The members of the Board of Taighde Éireann – Research Ireland were appointed through the Public Appointments Service led process for State Board positions. The members are listed below, along with brief biographical descriptions.
Michael Horgan- Chairperson
Dr Eoin O’Sullivan
Anne Vaughan
Professor Niamh Moloney
Professor Valeria Nicolosi
Dr. Godfrey Gaston
Professor Rebecca Braun
Patricia Quane
Lorraine Allen
Leonard Hobbs
Michael Horgan - Chairperson
Michael Horgan is an experienced CEO and Board Chairperson. He was appointed Chair of the HEA in July 2016 for a five-year term, was formerly chairman of the Health and Safety Authority (2010-2016) and was Chief Executive of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He is a Chartered Director, holds a BSc in Computer Science, an MA from the University of Dublin (Trinity College) and a Master’s in industrial engineering from UCD.
He has been Chairman and non-executive director of InterPay, trading as TransferMate Global Payments since its foundation in 2010. TransferMate is a regulated (Central Bank of Ireland) fintech payments company based in Ireland but with offices throughout the world. Michael is also a non-executive Director of Mountain Productions Ltd. In July 2022 he joined and was elected Chair of Uversity, a charity established to fund mature students complete a university degree. He is a member of the Audit and Risk Committee of the Data Protection Commission and on the Advisory Board of Intuition Ltd (an eLearning and Knowledge Management company).
Dr Eoin O’Sullivan
Dr Eoin O’Sullivan is the Babbage Fellow of Technology & Innovation Policy and the Director of the Centre for Science, Technology & Innovation Policy at the Institute for Manufacturing.
He joined the Institute for Manufacturing as a Senior Policy Fellow in 2007. Since then Eoin has carried out research on the ways science and engineering R&D is translated in new technologies, industries and economic wealth. Eoin’s policy-related activities have included studies for the UK Department of Business, Innovation & Skills; the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council; the UK Government Office of Science; Innovate UK; and Research England. Eoin has also worked with a range of international organisations, including the OECD, EU Commission, United Nations Industrial Development Organisation and US National Academies.
In addition to his technology and innovation policy research activities, Eoin also maintains an interest in university research and knowledge exchange practices. He is co-author, with Dr Gary Crawley, of The Grant Writer’s Handbook: How to Write a Research Proposal and Succeed (Imperial College Press, 2015). Eoin also maintains a set of grant writing webpages offering basic tips for researchers preparing grant applications, and gives occasional grant-writing workshops (with particular focus on communicating research impact and the value of research partnerships).
Ms Anne Vaughan
Anne Vaughan is chairperson of the National Statistics Board which provides strategic guidance to the Central Statistics Office. She was a member of the Commission on Taxation and Welfare and the Commission on Pensions. She retired from the Department of Social Protection in 2018 where she was Deputy Secretary for almost eight years with a particular focus on governance issues. Anne is a non-executive director of a number of charitable bodies. She is a member of the Audit Committee of the C&AG.
Professor Niamh Moloney
Niamh Moloney is Professor of Financial Markets Law in the Law School at the London School of Economics and Political Science and specialises in EU financial market regulation. Educated at Trinity College Dublin and Harvard Law School, she is a Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Zurich. Niamh’s recent books include EU Securities and Financial Markets Regulation (4th edition, 2023), The Age of ESMA. Governing EU Financial Markets (2018), and Brexit and Financial Services. Law and Policy (2018, with Alexander, Barnard, Ferran, and Lang). Niamh is an editorial board member of several journals, including the European Law Review, a co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Financial Regulation, and a Series Editor of the Cambridge University Press Series on International Corporate Law and Financial Market Regulation. She is currently a member of the LSE Council, the LSE’s governing body.
Niamh serves as an independent, non-executive director of the board of the Central Bank of Ireland and as a member of the Board of Appeal of the European Supervisory Authorities. She was Chair of the Commission on Taxation and Welfare, established by the government of Ireland in 2021 to review the state’s taxation and welfare systems, which reported in 2022 (Foundations for the Future). Niamh is also a member of the Advisory Scientific Council of Better Finance (the European Federation of Investors and Financial Services Users) and a member of the Advisory Academic Committee of the European Capital Markets Institute. Previously, Niamh was Special Adviser to the 2014-2015 inquiry by the UK Parliament House of Lords EU Select Committee into the EU’s regulatory response to the financial crisis.
Professor Valeria Nicolosi
Professor Valeria Nicolosi received a BSc (honours) in Industrial Chemistry from the University of Catania (Italy) in 2001 and a Ph.D. in Physics in 2006 from Trinity College Dublin.
In 2008 she moved to the University of Oxford with a RAEng/EPSRC Fellowship. In 2012 she returned to Trinity College Dublin as Research Professor. Now she is the Chair of Nanomaterials and Advanced Microscopy in Trinity College Dublin, and a PI in AMBER and I-Form
Professor Nicolosi’s work in AMBER includes synthesis, exfoliation and characterisation of layered materials towards a range of applications, particularly energy and ICT. Strong emphasis is given to the characterisation of materials and devices by advanced electron microscopy techniques, such as aberration-corrected TEM, STEM, EELS and EDS.
She has published more than 200 high-impact-papers and won numerous awards. Professor Valeria Nicolosi is Ireland’s only seven-time ERC awardee.
Every year, since 2018 she has been recognised as one of the world’s most influential researchers of the past decade, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in Web of Science.
Professor Nicolosi served on the Advisory Board of the European Innovation Council (EIC) from 2019 to 2021 and she sits on the Council of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings since 2022.
She has won numerous awards: the RDS/Intel Prize for Nanoscience 2012, the World Economic Forum Young Scientist 2013, EU Woman in Technology Award 2013, SFI President of Ireland Young Researcher Award 2014, SFI Irish Early Stage Researcher 2016, TCD ERC Awardee 2017, Women Business Forum Women of the Decade in Science & Innovation 2018.
As a recognition of her career achievements, in 2021 Professor Nicolosi was conferred the honourary decoration of “Cavaliere” in the Order “Stella d’Italia” by the President of the Italian Republic, at the proposal of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Dr Godfrey Gaston MBE
Dr Godfrey Gaston MBE is a Cyber Security Innovation and Entrepreneurship consultant and currently advises and supports several cyber security startup companies. He has a PhD in Semiconductors and an MBA from Henley Management College.
He was formerly Executive Director of the Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT), and Director at the Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT), based at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland. Prior to this, he worked in the semiconductor industry for GEC Plessey Semiconductors, start-up BCO Technologies (acquired by Analog Devices) and Engineering Manager for Analog Devices. Current interests include supporting technology startups (especially in the cyber security sector), development of cyber security ecosystems and the linking of these ecosystems internationally.
Godfrey also co-founded the network security start-up company, Titan IC, acquired by Mellanox Technologies/NVIDIA in March 2020.
In 2023 Godfrey was named Chairman of Sitehop, a thriving cybersecurity firm headquartered in Sheffield.
Professor Rebecca Braun
Professor Rebecca Braun joined the University of Galway in 2021 to take up the position of Executive Dean of the College of Arts, Social Sciences & Celtic Studies. Before then, she was Professor of Modern Languages & Creative Futures at Lancaster University in the UK, where she was also Co-Director of the Institute for Social Futures from 2017-2020. She has held further lectureships and research fellowships at the Universities of Liverpool, Manchester and Oxford in the UK and at the Freie Universität Berlin.
Patricia Quane
Patricia Quane is the former Vice President & General Manager at Astellas Ireland Co., Ltd, a Japanese Pharmaceutical company employing 400 people in Killorglin, County Kerry. Patricia studied Science at University College Cork. Following her graduation she began a career in the pharmaceutical industry, progressing through various roles until she achieved a milestone in 2008 by becoming the first non-Japanese Head of Plant at the manufacturing site responsible for producing the world's leading immunosuppressant, Prograf. Throughout her tenure, Patricia demonstrated exceptional leadership by selecting, nurturing, motivating, and inspiring large teams to take ownership and pride in their work, consistently surpassing expectations.
Sustainability held a prominent place on Patricia's agenda, and her work in Killorglin resulted in the plant receiving global recognition for its leadership in the Corporate Environmental Initiative program. By harnessing renewable energy and implementing measures to safeguard the environment, the plant earned several major National Awards for sustainability from SEAI, IBEC, and Chambers Ireland.
In recent years, Patricia has embraced numerous voluntary roles within IBEC, BioPharmaChem Ireland (BPCI), and the Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment, fostering collaboration with the IDA, all with the common goal of nurturing and sustaining enterprise growth in Ireland. As the Chairperson of BioPharmaChem Ireland (BPCI), Patricia has represented and presented at pharmaceutical industry events on both national and international platforms.
In 2020, Minister Damien English TD appointed Patricia as the Chairperson of the Southwest Regional Enterprise Plan (SWREP) committee, charged with developing and implementing a plan that nurtures collaborative and innovative enterprise projects in the region while facilitating sustainable job creation. In March 2022, Patricia was appointed as the Chairperson of the Expert Group for Future Skills Need (EGFSN) for the Biopharma industry. This pivotal project has identified the forthcoming skills needs and gaps in the BioPharma sector in Ireland over the next five years and is now tasked with implementing the recommended actions.
Lorraine Allen
Lorraine Allen is the founder of Brand Innovation Ireland. She has over 25 years of industry experience in innovation creation & commercialisation, user insights, marketing strategy and brand building.
Lorraine currently works across the Irish and European innovation ecosystem with a variety of organisations from start-ups to universities to established businesses, creating innovation and commercialising scientific research that focuses on tackling key global challenges, increasingly with a sustainability focus, across industries such as food & agri-tech, circular economy, biotech, and health.
An advocate of design thinking Lorraine supports organisations through a process that creates and nurtures new ideas with the target user to successfully launch market validated products & services. She has created innovation pipelines and implemented processes to prioritise & fast track user validated ideas to market. Having worked on large consumer brands internationally for multinationals such as Nestle & Kelloggs she also specialises in creating brand identities & positioning and developing marketing strategies & communication plans.
Lorraine also works with Enterprise Ireland and various Local Enterprise Offices as a mentor & consultant, and with the European Commission as an expert & evaluator for several innovation funds. She coaches EIC funded deep-tech start-ups commercialising and scaling their innovation globally and is a business expert with the EIT Food Seedbed Incubator advising early-stage European food-tech start-ups. She serves on the Board of Bord Bia and is Chairperson of their Consumer Foods Board. Lorraine is also advisor to a Danish spin-out Bactolife, funded by the Gates Foundation, providing guidance on their pipeline and commercialisation efforts in Human health..
Leonard Hobbs
Leonard Hobbs is one of Ireland’s leading technologists in the ICT sector with over 30 years of experience, mostly at Intel Ireland, spanning leading edge research to technology transfer to advanced manufacturing and also including public affairs.
He was Director of Research and Innovation at Trinity College Dublin from 2017-2023 where he had responsibility for the definition and implementation of the research, innovation and enterprise strategy for the University, spanning research programs development, contract management, technology transfer, consultancy, industry engagement, campus company startups and VC investment.
He returned to Intel Ireland in 2023 to take on the lead role for government affairs.
From 2016 to 2023, he was General Manager for MIDAS Ireland which is the representative body for the microelectronics sector in Ireland, consisting of industry, educational, research and government agencies, working together to drive the development of the microelectronics sector in Ireland.
He is chairperson of the Valentia Transatlantic Cable Foundation, whose objective to support the advancement of the scientific heritage of, and community development on, Valentia Island and to promote Valentia Island as a site which should be included on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.
Leonard has been involved in the BT Young Scientist Competition for 25 years as head judge for the Technology category.
