Tom leads innovation, entrepreneurship and enterprise development, consulting and knowledge transfer at NovaUCD, Ireland’s premier incubator/accelerator. NovaUCD has supported over 360 entrepreneurs attract over €760m investments to create thousands of jobs. He recently established Ireland’s first in-Hospital Knowledge Transfer Offices in St Vincent’s and The Mater Hospital and was invited by Vodafone and Ericsson to develop the nationwide 5G Accelerator Programme.
Tom is on the Advisory Board of the EIF funded Atlantic Bridge University Fund supporting investments in innovative start-ups from university research in Ireland. He has also previously served on the founding boards of several high-tech start-up companies including DecaWave and served on the board of the Dublin City Enterprise Board setting strategy and approving grants and investments in over 200 start-ups.
Before joining UCD, Tom created Hothouse the Innovation and Tech Transfer Centre at the new Technological University Dublin and created the broader Dublin Region Innovation Consortium.
He was seconded by Knowledge Transfer Ireland to review the National IP Protocol and contributed to the Irish Government’s five-year strategy Innovation 2020 through his work on the Government’s Research Prioritisation panel. He was also recruited by the ProgressTT H2020 project to be one of a small number of international mentors to enhance the performance of high potential Knowledge Transfer Offices across Europe.
He started his career as an engineer and rose through the ranks of corporate America to lead a €100m/year telecommunications consultancy and systems integration business for Nortel as Vice President for Canada and Central US. Tom has an MSc from Aston University and an Executive MBA from Northwestern University in Chicago.