AICON Speakers 2021

Alison Coote
Alison is a product principal at Kainos with over 20 years of industry experience. She is active in startup and product communities and now leads the Kainos startup initiative.
Read more

Matt Lee
Matt Lee is a Data Scientist with expertise in medical imaging and computer vision. Previously a medical physicist specialising in digital radiology QA
Read more

Bronagh Smyth
Bronagh Smyth is a user research consultant at Kainos with over 10 years of experience, including leading UK Government projects, as well as within FMCG, advertising and startups.
Read more

Gillian Docherty
Gillian is the Chief Executive of The Data Lab, an innovation centre with a mission to help Scotland maximise value from data and lead the world to a data-powered future.
Read more
The Data Lab believes Scotland can lead the world to a future where data powers scientific progress, economic prosperity and social good.
The Data Lab helps accelerate the journey to impact by fuelling innovation through collaboration, building skills and growing talent, and strengthening Scotland’s thriving data science community. The Data Lab acts as a catalyst, using our expertise, network, funding and platforms to change how Scotland, and the world, innovates with data.
Gillian was appointed an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2019 for Services to Information Technology and Business.
Gillian was appointed Chair of Scotland’s AI Alliance, created to drive forward the recommendations in the AI Strategy for Scotland.
Formerly of IBM, Gillian is a TED speaker and was named Digital Leader 2018 for the UK, she received an Outstanding Achievement Award at Scotland’s Women in Technology Awards in 2019.
Gillian was named CEO of the year at the Digital Technology Awards 2017 and was also in the UK’s top ten most influential people in data according to DataIQ.
Gillian is Vice President of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, a trustee of Beyonder Involve Charity and an Industry advisor to several Startups.
Gillian has a degree in Computing Science from the University of Glasgow, an Honorary Doctorate from Robert Gordon University and is married with a daughter.

Edward McDonnell
Edward is a director at CeADAR. The centre focuses on delivering cutting-edge AI solutions to industry, developing tech prototypes and helping other organisations.
Read more
The CeADAR Centre won a Gold i-Spaces accreditation from the EU’s BDVA in 2020 (1 of only 9 in Europe), the Dunn & Bradstreet award for best analytics research group and the NASA prize in 2019 for a satellite system to help populations displaced by conflict.
Prior to being appointed Director of CeADAR, Edward was European Director of Innovation & Technology Research at Fidelity Investments in Dublin. The role involved prospecting for FinTech technology and investment opportunities across Europe, understanding developments in the European innovation ecosystem, and directing technology trials.
Edward has also held various technical and global senior management roles in the Office of Strategy and Technology at Hewlett-Packard Europe based in England.
Edward is a graduate of QUB has a PhD in Analytics and AI from the University of Edinburgh, is a Fellow of the IEE & ICS, and is the named inventor on 76 granted patents. He has been awarded several international prizes including the Scientific American top 50 technologies that demonstrate outstanding leadership, Grand Award and Overall Winner for Innovation, Popular Science (USA), Horizon Award “10 Cool Cutting Edge Technologies”, Computer World (USA).

Joe Dunleavy
Joe is an Innovation, Software Delivery, FinTech and Business lead experienced executive currently working in the role of VP, Group Head of Innovation at Endava.
Read more
Before the sale of Pramerica to TCS (Dec, 2020), Joe worked for Prudential / Pramerica for 16 years based in both Letterkenny, Ireland for 13 years as well as in the US on a 3-year international rotation from 2012 to 2015. Joe has held several leadership roles including Innovation Head, US based Interim CIO, Software Development Lead and Technical Project Manager. Before Pramerica, Joe worked in an IT start-up company called Nooked in Sligo, Ireland and Microsoft at their European Development Center in Dublin, Ireland.
He holds a Post Grad in UX, UI and Innovation, a MBS in Innovation (LYIT) & Leadership and a BSc in Computer Science (Sligo IT).
Joe is passionate about technology, innovation, volunteering, food, coaching and sport.

Marianne Bjerkman
Marianne Bjerkman is the cluster manager for the fast-growing business cluster Cluster for Applied AI in Norway. In only one year it has joined the national cluster program.
Read more

Martin McGovern
Martin is a Manager at Aon within the Centre for Innovation and Analytics. He combines cutting edge data science techniques with his actuarial and industry experience.
Read more

Gavin Shaddick
Professor Gavin Shaddick is co-Director of the Met Office-University of Exeter Joint Centre for Excellence in Environmental Intelligence and Chair of Data Science and Statistics at the University of Exeter
Read more

Luke Chen
Professor Chen is an IET Fellow, a Senior Member of IEEE, with extensive expertise and knowledge on pervasive computing, data analytics, artificial intelligence, user-centred intelligent systems and their applications.
Read more

Courtney Lewis
Courtney joined Datactics in 2019 after graduating with a First Class degree in Computing Science. During her studies she worked on data quality, using SQL, for a public sector department. Courtney possesses strong technical and client skills.
Read more

Daniel Browne
Daniel joined the team in October 2020 as a Junior Machine Learning Engineer. During his final year he produced a project on the application of AI to analyse music. He is currently developing Data Quality Rules Suggestion for future Datactics AI projects.
Read more

Hojjat Azadbakht
Hojjat is the Founder and CEO of AINOSTICS. He holds a PhD in Biomedical Imaging and Data Sciences, and is an Honorary Professor at the University of Manchester.
Read more

Christian Kerr
Christian is the founder of AiCore, a specialist AI & Data workforce accelerator that trains individuals to build out production-grade systems deployed at companies today.
Read more

Terry Canning
Terry Canning is the CEO and Founder of CattleEye. He grew up on a dairy farm and after working for 9 years, he began to apply his knowledge to the livestock industry.
Read more

Robin Lester
Robin Lester is a Cloud Solutions Architect (CSA) at Microsoft focused on developing AI capabilities and cloud data practices among our partner ecosystem.
Read more

Dr. Piers Campbell
Piers leads the technology strategy, growth and customer delivery for Data and AI at Kainos. He has over 15 years of experience delivering innovation to customers across multiple sectors.
Read more

Marc Mullan
Senior leader with over 20 years’ experience successfully developing and delivering strategic change in the fields of data & analytics, multi-channel CRM, sales operations and more.
Read more

Don-Paul Dhaliwal
Founded Conigital, a driverless vehicle company automating the way people and goods move. They are on mission to disrupt the transport industry through a vision of greener, more efficient mobility, for all.
Read more

Daniel Garcia
Daniel is a Data Scientist at Kainos with experience in Time Series modelling. He recently joined the Data and AI practice at Kainos after graduating in Data Science from King’s College in 2020.
Read more

Isabella Christie
Isabella joined the Data & AI Practice as a Trainee Data Scientist in 2021. She began her career at Kainos as a Software Engineer after graduating from the University of Birmingham in 2020.
Read more

Mairead Doherty
Mairead is a data scientist at Deutsche Bank, working with advanced technologies and tools to develop a range of innovative data solutions involving Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning.
Read more

Nell Watson
Eleanor ‘Nell’ Watson is an engineer who lectures in machine intelligence research. She has contributed to IEEE SA ethics initiatives, including serving as vice chair of P7001 standard on transparency.
Read more

Jeremy Batt
Jeremy has led Amenity’s engagement in developing a custom NLP model that
extracts meaningful and previously unattainable insights for Voice of Customer at Allstate.
Read more

Christian King
Christian is one of the founding members of HM Land Registry’s data science practice and has gained expertise in a variety of data science fields.
Read more

Kate Nicholl
Lord Mayor of Belfast, Kate Nicholl took up office on 1 June 2021. A member of the Alliance Party, she was elected as a representative for the Balmoral district.
Read more
Councillor Nicholl, 33, was born in Zimbabwe and moved with her family to Belfast when she was 12 years old. She attended Methodist College and University College London and is currently enrolled in a master’s degree at Ulster University.
Councillor Nicholl lives and works in South Belfast and is married with an 18-month-old son, Cian. The theme for Councillor Nicholl’s year in office is ‘Our Belfast’, with a commitment to meet the people in every area, to recognise those who are making a difference in every quarter, and to find ways to work with them for the betterment of the city. She also wishes to highlight the voices of children and young people during her year in office and to champion action on climate change and the environment.

Rachel Gawley
Rachel brings together and leads expert teams to research and develop new tech products and their associated business ventures from inception to commercialisation.
Read more

Stephen McKeown
Divisional Chief Information Officer and Director, Allstate Technology and Strategic Ventures. A Fortune 100 company and one of the largest insurers in America.
Read more

Yassine Jelassi
Yassine is currently working as the commercial manager for CeADAR. He guides companies in their AI journey and help them achieve business impact and competitive advantage from their AI initiatives.
Read more
Yassine is currently working as the commercial manager for CeADAR, Ireland’s National Centre for Applied Artificial Intelligence. He guides companies in their AI journey and help them achieve business impact and competitive advantage from their AI initiatives.
Yassine graduated in 2011 as an Industrial Engineer from the University of Carthage in Tunis. He also holds an MBA from the UCD Smurfit Business School.

Dr Alastair McKinley
Alastair is the CTO at Analytics Engines where he is responsible for technology strategy, solution architecture and innovation. Alastair gained his PhD from QUB in 2009 focusing on high-performance computing and algorithms used in telecommunications.
Read more
He is interested in data modelling and data engineering in PostgreSQL and Python, Cloud Native solution architecture and NLP applications.

Ryan Burns
Ryan is a Customer Journey Analytics Manager at Allstate, driving customer centricity and improving the customer experience through Voice of Customer actionable insights.