Professor Chris Morash became the inaugural Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing at Trinity College Dublin on January 1, 2014. Born in Nova Scotia, his first degree is from Dalhousie University, after which he moved to Ireland to join the first cohort of students in the M.Phil. in Anglo-Irish Literature (as it was called at the time) in Trinity in 1985; his Ph.D on Irish Famine Literature is also from Trinity, carried out under the supervision of Professor Terence Brown. Prior to his appointment to Trinity, Chris Morash worked in Maynooth University, where he had been Professor of English since 2007, and founded the Centre for Media Studies in 2003. He was the first chair of the Compliance Committee of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (2009-2014), and has been an active member of the Royal Irish Academy since 2007.

Conor joined Google in 2015 and currently leads the Scaled Engagement and Learning (SEAL) team, which focuses on engaging, informing, and educating all parties in the Advertising ecosystem, in order to drive customer success with Google advertising products.

Conor trained as an electronic engineer and designed microchips for mobile applications for four years with Nasdaq-listed semiconductor intellectual property company ParthusCeva, Inc. Conor’s team delivered the world’s first commercially licensed Bluetooth IP, selling to clients such as Panasonic, Sharp, Hitachi, and Fujitsu. After obtaining his MBA he transitioned into management consulting, spending 10 years with McKinsey & Company — the last four as Managing Partner of McKinsey’s Irish practice. Conor’s work with McKinsey focused on Telecoms, High Tech and Media clients across EMEA and he was Global co-Lead of the Customer Experience Practice, writing a number of articles on the subject for the McKinsey Quarterly and HBR.

Conor is married with three young children and lives in Dublin, Ireland. In his spare time he works with a number of local NGOs. On the weekend, Conor coaches his kid’s GAA academy and hopes they can reach the heights he didn’t.

Conor graduated from University College Dublin with a BEng in 1999, and obtained his MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management in 2005.

David Puttnam is the chair of Atticus Education, an online education company based in Ireland. Atticus, through a unique arrangement with BT Ireland, delivers interactive seminars on film and a variety of other subjects to educational institutions around the world.

David is Ireland’s Digital Champion; President of the Film Distributors’ Association; Chair of the TSL Advisory Board; Chair of the Academic Board, Pearson College; a UNICEF Ambassador; and Adjunct Professor of Film Studies and Digital Humanities at University College Cork. In 2016, he was appointed as International Ambassador for WWF. David spent thirty years as an independent producer of award-winning films including The Mission, The Killing Fields, and Chariots of Fire. His films have won ten Oscars, 25 British Academy of Film & Television Arts (BAFTA) awards and the Palme D’Or at Cannes. He was awarded a BAFTA Fellowship in 2006.

Other work he has been involved in includes: Chancellor of the Open University (2006-2013); Deputy Chairman, Channel 4 Television (2006-2012): Deputy Chairman, The Sage Gateshead (2007- 2012); President, UNICEF UK (2002-2009); Founder and Chair of the National Teaching Awards (1998-2008); Chair, Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Draft Climate Change Bill (2007); Chancellor of The University of Sunderland (1996-2006); Vice President and Chair of Trustees, BAFTA (1994-2004); founding Chair of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), (1996-2003); Chair, National Museum of Photography, Film and Television (1994-2003); Inaugural Chair, General Teaching Council, (2000-2002); Chair, Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Draft Communications Bill (2002); and Chair, National Film and Television School (1987-1996).

He has been Chair of two Hansard Society Commission Reports and has served as a non-executive director on a number of public companies. He has served as a trustee of the Tate Gallery, the Science Museum, the Thomson Foundation and a great number of other organisations.

David has been awarded a CBE (1982) and a knighthood (1995); he was appointed to the House of Lords (1997) and as the UK Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (2012). In France, he was made a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters (1985), then becoming an Officer (1992), and a Commander (2006). He has been the recipient of more than forty honorary degrees from universities in the UK and overseas.

Linda Doyle is the Director of CONNECT and Professor of Engineering and The Arts in Trinity College, University of Dublin. CONNECT is a national research centre focused on future networks and communications and is co-funded by SFI and industry. CONNECT is headquartered in Trinity College Dublin and is spread over ten different academic institutions in Ireland. Her expertise is in the fields of wireless communications, IoT, cognitive radio, reconfigurable networks, spectrum management and creative arts practices. She has raised over 70 million in research funding in the past decade and has published widely in her field. Linda has a reputation as an advocate for change in spectrum management practices and has played a role in spectrum policy at the national and international level. Currently she is a member of the National Broadband Steering Committee in Ireland, and is a member of the Ofcom Spectrum Advisory Board in the UK. She is on the advisory board of Wireless@KTH in Sweden and is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. She is on the Board of the Festival of Curiosity -­ a STEM outreach activity for children based on a city-centre yearly science festival. She is a judge in the BT Young Scientist. She is the Chair of the Douglas Hyde Gallery and on the board of Pallas Studios. Linda Doyle is a Director of Xcelerit and SRS.

Linda Hogan is an ethicist with extensive experience in research and teaching in pluralist and multi-religious contexts. Her primary research interests lie in the fields of inter-cultural and inter-religious ethics, social and political ethics, human rights and gender. In addition to her academic expertise, Professor Linda Hogan has expert knowledge of institutional management and governance, having spent 5 years as the Vice-Provost/Chief Academic Officer and Deputy President at Trinity College Dublin. In that role she had overall responsibility for education and research at the university and was an ex officio member of the university's Senior Management Team. She coordinated strategic planning, and had responsibility for the direction and quality of research, undergraduate and postgraduate education and the student experience.

Niall Ó Donnchú is the Assistant Secretary-General of the Department of Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht. He is a graduate of Queens University, Belfast and the London School of Economics. Prior to this, he was head of ecommerce and broadband policy at the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources and head of alternative energy policy at the Department of Energy. He is a board member of the National Concert Hall, Culture Ireland and Energy Action Ltd.

Rachael Naughton is the manager of the Naughton Scholarships, a programme established in 2008 to promote the study of engineering, science and technology at third level in Ireland. She is also on the board overseeing the Naughton Graduate Student Exchange Program in Science and Engineering which enables students to experience international education at one of Ireland’s leading universities or at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Rachael qualified as a Solicitor with the Law Society of Ireland and spent a number of years practising as a financial services lawyer. She holds a degree in History from Trinity College Dublin and a diploma in legal studies from the Dublin Institute of Technology.

Rachel is an art and architectural historian with a particular interest in medieval Ireland. Her research has developed
from doctoral studies in Romanesque architecture and sculpture to focus on

the later medieval period, in particular
the social context of medieval art and architecture. She is also interested in the extended biographies of medieval buildings — how the architecture of the Middle

Ages came to be perceived and managed after the mid-sixteenth century. She was editor and principal author of the rst volume of the Royal Irish Academy Art and Architecture of Ireland series, published by Yale University Press in November, 2014. She is currently Principal Investigator

on the IRC-funded Monastic Ireland, Landscape and Settlement Project and academic partner on the Bank of America Merrill Lynch-TCD Gospel Books Project.

Shay Garvey is chair of Science Gallery Dublin. He is a founding partner of Frontline Ventures and one of the most active and experienced early-stage technology investors in Europe. Shay has invested in over 30 early-stage European tech companies; notable exits include Toucan Technologies (acquired by PMC Sierra, NASDAQ: PMCS), Exceptis Technologies (acquired by Trintech, NASDAQ: TTPA), DRM Data Management (acquired by P&O UK, LSE: PO), Improveline (acquired by Homeserve UK, LSE: HSV) and, most recently, Logentries (acquired by Rapid7, NASDAQ: RPD). Shay currently sits on the board of Qstream, Roomex, Linked Finance, and AQMetrics. Shay has engineering degrees from University College Dublin (BSc) and University of New Brunswick Canada (M Eng). He also has an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Shay has had a wide and varied career, covering corporates (Exxon, Corning, McKinsey), startups (Glentara Foods, Irish Seafood Producers Group), and venture capital (Delta Partners). Throughout his career in venture, he has been part of teams that have raised eight funds, totalling a combined $500 million through three different economic cycles.  

Shay has long been interested in the convergence of startup culture and society, as well the internationalisation of companies and ideas. In addition to his board membership at Science Gallery, he is also chair at Genio, an Irish non-profit that manages the Social Reform Fund in Ireland. When not investing, Shay likes to walk the hills of Wicklow. He also likes reading English literature and has an interest in all things Latin.

Tom Molloy leads Trinity College Dublin’s Public Affairs and Communications unit, which is responsible for ensuring good relations between the university and outside organisations such as government and the media. He is a former group business editor of Independent Newspapers and a former editor of the Kilkenny People and at Bloomberg News. He trained as a journalist in Hamburg and worked as a reporter in Washington, London and Dublin. He studied History in Trinity College Dublin and International Relations in Cambridge.

Vinny Cahill is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Mathematics and Science where he has responsibility for the provision of academic and strategic leadership within the Faculty. Vinny is also a Principal Investigator for Science Foundation Ireland and previously served as Dean of Research for the University, Head of the School of Computer Science, Director of Postgraduate Teaching and Learning for Computer Science and Statistics and Head of the Distributed Systems Group. His research addresses many aspects of distributed systems, in particular middleware and programming models for mobile, ubiquitous and autonomic computing with application to optimisation of urban resource usage and service delivery.