Governance committee

Aongus Hegarty is a seasoned board member and strategic advisor, with four decades of global business experience. He recognises the connected role between people, business, and technology in driving growth and innovation. At Dell Technologies, Aongus held several executive roles, most recently as President for International Markets, an organisation spanning over 170 countries. He also led the company’s SME business globally and was instrumental in driving strategic initiatives and growth with Dell’s channel and distribution partners.

Renowned for his insights on leadership, digital transformation, and sustainability, Aongus is also an advocate for entrepreneurship and diversity and inclusivity. Recognising this, the Irish Government appointed Aongus as Co-Chair of the Balance for Better Business (B4BB) initiative, promoting increased female representation on company boards.

An alumnus of the University of Limerick, Aongus was honoured with the Alumni Award for Outstanding Achievement in 2013. He holds a fellowship from both the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) and the Irish Management Institute (IMI), the latter presenting a life fellowship upon him in 2019.

Professor Lionel C. Briand began his role as Director of Lero and Professor of Software Engineering in University of Limerick’s Department of Computer Science and Information Systems on January 1, 2024. He has a shared appointment as professor of software engineering at the University of Ottawa, Canada. In collaboration with colleagues, over 30 years, Prof. Briand has run research projects with companies in the automotive, satellite, aerospace, energy, financial, and legal domains. He has held various engineering, academic, and leadership positions in six countries.

Prof. Briand was elevated to the grade of fellow by both the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for his work on software testing and verification. He was granted the IEEE Computer Society Harlan Mills award, the ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering (SIGSOFT) outstanding research award, and the IEEE Reliability Society engineer-of-the-year award, respectively in 2012, 2022, and 2013. He further received a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant in 2016 - on the topic of modelling and testing cyber-physical systems - which is the most prestigious individual research award in the European Union and was elected a fellow of the Academy of Science, Royal Society of Canada in 2023.

Prof. Briand currently holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) on "Intelligent Software Dependability and Compliance". His research interests include: software testing and verification (including security aspects), trustworthy AI, applications of AI in software engineering, model-driven software development, requirements engineering, and empirical software engineering.

Prof. Briand earned his PhD in Computer Science in 1994 from the University of Paris Saclay, France.

Prof Brian Fitzgerald is former director and Co-Principal Investigator for Lero. He holds an endowed professorship, the Frederick A Krehbiel II Chair in Innovation in Global Business & Technology, at the University of Limerick, Ireland, where he was also Vice President Research from 2008-2011. He is Principal Investigator in Lero and was Founding Director of the Lero Graduate School in Software Engineering. His research interests, i.e. primarily in software development, encompassing development methods, Global software development, agile methods and open source software.

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Professor Norelee Kennedy was appointed Vice President for Research at University of Limerick in July 2019 and took up the post in January 2020. Professor Kennedy is an Associate Professor of Physiotherapy in the School of Allied Health at UL. She graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a BSc in Physiotherapy in 1999 and a PhD (2004) in the field of physiotherapy and rheumatology. She also has a Postgraduate Diploma in Statistics (TCD 2000) and a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (NUI Galway 2004).

Prof. Kennedy was appointed as Lecturer in Physiotherapy at UL in 2004, becoming Associate Professor in 2018. She was the Head of School of Allied Health, UL from 2014-2019. During that time she oversaw the first external quality review of the school, six regulatory body programme approvals and monitorings of professional programmes as well as the establishment of two new professional graduate entry programmes. She also co-led the successful first School of Allied Health, Athena SWAN application for a Bronze award in 2018.

Alongside her academic leadership Norelee leads a programme research in the field of rheumatology/physiotherapy. To date she has been awarded almost €3 million in research funding from national and EU funders. Currently, she leads a Health Research Board funded project and is also part of a EULAR-funded European wide group developing an educational programme for health professionals to promote physical activity in people with rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs). In 2018, Norelee was invited to sit on a EULAR European working group to develop recommendations for physical activity for people with RMDs. She also served on the EULAR Health Professionals committee (2014-2019).

Jennifer Condon was appointed as National Software Director within Enterprise Ireland (EI) in1998. She subsequently served as Divisional Manager responsible for Internationally Traded Software and Services – focussed on EI’s policy and strategy for the development and growth of the Irish Software & Services industry. Prior to joining Enterprise Ireland, she gained extensive experience in the software industry having worked in software design and development, project management, software sales and marketing both in the Public Service and in companies including Cara Data Processing and Praxis Ltd. Directly before joining EI she spent over 10 years as Managing Director of Fujitsu-ICL's Information Technology Centre in Dublin which focussed on R&D in emerging leading edge software technologies. Now retired Jennifer is a Chartered Engineer, Member of the Institute of Engineers Ireland and Fellow of Irish Computer Society.

Chris Johnson is Pro Vice Chancellor for Engineering and Physical Sciences at Queen’s University, Belfast.    He is a systems engineer focussing on safety and security.   He has held fellowships with NASA, US Air Force, US Navy and the FAA and serves as a founding member of the Scientific Advisory Board on the future of European Air Traffic Management (EC SESAR JU) for more than a decade; a role which has been extended after Brexit.    In 2021, he is helping provide safety/security assurance arguments for the launch of (one of) the UK’s first Quantum Key distribution satellites and is one of seventeen expert witnesses  to the Public Inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Aeronautical Society and the British Computer Society.

Dr Nicola Stokes is an AI Tech expert with 15 years’ experience managing AI related RDI projects in diverse domains such as life sciences, health informatics, smart cities, and media analytics. Nicola’s undergraduate degree is in Computer Science, and she has a PhD in Artificial Intelligence. She has also lectured at the University of Melbourne and University College Dublin. Before joining IDA Ireland she managed Science Foundation Ireland’s portfolio of AI investments including the SFI Insight Centre for Data Analytics and the SFI ADAPT Centre for Digital Content Technologies, two of the largest academic centres for AI and Data Analytics research in Europe. In her current role, she is IDA’s Technologist for International Financial Services where she has responsible for identifying and winning FDI financial technology investment opportunities in insurance, investment management, aviation financing, banking and payments. Nicola served as Chair of Blockchain Ireland in 2019/20, and is a member of the Government’s Expert Group for Future Skills Needs in Artificial Intelligence. She was recently awarded IT Leader of the Year at the Women in Tech Excellence Awards.

Chris has a Masters in Software Engineering from Trinity College Dublin, with over 25 years software engineering experience gained in Ireland, Canada and the United States.

Chris joined the International Space Station Project in 1990 where he was a member of the team that defined the software development processes and tools for the program, and then technical lead on the Remote Manipulator System control software. In 1994 he moved to the $1.5bn Iris program which replaced the entire communications systems for the Canadian armed forces, first on the process/toolsmithing side, and then the product development side. In 2000 he founded Headway Software to address the lack of large-scale modularity that he saw as pervasive in software industry.

He lives on the south coast of Ireland, where he likes to sail when it’s windy, and walk the dog when it’s not.

Dr. Eucharia Meehan is the CEO & Registrar of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS). DIAS, one of a family of international  independent research institutes, focuses  on fundamental research in designated disciplines - #DIASdiscovers (www.dias.ie).  Prior to joining DIAS (2017), Eucharia was the inaugural Director of the Irish Research Council (IRC), the latter being established in 2012 through the merger of two former councils IRCSET and IRCHSS. Prior to that she was Head of Research and Innovation (policy and investment) at the HEA. This latter role encompassed Director of the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI – an investment of  €1.2bn to develop strategic research infrastructure and capacity).  Prior to 2002, she was Head of Programme Management for Elan Biotechnology Research (EBR).

Anna-Marie is Head of Entrepreneurship & HPSU Operations in Enterprise Ireland. Her previous role was Manager of the Retail, Consumer & Online Department and prior to that she worked as a Senior Development Adviser across the organisation. Prior to Enterprise Ireland, Anna-Marie worked in industry for over 10 years and has considerable experience in a variety of industry sectors, most notably ICT, both in Irish early stage start-up companies and globally trading multinational businesses including Ericsson, Dell and Smurfit. Additional responsibilities include serving on the Enterprise Ireland’s Financial Products Committee, the Equity Review Committee. She is a member of the Irish Photonic Integration Centre (IPIC) Governance Committee and the NSAI IoT and Digital Twin Committee.  As part of her wider commitment to developing innovation and entrepreneurship in society, Anna-Marie is a regular judge at the BT Young Scientist, Ireland’s premier science competition for school children and has recently been appointed to serve as a member on the Council of Gaisce. A native of Monaghan, Anna-Marie holds a B.Sc. (Hons) in Computer Science, an MBS in Management Information Systems from the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and a MSc in Business Practice from the IMI.