Dr Paul Cunningham, President & CEO, International Information Management Corporation; Director, IST-Africa Institute
Paul is the President and CEO of International Information Management Corporation, Founder and Director of the IST-Africa Institute, a Visiting Senior Fellow at Wrexham Glyndŵr University, and Founder and Coordinator of mHealth4frika. Paul works as a technology, strategy, and policy expert for organizations including the World Bank as well as European and nationally funded research and innovation programs in Europe and Africa. Supported by the European Commission and African Union Commission, IST-Africa (www.IST-Africa.org) is a not-for-profit strategic collaboration with ministries and national councils responsible for innovation, science and technology adoption, implementation, policy and research in 18 African Member States. At Wrexham Glyndŵr University (Wales), Paul focuses on Social Implications of Technology and ESGDC (Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship). Supported by the European Commission under Horizon 2020, mHealth4Afrika (www.mHealth4Afrika) is co-designing an open source, multilingual mHealth platform integrating electronic medical records, medical sensors, and generation of monthly aggregate health indicators to strengthen primary healthcare delivery in resource constrained urban, rural and deep rural health clinics in Africa. An IEEE Senior Member, Paul is 2017 – 2018 President, IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT); Projects Chair, IEEE Humanitarian Activities Committee; Member, IEEE Technical Activities Board and IEEE Global Public Policy Committee; and Founder and Chair, IEEE SSIT IST-Africa SIGHT (Special Interest Group on Humanitarian Technology). Paul is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin and UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School; has studied at postgraduate level in Hungary and USA; and is completing a PhD at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences (DSV), Stockholm University. Paul is a member of the Institute of Directors in Ireland (M Inst D.) and a former Board Director (2008 – 2012) of Meeting Professionals International.
Prof Tim Lee, Chair of the SIGHT committee for the IEEE
Timothy Lee, currently a Boeing Technical Fellow, is responsible for the development of RF and digital electronics for advanced communications networks and sensor systems at The Boeing Company (1998-Present). He is leading the development of state-of-the-art CMOS and RFintegrated circuits and devices. Current interests include techniques to overcome the End of Moore’s Law which includes 2.5D/3D heterogeneous integration and hardware designs for 5G millimeter-wave systems.
In the IEEE, Tim has served as the 2015 MTT-S President. In 2017 is serving as a Co-Chair of the IEEE 5G Initiative and the 5G mm-wave technical working group. Tim is working to grow a new generation of technical leaders whose vision is a thriving local community enabled by internet and wireless technology. Tim believes that the only true way forward to invest not only in technology infrastructure but to invest in human capital to foster innovation and interactions between communities and technologists.
Dr Awam Amkpa, Associate Professor (Global Visiting Associate Professor) New York University
Awam Amkpa is the author of Theatre and Postcolonial Desires (Routledge, 2003). He is director of film documentaries and curator of photographic exhibitions and film festivals. Amkpa has written several articles on representations in Africa and its diasporas, representations, and modernisms in theatre, postcolonial theatre, and Black Atlantic films.
Former Senior Lecturer of Drama and Television at King Alfred’s University College, Winchester, England, and Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts at Mount Holyoke College. Author of Theatre and Postcolonial Desires, London: Routledge, 2003 and forthcoming Archetypes, Stereotypes and Polytypes: Theatres of the Black Atlantic. Director of film documentaries such as Winds Against Our Souls, Its All About Downtown, National Images and Transnational Desires, and feature film Wazobia! Author of several articles in books and journals onModernisms in Theatre, Postcolonial theatre, Black Atlantic Issues, and Film studies.
Mark Pollock
Mark Pollock is a Northern Irish adventurer, athlete, rower, author and international motivational speaker, who became the first blind man to race to the South Pole. As part of a three-man team called South Pole Flag, alongside Simon O’Donnell and Inge Solheim, he took 43 days in January 2009 to complete the Amundsen Omega 3 South Pole Race. An avid rower Pollock has won bronze and silver medals at the 2002 Commonwealth Rowing Championships in Nottingham, England and has also written a book titled Making It Happen
Mark will give a live Provocation to join him and his team with SMARTlab to form the new RADICAL Collaboration Project, to
bring cutting-edge research into paralysis, robotics, computer vision, multimodal interfaces and virtual systems/augmented reality together to support extreme users!
Padraig and Reinhard Schaler, An Saol Foundation
Life and Living with a severe Acquired Brain Injury (sABI)
To survive a severe Acquired Brain Injury is one of the most hard-hitting, life-changing events for the survivor, their families, and their friends. What makes it worse is that in Ireland families are left with no hope, basically having to fend for themselves. Shockingly, it is still accepted practice that survivors are sent to nursing homes – after a short assessment period in either an acute hospital or the country’s only National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) – to be ‘medicated, managed, and maintained’ for the rest of their lives.
With ongoing rehabilitation, an Saol have seen dramatic improvements in our family members when nobody believed this to be possible. And what we have experienced personally is supported by recent international research which shows that demanding mental and physical activity offers the only consistently proven means to regain function – leading to a better quality of life.
An Saol are the families, friends, and supporters of persons affected by sABI. We have established the AN SAOL FOUNDATION and the AN SAOL PILOT PROJECT to change the hearts and minds of society to support survivors of sABI, and their families, so that they can live their life to the fullest.
Padraig Schaler was spending the summer in Cape Cod on a J1 in 2013 when he was hit by a truck that was overtaking his bicycle and he sustained life-changing brain injuries.
He was the first wheelchair user to complete the newly-designed Camino Celta, while his father Reinhard, a UL lecturer, founded the An Saol Foundation to help those dealing with life with a severe acquired brain injury.