Patrick John Prendergast
Patrick John Prendergast was appointed to the role of Vice-Provost / Chief Academic Officer on 14th July, 2008. He teaches in the School of Engineering, where he is Professor of Bioengineering. Previous to this appointment he was Dean of Graduate Studies in the University (2004-2007). He also served as a College Tutor (1997-2004).

Professor Prendergast's research is in the field of biomechanical engineering. He has pioneered computational techniques to simulate the effect of mechanical forces on tissues, and of modelling the performance of medical devices. Recently he has focussed on developing methods simulating the effect of biophysical stimuli on tissue adaptation, and on their experimental corroboration at the cellular level. He currently holds a Science Foundation Ireland Principal Investigator Award titled “Computational mechanobiology: fundamental advances and implementation for medical device engineering ”.

Together with colleagues from Engineering, Dentistry, and Medicine he established the Trinity Centre for Bioengineering (www.tcd.ie/bioengineering) and served as its founding Director from 2002 to 2008. He continues his role in the Centre as a Principal Investigator. Prior to coming to Trinity in 1995, he held research positions in the Istituti Ortopedici Rizzoli, Bologna, and the University of Nijmegen. He has held visiting positions at the Institute of Fundamental Technological Research, Polish Academic of Sciences (2000), the Technical University of Delft (2001), and the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia (2008).

Patrick Prendergast is from Oulart in Co. Wexford. He graduated BA, BAI in mechanical engineering in 1987, PhD in 1991 and ScD in 2009, all degrees from the University of Dublin. He was elected a Fellow of Trinity College (FTCD) in 1998 and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA) in 2008.


Dr Sarah Thomas
Sarah Thomas was appointed Bodley’s Librarian and Director of Oxford University Library Services in February 2007. She is the first woman and non-British citizen to hold the position in 400 years. From 1996-2007 she was Cornell’s University Librarian. Previously she was the Acting Director of Public Services and Collection Management and Director for Cataloging at the Library of Congress (1992-1996), Chief of the Technical Services Division at the National Agricultural Library (1984- 1992), and Manager of Library Coordination at the Research Libraries Group (1979-1983). She began her career at Harvard’s Widener Library cataloguing German books and introducing Harvard to OCLC via the Computer-Based Cataloguing Section (1973-1975).

Dr. Thomas led in the establishment of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging at the Library of Congress, and has been active in scholarly communication initiatives. Under her direction the Cornell University Library was honoured with the ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries award in 2002. She received the Melvil Dewey Award from the American Library Association in 2007. She has also served as the President of the Association of Research Libraries.

In 2009 she was selected to the Simmons College Alumni Achievement Award. In 2010 Smith College awarded her the Smith Medal for exemplifying in her life and work the true purpose of a liberal arts education. Also in 2010, under her leadership, the Bodleian Libraries were awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for the excellence of their collections and their efforts, along with six other cultural heritage entities of the University of Oxford, in widening access to their historic collections.

She graduated from Smith College in 1970, received a Master of Science in library science from Simmons College in 1973, and a Ph.D. in German literature in 1983.

Abstract title: Always Look on the Bright Side: Opportunities for Creativity and Change in a Time of Constrained Resources
Higher education is facing unprecedented cutbacks in resources and the period of economic restraint is anticipated to last well over a decade. This does not have to be a scenario of doom and gloom for libraries, nor must it push us into a series of retrenchments that erode our capacity to provide services in support of the creation of new knowledge. Librarians have the ability to transform this threat into a powerful driver for change. With insight, courage, and the willingness to make difficult decisions, we can emerge as strong resources in support of scholarship and learning.


Dr. Michael Factor
Michael E. Factor, IBM Research - Haifa, Haifa, Israel (c). Dr. Factor received a PhD. in Computer Science from Yale University in 1990. Since then, he has worked at the IBM Israel Haifa Research Lab (HRL) where he is an IBM Distinguished Engineer focusing on storage and systems. Over the past several years he has been focusing on long term digital preservation, helping define IBM’s view on this topic. In this context, he has published multiple articles on the topic, provided guidance to the IBM team that worked on CASPAR and has spoken about the topic at public events, with customers, and with IBM executives. Other areas of interest include virtualization, storage systems, distributed systems and new storage architectures. In addition, he serves as IBM’s Research focal point for IBM’s XIV storage systems. In the past, Dr. Factor was an architect for DS8000 copy services and managed the Distributed and Clustered Systems group in HRL. Dr. Factor also advises graduate students in the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. He has over 25 issued patents and 60 published articles.

Abstract title: "Long Term Digital Preservation: A View from IBM Research"

In this talk, Dr Michael Factor will present an introduction to the problem of long term digital preservation, which is ensuring long term usability of digital objects in spite of obsolescence to software, formats, hardware, etc. Dr Factor will then present an overview of some recent IBM Research activities on digital preservation. In particular, he will describe IBM’s involvement in the recently finished CASPAR project where IBM built a preservation aware storage abstraction. Dr Factor will also describe an assessment tool that IBM have developed which helps evaluate how well an organization is doing in preserving its digital assets.


Timothy Brundle
Timothy Brundle is responsible for the commercial development of the University of Ulster (Ulster). In his role as Director of Innovation he leads the University’s support for business and economic development, directs Ireland’s most successful academic consultancy business and manages a highly active technology transfer team. In addition he is the Executive Director of Innovation Ulster Ltd, the University of Ulster’s award-winning technology venturing and Investment Company.

Prior to his appointment with Ulster, on behalf of QinetiQ Group PLC, he held the positions of both Director of Sales and Marketing and Technology Transfer Director within the Ministry of Defence Diversification Agency. In his early career, Timothy consulted in the area of technology forecasting.

Timothy has a passion for delivering economic value and social impact from innovation. He has extensive experience and a successful record in Intellectual Property licensing, starting high technology companies, marketing innovation, productising inventions, raising private equity and Venture Capital, and Initial Public Offerings.

Timothy is a non-Executive Director of a number of early stage high technology companies and is a Board member of Invest NI, Northern Ireland’s economic development body. He is a frequent visitor to the research clusters across the United States, where he has built close working relationships which continue to inspire his pursuit of innovation. When he is not travelling, Timothy lives by the sea in Bangor, County Down, with his wife and daughter.

Abstract title: iPhone and Ulster
Timothy Brundle will present the University ofUlster's strategic engagement with Apple and its uptake of iPhone in research, innovation and administration.'


Charles Hutchings, JISC
Charles Hutchings is an associate member of the market research society with over ten years experience of designing, managing and conducting market research across the public and private sectors. His career started in 1999 as a research assistant with the National Centre for Social Research, and from then he worked for companies including Ipsos MORI, Colin Buchanan and Partners and Future Publishing. He joined JISC; an organisation which inspires technological innovation in universities and colleges across the UK, in 2006 as Market Research Manager. Here he is responsible for conducting a range of market research on the community’s reaction to their activities and outputs, and identifying their needs, to provide strategic information to the JISC on the effectiveness and focus of its activities.

Abstract title: Balancing the books and focusing the mind
Times are hard for us all, and academic libraries and information technology departments are no exception. In the UK, the fall in the value of sterling has seriously damaged purchasing budgets alongside continued inflation in the cost of scholarly journals at a rate far higher than the Retail Price Index (RPI); resulting in shortfalls in academic library annual budgets anywhere between £50,000 and £400,000. Likewise IT departments are finding it hard especially when purchasing equipment and services from abroad. Coupled with inevitable budget cuts as a result of the global economic crisis and the ever changing demands from learners, teachers and researchers for services to be delivered in new and sophisticated ways, the potential impacts on these services are worrying.

This session will summarise the findings of a recently commissioned study by JISC involving senior library managers and IT directors from almost 40 universities across the UK, and highlight some of the actions they and others are taking to help address these issues.


John O’Donnell
John O'Donnell has been Head of Technology with Paddy Power since late 2000 and have been instrumental in the growth of the online Internet offering from a fledgling business into a € billion turnover business that delivered over 70% of the group profits in 2009. Prior to Paddy Power, he worked in New York for 7 years including almost 5 years as a Senior Technology Manager for Lehman Brothers. He also led a project for OptiMark which successfully delivered a new trading system onto the Nasdaq Stock Exchange.

Abstract title: Stay in the Game: Use of technology in the gaming industry
Paddy Power's success in the online bookmaking and gaming industry is based on the exploitation of technology to drive top line growth whilst providing scalable and cost efficient operations to maximise profitability. Making smart technology choices is the key to providing reliable and flexible technology solutions to the individual requirements of the business functions.


Sue McKnight
Professor Sue McKnight is Director of Libraries and Knowledge Resources at Nottingham Trent University. Sue is responsible for library services across NTU’s three campuses and for leading the University’s strategic developments in e-learning and knowledge management and has been in this position since 2004. In 2009, Libraries and Knowledge Resources was awarded ‘Customer Service Excellence’ accreditation by the UK Cabinet Office.

She is the first ‘non-traditional academic’ awarded a personal chair in the University in recognition of her international contributions to the profession, to her university community and her research and publication record. Her major research interest is ‘customer value discovery’, especially as this relates to libraries and eLearning.

She has been an active member of IFLA, having served two terms as chair of its Academic and Research Libraries Section. She currently chairs the JISC eBooks Working Party and was Vice-Chair of the JISC National eBooks Observatory Project. Sue is also a member of the Bloomsbury Academic Library Advisory Board and is past member of the Pearson Education Strategic Advisory Board. She is currently leading the SCONUL Learning & Teaching Task & Finish Group.

She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK), CILIP and the Australian Institute of Management. Sue was named a National Teaching Fellow in June 2008 by the Higher Education Academy (UK) and was named Manager of the Year by the Australian Library & Information Association in 1999.

Before joining Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom, Sue was Executive Director of Learning Services and University Librarian at Deakin University in Australia. Prior to that position she held senior posts at The University of Queensland Libraries. Sue also has special library and public library experience in Australia, as well as international consulting and facilitation experience.

Abstract title: Service Excellence
The concept of ‘service excellence’ requires a clear understanding of what customers expect of the service and how they, the customers, would define ‘excellence’. There should be no other definition.

To deliver ‘service excellence’ requires the translation of the customer defined attributes of ‘service excellence’ into publicly communicated customer commitments, with evidence gathered to regularly test whether ‘service excellence’ is being achieved.

Service excellence requires a culture of customer focus and continuous improvement whereby the values of the service organisation, the staff teams and the individuals are all aligned towards delivering the customer commitments. Staff attitudes and behaviours are focussed on team work to deliver the articulated service standards.

Service excellence requires a feedback loop: ensuing input from customers; transparency of performance to customers, service staff and stakeholders;  an engagement of service staff at all levels to define and implement changes to deliver ‘service excellence’; and a commitment to re-measure customer definitions of excellence, and then to re-plan.


Chris Clark
Since joining BT in 1991 Chris has held a wide variety of roles in the company, both in the UK and internationally. Prior to taking up his current role, Chris was Director of Business Transformation for BT Retail where he managed a radical two year transformation programme. Chris was previously CEO of Converged Mobility Operations, leading the commercial and operational performance across BT’s mobility division and he was part of the Wireless Broadband Association (WBA) where he was involved in driving European membership and helping turn the WBA into a leading global Wi-Fi alliance.

From October 1999 to April 2004 Chris was President of BT Global Services’ Wholesale Business, a global business unit responsible for delivering in excess of €1.5 billion in revenues, with over 350 people in 16 countries. This business was created by the bringing together of BT’s former European joint ventures and Concert, BT’s international joint venture with AT&T. Chris led this business from its formation in April 2002 and prior to this Chris was CEO of Farland BV, BT’s pan European network company.

Chris was based in the US for a number of years where several key business development roles culminated in his position as advisor to BT Worldwide’s President and CEO.

Chris sits on the board of Business in the Community in Northern Ireland.

Chris is married with two young daughters. He is a keen sportsman and enjoys travelling.

Abstract title: ‘Survival skills for change in today’s economic climate’ - Meeting today's challenges while building a sustainable future