AICON Speakers 2019

Dr Adrian Johnston

Director of Operations for Digital Catapult NI

Adrian is the Director of Operations for Digital Catapult NI tasked with accelerating the adoption of emerging digital technologies within NI based companies. Prior to Digital Catapult Adrian worked for Seagate Technologies for 20 years and lead the Advanced Analytics team.

With a PhD in Informatics and AI, he has led industrially led research in advanced manufacturing and the implementation of AI, IOT and factory automation in complex data environments. In addition to Digital Catapult, Adrian is a member of the UKRI Expert advisory group on AI and a member of the Matrix Science panel.

Dr Anna Jurek-Loughrey

Lecturer in the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB)

Dr Anna Jurek-Loughrey is a lecturer in the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB).

She obtained her MSc in Computer Science in 2006 and her MSc in Applied Mathematics in 2009 from Technical University of Lodz in Poland. In 2012 Dr Jurek-Loughrey received her Ph.D. qualifications in Computer Science from Ulster University in Northern Ireland. Prior to joining QUB she worked as data scientist at Repknight Ltd (currently SKURIO). Dr Jurek-Loughrey has 10 years of experience in conducting research in diverse subfield of Artificial Intelligence (AI) including theoretical and applied machine learning, record linkage and entity resolution, social media analytics with application in security and public health. Currently her main research interest lies in applying AI in order to address the challenges of biomedical data analysis, and to solve the problem of online fake news verification.

Dr Caoimhe Carbery

Data Scientist at SmashFly

I am a Data Scientist at SmashFly where I focus on implementing AI algorithms to help the recruitment process. I have experience in a wide range of AI algorithms and applications, which I am now implementing within the company to develop unbiased algorithms for predicting candidates engagement.

Explainable AI and Machine Learning methods are a vital component to the work we do at Smashfly within our platform. I have also completed my PhD in Computer Science from Queen’s University Belfast which focused on Data Science solutions for manufacturing.

Chris Johnston

Founder of Adoreboard

Chris is founder of Adoreboard, an Emotion AI platform for measuring human experiences. Its platform delivers Decision Ready Insights into consumer and employee experiences. Insights generated by Adoreboard’s Emotion AI power decision on experience for brands such as Telstra, Nike, Sky, BMW and Slack.

Adoreboard has been cited by leading analysts Forrester in its Future of CX Measurement, Gartner as AI tool to understand customers better and by MMC ventures in its landscape of Europe’s AI startups.

Claire Houston

Software Engineer at Kainos

A Software Engineer at Kainos, Belfast, working primarily in AI and Machine Learning. A recent graduate, Claire is a core member of the Artificial Intelligence Capability and has been exploring the use of Chatbots and NLP to change how customers interact with services.

David Meredith

Senior Software Developer

David is a software engineer with fifteen years dev-ops experience in the Web, Enterprise and Grid domains. He completed a PhD in the 2D and 3D computer modelling of lithosphere dynamics, later moving to STFC in 2004 to start a career in e-Science.

David then worked as a developer on a number of e-Science pilot projects including the UK National Grid Service. He has since been service manager and lead developer for a number of production e-infrastructure services in the UK and EU including the European Grid Infrastructure’s Grid Operations Centre Database, a primary information service for EGI.eu and the Worldwide Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Computing Grid, the UK e-Science Certification Authority (UKCA), a service that issues trusted digital certificates to UK e-Research communities, and the Alder Hey Cognitive Hospital Project. David is currently a technical lead for the Hartree Cognitive Computing Centre; a collaboration between Hartree and IBM to exploit cognitive computing technologies in UK research and

Deepa Mann-Kler

CEO Neon | Visiting Professor in Immersive Futures Ulster University | Diversity & Inclusion Specialist

Deepa is CEO of Neon an immersive health technology company; Visiting Professor In Immersive Futures with Ulster University and a Diversity & Inclusion Specialist.

As a thought leader and TEDx speaker she keynotes at conferences on the intersection of bias, ethics, creativity, technology, innovation, diversity, health and wellbeing through storytelling. As an author her published work addresses race and identity.

Frankie Garcia

Job Position

Frankie Garcia is a Policy and Research Manager at Digital Catapult in London. Frankie works closely with machine learning startups and scaleups to understand their technical and business barriers.

This feeds into the design of impactful interventions for Digital Catapult, and helps to inform UK Government policy makers on the opportunities and challenges facing the early adoption of advanced digital technologies in the UK economy. Frankie has co-authored different reports, developed ecosystem maps, and conducted analyses on the landscape of ethics and machine learning startup challenges in the UK. Frankie’s focus areas are primarily in machine learning and the UK manufacturing industries. Frankie has previous experience working in high-growth unicorn companies and holds a BSc from the London School of Economics.

Kevin Curran

Professor of Cyber Security

Kevin Curran is a Professor of Cyber Security, Executive Co-Director of the Legal innovation Centre and group leader of the Cyber Security and Web Technologies Research Group at Ulster University. He is also a senior member of the IEEE.

Prof Curran is perhaps most well-known for his work on cyber security, blockchain and location positioning within indoor environments evidenced by over 800 peer review papers. He is one of the most interviewed technology experts in the UK with over 1000+ interviews in recent years https://kevincurran.org/interviews/.

Kieran McCorry

National Technology Officer at Microsoft

Kieran McCorry is the National Technology Officer for Microsoft in Ireland and has worked in the technology industry for over 28 years. He is responsible for representing Microsoft to broad audiences in areas such as technology leadership and AI, engendering trust, technology vision, strategic alignment, and relevant policy direction for Microsoft customers.

He has worked across many sectors of the technology landscape including those of collaboration, social media, analytics, mobility, privacy, the Internet of Things, innovation, digital transformation, and intellectual property development. He is a frequent speaker at worldwide conferences and has been a regular contributor to various industry publications. He is the author of four books on messaging technology and has several patents. He holds a variety of degrees in computer science, law, and corporate governance.

Marc Cohen

Developer Advocate, Google Cloud Platform at Google

I build tools, demos, codelabs, and other things to make the Google Cloud Platform easier and more fun to use. Originally from New Jersey, then Seattle, and now live and work in London. I co-authored a book about Google Compute Engine and wrote the product announcement demo. In a previous life, I developed communication systems at Bell Labs and Lucent Technologies.

Outside of work, I enjoy indie music, quirky films (especially documentaries), books, puzzles, and chess. I’m also very interested in education, teaching, and applying technology (like spaced repetition and Google Codelabs) to enhance the learning experience.

Matt Lee

Machine Learning Engineer

Matt completed a Physics degree at the University of York in 2009 and then trained as a Medical Physicist with the NHS, gaining an MSc in Medical Physics and joined the register of clinical scientists.

Within the NHS he specialised in image analysis, particularly in Nuclear Medicine and Mammography and wrote software tools in Matlab to automate image quality procedures. He then moved on to Hospital Services Limited (HSL), an imaging supplier to the NHS and HSE, as a technical manager where he worked in customer training, troubleshooting, servicing and developing image analysis software for engineer’s to use on service visits. Matt joined Allstate last year where training was provided for a transition to Machine Learning and has focused on computer vision projects- particularly OCR

Michael McGoldrick

Global Content Marketing Manager at MRP

As Global Content Marketing Manager at MRP, Michael McGoldrick is currently responsible for the management of content across functions and silos to deliver an effective marketing strategy and editorial plan to meet business objectives at the lowest possible cost.

Supporting development and execution of all aspects of the corporate marketing program, Michael also develops editorial governance including content categorization and structure, content development, distribution and measurement.

Michelle Szaraz

Innovation Delivery Manager at Digital Catapult

Michelle Szaraz is an Innovation Delivery Manager at Digital Catapult in London. Michelle focuses on delivering and innovating Digital Catapult’s flagship AI programme - Machine Intelligence Garage.

With a background in operations, programme delivery and working with startups, Michelle is involved in selecting new AI/ML startups for the Machine Intelligence Garage programme and maximising the programme’s impact and benefit to participating startups. Michelle is also responsible for designing, delivering and innovating programme activities to address the technical needs of startups alongside helping them build business expertise, use data more responsibly and raise funds. Michelle holds an MA in International Peace and Security from King’s College London and her previous experience includes working for and with enterprises, NGOs and governments in the UK and internationally.

Neil Barlow

Head of Vehicle Policy & Engineering

Currently Head of Vehicle Policy & Engineering for the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency – the body responsible for keeping the roads safe in Great Britain. Also overall service responsibility across MOT, Heavy Vehicle Testing, Heavy Vehicle Enforcement and Recalls.

Has worked in the GB Department for Transport and its agencies for around 25 years – across safety research, working across Europe on road safety projects, vehicle approvals and vehicle testing. Most recently has been responsible for the GB MOT service – including making public MOT data through the MOT History Service, and delivering electronic MOT Reminders. Currently focused on driving change and improvement across DVSA’s vehicle services – best ensuring that road safety objectives are met, through best meeting user needs – which includes innovative digital solutions

Niall Haslam

Chief Technology Officer at axial3D

Responsible for product development and management for the software team as well as the architecture of the company’s automated segmentation processes. He has a multidisciplinary skillset, key to the company’s development of future products and services.

Niall has over 10 years software experience and held several senior software development roles in academia and industry, UCD. Niall started coding during his master’s in bioinformatics analysing patient databases for biologically relevant data. He continued in academia with a PhD in Southampton before taking positions at EMBL Heidelberg and UCD Dublin. Most recently he worked at CME Group providing analysis of product performance for the exchange. He also served on the board of a social enterprise in Dublin and as an Academic Board member of PLoS ONE.

Nikita Armstrong

Principal Software Engineer, Applied Innovation at Liberty IT

Principal Full Stack Software Engineer with over 7 years’ experience. Currently working within the Applied Innovation space at Liberty IT. Passionate about front end development and has a keen interest in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

Oliver Wilson

Applying Software Engineering Discipline to Data Science and AI

Oliver has ten years’ experience of software engineering, the majority of which he has spent in the gambling industry, in Europe and Asia.

More recently, he has joined Kainos to work on UK public sector engagements, and now brings his experience to Kainos’ Artificial Intelligence Capability.

Dr. Paul O’Reilly

Head of Research and Algorithm Innovation (Life Sciences), Philips Digital and Computational Pathology

Dr. Paul O’Reilly is Head of Research and Algorithm Innovation at the Philips Computational Imaging, Discovery and Education centre in Belfast. He is a graduate of Queen’s University Belfast with a B.Eng in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in Control Engineering.

After graduating with his PhD on applications of neural networks, in 1994, he has worked in a variety of academic and non-academic roles in development, architecture and research. Prior to his appointment in Philips Belfast, he was an active researcher in the Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology at QUB, specializing in research into application of Informatics and Big Data approaches to discovery and analysis within cancer research.

Dr. Radu Dobrin

Head of the Oncology Bioinformatics group at Bristol-Myers Squibb

Dr. Dobrin is the Head of the Oncology Bioinformatics group at Bristol-Myers Squibb and holds an Adjunct Professor position at Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai. His team is responsible for advancing Bristol-Myers Squibb’s industry leading oncology pipeline through the application of cutting edge bioinformatics approaches.

The group is engaged with all bioinformatic aspects of oncology at BMS including early discovery, translational research, and clinical development. His goal is to leverage machine learning algorithms and predictive models for understanding disease and drug interventions. Dr. Dobrin has a dual Ph.D. in Physics and M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Michigan State University.

Ricardo Sueiras

Principal Cloud Evangelist

Ricardo is an enterprise evangelist at Amazon Web Services; he works with enterprise executives and technology leaders to help them adopt the cloud and transform their businesses. He has over twenty years of experience leading emerging technology and innovation programmes and has been working with cloud technologies since 2008. He is passionate about cloud, innovation and open source and is excited about how cloud accelerates and amplifies customers’ ability to innovate.

Prior to joining AWS Ricardo worked for one of the largest professional services firms. For the past few years he has been leading emerging technology and innovation programmes.

Robert Grundy

CEO of Health Innovation Research Alliance Northern Ireland and Chair of Matrix

Dr Robert Grundy is the founder of Anglezarke Life Sciences, Interim CEO of Health Innovation Research Alliance Northern Ireland and Chair of Matrix, Northern Ireland’s science and technology panel. He was previously CEO of CIGA Healthcare Ltd and Director of Commercial Development and Licensing at Almac Discovery.

Rob’s focus is on the commercial development of differentiating innovation across science and technology. Rob also holds the position of Honorary Lecturer in the School of Medicine Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences at Queen’s University Belfast.

Rob Procter

Professor of Social Informatics in the Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick

Rob Procter is Professor of Social Informatics in the Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick and a Faculty Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national institute for data science and AI, where he chairs the social data science interest group.

Current projects include applications of data science and AI in academic research, industry and government, and the challenges for their adoption at scale. Earlier this year, he was co-author of the report for the Department for the Economy on Artificial Intelligence Research in Northern Ireland.

Scott Morrison

Data Science Director

Scott started with Diaceutics to enable the integration of machine learning into the business process, since then has went on to head up the data science team. Scott has 8 years experience in the data field, with a masters in data science and prior to Diaceutics held a senior position in the advanced analytics group at Seagate Technology.

He has delivered on multi-million dollar ROI projects in the field of predictive machine learning and anomaly detection and is currently delivering the data science initiative at Diaceutics to improve the patient pathway.

Stephen Allott

Venture Partner

I love helping entrepreneurs and their businesses reach their potential and I have always been fascinated by the potential of technology to transform our lives. Although I am a generalist, I have thought a lot about financial planning and management, sales management, attracting great talent and enabling senior management teamwork. Above all problem solving is the most critical management skill for success.

I’m best known for working at Micromuse, a London origin network management software company that we IPO’ed on NASDAQ. We grew from 10 to 800 people, reached US market dominance and world market leadership. We combined a brilliant product with world class sales skills. I learnt about leading a US public company in my role as President, CFO and main board director.

Stephen Browning

Challenge Director – Next Generation Services at Innovate UK

Stephen is leading the Next Generation Services programme as part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. This programme is aimed at supporting the transformation of our Accountancy, Insurance and Legal Services sectors by the responsible use of AI and data. Prior to this role, he headed the organisation’s Enabling – Digital team and the SBRI programme.

Stephen has a background in the semiconductor industry, having spent nearly 20 years working for Philips Semiconductors and NXP where he held various software engineering, project management and business management roles Stephen holds an MBA (distinction) from Imperial College and a BSc in Electronic Engineering

Stuart Greenlees

Applied Innovation at Liberty IT

Stuart has been coding, designing and architecting solutions for over 20 years and currently works for Liberty IT. He is passionate about solving problems using a customer centric approach with the aim to build simple, elegant and intuitive products.

In his current role, Stuart leads a number of teams who explore emerging technology solutions for the insurance industry; with a current focus on computer vision and natural language processing.

Stuart Millar

Deep Learning Research Engineer - Rapid7 Belfast

Stuart drives the recently formed AI/ML function for Rapid7 in Belfast, where he is also completing his PhD in applying deep learning to solve significant cyber challenges. In addition, he is part of CSIT's Security Intelligence group, where his work in deep learning for mobile malware detection saw him awarded the status of Mobile World Scholar by GSMA at Mobile World Conference this year.

Stuart is an IEEE member, having studied both MSc Applied Cyber Security and MSc Software Development at Queen’s. Previously he partnered closely with Invest NI on numerous Foreign Direct Investment projects for tech in Belfast, plus spent several years producing and presenting in broadcast media with BBC Radio 1 and RTE.

Theodosis Georgiou

Chief Scientific Officer of WILD AI

Theodosis Georgiou is the Chief Scientific Officer of WILD AI. His main responsibility within the WILD team is to oversee WILD’s technology and to optimise user personalisation and training plans through Artificial Intelligence.

Theo studied computer engineering in the Electrical and Electronic Engineering department at Imperial College London where he also received his Ph.D in Personal Robotics and AI. While in academia his research focused on user modelling and user adaptive training through machine learning. His research used data from various sensors, which observed the the user interact with an intelligent system, such as a robot or a driving simulator. His passion for fitness and interest in human biology is what drove him to join the WILD team to create adaptive training plans and help athletes understand their bodies and achieve their optimal performance.

Tom Kirkham

Business Development Manager

Dr Tom Kirkham is a Business Development Manager at the Hartree Centre. He works across various technologies in the Hartree Centre drawing on experience as a Computer Scientist for over 15 years.

His expertise is within the management of data and application of Industrial 4.0 technology on industrial challenges specifically using technology such as IoT, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence in applications such as Digital Twinning and the digitisation of knowledge using AI technology such as Natural Language Processing. He is the PI of the Energy Clouds project at Hartree which is an applied Industry 4.0 project with Siemens and he also leads the Bridging for Innovators project at Hartree supporting industry to boost productivity using Industry 4.0 technology.

Tony O’Donnell

Co-Founder of Cambium

Diverse business and societal challenges are driving public and private sector organisations to innovate more and faster than ever before. Improving productivity of manufacturing operations, enabling appropriate healthcare for an aging population and successfully adapting to a changing climate are only three of the many challenges facing us today.

Cambium specialise in helping organisations maximise their early business value in meeting these challenges by adopting a digital first strategy. Working with early adopters of technologies e.g. AI & ML over the past three years, we seek to leverage our experience to help clients get a head start in their digital journey. Still learning, but so far, an early career as a research scientist has led to a 20 year track record of growing IT businesses in the UK, Europe and Asia, including a successful IPO. Tony has an MBA from Warwick and BSc.(1st) in Ecological Science from Edinburgh.

Wendy Moore

Knowledge & Insights Director

Wendy has a PhD in Molecular Oncology with a focus on the identification of novel biomarkers in colorectal cancer and the development of clinical drug resistance. She has worked for Queens University Belfast for over 16 years as both a translational wet-lab based researcher and a bioinformatician in personalized medicine within many oncology disease areas.

Wendy now works for Diaceutics within the Business Analytics Group where she provides real-world data insights to pharma clients across many disease areas.