Scientific Advisory Committee

Comprising of International Manufacturing Academic and Industry thought leaders who provide the Centre with independent, impartial scientific advice

Conor McCarthy

Centre Director & Principal Investigator

Having grown up in Glasnevin, Dublin, Professor Conor McCarthy has spent the best part of the last 20 years in the Mid-west region carrying out research into joining dissimilar materials for high-end industrial applications. Now residing in the lakeside town of Ballina, Co Tipperary, Professor McCarthy is the Centre Director for Confirm – Smart manufacturing, a new major national SFI research centre focused on Smart manufacturing technologies.

CHRIS DECUBBER

EFFRA Technical Director

Mechanical or Industrial Engineering Chris is responsible for generating consensus on research and innovation priorities among the industrial and research community for the 'Factories of the Future' PPP. In addtion, Chris is also responsible for the monitoring the progress and outcome of the 'Factories of the Future' PPP, including the management of the EFFRA Innovation Portal. Chris also leads the deployment of innovation and knowledge transfer mechanisms.

Suzanne Lesecq

Director of Research at CEA-LETI

Control theory applied to SoC and Power Electronics, Data fusion, Obstacle detection, environment perception, Motion capture (MoCap) project coordinator, project manager project proposal writing

Duc Truong Pham

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Duc Truong Pham has made wide-ranging contributions to the theory and practice of mechanical, manufacturing and systems engineering. His academic output includes more than 500 technical papers and 15 books. He has supervised over 100 PhD theses to completion. He has won in excess of £30M in external research grants and contracts. In addition to pursuing and leading research, he has also been very active with knowledge transfer to industry, applying the results of his work to help multinational companies and SMEs to generate wealth and create and safeguard jobs. He has lectured extensively abroad on his research and has acted as a consultant to several major companies. He was Professeur Invité at École Centrale de Paris, Consulting Professor at HUST (China), Erskine Visiting Fellow at the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), Visiting Professor at the Université Paul Verlaine (France) and Visiting Professor at King Saud University (Saudi Arabia). He is currently a Strategic Scientist at Wuhan University of Technology. He is the recipient of several prizes including the Sir Joseph Whitworth prize awarded by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1996 and 2000 and the Institution's Thomas Stephens Group Prize in 2001 and 2003 and Donald Julius Groen Prize in 2004, and the 5th ICMR Best Paper Prize in 2007. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Learned Society of Wales, Society of Manufacturing Engineers, Institution of Engineering and Technology, and Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He was made an OBE in the 2003 New Year's Honours List for his services to Engineering.

Colin Ridoutt

Head of Technology & Quality at Siemens

With nearly 20 years experience in Product development (NPI/NTI), I have taken a leading role in many Gas Turbine, Steam Turbine, Generator and Engine developments. In my career, I have developed the strategy and executed many interesting projects to develop new products and technologies with a focus on improving efficiency, performance, reliability, and also to reduce product costs. I have also driven process improvements, through LEAN initiatives, to reduce development cycle times and produce development costs. My focus is on delivering results, by developing innovative solutions that meet customer needs, in a quick and efficient manner. I am an enthusiastic and dependable manager, who drives decisions and assumes responsibility. I am a Fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) and a Chartered Engineer with the UK Engineering Council. I have a high level of interest in technology, and in this context I am the Vice Chairman for the Switzerland group to promote the science of Engineering and mentor engineers in their career development. Product Development (NPI), Technology Development (NTI), R&D Department Manager, leading multi-national teams, technology strategy, development roadmaps, People Management & Career Development, Chairing Design Reviews, Capacity Planning, Budgeting, Customer Engagement, Root Cause Analysis, Cost Reduction, Lean Process / Value Stream Mapping, Risk Analysis (FMEA), Experience Response, Product Qualification, Product Safety (e.g. CE compliance), ISO 9001 & 14001 certification, Building productive and collaborative work cultures.

Jun Ni

Co-Director of National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Intelligent Maintenance Systems

I started pursuing my career in manufacturing in 1978 and have researched various aspects of manufacturing and production. Beside publishing my research findings, I have also enjoyed mentoring undergraduate and graduate students. From 2006 through 2014, I served as the founding Dean of the University of Michigan – Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute located in Shanghai, China and is currently the Honorary Dean. In addition, I have served on advisory boards or expert panels for various government agencies in United States, China, Taiwan, South Africa, and South Korea. Currently, I am the co-chair of the Global Future Council on Advanced Manufacturing and Production at the World Economic Forum.

We use cookies to give you the best online experience. By agreeing you accept the use of cookies in accordance with our cookie policy.

Privacy Settings saved!
Privacy Settings

When you visit any web site, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Control your personal Cookie Services here.

These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems.

In order to use this website we use the following technically required cookies
  • wordpress_test_cookie
  • wordpress_logged_in_
  • wordpress_sec

For perfomance reasons we use Cloudflare as a CDN network. This saves a cookie "__cfduid" to apply security settings on a per-client basis. This cookie is strictly necessary for Cloudflare's security features and cannot be turned off.
  • __cfduid

Decline all Services
Accept all Services