Speakers

John Boland is the Chief Executive Officer of HEAnet, Ireland's National Education & Research Network. He was appointed to this position in October 1997 when HEAnet was incorporated as a limited company with its own staff.

Prior to 1997 he worked as Systems and Networks Manager in the Computer Services Department of Dublin City University and represented DCU on the HEAnet Network Management Committee, before its incorporation.

Prior to joining DCU John worked in industry with a number of international companies including Marconi Communications Systems in the UK, Motorola Information Systems in the UK and the US and Westinghouse in Australia.

He holds a B. E. in electronic engineering from University College Dublin and has embarked on an ongoing M. Sc. in Computer Applications.

As CEO of HEAnet John is involved in the development of world-class Internet services for education and research in Ireland.

Currently John is a member of DANTE's Board of Directors, and represents HEAnet on the NREN GEANT Policy Committee, a collaboration between the European National Research Networks and the European Commission, delivering advanced pan-European research and education networking. He is also a member of the TERENA General Assembly (Trans European Research and Education Networking Association) and on the international task force for Internet2.

Roland Trice manages the Senior Engineers who operate the SuperJANET backbone. His networking career began in 1984, just prior to the birth of JANET itself.

Since then he has helped design, procure, develop and operate large national and regional networks, in the UK, including SuperJANET4, the current UK education internet and its successor, SuperJANET5.

Dr Vincent Wade is Director of the Centre for Learning Technology in Trinity College Dublin and Research Director of the Knowledge and Data Engineering Research Group in the Computer Science Department in Trinity College Dublin. In 2002, he was awarded Fellowship of Trinity College for his contribution to research in knowledge driven systems.

He is active in the research of virtual learning environments, adaptive multimedia systems for education, and management systems for networks and distributed systems. In the area of e-Learning his research has focused on virtual collaborative learning environments, learner centric adaptive systems, re-use of digital learning resources and virtual communities. He currently leads several EU and nationally funded research projects in these areas. His research work and publications span both theoretical and applied research, and has authored over one hundred and twenty technical papers in refereed international research journals and conferences. He has received six ‘best paper’ awards for publications in IEEE and AACE international Conferences, and is currently guest editor for IEEE Internet Computing Special Issue on Distance Education.

Vincent is the co-ordinator of the National Digital Learning Repository Project which is a three year project involving seven universities in Ireland, all Institutes of Technology (and their associated teaching colleges), HEA and HEAnet.

Bill is co-founder, president and COO of PurDigital Media, Inc., headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. As an early pioneer in IPTV, Bill led the effort to provide the first IPTV triple play service in a major U.S. market, and was the first to offer IPTV service at a U.S. university, where today PurDigital serves all of Georgia State University’s student housing facilities.

He received his Bachelor of Engineering summa cum laude from Georgia Institute of Technology and his Masters of Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

Mike McGrath was a founder of Crannog Software in 1998 and has over 20 years experience in the IT industry.

With Sean McNamee, now Crannog Software’s CEO, Mike co-founded LAN Communications in 1993, a company that was ’s first Cisco Gold partner and which has been the largest indigenous datacomms reseller since 1999.

LAN Communications was sold to eircom (main Irish carrier) in 1999. Mike then built and developed, in LAN Communications, the largest network operations centre in , supporting some of the most significant businesses and government departments, both nationally and internationally.

Mike has worked in and with carrier, ISP, mobile and large-scale enterprises during his career. As Crannog’s Chief Technology Officer and visionary, he works today with a rapidly-growing development team to provide network management solutions that recognise the needs of different audiences.

In 1996 Mike achieved the accolade of becoming the first accredited Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert (C. C. I. E.) in Ireland.

John Costello is a Systems Technologist in the James Hardiman Library at the National University of Ireland, Galway. John holds a BSc. in Mathematical Sciences and Computing, is a qualified Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and a CompTIA Security+ Certified Professional. John has been working in the James Hardiman Library systems department for the past nine years and is currently responsible for the administration of e-Knowledge the libraries electronic resource portal.