Trinity Alumni Awards 2017

Posted on: 14 May 2017

A stellar cast of Trinity graduates received Trinity Alumni Awards at a gala dinner in Trinity College last week. The awardees are:

• Founder of software company, Workday,  and  former companies, Cape Clear & Iona Technologies, Annraí O’Toole
• Co-founder of Framestore, the Oscar-winning visual effects company, William Sargent
• Founders of   the computer vision hardware company, Movidius Sean Mitchell and David Moloney
• Executive Vice President, Global Operations at Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Julie O’Neill

The Trinity Alumni Awards recognise and celebrate the extraordinary achievements of Trinity alumni in Ireland and across the globe. The awardees are graduates of the University who have excelled in their chosen field.  This year they were presented with the awards by Provost, Dr Patrick Prendergast at a special dinner in the auspicious Dining Hall.

Tech giant, Annraí O’ Toole graduated with a BA, BAI in Computer Engineering in 1987 followed by an MSc in Computer Science. He fully embraced student life during his time in Trinity and was involved in the Students’ Union, the Engineering Society and the Philosophical Society.  He went on to work in Trinity as a research assistant in the Department of Computer Science in Trinity where he lectured undergraduates for four years while also working on EU funded projects in distributed and parallel computing. In 1990, Annraí was instrumental in spinning IONA Technologies out from Trinity’s incubation centre and became the company’s first employee. He was a director and Chief Technical Officer of IONA and played a key role in its flotation on the NASDAQ in 1997. In 2000, he left IONA to found another start-up, Cape Clear, which was acquired by California based Workday in 2008. Four years later, in 2012, Workday was also floated on the NYSE and last year the company announced a major expansion in Smithfield employing over 1,000 computer scientists and engineers making a significant contribution to Dublin’s reputation as a tech hub. Annraí’s achievements are of the highest order in his field and have made a very significant impact on the Irish economy.

William Sargent graduated with a Business degree in 1978 from Trinity and emigrated to London with many others of his generation for whom jobs were scarce in Ireland.  He co-founded Framestore in 1986 and led its rise from an award-winning commercials house to world-renowned film and digital studio based in London, New York, LA, Montreal and Beijing. During this time Framestore has worked on all the Harry Potter films (and the new JK Rowling ‘Fantastic Beasts’), Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Paul King’s Paddington, and Dr Strange. William and his team have won all the major creative awards including two Oscars British Academy, Primetime Emmys, and over 80 global awards for the newest format Virtual Reality. In addition to leading Spitting Image, he has produced numerous award-winning films and television productions for the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV. Equally at home in Hollywood and government, he was Permanent Secretary, Regulatory Reform at the Cabinet Office, Board Director of HM Treasury and is a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts and Governor of Southbank Centre.

Julie O’Neill received a BSc (Pharmacy) degree from Trinity and an MBA from UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School. Having started her career in 1990, she gained experience in the areas of operations, plant management and quality assurance while working for Helsinn Birex Pharmaceutical Limited and Burnil Pharmacies Limited before joining Gilead Sciences in 1997. During her 17-year tenure at Gilead, Julie held many senior management positions including Vice President, Operations & General Manager, Ireland. Since 2014, she has worked with Alexion Pharmaceuticals and is currently Executive Vice President, Global Operations, where she leads a diverse multi-disciplinary global operations team. Julie holds various national leadership positions. Since 2013, she has held the position of Chairwoman and Member of the Board of the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI) and is the former President of the Irish Business and Employers’ Confederation (IBEC), being the first woman to hold this position.

Sean Mitchell received a Bachelor’s degree in Electronic Engineering from Trinity in 1989, followed by a Masters in 1990 and a Masters in Management Practice in 2004. After working in the semiconductor industry for 17 years for numerous Irish start-up companies including Silicon & Software Systems, Parthus Technologies and Silansys Technologies, he co-founded Movidius in 2005. As CEO, Sean led the team through multiple rounds of venture capital investment and the development of world-leading technology for enabling visual intelligence. Sean continues to lead the Movidius team in Europe within Intel.

Movidius is a Dublin based company that produces computer vision hardware which has applications in drones, security cameras, robotics, camera technology and virtual reality products. Founded in 2005, it lists Google and Lenovo among its blue-chip clients. After an eleven year journey, Movidius was acquired by Intel Corporation in November 2016.

David Moloney received a BEng from Dublin City University and PhD in Engineering from Trinity in 2010. He began his career in 1985 in Siemens Halbleiter AG (Infineon) in Munich and ST Microelectronics in Milan before returning to Ireland in 1994 to co-found a series of start-up technology companies including Parthus (CEVA) and Silansys (Frontier-Silicon). David is currently CTO of Movidius.

Applications are invited to nominate candidates and the recipients are chosen by the Alumni Awards Committee chaired by Mr Colm Duggan.