John Breslin

I have worked as a colouriser on the Old Ireland in Colour book trilogy and series of associated Old Ireland in Colour exhibitions, in a Partnership / Firm with Dr Sarah-Anne Buckley. As a Sole Trader, I have also colourised a variety of old Irish photographs for book covers, TV programmes (RTÉ, TG4), records (Claddagh Records), magazines, exhibitions, interiors, promotions (Druid Theatre), and more.

Scale Ireland raises the profile of Ireland's tech startup and scaleup companies, while also showcasing the positive impact of Irish entrepreneurs on the wider economy in relation to employment, exports and innovation. Scale Ireland also draws attention in the media to key sectoral issues.

TechInnovate is an entrepreneurship development programme where interdisciplinary teams from engineering, business and design backgrounds align unmet domain needs with a market opportunity through a technology innovation. AgInnovate was also recently established as a sister programme to TechInnovate.

I was appointed as a Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI) at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, Ireland's largest ICT research centre, funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). Co-PI indicates an independent researcher who co-holds an award from SFI, in this case under the Research Centres programme. I am Leader of the Unit for Social Semantics (USS) at Insight.

Our vision is for a downtown Innovation District in Galway City, attracting creators, innovators and entrepreneurs who wish to work in close proximity to others in a supportive and connected environment, as well as young technology companies with strong growth potential, and eventually larger companies and multinationals. We started with one innovation hub, the PorterShed, with plans for other complementary hubs as part of a fully-fledged Galway City Innovation District. The PorterShed has become Galway's downtown entrepreneurship hub in the two years since it opened in May 2016, with 100 people/30 companies based in the space, 400 events held there, and 8,000 visitors. With my fellow volunteer board members at the not-for-profit Galway City Innovation District, I led the proposal writing for the Enterprise Ireland co-funded "NDRC at PorterShed" accelerator in Galway, which was Ireland's first regional accelerator.

Technology Voice is an online publisher of long-form articles on emerging technologies.

The VistaMilk SFI Research Centre represents a unique collaboration between agrifood and ICT research institutes and leading Irish/multinational agrifood and ICT companies. Funded by Science Foundation Ireland and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, VistaMilk's aim is to be a world-leading SFI Research Centre for precision pasture-based dairying.

I was promoted to Personal Professor in Electronic Engineering in the College of Engineering and Informatics at the National University of Ireland Galway. A Personal Professorship, similar to a Personal Chair, is awarded in recognition of high levels of achievement. I have written a blog post about the promotion process for the benefit of others, see below.

I was appointed as a Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI) at the Confirm SFI Research Centre for Smart Manufacturing, funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). Co-PI indicates an independent researcher who co-holds an award from SFI, in this case under the Research Centres programme.

AYLIEN provided a text analytics framework powered by semantic technologies, and was initially funded by SOS Ventures (Sean O'Sullivan, Bill Liao). It was acquired by Quantexa in 2023.

I was elected as Vice-Chair of WestBIC in February 2019. I was later elected as Chair of WestBIC in December 2019. I reverted to Vice-Chair in April 2021. I was again elected as Chair in December 2021, serving until June 2022.

WestBIC (Western Business and Innovation Centre) helps entrepreneurs in the West of Ireland to get investor ready.

Pocket Anatomy is a 3D human body educational tool for the iPad. It was winner of The Next Web Best Tech Startup Award in 2014 and is a member of the StartUp Health Academy. Fellow advisors include Paul Gilson (Novate), Paul Kenny (Cobone) and Liang Hoe (ex-Apple).

BuilderEngine is a next-generation HTML5 web builder and CMS.

I was promoted to Senior Lecturer in Electronic Engineering in the College of Engineering and Informatics at the National University of Ireland Galway. I am course director of the MSc in TechInnovation and the MSc in AgInnovation.

I was appointed to the Board of Directors for the American Council on Exercise (ACE) in 2013. ACE is the largest non-profit fitness certification, education and training organisation in the world. I served as Secretary (officer of the corporation), Member of the Executive Committee, Member of the Compensation Committee, and Chair of the Bylaws & Governance Committee.

Confirm is the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Smart Manufacturing. Confirm benefits from expertise across eight core research performing organisations in Ireland and 16 international collaborations. Confirm has 42 industry partners across the MNC and SME sectors including: Johnson & Johnson, Analog Devices, Action Point, Modular Automation, SL Controls, United Technologies Research Centre Ireland, KUKA, Medtronic, and many others.

I co-founded and was a director of boards.ie Ltd., Ireland's largest community forum site, which was incorporated as a company in 2000. The site began life as a computer gaming forum I set up in 1998.

I am Co-Founder and Chairman of the Startup Galway initiative, which aims to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem in Galway. We organise a monthly tech meetup where attendees can hear from the experiences of a successful tech founder. Also behind the initiative are John Brosnan (NetFort), Mic FitzGerald (OnePageCRM) and Barry O'Sullivan (Altocloud, Dragon's Den). I was also Co-Organiser of the first successful Galway Startup Weekend in November 2014.

AISLER manufactures powerful (electronic) prototypes for customers in over 100 countries worldwide everyday.

I joined the Galway 2020 Advisory Panel in June 2014, advising on Galway's bid for European Capital of Culture (ECoC), as well as participating in the judging panel visit in July 2016. The purpose of this panel was to provide a high-level cultural overview of the ECoC programme, to advise on how to proceed with the ECoC bid process, to assist in the development of the bid, to ensure that the principles and aims of the ECoC programme were met through the bid process, to ensure that the bid and the programme submitted met the high artistic and cultural quality requirements, to ensure that the bid met the criteria laid down by the European Commission, to ensure best practice models were followed, and to receive reports on the progress of the bid and provide feedback. Galway was awarded European Capital of Culture 2020 in July 2016.

BirdLeaf provided aggregate demographic analyses of customer prospects simply based on a list of email addresses. As CloudDock, the company was a graduate of the NDRC LaunchPad Accelerator, winner of the SCCUL Enterprise ICT Award for 2013, winner of Ireland's Best Young Entrepreneur Galway Award in 2014, and a participant in the Wayra Ireland Accelerator (a Telefonica initiative). The founders are both graduates of NUI Galway.

I am also Leader of the Unit for Social Software at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, NUI Galway (formerly DERI).

The Startup Gathering is a public/private partnership intended to advance the goal of Ireland becoming a startup hub by 2020. I was invited by Ged Nash TD, Minister for Business and Employment, to participate on the Steering Group for the Startup Gathering as the City Coordinator for Galway.

I was one of 30 ambassadors selected from 20,000+ applicants to take part in the ESB's Great Electric Drive 2014/2015, and I drove the BMW i3 electric car for the duration of my ambassador role.

Dot-Irish is a new top-level domain (.irish) for everything Ireland-related.

StreamGlider is a next-generation mobile content delivery platform. As a real-time multimedia newsreader, it competes with applications such as Flipboard, Pulse and Flud. StreamGlider is available primarily as a standalone app on the iPad, but is also deployable for private labelling. As such, we aim to give control and branding back to publishers. Co-founders are Nova Spivack and the late Bill McDaniel. (I became Acting CEO before StreamGlider's dissolution in November 2014, and was previously VP of Products and Marketing.)

Trugence is a converged media and ecommerce framework.

I was appointed as a Lecturer (Above the Bar) in Electronic Engineering in the College of Engineering and Informatics at the National University of Ireland Galway.

CrowdGather is a discussion forum network based in Los Angeles.

Founder and leader of the Unit for Social Software (USS).

I was founder and director of Social Media Ltd., trading as New Tech Post.

Along with my co-founders at boards.ie, I set up a separate classified adverts site called adverts.ie based on the success of the For Sale forum area on boards.ie. This was later incorporated as a separate company in partnership with Daft Media Ltd. Adverts Marketplace Ltd. was acquired in a joint venture by Distilled Media Group and Schibsted Media Group in 2015.

I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) at the National University of Ireland Galway. My research interests include the Semantic Web and social software, and I am co-creator of the Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities (SIOC) project at http://sioc-project.org. During my work at DERI, I was also an adjunct lecturer at the University, doing some teaching and student supervision.

I lectured full time at NUI Galway from 2000 to 2004.

I worked for a year as a research officer funded by PEI Technologies (Power Electronics Ireland), where I coded high frequency optimisation and transformer design algorithms, and developed a compact GUI in Visual Basic to display large amounts of data, while interfacing the software with core and winding database files.

During the summer of 1996, I was paid by Virginia Tech to work as a visiting scholar in the Virginia Power Electronics Center (VPEC). I also held a green card during this time.