal agencies. Prior to his work in technology policy, Steitz was a NASA senior spokesperson, formulating and executing traditional and new media public affairs strategies for NASA flagship missions. 

Denise has lived and worked in Europe, Asia, and the US, accruing multi-sector exposure, helping early-stage technology organisations to scale and grow. She has over 15 years’ experience of developing and creating innovative new businesses and products. Denise is Director of Innovation Scouting at Co-Cubed working with FSTE 100 clients to navigate startup ecosystems globally to identify the most promising and disruptive innovations within their industries, scouting for the most impactful companies relevant to their strategy or investment thesis. Denise has an in-depth knowledge of European early-stage investment and start-up ecosystems. Denise is also a mentor at Imperial Venture Mentoring Service, a Global Expert Member at Consilience Ventures, a Deal Leader at GoBeyond Investing and a board member of BITA.

Adrian Johnston joined Catalyst NI as Director of Strategic Business Development in January 2022 to develop and strengthen strategic partnerships across industry, academia and government. His most recent role prior to this was as Director of Operations with Digital Catapult NI from December 2018 accelerating adoption of emerging digital technologies across industry and the public sector. He has 20 years technology leadership experience having previously worked for Seagate Technology in their Springtown facility heading the Data Science and Analytics team. With a PhD in Informatics and AI, Adrian has continued to drive research in advanced manufacturing and the adoption of AI, IOT and automation in complex data environments with both Ulster University and Queens University Belfast. His academic and industrial experience is enabling NI SME, Tech innovators, corporates and public sector adoption of emerging tech to enhance productivity, growth and the NI economy. Adrian was awarded the 2020 Ulster University Distinguished Graduate of the year for his work in this field. He continues to engage with the research community and contributes to a few initiatives on future Northern Ireland AI strategy, funding and policy including as a member of the NI Matrix Science Panel, the UKRI AI Review panel and the UK RD Place Strategy Advisory group.

Andrew has overall responsibility for the management of CATAGEN, having founded the business and successfully spun it out from Queen’s University, Belfast (“QUB”). He graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in Automotive Catalysis which led to the development of the CATAGEN business, based on the technology originally developed at QUB. 

At QUB, he collaborated with Professor Roy Douglas to create a new and much more cost effective and accurate means of testing emissions control devices (catalytic converters), the primary purpose of which is to clean up the combustion process that comes from an engine. After spin out from QUB, CATAGEN initially sold test equipment to two of the world’s largest vehicle manufacturers. However, Dr Woods followed this by leading a significant R&D project to develop the technology for larger scale applications. 

In 2017 he launched a winning service-based business model and the company has experienced rapid growth ever since. CATAGEN was named by Deloitte in the Technology Fast 50 Awards for 2019 and 2020 as one of the fastest growing businesses on the island of Ireland.  It was the only company in Northern Ireland represented on Technation’s Net Zero Cohort in 2022 and is now part of Technation’s Net Zero X cohort for scaling companies in 2023.  Andrew’s vision for the business is to clean and decarbonise the air and minimise carbon impact on our environment. 

This expertise has led to the development of ClimaHtech – an acceleration system towards decarbonisation using advanced climate technologies.  In 2022, CATAGEN successfully received five funding awards from the UK’s Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to develop 5 new technologies in green hydrogen, bio-hydrogen, e-fuels, carbon capture and compression technologies.  

Andrew founded CATAGEN in 2010, successfully spinning it out of Queen’s University Belfast with Professor Roy Douglas CTO.  He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in Automotive Catalysis.

Andrew has built an award winning team whose purpose is to clean and decarbonise the air.  From initially providing world-class emissions testing to the automotive sector, the company is now developing advanced testing for heavy duty diesel and industrial catalysts.  

This expertise in emissions data and simulation, the development of energy efficient chemical reactor technologies, IP and knowledge has given CATAGEN a vantage point for new net zero technologies.  This has led to the development of ClimaHtech – an acceleration system towards decarbonisation using advanced climate technologies.  In 2022, CATAGEN successfully received five funding awards from the UK’s Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to develop 5 new technologies in green hydrogen, bio-hydrogen, e-fuels, carbon capture and compression technologies.  

www.catagen.com/climahtech 

Dr Joe Dugan, General Medical Practitioner ,Chair West Belfast Federation of Family Practices and West Belfast Primary Care MDT Professional Lead

Dr Joe has worked as a GP principal in West Belfast for 36 years. His specialist interests include Surgery in Primary Care encompassing  skin surgery and vasectomy and musculoskeletal medicine including joint injection . He used this experience in the development of Elective Care Services within federations to extend the range of health care provided in the community. He also has a special interest in Sports medicine being an advisor to several sporting organisations.

Joe was formally an Honorary Lecturer in Clinical Medicine QUB and participated in all aspects of undergraduate teaching throughout his career.

His other area of interest as alluded to above has been service development in health care. He is currently Chair of West Belfast Federation , a “Not for Profit Community Interest Company “ which provides extended Primary Care Services on a locality basis. This incorporates a specialist multidisciplinary team  encompassing professionals from all areas of health and social care. Joe is Chair of the Operations Management Group and Clinical Lead. 

Luis Alonso is a research scientist in the City Science group and Principal Investigator of the Andorra Living Lab Project. He has a PhD in architecture and coordinates the Andorra Living Lab project. He oversees the integration of the group’s diverse research topics (energy consumption, city simulation, urban mobility, innovation district, and smart housing) in the City Science Network of Collaborative Cities, to provide comprehensive solutions for urban and country challenges, in order to transform cities into more diverse and vibrant “human scale ecosystems.”

Since he is focused on very different lines of research and work, his antidisciplinary approach fits on the Media Lab philosophy: City Science, urban indicators, big data analysis, urban planning, architectural robotics, building design and construction, new and smart materials (free-form transparent energy efficient envelopes and biomedical uses), energy simulation and building efficiency and sustainability, eco-innovation, e-learning and its impact on social networks, new technologies, IoT, etc.

Dr Róisín Loughran is the Manager of the Regulated Software Research Centre in Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT). Dr Loughran obtained a Bachelors degree in Electronic Engineering in UCD before undertaking a MPhil in Music and Media Technology at Trinity College Dublin. She completed her PhD entitled `Musical Instrument Identification with Feature Selection Using Evolutionary Methods’ at the University of Limerick and worked for a number of years as a post-doctoral researcher within the Natural Computing Research and Applications Group (NCRA) in UCD. Dr Loughran has extensive knowledge and publications in the area of AI and Evolutionary Computing (EC), in particular in the application of EC methods to interdisciplinary projects such as those in digital signal processing, music generation and creativity. Dr Loughran is currently researching into the application of EC and other AI methods to investigate and mitigate unwanted detrimental biases in algorithmic systems. Dr Loughran is an active contributor to the working group for the IEEE P7003 upcoming Standard on ‘Algorithmic Bias Considerations’.

Dr. Carmine Bailey, owner of Bailey Collaborative Solutions, LLC, earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Mathematics from Lehigh University in the area of Optimal Control of Minimum Film Thickness under a research grant from General Motors Corporation. Dr. Bailey began his career with Teledyne Brown Engineering (TBE) as a systems analyst for the US Army Strategic Defense Initiative. Dr. Bailey joined McDonnell Douglas Aerospace in 1990, where he was Manager of the Guidance, Navigation and Control Systems Department supporting the NASA Aeroassist Flight Experiment program. In 1997, Dr. Bailey joined The Boeing Company continuing in a managerial role with the International Space Station (ISS) program as the Systems Engineering Manager, where he was responsible for verification and final sell-off to NASA of Node 1, Airlock, Human Research Facility Rack, and EXPRESS Racks.

Professor Fergal McCaffery is founder and director of the Regulated Software Research Centre, and a Professor of Computing Science in Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT). He is the Medical Device Software Engineering competency area leader in Lero. He is a co-founder of Nova Leah (a spin out company from the Regulated Software Research Centre). Over the past few years, he has taken a part time career break to work with Nova Leah and also as Chief Scientific Officer for STATSports. He has been awarded over €16 million in research funding through highly competitive national and European funding calls to research the area of medical device software, including SFI awards of Stokes, Principal Investigator and a Lero Co-PI. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed conference and journal papers and is on the editorial board/programme committee for a number of leading software engineering conferences and journals. Winner of the SFI Enterpreneurship Award 2020, Winner of DkIT Established Researcher of the Year Award in 2017. Winner of the Lero Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in 2019. Finalist for the Irish Software Association/IBEC Outstanding Academic of the year Award in 2015 & 2019. He is internationally recognised for his contributions to medical device software engineering. His research team have led the development of 5 International Standards/Technical reports for medical device software. He was the Leader for the development of IEC/TR 80002-3 for medical device software processes in collaboration with the ISO/IEC 62304 development team.  He also was appointed to the Health Products Regulatory Authority Advisory Committee for Medical Devices.

Giancarlo Di Vece is the CEO of Unosquare, a growing 800 person global software consultancy that operates in 8 countries and 3 continents. During his time as CEO, Giancarlo has exponentially transformed the organization to scale – doubling in size in the last two years. With a fierce purpose of democratizing opportunity across the globe, Giancarlo and his leadership team work endlessly not only to find and attract the best talent anywhere in the world, but also guiding and facilitating the careers of those who decide to become part of Unosquare.

By caring about the community, its people, and the future of inclusive business, Unosquare has achieved the rarified status of being on the Inc 5000 Fastest growing companies 7 years in a row – a feat achieved by the likes of companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, and Patagonia to name a few. In addition to this, Unosquare has received awards in multiple countries for Innovation, Life-Work Balance, and Employee Satisfaction.

Giancarlo’s enthusiasm and contributions have been sought out as inspiration for others, he is often invited to write for Entrepreneur, Forbes, CIO.com as well as to speak at different events that influence the industry.

John spent his early career coding for a healthcare tech company in Pittsburgh before a 15 year stint in media. A journalist and editor at the North Belfast News, John also ran Ireland’s most successful independent food website, Forked.
In 2013 John launched a wifi software technology startup, which was used in restaurants, cafés, hotels, stadia and vehicles around the world.
John joined Entrepreneurial Spark in 2015 to help support ambitious startups throughout Ireland. The social enterprise was bought over by NatWest, RBS and Ulster Bank in 2018. Since joining the team John has worked to support 7000+ startups across the country. Those businesses have raised £35m+ in investment and created more than 1000 jobs.
Since 2019, John sits as a member of Ulster Bank’s Regional Board and leads on climate and the drive to support a more diverse entrepreneurial ecosystem in Northern Ireland.

Marko Grobelnik is an expert researcher in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Focused areas of expertise are Machine Learning, Data/Text/Web Mining, Network  Analysis, Semantic Technologies, Deep Text Understanding, and Data Visualization. Marko co-leads the Department for Artificial Intelligence at Jozef Stefan Institute,  co-founded UNESCO International Research Center on AI (IRCAI), and is the CEO of Quintelligence.com specialized in solving complex AI tasks for the  commercial world. He collaborates with major European academic institutions and major industries such as Bloomberg, British Telecom, European Commission, Microsoft Research,   New York Times. Marko is co-author of several books, co-founder of several start-ups and is/was involved into over 50 EU funded research projects in various fields of Artificial Intelligence. Marko represents Slovenia in OECD AI Committee (AIONE) and in Council of Europe Committee on AI (CAHAI). In 2016 Marko became Digital Champion of Slovenia at European Commission.

Mary Ann Pierce is founder and CEO of MAP Digital. She is a Webcast pioneer and for over 20 years she has produced cloud-enabled events on MAP Digital’s proprietary MetaMeetings platform, the only integrated enterprise event SaaS platform. Mary Ann and the MAP Digital team are enabling the Event 3.0 era by transforming conferences into content marketing engines with MAP Digital’s Content-as-a-service automation. Repurposed event content from their MetaMeetings platform fuels the campfires of event communities and amplifies the event’s thought leadership, brand via video snippets distributed over social media and media channels to build audience and sponsorship revenue.

For 20 years the MAP Digital team has deployed the MetaMeetings® platform to run the entire digital infrastructure for global investment banking, pharmaceutical, Marcom and CEO Council conferences. MAP Digital helps their clients transform their conferences into strategic business channels. At MAP Digital giving back is fundamental. We use our MetaMeetings platform for Social Good working with the Global Summit of Women, the Equality Moonshot, and Capital as a Force for Good, a community of financial service CEOs funding sustainability. She is the Global Ambassador of the AwakenHub, the first all-Ireland accelerator for women, which will soon be expanding within the Irish Diaspora.

Mary Ann Pierce studied film and communications at Temple University before working in direct marketing, corporate communications, film, theater, and arts management. She has served on the board of Digital Irish, advised the MIT Enterprise Forum NYC and Silicon Republic’s Inspirefest in Dublin, and taught digital event design at New York University. She is the Global Ambassador of the Awaken Hub, the first female founder accelerator spanning all Ireland and expanding within the Irish Diaspora.

Pierce has presented at many events, including the annual meetings of IMEX, PCMA, MPI, and Global Summit of Women. MAP Digital has embraced empowering Women and Girls in STEM as their Corporate Social Responsibility. In 2017, Meetings & Conventions magazine listed her among the Top 25 Women in the Meetings Industry, and in 2020, Meetings Today magazine named her a Trendsetter.

Mary McKenna is a Donegal based serial technology entrepreneur and angel investor. She was one of the co-founders of successful Irish online learning company Learning Pool which is based in Derry in the North West of Ireland.

Since selling Learning Pool 7 years ago Mary has worked extensively with earlier stage startups and scaleups across the entire European startup ecosystem and especially with first time and female entrepreneurs. She has angel invested in 16 early stage tech startups to date.

She is an EU Horizon Europe innovation judge, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Oxford and in 2020 along with some likeminded friends she launched the AwakenHub community for female founders across the island of Ireland.

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.

Michaela Black, Professor at Ulster University, her career has seen her apply Artificial Intelligence and gamification to a wide range of domains including: telecoms, healthcare, finance, education and marketing with 60+ publications and securing £7M+ in pedagogic and research funding.Michaela has actively engaged in a wide range of IT projects securing funding from a wide range of funders. Michaela has just successfully coordinated an EU-funded project MIDAS* (Meaningful Integration of Data, Analytics and Services) 2016-2020. This 40-month project, secured €4.5m in funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme. It delivered Data Science hardware and software solutions to connect fragmented health data and enable policymakers across 4+ European countries to analysis data and enhance policies across a range of diverse topics such as: mental health, obesity, diabetes and looked after children, as well as sharing and ensuring uptake of excellent data access practices such as MIDAS Honest Broker Service. She is also a member of a consortium who has just secured H2020 Europe funding for LUCIA: Understanding Lung Cancer related risk factors and their Impact starting January 2023.Michaela is a current co-director of the engage** technology, a stakeholder participation system, proven and effective platform for gaining participant input and key consensus on relevant topics using real-time digital technologies. engage has delivered successful engagements in partnership with organisations across government, industry, professional bodies, PPIs, NGOs and academia, on the island of Ireland and across Europe. This work has influenced topics such as Brexit, work force planning in Department of Health and Matrix NI Policy on Women in STEM.An active STEM ambassador, Michaela strives to encourage more women to join this field. Actively part of the Athena Swan (AS) team at UU to promote diversity and equality, and the School of Computing, Engineering and Intelligent Systems AS team which received a Bronze Award. In 2019 she secured£15K funding from EPSRC/University of Bath Inclusion Matters Scheme, to host a datathon which aimed to improve equality, diversity and inclusion within the engineering and physical sciences.

John is a Professor of Computer Science at the Open University, Director of the Knowledge Media Institute [1], the OU’s technology research and innovation centre, and the President of STI International [2], a semantics focused networking organization. He has published over 280 refereed articles (h-index 56) in the areas of semantics, the Web, distributed ledgers and eLearning. His current work focuses on how a combination of blockchain and Linked Data technologies can be used to process personal data in a decentralised trusted manner and how this can be applied in the educational domain [3].

Prof. Domingue currently serves as the leader of the first of five themes, on University Learners, for the £20M funded Institute of Coding [4] which aims to increase the number and diversity of computing graduates in the UK as well as enhancing the connection between university teaching and corporate training.

Since January 2019, he has played a leading role in the EU funded QualiChain project [5] which has the aim of revolutionising public education and its relationship to the labour market and policy making by disrupting the way accredited educational titles and other qualifications are archived, managed, shared and verified, taking advantage of blockchain, semantics, data analytics and gamification technologies.

Until February 2020 Prof. Domingue was also a key player in the European Blockchain Observatory [6] supporting the European Commission on road-mapping the future of this technology in a number of key sectors.

February 2020 saw the start of a new EU project, DEL4All [7], where under Prof Domingue’s leadership the OU will aid in road-mapping how education will be transformed due to the impact of blockchains, AI, data and augmented and virtual reality technologies.

In 2017 Prof Domingue’s research in blockchains and education was referenced in the Joint Research Centre Policy Report Blockchain in Education for the European Commission [8]. Prof. Domingue has given many talks on his work including at the Royal Institution in 2018 [9] and at TEDx [10].

Very recently his focused has centred on our blockchain based platform could be applied for COVID-19 Anti Body Test and Vaccination certification which has attracted attention from the media [11].

Last year he became a Fellow of the British Blockchain Association [12].

1. http://kmi.open.ac.uk/
2. https://www.sti2.org/
3. http://blockchain.open.ac.uk/
4. https://instituteofcoding.org/
5. https://qualichain-project.eu/
6. https://www.eublockchainforum.eu/
7. https://www.del4all.eu/
8. https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC108255/jrc108255_blockchain_in_education%281%29.pdf#page=66
9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wwYDMdji3k
10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPefcmWFWyM&t=6s
11. https://blockchain.open.ac.uk/#covid-19
12. https://www.britishblockchainassociation.org/fellowship

Professor James McLaughlin is the Director of Ulster University’s Nanotechnology and Integrated-Bioengineering Centre (NIBEC). A Fellow of the Institute of Physics and the Irish Academy of Engineering, he was awarded an OBE for his services to Research and Economic-Development and CBE in 2022 for Research and Education. He is a Senior Distinguished-Fellow and his world-leading Digital-Healthcare-Technology research addresses nanotechnology and it’s application in areas such as cardiac point-of-care-sensors and medical-diagnostics. Professor McLaughlin with a H-Index of 50, over 400 publications, 35 patents and has attracted over £70m of funding (EU, EPSRC, Wellcome Trust, InnovateUK; INI; US-Irl etc.) to pioneer research that has led to the establishment of NIBEC, CHIC, NICAM, NanotecNI, ECME, Biodevices Lab and BEST Centre. He is a co-founder of various successful companies including the wireless-patient-monitoring company, Intelesens, as well as  Heartscape, SiSaF and the initial phases of Heartsine. He sits on a wide range of boards, funding councils and served on NI MATRIX for 10 years. He also led the successful global XPRIZE Tricorder Zensor team to overall 3^rd position and has developed a wide range of industrial and international academic collaborations particularly in the areas of nanotechnology, cardiovascular monitoring and diagnostics. He is currently heading up the new £42m Belfast City Region Deal – Centre for Digital Healthcare Technologies.

Robert Smith oversees the AI and machine learning team, the flagship Machine Intelligence Garage programme – which supports high-growth potential startups working with AI & ML – and the prestigious AI Ethics Committee, established in 2018 to advise organisations working with Digital Catapult on how to ensure responsible and ethical development and deployment of AI-enabled products and services. An eminent computer scientist and widely respected leader in the field of evolutionary computation, Robert has over 30 years of experience working in academia, directly with industry, and as an entrepreneur himself. Robert is author of the acclaimed book Rage Inside The Machine: The Prejudice of Algorithms, and How to Stop the Internet Making Bigots of Us All, Senior Research Fellow of the Computer Science Faculty at University College London (UCL), and a Founding Trustee of We and AI, an organisation dedicated to improving AI’s effects of society. Robert has also worked with companies across the private and public sectors in both the US and UK including the US Navy, Boeing, Airbus and BT.

Sara is Head of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at Innovate UK. Sara works to identify, support and accelerate high growth-potential innovation in the UK, based on cutting-edge AI and data research and technology. She is passionate about diversity in STEM and digital inclusion With a background in computer science, Sara has significant commercial digital experience working in the third and private sectors. Prior to joining Innovate UK, she worked as an AI consultant advising global organisations on AI development strategies and implementation.

Seamus McAteer is an entrepreneur, and operator. He is currently Founder in Residence at AI Fund. After a career as a frequently quoted analyst with SRI International and Jupiter Communications he founded M:Metrics, a global syndicated data  currency for the mobile Internet that was acquired by Comscore in 2008.  Seamus founded and successfully sold two other startups: Metaresolver, an ad tech platform acquired by Millennial Media, and Datasnap, a location analytics platform acquired by Neustar. More recently he joined Otter.ai as employee number seven to lead commercial activity He was instrumental in launching their product and scaling the business/

Seamus lives in San Francisco with his wife Madeline and 10 year old son Thomas. He runs occasional half marathons and loves live music—the louder the better. He helps out at a number of nonprofits and is on the Board of Governors of Ohlhoff Recovery Programs, the largest non-profit program working with addicts in San Francisco.

Sean Flood is an experienced entrepreneur with a passion for companies in the mobility, sustainability, advertising and health & wellness space.

For 12 years prior to overseeing the sale of the company to Last Mile Holdings (MILE on TSX), Sean was Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Gotcha Mobility (ridegotcha.com), an e-mobility company dedicated to providing innovative shared mobility products and technologies that get people out of single-occupancy cars and safely onto accessible, sustainable electric mobility products. The company operates e-bikes, e-scooters, and etrikes as transportation solutions tailored to cities and universities across the US. Gotcha was recognized as one of America’s fastest-growing companies in 2018 and 2019 on the Inc. 5000 list and was a finalist on Fast Company’s 2019 World Changing Ideas Awards in the Health and Wellness category for providing students with sustainable micro-transit products that encourage healthy lifestyles. In 2019, Sean received Charleston Regional Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 award for his entrepreneurship in launching Gotcha and community involvement. Sean was also CEO of Rivet Campus Media (rivetcampusmedia.com) (Owned by Private Equity firm MSouth), the largest on campus collegiate advertising platform. He oversaw growth of 125% in two years and partnerships with 148 universities around the country. Currently, Sean is a Founding Partner at EFO Ventures, an early stage investment firm focused on investing in founders in the mobility, cleantech & health and wellness sectors. Sean is a graduate of Florida State University’s Jim Moran School of Entrepreneurship with an additional degree in Marketing.

Dr. Whoriskey has helped build some of the most successful Biotechnology companies from the ground up as a member of the Founding Executive Teams of Vera Therapeutics, Moderna, Momenta Pharmaceuticals and Cubist Pharmaceuticals. These companies have pioneered cutting edge technologies and developed lifesaving medicines and protective vaccines, creating significant value and contributing numerous jobs to the local economies. As head of Technology Strategy, Susan played a unique role in the C-Suites creating cohesion at the interface of research, intellectual property, and business in the critical early phases of translating the “big science idea” from the lab bench to the clinic. This included managing company growth through seed and venture funding, scientific proof of concept, IPOs, clinical development, and the achievement of multiple FDA drug approvals. Cubist was purchased by Merck in 2014 for $9.5B. Momenta was acquired by J & J in 2020 for $6.5B. Moderna and Vera Therapeutics remain independent public companies.

Susan has held various positions in academics, venture capital and biotech executive management. She has been a Research Fellow in Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School with a Nobel Laureate, a consultant to venture capital firm Polaris Venture Partners, and an Entrepreneur in Residence at MIT.

Dr. Whoriskey earned a PH.D. in Molecular Biology & Molecular Genetics from UCLA and a Bachelor of Science in microbiology from University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is a proud recipient of an Honorary Doctorate in Biotechnology and Entrepreneurism from the University of Ulster. She is an inventor on 50 issued and pending patents and has written grants that have received over $30M in federal funding for scientific research.

CEO/Founder of Instil Software, a product-focused software engineering consultancy based in Belfast. Built on a foundation of engineering, design and product excellence, we develop software for and provide developer training to some of the world’s leading technology firms.

Personally, I have 30 years broad industry experience, including 10 years writing compilers and emulation software, and 20 years developing software for the telecoms, medical, audio, security and insurance industries.