Dr Karl Jeacle - IP Network Architect

Karl has extensive experience in the field of computer networks. He was a key member of eircom.net's core network infrastructure team from 1997-2002, responsible for planning, building and maintaining eircom's national and international IP network. Previously, he was a member of Broadcom Eireann Research, a joint R&D subsidiary of eircom and Ericsson.

More recently, Karl has designed the TCP-XM protocol, an extension to TCP which supports multicast. Karl holds a Ph.D in Computer Networking from University of Cambridge.

Ciaran Carthy - Large-scale Database Technology

Ciaran has worked extensively with the core technology underlying modern database engines, across applications as diverse as email management, CAD display lists and telecommunications billing.

As part of the core development team of Irish startup Isocor, he developed the database engine underlying the MAPI personal folders database of their X.400 mail connectivity suite. Subsequently, he was a principal engineer at Marconi where he delivered the architecture and implementation of the company's first Java client/server Network Management GUI.

In 2002, Ciaran founded startup Ferrodata and developed TVS, a distributed access layer which sits on top of Berkely DB and greatly simplifies development for large scale database applications.

He currently lectures in Databases, Operating Systems, and Programming at Dundalk Institute of Technology.

Steve Collins - Hardware & Consumer Electronics

Steve spent 12 years as a design & test engineer working for Digital Equipment Corporation. Following this, he moved to Intel Ireland, where he managed their internal production test group. Subsequently, he was engineering manager at Eicon Networks (now Dialogic Communications), a provider of networking equipment.

In 2000, Steve joined telecommunications startup Virtual Access, and in 2002, participated in a successful management buyout. In 2004, he left Virtual Access to pursue development opportunities in consumer electronics.

Steve has extensive knowledge of both hardware and software design, across a wide range of embedded technologies.