Marion Boland, Head of Policy Research, Science Foundation Ireland, a statutory body in Ireland with responsibility for funding oriented basic and applied research in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics with a strategic focus.
Marion manages a diverse portfolio of policy related areas, including Open Science, Data management, Research Integrity, Grant Terms & Conditions and SFI’s Gender Strategy.
Marion holds a Ph.D. from the Institute of Cancer Research/University of London. She held positions at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Alberta and University of Cambridge before joining the Centre for Cancer research and Cell Biology at Queen’s University Belfast in 2001 as a lecturer in Molecular Oncology.
Elaine Burke, Editor of Silicon Republic
Since going online in 2001, Silicon Republic has gone from being Ireland’s top resource for science and technology news, with countless awards to its name, to one of the leading online publications in Europe with more than half-a-million pageviews each month and growing.
Coming from a background in publishing, Burke has led many award-winning publications as editor. She first joined Silicon Republic in 2011 as a journalist covering gadgets, new media and tech jobs news.
She often offers her analysis and contributions on TV and radio, and can regularly be heard on RTÉ’s Drivetime with a digest of the latest sci-tech news.
Professor Madeleine Lowery in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University College Dublin.
Her research involves the application of engineering to understand how the human nervous system controls movement and to design therapies and technologies to improve impaired motor function. Her research interests include control of artificial limbs, electrical stimulation, deep brain stimulation and neural control of movement.
She received the BE and PhD degrees from the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University College Dublin before joining the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, North-Western University, as a Postdoctoral Fellow then Research Assistant Professor.
She returned to UCD in 2005 where she is Programme Director for the BE and ME Programmes in Biomedical Engineering and Head of Subject for Biomedical Engineering.
She was the recipient of the 2018 Graves Medal Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland, and was awarded a Consolidator grant by the European Research Council (ERC) in 2015, an ERC Proof of Concept Grant in 2019.
Dr Susan Leavy, Assistant Professor, with the School of Information and Communication. Her work addresses fairness in artificial intelligence, developing interdisciplinary approaches to mitigating bias in machine learning.
She earned a PhD in Computer Science at Trinity College Dublin, where her work concerned detection of gender bias in the media using machine learning. Prior to her current academic career, Susan worked in investment banking designing and managing the development and deployment of global trading systems.
She holds an MSc in Artificial Intelligence from Edinburgh University, an MPhil in Gender and Women's studies from Trinity College Dublin and a BA in Philosophy and English Literature.
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