Company
Board of Directors
David Kirk - Chairman
David Kirk is a successful entrepreneur and investor, both private and institutional. During his career – over three decades of software, networking and telecommunications – he has held positions in engineering, marketing and sales, with startups and Fortune 10 companies. He has held executive level positions at American Online, where he led the world-wide launch of their online service, and managed the development and operations of their business systems, including billing, eCommerce, Internet advertising and fraud management. After AOL, David was Senior Vice President at Cisco Systems, where he managed their core software development, and was general manager of their enterprise business. David was born in Belfast, and now resides in California. He has a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science from DeMontfort University (previous Leicester Polytechnic) inLeicester, England.
Godfrey Gaston - CEO
Godfrey Gaston graduated with a MEng degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the Queen’s UniversityofBelfastin 1988. He then went on to complete a PhD at the UniversityofEdinburghin the field of Microelectronics and Semiconductors in 1992.
In 1992 he then moved to work as a principal engineer for GEC Plessey Semiconductors in Devonwhere he helped to develop 4 generations of deep sub-micron CMOS processes. Following this role he was recruited as Engineering Manager for a technology start-up BCO Technologies in Belfast, where he led the development of a new Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) processing technology, which resulted in the acquisition of BCO (AIM listed) by Analog Devices for $153M in 2000. For the next 4 years as part of Analog Devices Belfast, Godfrey led the development of a multi-million dollar optical networks project.
In 2004 Godfrey moved to the Instituteof Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT) as Operations Director. He has responsibility for general operations, business development, marketing, financial management and commercialisation of the research through licensing and spin out company formation.
Godfrey completed his MBA at Henley Management College, London, 2006 with a dissertation focus on “Critical Success Factors in University Startups”.
Sakir Sezer - CTO
Sakir Sezer graduated in 1994 with a Dipl Ing. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from RWTH Aachen University,Germany. In 2000 he completed his PhD at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland. From 1995 to 1998 he worked with Nortel Networks and Amphion Semiconductors in the development of ASICs, for access and high-speed transmission products. In October 1998, Dr Sezer joined QUB to lead research and teaching in the areas of communication and digital systems. In this position he has worked closely on many aspects of complex chip design with companies such as Nortel Networks, Parthus and Amphion.
At Queen’s University Belfast Dr Sezer has established a research team, currently comprising over 12 full-time researchers and staff engineers, spanning all aspects of hardware based network processing, including frame/packet processing, fixed wireless communications, traffic management, QoS, packet classification and network security. The group has been engaged in many R&D projects for Nortel Networks, including access and transmission systems. Technology and intellectual property (IP) that Dr Sezer developed has been commercially deployed by Nortel Networks and Amphion.
Dr Sezer has co-authored over 70 publications in the field of Communication Systems, Programmable Systems, VLSI and SoC, and also serves as a technical committee member for a number of prestigious international conferences including IEEE SoCC, ICT, FPT, RAW, and ICONS. He led a number of industry-sponsored research programs including JIGSAW, a £3.5M Nortel Networks sponsored program.
Dwayne Burns - VP Engineering
Dwayne Burns graduated with a first class honours degree in Electronics and Physics from the University of Edinburgh in 1991. He then completed a PhD in Optoelectronics at the University of Edinburgh in 1994.
In 1995, Dwayne took up a one year Human Capital and Mobility Fellowship at the Istituto per la ricerca scientifica e tecnologica (IRST), in Trento,Italy, where he developed a liquid-crystal-on-silicon microdisplay backplane, and an optical processing device.
At the end of 1995, Dwayne took up an IC Design Engineer post at Xilinx Development Corporation in Edinburgh,Scotland. Here he helped developed the XC6200 family of reconfigurable FPGAs. In 1998, he became a Senior Engineer, where he developed Forward Error Correction IP in the LogiCore Group.
Towards the end of 2000, Dwayne was recruited by MicroEmissive Displays Ltd (MED), a start-up company based in Edinburgh,Scotland. MED develop polymer-led-on-silicon microdisplays, and have raised over £30M in funding from VC sources, and more recently through its listing on AIM.
In 2006, Dwayne returned to his native Northern Ireland where he took up a Research Fellow post at the Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT). Here he led the development of several technology demonstrators, including a weighted fair queuing traffic manager, and several iterations of the deep packet inspection pattern matching processor which became the basis of TICS Regular Expression Processor (RXP) offering. He has recently taken up a Principal Engineer post at ECIT, where he is now focusing on refining the RXP architecture and delivering further demonstrators.
Professor John V McCanny CBE FRS FREng IEEE Fellow
Professor John McCanny is an international authority in the design of silicon integrated circuits for Digital Signal Processing; having made many pioneering contributions to this field. He has published 260 major journal and conference papers, 5 research books and holds 25 patents. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (of London) the UK Royal Academy of Engineering, the IEEE and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. Professor McCanny co-founded two successful high technology companies, Audio Processing Technology Ltd. (www.aptx.com), which markets audio compression products to the broadcast industry worldwide and Amphion Semiconductor Ltd. (www.amphion.com), a leading supplier of semiconductor “intellectual property” (complex chip designs) for applications such as digital TV, mobile multi-media devices, 3G cell phones and digital video recorders.
Professor McCanny has won numerous awards. These include a UK Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal in 1996 (for “Outstanding contributions to UK Engineering leading to market exploitation”) and an IEEE 3rd Millennium medal. From 1999-2000 he chaired the IEEE Signal Processing Society’s Technical Committee on the Design and Implementation of Signal Processing Systems and was also a member of the Society’s Technical Directions committee. Over the past 20 years he has also served on manyUKand EU electronics research committees and on the technical committees for many major international conferences. He currently sits on the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Standing Committee for Engineering, the UK’s Department of Trade and Industry’s Electronics Innovation and Growth Team and several Royal Society committees. These include Sectional Committee 4, which elects Fellows in the field of engineering and materials science for which he is currently Chair.
Professor McCanny was responsible for the vision that has led to the creation of the new £40M Institute for Electronics Communications and Information Technology (ECIT) in N. Ireland.
Professor McCanny was awarded a CBE (commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II of England. He was also awarded the 2003 Royal Dublin Society/Irish Times Boyle Medal, which recognises scientific excellence in Ireland. He has recently been named 2004 IT Professional of the Year by the British Computer Society (Belfast Branch) and was recently nominated by the Irish Academy of Engineering for the Finish Government’s new Millennium Prize (deemed by some to be the equivalent of the “new Nobel for technology”).