Alfons is a healthcare innovator from Barcelona, Spain passionate about how new technologies can break the barriers to mobility and independence that people with disability face every day.

He holds a Master’s in Industrial Engineering (Biomedical major) from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and various entrepreneurship courses at the Business Schools of Cambridge Judge, EADA and ISDI.

Driven by a personal experience (his father had a stroke), Alfons started his professional career at Implantcast (German manufacturer of joint implants) and Institut Guttmann (neurorehabilitation hospital), where he discovered first-hand the daily reality of people with disabilities and identified unmet clinical needs.

In October 2018, he co-founded ABLE Human Motion: a start-up with the mission of enabling mobility for everyone, where he holds CEO responsibilities. Under Alfons’ leadership, ABLE has created a new generation of robotic exoskeletons that is light and accessible, crucial for widespread adoption. The technology has already been tested by +100 patients with spinal cord injury (who walked +150,000 steps), showing improved clinical outcomes and benefits in rehabilitation. The company is positioned among the most promising medical device start-ups in Europe, being recognized as the Best European Robotics Startup in 2020 and winner of the TOYOTA Startup Awards.

Dr Alison Liddy is CEO and Co-Founder of Relevium.  Relevium is developing innovative peptide gel-based therapeutics for painful conditions.

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.  CATAGEN is also the only company in Northern Ireland represented on Technation’s Net Zero Cohort in 2022.  Andrew’s vision for the business has led to the opening of CATAGEN’s Net Zero Technology Centre – the overall purpose of which is to clean and decarbonise the air and minimise carbon impact on our environment.

This expertise is now leading to the development of new Net Zero Technologies to further reduce emissions including the production of green hydrogen, e-fuels, carbon capture technologies and a personalised emissions data platform that will track the emissions pollution created by a user’s vehicle.

Anna Ní Ghallachair was appointed Chairperson to the Board of Údarás na Gaeltachta in 2018 by the Minister of State for the Irish Language, the Gaeltacht and the Islands at the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht for a five-year term from 16 January 2018 to 15 January 2023. This is her second term as Chairperson of the Board of Údarás na Gaeltachta. She previously served as Chair from 20 November 2012 to 19 November 2017.

Anna Ní Ghallachair is from Árainn Mhór in Co. Donegal. Following ten years as a lecturer of French, German, and Irish in Letterkenny Institute of Technology and over 20 years as Director of the Language Centre in Maynooth University, she was Director of the Centre for Irish Language Research, Teaching and Testing and Head of the School of Celtic Studies in the same university until retirement in January 2021.

Anna has studied modern languages in Ireland and in France, where she spent six years as a lecturer while doing postgraduate work in French. Her research focuses on multilingualism, teaching and learning Irish and the literature of Brittany.

She was a member of Coimisiún na Gaeltachta (2000-2002) and a member of the language education policy working group in the Department of Education and Skills (2008-9). She is a former chairperson of the Irish Association for Applied Linguistics (2004-2007), Raidió na Gaeltachta (2010-2013) and Údarás na Gaeltachta (2012-2017). She has also served on a number of committees in Ireland and abroad focusing on the teaching and promotion of languages.

In 2008 she was honoured by the French Government in recognition of her services to plurilingualism.

She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE) and of the Royal Irish Academy’s Languages, Literature, Culture and Communication Committee.

Anne Marie Conlon is Head of Economic Development with Donegal County Council. Anne Marie and her team lead out and deliver on a range of projects and initiatives prioritizing Green tech and the Green Economy as part of Donegal County Council’s key strategic objective of transitioning to a low carbon, climate resilient society.

Curious about users, behaviours and needs, Becca founded a technology company, designing products and services for better inclusion. Her technology company is mostly known for their non-verbal emergency reporting app, TapSOS.

TapSOS is the only UK company to be accredited by BAPCO, DCMS and is integrated with BT 999 for all four emergency services.

Becca believes in ‘being the change you’d like to see’ and is passionate about design for those most vulnerable in society and to be a voice for those unheard.

Becca was awarded the 2020-2021 Women in Innovation award through Innovate UK and during 2020 expanded the innovation for domestic abuse reporting, in response to the impact of COVID-19.

Camille O’Malley is CTO & co-founder of Xtremedy Medical. Camille trained as an R&D chemist, working in large multinationals in Asia & Ireland. Camille completed her Masters from Smurfit Business School. She was chosen as a 2018 BioInnovate fellow & joined the Stanford BioDesign affiliate program to investigate unmet needs. She worked with orthopaedic clinicians and patients, witnessing first-hand the devastating impact chronic infections have on patients lives’. Camille used her scientific & commercial background to define the root cause of these infections – bacterial biofilms – and how various clinical interventions were wholly ineffective. 

O’Malley is developing a first-of-its-kind surgical treatment for eradication of biofilms in diabetic foot infections. Using pulsed field ablation, coupled with a non-invasive design, the BioBlate works by creating electrical signals to treat bacteria on the surfaces and below. The system uses custom biosensors to feedback the environment and deliver a repeatable signal every time. 

Camille & her team at Xtremedy have shown 1000-fold superiority to current treatments. Available surgical options for infections are limited, surgeons are blind to where the infection in within the wound & rely heavily on post-operative antibiotics. These therapies can last weeks or months & lead to extensive kidney damage in patients. O’Malley’s BioBlate technology works as an adjunct to antibiotics, physically disrupting the bacterial infection & subsequently creating a more receptive environment for antibiotics to work. All in a single surgery. 

Camille O’Malley co-founded Xtremedy Medical in 2020 and works as CTO “I wanted to work on a solution to a true unmet clinical need. DFI’s are a growing, global pandemic. We didn’t stand by & assume someone else is working on the next generation of infections treatments. We’re doing it ourselves.”

Professor Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh is President of NUI Galway. Trained as a Chartered Accountant, he has a PhD in Accounting and has published widely in the accounting field. He is a board member of the National Library of Ireland and a member of the Council of the Economic and Social Research Institute.

With a considerable forestry portfolio, spanning some 200 properties across the north west, a significant track record in onshore wind farm development and a focus on the future of Floating Offshore Wind off the West Coast of Ireland, Ronan Group Renewables spans renewable energy potential across the region.

The company are committed to developing the potential of the north west and using their experience to assist the growth of the renewable economy that can be transformational to the future employment and investment goals of Donegal and other counties across the north west.

Entrepreneur and Top Manager in the field of innovation with 20 years of experience in senior roles in Ukraine, Europe, and the US. From 1998 to 2007, he managed IT companies and an international team of software developers. In 2007, he joined Microsoft Ukraine and from 2009 to 2014 headed the Corporation’s representative office in Ukraine. From July 2014 to August 2018, he served as Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine. He was involved in the creation of the National Reform Council, preparation for the Ukraine 2020 strategy, the launch of third/fourth generation (3G/4G) mobile communication, creation of the Digital Ukraine and Go Global initiatives, the ProZorro electronic public procurement system and the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, organization of the cyber defense of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine; he introduced many other reforms, initiatives, and innovations.

Darryl Charles joined Ulster University in 2001 and is a member of the Computer Science Research Institute. Darryl is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and teaches at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. His research background is in computational intelligence and he has applied his expertise in this area to serious games and apps as well as a number of research contexts such as intelligent interactive storytelling, machine learning in games, user modelling, cloud computing, and connected health. Recent research has been mainly focused on health contexts and creating software with natural user interfaces to help motivate people to engage with learning, exercise and rehabilitation. Since 1998 he has had over 80 papers published in peer reviewed journals and conferences as well as an authored book entitled Biologically Inspired Artificial Intelligence for Computer Games.

Darryl graduated from Queens University Belfast with a degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering (Hons.) in 1988. After qualifying as a teacher at Stranmillis College, Belfast, he taught Technology and Design to A-Level at Portadown College until 1995 and during this spell completed an MSc in Microelectronics and Microcomputer Applications at the University of Ulster. After a spell as Head of IT at Cox Green School in Maidenhead he returned to full-time education to study for a PhD on Unsupervised Artificial Neural Networks at the University of Paisley. While completing his PhD he was appointed as a lecturer and subsequently as a senior lecturer in Computing at Paisley before returning to Northern Ireland in 2001.

She is the founder and CEO of OKRA Technologies – an artificial intelligence data analytics company for healthcare. OKRA allows healthcare professionals to combine all their data in one place and generate actionable, evidence-based insights in real time, to save and improve human lives. Loubna is currently a member of the European Union High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, where she is particularly focused on healthcare and achieving competitive business impact with AI. She was named an MIT Technology Review Top Innovator Under 35, a Forbes 50 Top Women In Tech, and won several prizes, including CEO of Year 2019 at the Cambridge Independent Science and Technology Awards and Best Female-Led Startup at the StartUp Europe Awards. On a personal level, she is a strong advocate for diversity, women and challenging the status quo.

Dr Orla Flynn was appointed inaugural President of Atlantic Technological University in April 2022, having served two years as President of Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology. Prior to this Dr Flynn was Vice President for External Affairs at Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) for six years, and previous academic leadership roles in CIT included Head of CIT Crawford College of Art & Design and Head of School of Humanities. 

Dr Flynn commenced her academic career as a Lecturer in Computer Science, holding undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications in Mathematical Physics and Computer Science from University College Cork, an MA in Management in Education from WIT, and a PhD from the Kemmy Business School at the University of Limerick. She is a Director on the Boards of HEANet and Galway Chamber of Commerce.

Dr. Charles Chen is a Senior Scientist at AstraZeneca, a UK-Sweden-based pharmaceutical company, working on designing and synthesizing novel lipids for lipid nanoparticle-based delivery systems and focusing on vaccine delivery. Before joining AstraZeneca, Charles started his research journey when he was an undergraduate student and found his passion in drug development. Charles got his Ph.D. in Chemistry at King’s College London in UK under the supervision of Prof. Martin Ulmschneider. In 2019, Charles moved to Boston in the US and did a 2-year postdoc training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Massachusetts General Hospital and was co-supervised by Prof. Timothy Lu and Joanna Yeh.

Charles has led numerous projects and utilized molecular dynamics, a computational microscope, to investigate how small proteins interact with the cell membranes and combined this technique with high-throughput drug screening platforms. Interactions between small proteins and cell membranes have been a challenge for several decades, and it makes it difficult to rationally design the small proteins for drug development. Charles’ combinational approaches have shown promising outcomes in antibiotics and cancer chemotherapy and published more than 20 peer-reviewed papers and some international patents. His works have attracted great attention from industries and are under preclinical safety evaluation.

Elaine Smyth is the Director of the Innovation Community at Catalyst. Catalyst is a technology hub providing workspace to over 170 innovation companies, from startups to multi-nationals together with research institutes across several campuses. As a not for profit organisation Catalyst invests the surplus from rental income to support the growth of entrepreneurship and startups through a range of programmes and initiatives. Over 900 entrepreneurs and startups avail of this support each year.

Before joining Catalyst, Elaine has held roles as HR Director, Chief Operating Officer and Global Consultancy Services Director for several technology companies and Investment Director roles with local venture capital firms.

As President and CEO of Unosquare Giancarlo Di Vece believes software engineering is not only a science, it’s also an art. This refreshing viewpoint, along with his leadership and passion for technology, globalization, and IT recruitment talent, has led to thousands of business projects successfully completing their digital transformation initiatives with Unosquare in creative and pioneering ways.

Giancarlo focuses his organization’s efforts on the financial services and life sciences space, as he trusts that these are the organizations that impact the way people live and interact with one another every day. Under Giancarlo’s direction, he and his team actively seek the best talent and then places them into processes and practices for distributed agile augmentation. His goal? To make today better than the past, and help companies move their projects towards the future.

Always looking for a challenge, Giancarlo started gainfully buying and growing businesses at a young age. At the age of 21, he purchased a small craft company dedicated to the North American market and transformed it into a 200-person operation selling to some of the largest retailers in the US. In 2013, with a background in industrial engineering, he decided to move into the technology industry by joining Unosquare and quickly embraced his role of transforming the organization to align with client needs.

By helping organizations understand their projects, manage their talent, and realize their process, Unosquare has been named one of the 100 fastest-growing private businesses in Oregon for 8 years in a row and one of the fastest-growing US companies on the Inc. 5000 list for 7 years in a row. Giancarlo’s enthusiasm and contributions have been sought out as inspiration for others, and he is often invited to write and speak on the topics that influence the industry.

Unosquare currently has 800 employees in the US, Mexico, UK, Bolivia, Colombia, and Argentina.

Graham Warke was co-opted as a DUP Councillor on to Derry City & Strabane District Council in 2015, Graham was elected to represent the Faughan area of Derry and Strabane District Council and topped the poll when he was re-elected in 2019.

Graham was Chair of the Derry & Strabane Local Action Group (LAG) and currently sits on the Health and Communities and Business and Culture Committees. Graham also sits on the Bonfire Committee, VISIT Derry, City Centre Initiative and PCSP.

Graham served in the Royal Irish Regiment for a number of years before working as a youth worker in the Cathedral Youth Club in the Fountain estate

Graham has two children Katelyn and Ollie. Graham enjoys spending time with his family and travelling extensively.

Inty Grønneberg is the Co-founder and CEO of Ichthion, a British Ecuadorian start-up awarded for developing high-end technologies to restore rivers and oceans from plastic pollution. In addition, he is the President and Co-founder of the Circular by Ichthion Foundation, an NGO with the goal of improving the life of vulnerable groups through technology and innovation while contributing to environmental protection.

He holds a PhD in Innovation Ecosystems from the Imperial College London, and a Master’s degree in Manufacturing Processes at the University of Greenwich.

As a result of his professional career, he has had the honour of receiving several awards, for example:

• MIT Technology Review Latin America Inventor IU35 in 2018
• Ambassador for the environment and bio-economy, Ecuadorian Ministry of Environment
• National Order of Merit, grade Great Commander, Presidency of the Republic of Ecuador
• Creativity Award 2019, Ecuadorian Chamber of Industry and Productivity
• Strait of Magellan Award for Innovation and Exploration with Global Impact, Embassy of Chile in Ecuador.
• Scientific merit “Eugenio Espejo” Award, Chamber of Commerce of Quito

He has more than a decade of leadership experience in Latin America and Europe including his former role as Global Manufacturing Manager at Oxitane and held numerous Senior engineering positions at General Motors and Toyota.

John Breslin is a Professor in Electronic Engineering at the College of Science & Engineering at the National University of Ireland Galway, where he is Director of the TechInnovate and AgInnovate entrepreneurship and innovation programmes. John is Co-Founder of boards.ie (Ireland’s largest discussion forum website), adverts.ie (classified ads website), and StreamGlider (real-time streaming newsreader app). He is Co-Founder of the Galway City Innovation District / PorterShed and Startup Galway. John is Chair of WestBIC, and on the Steering Group of Scale Ireland. He coordinates the STARTED Erasmus+ Knowledge Alliance. John has taught electronic engineering, computer science, innovation and entrepreneurship topics over the past 20 years. Associated with three SFI Research Centres, he is a Co-Principal Investigator at Insight (Data Analytics) and Confirm (Smart Manufacturing), and a Funded Investigator at VistaMilk (AgTech). He co-created the SIOC, implemented in hundreds of applications (by Yahoo, Boeing, Vodafone, etc.) on at least 65,000 websites with 35 million data instances. He has written 250 peer-reviewed academic publications (h-index of 45, ~9000 citations, best paper awards from IoT, DL4KGS, SEMANTiCS, ICEGOV, ESWC, PELS), co-authored The Social Semantic Web and Social Semantic Web Mining, and also the Irish bestsellers Old Ireland in Colour (2020) and Old Ireland in Colour 2 (2021).

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.

John G. McLaughlin grew up in Redcastle, Co. Donegal and was educated at Carndonagh Community School and the Regional Technical College in Letterkenny. He graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering from University College Galway in 1986. He spent a short time working for University College Galway and Westmeath County Council before taking up an appointment in California, USA where he spent 13 years working in engineering and construction. He joined Donegal County Council in 1999 where he worked in the National Roads Office in Donegal Town at Executive Engineer and Senior Executive Engineer level. In 2001, he was appointed Director of Roads and Transportation and held that role until July 2020, when he took up the position of Chief Executive of Donegal County Council. 

John Kelpie is the Chief Executive of the Derry City and Strabane District Council. Established in April 2015 as a result of a programme of local government reform in Northern Ireland, this new Council serves a larger geographical area and has a range of additional powers, functions and responsibilities than its predecessor councils.

John led on the creation of the new organisation designing an innovative, flexible and responsive staffing structure with a clear vision and purpose to develop a thriving, prosperous and sustainable City and Region with equality of opportunity for all.

As Chief Product Officer of Elvie, the revolutionary femtech company, Jonathan O’Toole is at the forefront of improving women’s lives by creating technology that they want, need and deserve.

Since he joined Elvie in 2014 from Dyson, as one of the first few team members and the first product hire, Jon has grown the product team to 100 people strong, launched five world-class products and continues to play a key role in the Elvie executive team, contributing to the company’s journey from East London start-up to global brand.

Jon takes stigmatised or forgotten areas of women’s health and technology and applies his empathy and creative flair to create transformative products. Under Jon’s leadership, Elvie has supported women on their breastfeeding journey (Elvie Pump, Elvie Stride, Elvie Curve, Elvie Catch) and enabled women to strengthen their pelvic floor, helping them to regain confidence and control after childbirth (Elvie Trainer).

The 50+ awards for these products, including several awards from The Red Dot and inclusion in TIME Magazine’s ‘100 Best Inventions’ twice, speak volumes. These products define or create categories and, most importantly, are effective in supporting and empowering new mothers in their most vulnerable and intimate moments.

Leah is a University Student who works as a Technical Support Engineer with Options Technology. Options are the No. 1 provider of IT infrastructure to global Capital Markets firms, supporting their operations and ecosystems. Although Options is based in Belfast, they have offices in New York, Toronto, Chicago, London, Belfast, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand.

Leah is also heavily involved with the Irish Language and is currently elected as a member of the executive committee and supreme governing body of Conradh na Gaeilge, the democratic forum for the Irish-speaking community.

Professor Malachy Ó Néill is Director of Regional Engagement at Ulster University. He hosted the American Conference of Irish Studies 2021 and played a leading role in the inception of a School of Medicine and the Derry/Strabane City Deal.

Mary Ann Pierce is founder and CEO of MAP Digital, a proven onsite and online event design and engineering agency. She is a Webcast pioneer and for over 20 years she has produced events on MAP Digital’s proprietary MetaMeetings platform, the only integrated enterprise event SaaS platform. We specialize in financial services, healthcare, media and social good conferences. Mary Ann and the MAP Digital team are enabling the Event 3.0 era by transforming conferences into content marketing and data analytic engines using AI and ML.  Repurposed event content from their MetaMeetings platform fuels the campfires of event communities and amplifies the event’s thought leadership via video snippets distributed over social media and media channels to build audience and generate sponsorship revenue.  We are partnering with other best of service platforms to provide a seamless experience for both attendees and organizers.

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.  Mary Ann is Awaken Hub, the first all-Ireland, female founder accelerator, Global Ambassador to the Irish Diaspora and previously served on the board of Digital Irish, IIBN and was an advisor to the MIT Enterprise Forum of New York City.

In 2020 Meetings Today named her a Trendsetter. They write: “For over 20 years, Pierce has organized hybrid events for clients and is now generously sharing what she has learned with planners and suppliers and showing the events industry the way forward.” In 2017, Meetings & Conventions Magazine named her as one of The Top 25 Women in the Meetings Industry, noting that “Pierce is ahead of the curve, as the rest of the industry now embraces data capture and analytics as the next frontier.”

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.

Meriem Sefta is Chief Diagnostics Officer at Owkin, a French-American startup that uses artificial intelligence to find the right treatment for every patient.

A graduate of École Polytechnique and MIT, Meriem completed her PhD in Cancer Biology at Institut Curie while teaching mathematics and statistical analysis at Paris-Sud University. She was a Research Project Manager before she became a consultant at AEC Partners. She joined Owkin as Head of Partnerships and now leads the organization’s diagnostics unit.

Owkin uses AI to identify new drug candidates, de-risk and accelerate clinical trials and build diagnostic tools that improve patient outcomes. Using federated learning, a pioneering collaborative AI framework, Owkin enables medical and biopharma partners to unlock valuable insights from siloed datasets, while protecting patient privacy and securing proprietary data.

Mícheál is the Chief Executive of Údarás na Gaeltachta and the Vice President of the Assembly of European Regions with responsibility for Tourism, Culture and Youth.. He served as Director of Enterprise, Employment, Property and Engineering with Údarás from 2015 up to his appointment as Chief Executive in September of 2017. Mícheál spent sixteen years as Director of Services with Donegal County Council with specific responsibility for Community, Culture, Planning & Economic Development. In this role he was also Chief Executive of the Donegal County Development BoardHe also spent periods working with local and community development organisations in Inishowen, Co. Donegal.Mícheál has also spent periods working in the local development sector, the community and voluntary sector, rural development, education and also a period with the Department of Agriculture and Food (pilot integrated rural development programme).

Professor Mark W.J. Ferguson is Chair of the Board of the European Innovation Council (EIC) for the European Commission. Previously (2012 – 2022) he was Director General of Science Foundation Ireland and was Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government of Ireland. He also served in Ireland’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, e.g., as a member of NPHET (the National Public Health Emergency Team). Professor Ferguson was Chair of the European Commission Pilot Advisory Board for the European Innovation Council, a member of the Governing Boards of the Global Research Council and of the European Commission Joint Research Centre and a founding member of the Small Advanced Economies Initiative. He served on the EU High Level Group on the impact of H2020 and chaired international committees reviewing the Research and Innovation systems of Denmark, Hungary and Canada. Previously, a Professor and Dean of Biological Sciences at The University of Manchester (since 1984), he was co-founder and CEO of Renovo Group Plc. (1998 – 2011). Professor Ferguson is the recipient of numerous international research prizes and awards, including the 2002 European Science Prize (jointly), author of 329 papers and book chapters, 61 patent families, author/editor of eight books, supervised 77 PhD students and has been awarded over £70 million in competitive research grants and approximately £100 million in start-up company equity funding. He has contributed to a number of scientific films, documentaries, TV and radio programmes and held offices in 16 international scientific societies, including President of the European Tissue Repair Society.  He has wide ranging research interests in cellular and molecular mechanisms in scarring and wound healing, developmental mechanisms in normal and cleft palate formation, alligator and crocodile biology including temperature dependent sex determination.

Professor Ferguson graduated from Queens University of Belfast with degrees in Dentistry (BDS 1st class honours), Anatomy and Embryology (BSc 1st class honours, PhD) and Medical Sciences (DMedSc), and holds Fellowships from the Royal Colleges of Surgeons in Ireland (FFD), and Edinburgh (FDS) and is a Founding Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci). He is a member or Fellow of a number of learned Societies and was made a “Commander of the British Empire” (CBE) by the Queen in 1999 for services to Health and Life Sciences.

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.

Sergio Gallastegui is Co-Founder and Lead Blockchain in Code Contract. He has technical and legal know-how about Blockchain and other technologies such as Big Data. The platform allows to automate administrative processes through Smart Contracts getting digital and legal warranties. Moreover, he has participated in other national and international projects related to business and technical innovation. His passion is about technology, innovation and sport.

Somdip Dey, also professionally known as InteliDey, is an Indian-born embedded machine learning researcher, educator, entrepreneur and electronic music producer. Dey is credited to co-develop the Nosh app, an artificial intelligence based food management application, aiming to reduce food waste in the household. Dey also co-founded Nosh Technologies and currently, holds the position of CEO and Chief Scientist in the company.

Every year more than 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted globally, which is both a social and environmental issue. In 2014, Dey’s parents in India went through a car accident that forced him to send back all his money for the medical procedures. With no money in his pocket and to survive hunger for a week he ended up salvaging edible food from dumpsters. After seeing so much food thrown away by others while pursuing his PhD in the U.K. he ended up co-founding Nosh Technologies in 2020 to use cutting edge technologies to reduce food waste.

At Nosh Technologies Dey invents algorithms and programs leveraging artificial intelligence, blockchain, edge computing and cloud computing to fight food waste and build a more sustainable planet.

Sonia Nic Giolla Easbuig is the Managing Director of LIGID Léiriúcháin, an award winning Independent Television Production company based in Ireland.
She has worked across the globe for many broadcasters making award winning documentaries in the Irish language on subjects as diverse as the ‘Donegal Hiring Fairs’, ‘The Hunger Strikes 1980 – 1981’, ‘The story of Bád Eddie’, the Middle East conflicts effect on the ‘Children of Palestine’ and a six-part series called ‘Bhí mé Ann’. LIGID has recently Produced a feature documentary about the late ‘Martin McGuinness’ for TG4, ILBF & BAI that was screened at the Belfast, Cork & Foyle Film Festivals and was nominated for Programme of the year at the Ghradaim Chumarsáide an Oireachtais 2021. It was also selected for the ‘Capital Irish Film Festival’ in Washington.
A winner of the Prix Circom international documentary section twice, she has been awarded an Amnesty International Human Rights Worldwide TV Award for ‘I gCillín an Bhais’, and also a Celtic Film Festival nomination for ‘Bhí mé Ann’. LIGID has received a ‘ Top 50 Business as Gaeilge award’ and in 2018 was awarded one of the first ‘Q-Mharc Gnó le Gaeilge’ award from Foras na Gaeilge.
Sonia has a MA in media Management and Policy from the University of Ulster. She is from Bunbeg in the Donegal Gaeltacht and has an office in both Gteic and Derry.

Steve Orr is Chief Executive Officer of Catalyst and serves on the Board of Directors. He also serves as an advisor to NI’s Department for Economy Minister on the Economic Advisory Group and represents Catalyst as a co-creator and partner on Innovation City Belfast.

Before being named CEO in November 2018, Steve was Director and Co-founder of Connect, Catalyst’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 helped over 900 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.

Dr. Whoriskey has helped build some of the most successful Biotechnology companies from inception as a member of the Founding Executive Teams of Vera, Moderna, Momenta Pharmaceuticals and Cubist Pharmaceuticals. She played key roles in managing these companies to grow from the “big science idea” through venture funding, scientific proof of concept, IPOs, clinical development and multiple FDA drug approvals.
Susan 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.

Swapnil Jagtap is an innovator of disruptive technologies in the aviation and energy (A&E) industry. He is a President’s PhD Scholar at the prestigious Imperial College London, holding engineering degrees from Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Mumbai. At 31, he is already a leader and distinguished researcher and has created a unique and highly interdisciplinary research niche of ‘sustainable A&E’, with one USA patent (sole inventor), and 16 high-impact publications (eight are solo authored).

Swapnil’s work reflects his grit, commitment, passion, and vision of decarbonising the A&E industry. A New-York ↔ Mumbai return flight emits a similar amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) an average car in the USA/UK emits annually. Aviation contributes to 5% of all man-made climate impacts, and 16,000 air-pollution-related premature deaths annually. Swapnil has extensively examined futuristic aircraft technologies and energy-vectors including their lifecycle impacts towards zero and/or negative GHG emissions intercontinental flight. He has invented a path-breaking design of a futuristic 300-passenger long-range liquid hydrogen aircraft which could bring a paradigm shift in the A&E industry because it produces zero-carbon and near-zero air-pollution while operating. His pioneering design could improve aircraft’s energy efficiency by over 50% and generate lesser contrails (climate impact) and noise than Boeing-777. This ground-breaking design will reinvent and revolutionise the A&E industry and drive future policy making, because it causes near-zero climate and human and environmental health impacts.

Swapnil is building the foundations of the future low-carbon A&E industry via sustainable innovation. He has been recognised as a Forbes 30 under 30 visionary and disrupter (2020 Europe list), and Georgia Tech 40 under 40 innovator, trendsetter, and people to watch (2021). He has been recognised with 30+ international honours/distinctions including three fellowships, five scholarships and eight travel grants, for his academic excellence and extraordinary people-and-planet centric research contributions at prestigious world universities, which are credible testimonials of his positive societal and environmental impact and global influence.

Ted Hu has been with MIT Technology Review for four years and oversees and works with all the international partners and editions of the magazine. During this time, he has also helped facilitate the international editions of Innovators Under 35 and helped organize the events while also being a presenter and moderator for several conferences. Innovators Under 35 is one of his favorite communities of Technology Review and he is delighted to be a part of this event as the bridge between the regional competitions.  

Valerio Magliulo is the co-founder of Abatable, a carbon intelligence and procurement platform that helps carbon project developers connect and transact with mission-aligned corporates and investors.

The voluntary carbon markets are widely seen as a critical tool to achieve a net zero carbon future and halt the course of climate change. However, these markets are still opaque, with little transparency around pricing and quality. Abatable connects companies that want to invest in positive climate contributions and project developers that are building those solutions. The platform gathers and leverages vast amount of data points available to generate actionable market intelligence and quality assessments to facilitate transaction between parties. Abatable provides worldwide project developers with the tools and support to scale and finance carbon solutions.

Prior to Abatable, Valerio held various product leadership positions at leading tech companies such as Meta, Google DeepMind and Monzo Bank. He dedicates his spare time to mentoring social entrepreneurs and product professionals through organisations like Bloomentor and Techstars, and volunteers for LGBTQ+ inclusion in primary and secondary schools in the UK with Diversity Role Models.

William Brant is an Associate Professor specialising in materials chemistry at Uppsala University, Sweden and co-founder of the sodium-ion battery company, Altris AB. William started his journey towards material development after graduating from the University of Sydney in 2010 with honours in Chemistry and receiving the University Medal. William then completed his PhD in 2014 on developing novel electrode materials for lithium-ion batteries before joining an internationally renowned battery research group at Uppsala University in 2015. Within the following six years William was promoted to become the youngest Associate Professor within the Structural Chemistry group and co-founded the start-up company Altris.

Williams research is focused on the design of new materials to be utilised in energy storage devices. His group applies cutting edge analysis tools at international synchrotron and neutron facilities to provide an unprecedented level of detail on the chemical mechanisms determining battery performance. It was William’s extensive experience in material design that led to the invention of an innovative production method for Prussian white, the low-cost, high performing cathode material produced by Altris. The vision for Altris is to produce the world’s most sustainable battery which does not compromise on price or performance. 

Xabier Sarasola is a speech synthesis researcher in Elhuyar Foundation and he has worked in multiple text-to-speech projects related with low resource languages, gender equality and cross-lingual synthesis. First, he has developed a multi-speaker speech synthesis system for Basque using neural networks. This system allows a low resource language like Basque to imitate any voice using only a small set of utterances of that voice. He has also used cross-lingual techniques to make the Basque voices speak in other languages that the original speaker does not speak. Combined with speech recognition, these cross-lingual techniques have the potential to create language dubbing systems that maintain the voice characteristics of the original voice. Moreover, he has participated in the development of the speech synthesis of Languedocien Occitan and Gascon Occitan. Finally, following the UNESCO recommendations to overcome gender bias in virtual assistants, he has created a gender ambiguous voice for the adaptation of the virtual assistant Mycroft to the Basque language. These projects have helped to build high quality text-to-speech services for low resource languages, an important step in an increasingly interconnected and digital world.