Speaker Bios - "Careering Towards the Knowledge Society"
Damien Clancy, Managing Director, Aughinish Aluminia
Damien is Managing Director of Aughinish Alumina Limited. Aughinish Alumina is the largest alumina plant in Europe and is located on the Shannon estuary in the West of Ireland. Aughinish has also recently commissioned a 150MW CHP plant on its site.
Damien joined Aughinish in 1979 and has held many roles ranging from R & D to manufacturing to HR. During his career he has spent seven years in Canada, spread over two occasions, both in Province of Quebec.
Today his work involves little travel outside Ireland. However, former roles have involved extensive travel to areas as diverse as the US, Canada, Australia, India, Jamaica, Africa and England. He is a member of National Executive Committee of the Irish Business Employers’ Confederation and has extensive links with the local university, the University of Limerick.
Damien and his wife Sheila live in Limerick and have two children – David and Rachel. Damien enjoys all sports but especially basketball, rugby and hurling. His main interests revolve around his children – both of whom ‘uniquely’ have played basketball for Ireland in the same year. In fact, Rachel has recently agreed a basketball scholarship with Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.
Dr Mary Murphy - Toxicology Manager at Remedi, NUI Galway
Dr. Mary Murphy is a senior researcher and the Director of Toxicology at the Regenerative Medicine Institute (REMEDI) at NUI, Galway. She is also affiliated with the National Centre for Biomedical Engineering Science at NUI, Galway. Dr. Murphy pursued both undergraduate and postgraduate studies in the Department of Biochemistry at University College Cork, Ireland prior to moving to the University of South Florida in the US for post doctoral studies on the etiology of smooth muscle cell tumours and the early events in the formation of connective tissue during wound repair.
She subsequently joined Osiris Therapeutics to work in the field of pluripotent adult mesenchymal stem cells and performed research on the basic biology of these cells and their capacity to impact both tissue regeneration and progression of diseases such as osteoarthritis.
Dr. Murphy’s current research interests focus on the biology, mechanism of action and the utility of adult mesenchymal stem cells for tissue regeneration or repair in orthopaedic, cardiac and neuronal applications. She has over 10 years experience in this field with publications on the isolation, characterization and differentiation of these cells from different species, the process of articular cartilage differentiation in the embryo, the effects of ageing and disease on the stem cells, development of pertinent models and the development of therapeutic modalities for mesenchymal stem cells in regeneration of cartilaginous tissues.
She has authored numerous refereed publications and patents, and is a member of a number of scientific societies. Dr. Murphy returned to Ireland in July 2004 to join REMEDI and is currently funded by Science Foundation Ireland to 1) study the role of stem cells in degenerative disease and 2) generate a toxicological database to address specific questions concerning the safe use of stem cells and/or gene therapy prior to initiation of human clinical studies.
Brendan O'Callaghan , Plant Manager, Tyco Healthcare
Brendan O’Callaghan is Plant Manager with Tyco Healthcare Dublin, an API manufacturing plant and subsidiary of Tyco International, the global conglomerate with Operating divisions in Healthcare, Electronics, Fire & Security and Engineered Products & Services. Tyco employ over 3,000 people in Ireland across their ranges of businesses, over 2,000 of them in manufacturing.
Brendan previously worked for Merck, Sharp & Dohme, where he held positions of increasing responsibility in Technical Operations, Project Engineering, Manufacturing and Planning. He is a graduate of UCD, with a 1st class honours degree in Chemical Engineering.
He is currently the chair of Pharmachemical Ireland’s R&D Working Group, a group formed to assist member companies increase their involvement and capability in Process Development and Research activities.
Dr Jim Ryan - Circa Group Europe
Dr Jim Ryan is a consultant and Director of CIRCA Group Europe.
He has a B.Sc. & Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from University College Dublin. In CIRCA, he focuses on RTD policy and management with a particular emphasis on the biotech sector. He has worked in biotechnology since 1985, when he worked on biotech policy development with the National Board for S&T (Ireland).
From 1988-2001 he was with BioResearch Ireland (BRI), and was Director from 1996 to 2001. BRI ran the National Biotechnology Programme which funded and commercialised biotechnologies from Irish universities. He has also worked as Research Assoc. at Simon Fraser Univ., Canada, and for Life Science Supplies Ltd. (Irl).
Prof. Kevin Ryan, Centre Director, ISERC, University of Limerick
Professor Kevin Ryan is Professor of Information Technology at the University of Limerick and the Centre Director of the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre. This includes academic and industrial organisations who aim to advance the quality and quantity of software engineering research being conducted in Ireland. Science Foundation Ireland have awarded €11.7m for this purpose. From 1999 to 2004 Kevin Ryan was Vice President Academic and Registrar at the University of Limerick. During this period he played a major role in formalising the Academic Quality systems of UL and, in collaboration with other CHIU Registrars, of the Irish University system. Prior to that he was Dean of the College of Informatics and Electronics.
Kevin Ryan took degees of BA (Maths & Economics), BAI (Engineering) and PhD (Computer Science) from Trinity College Dublin in 1971 and 1978. Over the past 25 years he has lectured and researched on software topics in universities and industry in Ireland, the UK, the USA, Africa and Sweden and has been involved in a number of major ESPRIT projects on software and requirements engineering.
He has been an adviser to the Irish government on the development of the Irish software industry and has acted as consultant to industry and to the EU ESPRIT Programme since its inception. He has published papers on software process improvement, software engineering education, software methods and tools, and software requirements engineering. He serves on the editorial board of 3 journals. He has been a director of a number of start-up software companies.
Colm Harmon, Director of the Geary Institute, UCD
Colm Harmon is Professor of Economics at University College Dublin (UCD) and Director of the Geary Institute. He received his BA and MA in Economics from UCD, and his PhD from the University of Keele in 1997. He was a lecturer at the National University of Ireland in Maynooth, and has held visiting appointments at Princeton University, University College London and the University of Warwick.
He has, together with colleagues, published widely in the international academic press on topics in labour economics and applied microeconometrics particularly in the economics of education and in health economics. A member of the National Economic and Social Forum, he has made a number of policy related contributions locally and has also been involved in a number of research projects for government departments in Ireland and the UK as well as the EU Commission.
He is a Fellow of the Bonn based Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA) and is a Research Affiliate with the Labour Economics Programme of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR).
Brendan Cremen, Director of Engineering, Xilinx Ireland
Brendan is the Director of Engineering at Xilinx Ireland and has been at Xilinx since it started here in 1994. His main responsibility has been the development of the R&D charter at the Ireland site in Citywest, Dublin. He has been instrumental in launching the Product Development effort in areas such as IC Design, Software Tools development and Test development. Most recently, Brendan has been involved in attracting Xilinx Research Labs to the Dublin facility.
Prior to working in Xilinx, Brendan worked in the US for 12 years in a variety of engineering and management roles at both Lattice Semiconductor and Harris Semiconductor. He has a B.E. (Elec) and a M.Eng. Sc. from UCC.
