News

“THE NOVAUCD facility had been running at full capacity for several years and there has been a significant demand from ambitious entrepreneurs who wanted to locate their start-ups here to be part of our ecosystem of experienced mentors, founders, alumni, investors and sponsors who can help them grow their businesses globally,” said Tom Flanagan, UCD’s Director of Enterprise and Commercialisation in relation to the €6.5m development project to expand the centre which has just been completed.

This twelve-month project, to renovate and extend the hub’s eastern courtyard, has resulted in a 50 per cent increase in capacity to house companies and includes a dedicated co-working space, over 20 new business units and labs that together can accommodate up to 30 additional start-ups.

NovaUCD, based on the Belfield campus, opened in 2003 and since then has supported over 360 companies and early-stage ventures to grow and scale. The companies which operate in sectors including AgTech, CleanTech, FinTech, ICT, MedTech and Life Sciences, have raised over €760m in equity funding.

In 2018 the combined annual turnover of the companies supported amounted to over €113m and collectively they employed over 1,040 people directly and an estimated similar number indirectly.

Companies currently, and to date, supported through NovaUCD include BiancaMed, Carrick Therapeutics, Corlytics, Equal 1 Labs, Equinome, GMI, Life Scientific, Logentries, MagGrow, NovoGrid, Nuritas, OncoMark, OxyMem, Terra Solar and Vivid Edge. These companies (some of which are profiled opposite) range from those at the early-stage of their development, to companies which have secured significant investment and are in the growth phase, to companies which have been successfully acquired.

If you are interested in finding out more about locating your start-up at NovaUCD contact: helen.mcgrath@ucd.ie or visit www.novaucd.ie or follow @NovaUCD

EARLY STAGE COMPANIES

OUTPUT SPORTS shrink lab-grade athlete performance analytics into a wearable system so coaches can optimise athletes’ performance. Output Sports is an end-to-end system designed to streamline the off-field athlete performance optimisation process. It is capable of testing an athlete’s performance profile (strength, power, balance,  speed and mobility) and tracks their exercise programmes. The company, a spin-out from the UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science, was founded by Dr Martin O’Reilly, Dr Darragh Whelan, Julian Eberle and Professor Brian Caulfield, based on research carried out at Insight, the SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics.

MANNA, one of the latest companies to locate at NovaUCD, is planning to deploy custom-developed aerospace grade drones to deliver fast food. The company was founded by Bobby Healy, the former chief technology officer at CarTrawler. Manna plans to start with a limited-scale service in Ireland at the end of this year and is waiting for flight approval from the Irish Aviation Authority. It has announced a partnership with Flipdish, the food ordering software company. Among the VC firms to have backed Manna are, Atlantic Bridge, Elkstone and Frontline.

EQUAL 1 LABS, Ireland’s first quantum computing hardware  start- up, is developing a new type of quantum computer based on CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor). Unlike current quantum computers which require very high costs to operate quantum bits ‘frozen’ at a temperature of 15mK, the Equal 1 Quantum Processing Unit can operate at higher temperatures and this significantly reduces its size. The company founded by Dr Dirk Leipold, Dr George Maxim, Mike Asker and Professor R. Bogdan Staszewski is a spin-out from the UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Atlantic Bridge has invested in Equal1 through the University Bridge Fund to support the fabrication of the company’s first quantum processor chip.

IN GROWTH MODE

CARRICK THERAPEUTICS, a life sciences company, has an ambitious patient-focused vision to serve cancer patients around the world with ground-breaking cancer therapies. It is pioneering a portfolio of unique treatments to target driver mechanisms of the most aggressive forms of cancer, tailored to an individual patient’s tumour. Carrick Therapeutics has secured $95m from investors including; Arch Venture Partners, Woodford Investment Management, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Google Ventures and Lightstone Ventures. In 2018, company co-founder, Dr Elaine Sullivan, won the EY Emerging Entrepreneur of The Year (EOY Ireland) Award. The company recently announced a move into the US.

OXYMEM was co-founded by Wayne Byrne, Professor Eoin Casey and Dr Eoin Syron as a spin-out from the UCD School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering. The multi-award-winning start-up is a leading innovator in energy efficient wastewater treatment. OxyMem’s breakthrough technology, the Membrane- Aerated Biofilm Reactor, addresses the global need for a more energy efficient wastewater treatment. OxyMem has an impressive list of financial backers including Dow Chemical Company and Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures and has clients in Ireland, UK, Europe, Japan, Middle East, Canada and Brazil and is in the process of growing employee numbers.

VIVID EDGE has developed a pioneering ‘energy efficiency as a service’ model for organisations using large amounts of energy. It provides the capital to enable them upgrade the efficiency of their buildings, beyond their own capital budgets, replacing such expenditure with a simple service fee. It has secured backing from a European energy efficiency fund with an initial €30m facility and has completed projects with multiple organisations, generating a multi- million euro revenue stream, and has a sales pipeline reaching into Europe, Middle East and Africa. In 2019, founder and CEO Tracy O’Rourke was a finalist in the Cartier Women’s Initiative to encourage female entrepreneurs.

SUCCESSFUL EXITS

BIANCAMED was co-founded in 2003 by Dr Philip de Chazal, Dr Conor Hanley and Professor Conor Heneghan as a spin- out from the UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. It developed a contactless, accurate device for the measurement of sleep and breathing. At the core of BiancaMed’s technology was a sensitive motion sensor to detect respiration and movement without being connected to the human body. BiancaMed had raised significant funding when it was acquired in 2011 by ResMed, a leading developer, manufacturer and distributor of medical equipment for treating, diagnosing, and managing sleep-disordered breathing and other respiratory disorders. Dr Hanley has recently raised over €40m for his latest venture FIRE1, to develop a remote heart monitoring product.

EQUINOME, an equine genomics company, was co-founded in 2009 by Professor Emmeline Hill, in partnership with Jim Bolger, the renowned Irish trainer and breeder, as a spin-out from the UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science. The company was established to commercialise research which resulted in the identification of the ‘Speed Gene’ in Thoroughbreds and the development of the Equinome Speed Gene Test which predicts the optimum race distance of a Thoroughbred horse. By 2015, Equinome was working with many of the world’s leading thoroughbred training and breeding operations when acquired by Plusvital, the Irish equine nutrition company.

LOGENTRIES was co-founded in 2010 by Dr Trevor Parsons and Dr Viliam Holub as a spin-out from the UCD School of Computer Science after a decade of joint research with IBM. Based on the simple premise that there was tremendous value to businesses hidden within log data entries, Logentries developed a SaaS based, log management service for collecting and analysing big data and making this data easily accessible to improve IT and business operations. The company secured $11m in funding and was servicing tens of thousands of users in over 100 countries before being acquired by Rapid7 in 2015 for $68m.

Written by Micéal Whelan

PICTURESQUELY LOCATED ON the south side of St Stephen’s Green in the beautiful complex of historic buildings where the University was founded, UCD Newman House is soon to be the home of a new landmark institution: MoLI – Museum of Literature Ireland.

A major partnership between UCD and the National Library of Ireland, MoLI draws inspiration from the genius and influence of UCD’s most famous student, James Joyce, and is named after his best- known female character, Molly Bloom.

Opening on Friday 20 September (Culture Night), the Museum of Literature Ireland will celebrate Ireland’s internationally-renowned literary culture and heritage from the past to the present, inspiring the next generation to create, read and write.

Immersive multimedia exhibitions, priceless artefacts from the National Library collections, lectures, performances, cutting-edge children’s education programmes, digital broadcasting, cross-disciplinary artistic commissions and a café set in one of the city’s most beautiful gardens will make MoLI a major contribution to the local and international literary landscape.

Museum Highlights Include

• James Joyce’s ‘Copy No 1’ of Ulysses, the rarest copy of the most important novel written in the English language, inscribed by Joyce to his patron Harriet Shaw Weaver.
• Joyce’s handwritten notebooks for sections of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, giving insight into his unique creative process.
• Rare recordings from the National Folklore Collection.
• Exhibitions on Irish writing and writers past and present, including opening exhibitions on Kate O’Brien, Young Adult Fiction and the State and Irish Writing.
• William Butler Yeats’ Nobel Prize Medal for Literature.
• Historic setting in UCD Newman House, where famous Irish writers including James Joyce, Flann O’Brien, Kate O’Brien and Maeve Binchy were students.
• Historic ash tree where James Joyce’s graduation photograph was taken in 1902.
• Courtyard café serving local and seasonal dishes.
• Beautiful hidden gardens connecting to the Iveagh Gardens, a tranquil oasis in the heart of the city.

Visit MoLI

Open 7 days 10am–6pm (From 20 September 2019)

Admission €8 | Concession €6 | Members go free

MoLI | Museum of Literature Ireland
UCD Newman House, 86 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2 | moli.ie | 01 477 9811

OVER THE LAST five years, philanthropic support from more than 9,000 alumni, corporate leaders and friends, has contributed significantly to enhancing the student experience, establishing academic chairs, research and facilities across UCD. In this article, we explore some of the ways that your generosity has impacted our campus, supported groundbreaking research and innovation, and is helping to reduce financial barriers for students so they can complete third-level education.

For many, the assumption that Irish universities are significantly funded by the exchequer is an easy one to make. It is also unfortunately incorrect: the State contributes just 36 per cent of annual turnover, which means UCD relies on non-exchequer income to fund scholarships, research and capital projects. It is the outstanding generosity of our supporters that helps to fill this gap, allowing for investment in world-class facilities that attract top-performing students and internationally-renowned faculty. This generosity of alumni and friends is both critical and transformative, its impact felt throughout the University and beyond. Your support is truly the difference between a good university and a great one.

UCD FOUNDATION

In just the last five years, 9,000 alumni, corporate leaders and friends have given over €120m to UCD Foundation, in support of UCD.

SUPPORTING STUDENTS

The last five years has seen €9m raised in support of enhancing the student experience at UCD. Much of this support comes from regular monthly gifts from our alumni, whose generosity has been essential in providing scholarships for over 500 students, allowing them to fulfil their potential.

Students such as Claudine Duggan, third year Science student: “Being the first in my family to attend university, I had nobody to ask about how it would be. Having the support of UCD alumni made such a difference, both financially and psychologically. I can’t put into words how grateful I am.”

WORLD CLASS RESEARCH

Our world is changing and as a research university, UCD is meeting its responsibility to be on the frontline in tackling climate change and chronic diseases such as cancer, dementia and diabetes, while promoting clean energy and sustainable living. As Professor Tasman Crowe, Director, UCD Earth Institute, says: “There’s no time for equivocation: this crisis belongs to us all. The very least we should try to do for our children and grandchildren is leave them a world that’s habitable.”

Research at UCD addresses challenges and opportunities that shape the future of Ireland and the wider world. Your support helps us to engage highly skilled researchers working in our priority areas of environment; energy; agri-food; culture, economy and society; health and ICT. To this end, philanthropy has provided €4m in support of 55 Newman Fellows: high-calibre, post-doctoral academic researchers.

A MASSIVE DIFFERENCE

With a constantly growing student population, UCD must develop our campus to accommodate more students than ever before. In the last five years, our supporters have invested over €50m in capital projects that create world-class facilities for students. This incredible support creates extraordinary opportunity for students to grow and develop.

The UCD Moore Centre for Business, opening in September, is a new wing of the UCD Lochlann Quinn School of Business that features advanced interactive learning environments, extensive co-working zones, an Entrepreneurship and Innovation Hub, Media Suite and a 320-seat lecture theatre. “Our students have told us that when we change spaces, it changes how we teach and what is learned,” says Maeve Houlihan, Director of UCD Lochlann Quinn School of Business. “Through this extraordinary initiative, faculty and staff can meet our students where, and how, they learn best as we transform the traditional classroom.”

The UCD O’Brien Centre for Science, opened in 2013, created outstanding facilities that allowed the College of Science to not only increase student numbers by 50 per cent, but also to attract the top five per cent of science students to study at UCD.

Other recent capital projects including the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) at Newman House (page 60) and the model Confucius Institute (page 102), were made possible with philanthropic support. Our upcoming Future Campus investment (page 24) will ensure that UCD is prepared to accommodate a growing body of students, faculty and staff.

CLOSE TO THE HEART

UCD is proud that our alumni and wider community support the initiatives that mean the most to them. To say the ‘old’ UCD running track was hugely popular is an understatement. Despite its popularity, it could not be maintained for myriad reasons and closed in 2011. Now, thanks to a generous donation, the UCD track will reopen in 2020. The new track will not just facilitate the UCD tradition of producing Olympians but will deliver important physical and mental health benefits to all who use it.

“Our entire university community owes an enormous debt of gratitude to this donor, and to all donors to the University, for the remarkable generosity that is enabling us to transform the teaching, research and sporting facilities on campus for this generation and for generations to come,” said UCD President, Professor Andrew J Deeks.

THANK YOU

As we move into the next phase of UCD’s future, we look forward to sharing with you the many ways your financial support creates an outstanding educational experience for our students. Your commitment helps strengthen UCD and builds our reputation around the world, and we are grateful to every single supporter.

If you would like to learn more, we invite you to visit www.ucdfoundation.ie or complete the enclosed form.

SUCH IS THE kudos of making the cover of Forbes magazine, pop star Bruno Mars sang about it in his 2010 hit, “Billionaire”.

It was billionaires, who took big, bold, brave risks, that were part of the fascination for Bertie Charles Forbes and Walter  Drey when they founded the magazine that planned to “tell the vital stories of those who run successful companies, and to capture the human side of business and finance” in New York, in September 1917.

Prescient definitely, Forbes’ initial interest in the affluent has been matched by their predictions of next generation influencers. Within the Forbes media empire focusing  on business, investment, entrepreneurship, lifestyle and leadership, it is their annual lists which range from “The World’s Youngest  Billionaires”, “The  World’s Highest Paid  Entertainers” and  a “30 Under 30”, which now hold the biggest fascination. Once on a list, an organisation, individual, start-up or idea gains global recognition. Forbes’ USP, the founders claimed, was to be its humanity: “Business was originated to produce  happiness, not to pile up millions”. Forbes weighs up the value of candidates, both in terms of money and in their greater contribution  to society, before deeming them worthy of an accolade. Every individual on the list has achieved something substantially and quantifiably great.

Nominees for  the “30  Under  30” Europe list are selected from 34 European countries and 22 non-European countries. The odds of making it onto the list are tougher than entry to Stanford or Harvard universities. Ireland is well represented over the years (by actor Jessie Buckley, fashion designer Richard Malone, Munster rugby international Peter O’Mahony, MMA champion Conor McGregor, Feel Free Medical founder Edel Browne and Ciara Clancy, founder of Beats Medical, among others) and UCD increasingly so.

Lady Gaga, Ronan Farrow, Joseph Altuzarra and Mark Zuckerberg were high-profile honourees on the inaugural “30 Under 30” list established in 2011. The initial aim was to showcase 600 people under 30 who mattered  globally. It has now extended to include the top 30 people in 23 categories, from Art & Style; Consumer Technology; Education and Energy to Enterprise Technology; Retail & Ecommerce; Science & Healthcare; Social Entrepreneurs and Venture Capital. In 2016, 15,000 nominations were received for these lists.

UCD’S 30 UNDER 30 WHO FEATURED IN FORBES

UCD engineering graduate Colin Keogh was nominated in the Science & Healthcare category in 2017. “The first indication I was under consideration was when I received an email letting me know I had been shortlisted,” he says. Keogh is co-founder of The Rapid Foundation, which provides technology like 3D printers and low-cost electronics to those who need it most in developing countries. The Rapid Foundation has already reached  more than 5,000 people through education and outreach events and has trained more than 50 people in 3D printing, modelling and innovation.

When Keogh was invited to the nomination party in London, he couldn’t make it because of work commitments. “I like to be busy,” he says modestly (he is currently finishing his PhD to be completed in December) and received confirmation of his award via email. Since then he has participated in the frequent “30 Under 30” summits held in Asia, US and Europe.

“I go to as many as I can, most recently I was at the summer retreat in Bratislavia, Slovakia. It’s an amazing opportunity to access a global network.” Keogh’s inclusion in the Forbes “30 Under 30” Europe  list was just the beginning. In 2017 alone, he won Junior Chamber International Top Outstanding Young Person  2017,  the Nissan Generation Next Ambassador 2017 and IT & Tech Professional of the Year 2017 at the Early Career awards.

As UCD alumna and Forbes “30 Under 30” honouree Sally Hayden told The Irish Times, “This sort of recognition offers a boost: a reminder to carry on when things get tough again, as they undoubtedly will, and see what else we can achieve.” Hayden, who graduated from UCD with a law degree, was awarded in the Media & Marketing category this year and was in northern Uganda on assignment interviewing a south Sudanese rebel when she received the news.

An investigative journalist, Hayden has written on migration, conflict and humanitarian issues for Irish, UK and international titles including TIME, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Die Zeit and HuffPost. Most recently she was named Foreign Correspondent of the Year at the Newsbrands Ireland Journalism Awards, 2018. Getting into Forbes is hugely significant, but it’s not the whole story or the final chapter of her career. Since 2016, Hayden has been a mentor for the Refugee Journalism Programme, which helps exiled journalists restart their career.

The 2019 “30 Under 30” Europe list also featured Kevin Glynn, a 2012 law and business UCD graduate, co-founder of company Butternut Box which delivers home-cooked dog food. The former Goldman Sachs trader set up Butternut Box with a view to capitalising on the £1.3bn annual market in the UK for dog and cat food snacks, currently dominated by two companies. Glynn told The Independent, “Butternut Box makes it easy and convenient to ensure dogs get the very best diet tailored for each individual.”

Since its inception, the company has diversified into snacks, toys and wellness products. The company has raised €21m in funding to date, employs more  than 70 people, and has delivered more than eight million meals to dogs. Revenues are expected to grow by 300 per cent in 2019. In addition, for every new client, Butternut Box donates a meal to a sheltered or homeless dog.

Tech entrepreneur and UCD student Shane Curran had been used to success before being featured on the Forbes 2018 “30 Under 30” list and is the epitome of what Forbes calls a “young disrupter”. BT Young Scientist Individual Winner in 2016 and BT Young Scientist overall winner in 2017, he founded qCrypt, a company that promises next-generation post-quantum security solutions to businesses. He was initially inspired by Limerick brothers, John and Patrick Collison and  their  payment tech firm Stripe. He spent time in San Francisco honing his ideas, and is now focused on his start-up, Evervault, which provides developer tools and application programming interfaces that allow companies process personal data without seeing, storing or handling it.

Sam Blanckensee, a UCD veterinary nursing graduate, made the Forbes “30 Under 30” Europe list in 2017 for his activism in the Law  & Policy category. He describes the process as “surreal – someone suggested I put myself forward; it was not something I considered myself.

I wrote a short application piece and forgot about it as I was involved in other things.” At the time, Blanckensee was the National Development Officer of the Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI), and in this capacity he helped to have gender recognition legislation passed in Ireland. This legislation allows citizens to self- declare their gender and receive new birth certificates, a transformative human right for Irish transpeople.

Since Blanckensee’s award he has been invited to Forbes summits in Tel Aviv and beyond though has been unable to attend “When you work in the non-profit sector you have to keep going.” Blanckensee has gone on to become the National Membership and Campaigns Officer with the Irish Traveller Movement, and is still actively involved in the TENI community.

“This sort of recognition offers a boost: a reminder to carry on when things get tough again and see what else we can achieve.”

UCD alumni have been featured in Forbes, some as interviewees, others as authorities in their respective industries.

In 2104, his potential was recognised with UCD’s President’s Award for work advocating for the human rights of transgender students in and outside college. Being included on the 2015 “30 Under 30” list undoubtedly bolstered Donal O’Sullivan’s already stellar career. Having studied economics and finance at UCD, before pursuing a masters at the Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business, he went on to become director of mergers and acquisitions at Eli Global, the US investment company, at the age of just 28. In 2017, he won Consulting & Advisory Professional of the Year at the Irish Early Career Awards.

What can we learn from these UCD honourees? In addition to their talent they laid the groundwork for their enormous potential early. As Sir Ronald Cohen, the father of venture capital and keynote speaker at the 2017 Forbes summit in Israel said, “Start young. Think big. Stick with it. Do these three things and you’ll be successful.”

As a by-product of a Forbes award, honourees have access to private networking groups, summits and exclusive events. Keogh explains, “I’m part of two WhatsApp groups set up by Forbes for Social Entreprise and Energy, and also have access to private Facebook, LinkedIn and social media networks, where I have been able to connect with speakers and judges and get advice.”

If Forbes founders Bertie Charles Forbes and Walter Drey’s aim was to tell stories, to put “humanity” into business, several UCD alumni are behind the facts, figures and statistics of the business world.

In a Forbes interview in 2019, US-based UCD engineering alum Barry Canton discussed being one of five founders of billion-dollar company Ginkgo Bioworks, an organism design company that replaces manufacturing processes by using biology to re-programme cells. Aside from being an interesting story about the growth of a business, and scientific advancements, the interview delves into the human side of the story: Canton is an emigrant to the US, a former international student of MIT, who just missed the immigration-limiting impact of the Trump administration. Even with a permanent residency things would have been different for Canton had it all occurred a few years later. “My path  to being an employee and a founder at Ginkgo would have been substantially different if Optional Practical Training [a programme the Trump administration wants to curtail] was not around.”

Other UCD alumni have been featured in Forbes, both online and in print: some as interviewees, others as authorities in their respective industries.

In a 2015 feature on Irish design, Forbes spoke to Karen Hennessy, CEO at Design and Crafts Council of Ireland, who graduated from UCD with an MBA in 2002, about the changing design landscape, reacting to the recession and consumer demand. Grainne Conefrey, who studied Sports and Exercise Management in UCD and graduated in 2010, was cited in a Forbes article in 2015 as Orreco’s product development manager and co-founder of FitrWoman, an app designed to adapt the menstrual cycle into athlete’s training schedules. Dara Ó Briain, mathematics, chemistry and theoretical physics graduate of UCD, was featured in Forbes in 2011, when a clip from his 2008 DVD Dara ÓBriain Talks Funny – Live in London was shared. And in 2011, Denis O’Brien, who graduated in 1980 with a BA in History and Politics, was interviewed about his charitable causes, human rights and his Digicel business.

Taken in context, these interviews are significant. Forbes magazine has a magazine readership of 6.4 million, 71 million monthly visitors to the website from the US alone, and 40 licensed local versions of Forbes worldwide; its influence is vast.

That UCD alumni are part of the Forbes conversation and community commands respect and is validation of their work and formative education.

With such impressive precedents, it’s only a matter of time before a UCD alum is one of Forbes’ cover stars.

Written by Penny McCormick
Reporting Louise Lawless

BERNARD LOONEY’S first day at UCD, where he studied electrical engineering, didn’t exactly start smoothly, he recalls.

Newly arrived to ‘the big smoke’ from Ashgrove, near Kenmare in Co Kerry, where he grew up on the family farm, the 16-year-old missed his first day of lectures because he mistakenly went to the Belfield campus, when they were actually taking place in buildings that the University then had in the city centre, on Earlsfort Terrace. These days, the 48-year-old lives in London, where he is CEO of global energy giant BP’s Upstream division, which finds and produces oil and gas, while investing in renewable energy and cleaner technologies.

Within the industry, and in the media that cover it, he’s seen as one of several contenders for the top job at the firm in the near future. The company is no stranger to employing Irishmen in senior roles. Fellow UCD alumnus, the late Peter Sutherland, spent 13 years as its chairman.“Peter was very supportive and a key source of inspiration as a fellow Irishman who had succeeded on the world stage,” Looney recalls.

For now, Looney’s current role sees him in charge of about 17,000 staff and about 20 per cent of the approximately €260bn turnover of the firm. His division spends about €7bn to €8bn running its operations in 29 countries, and invests €11bn to €12bn on top of that.

He looks back very fondly on his time at UCD. “UCD was very formative for me in many ways. It gave me a sense of confidence that I didn’t have. I attended quite young, just before my 17th birthday, and graduated when I was 20. Coming from my rural background, it was my step into big city life, you could say.

“I went home every few weeks, it could be quite lonely leaving home on a Sunday evening, getting the train from Killarney to Heuston Station, and then a bus to Rathmines where I lived in a basement flat, which I rented for IR£11 a week. My landlady would give me a loaf of bread, and I would bring a couple of pounds of meat from home.

“I enjoyed being at home. Rural life in Kerry was fairly one-dimensional in terms of who we knew; there was little diversity. I was one of five siblings, and our parents had a small dairy farm. Only about eight out of our 90 acres were actually arable, on which we had 14 cows. My older brothers overhauled and sold on Ford tractors to help make ends meet.”

He found his lecturers very encouraging, he says, recalling his time at UCD. “Professor Paul Curran and Professor Mark O’Malley were relatively young at the time. They felt modern. My mother used to tell my brother I was no good at maths, and I persevered with a nagging feeling that I wasn’t cut out for engineering.

“But Professor Curran and Professor O’Malley were very supportive. That meant more to me than you can imagine. My time at UCD taught me that the ethic I already had about hard work from the family farm continued, and they encouraged that. It encouraged me to be inclusive and respectful of diversity, and aware of the importance of teamwork. I’m extremely grateful for that, and it’s thanks to them and my fellow students that I had that start in life.”

“I think that if I were studying engineering today, I’d be learning a lot more about business, societal impacts, and ethics.”

Earlier this year, Looney visited his alma mater, meeting UCD President, Professor Andrew J Deeks, and Executive Director, UCD Foundation, Orla Tighe. As someone who took an MBA at the prestigious Stanford University, and who spends half his time travelling the world in his current role, overseeing a huge and diverse global workforce, how does Looney view UCD’s education offering today?

“My overarching impression from that day was of the ambition of the University. Professor Deeks has a compelling and inspiring vision. Regardless of where it might be placed in the global university rankings, Ireland’s educational brand feels very strong in the world, and I think justifiably so.

“The global nature of the student population is encouraging. The earlier students can be introduced to people and ways of thinking from Africa, China and Latin America is increasingly important. I had a very interesting day hearing about the work going on at the Energy Institute, and in areas such as data science. I think that if I were studying engineering today, I’d be learning a lot more about business, societal impacts, and ethics. I think we need experts in the world who are deep engineers, and those who understand the world, society and its challenges.”

The fact that BP is the world’s sixth largest energy company means it has an important role to play in tackling those challenges. Looney emphasises some of his division’s work on reducing its environmental impact, while investing in renewable energy and cleaner technologies. Underpinning the strategy is an energy transition, where production of gas – a comparatively cleaner fuel – takes a lead over oil, which produces more carbon dioxide.

An example of this work has been the €25bn Shah Deniz 2 project to deliver gas from Azerbaijan to Europe. It involved 500km of new pipeline being constructed, and 28,000 people working for 180 million hours. It recently won the major project award by the Royal Academy of Engineering in London.

Climate change has perhaps never been discussed more in media and society than in recent months. One hundred companies are responsible for 71 per cent of global carbon emissions, according to the Carbon Disclosure Project’s Carbon Majors Report 2017, and BP is ranked eleven on that list.

“This is not a straightforward subject, and something like the idea that oil and gas can be banned overnight isn’t realistic, because the world isn’t that simple and straightforward. People in countries like Indonesia and West Africa have different needs to us in the West. The Pope has talked about how civilisation requires energy, but energy use must not destroy civilisation,” says Looney.

“Emissions need to go down, and quickly. We need to do that responsibly and sustainably. BP has many stakeholders: shareholders, society, and our staff. Their expectations are merging, and we will continue to look at business opportunities where we feel part of helping and accelerating investment in renewable energy and clean technologies. This is also a huge topic in our company, as well as in wider society. We’ve set ambitious targets for reducing our own emissions. In May this year, at our AGM, shareholders overwhelmingly voted for us to disclose how our business is consistent with the Paris Agreement [to keep the global temperature increase below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels].

“I believe we are part of the solution … As a leader I feel I should listen. ”

“I believe we are part of the solution. More and more I think, as a leader, I feel I should listen, in order to understand, rather than in order to respond because I feel I should have an answer. We believe in the net zero emissions target for countries in the Agreement,” he adds.

However, BP shareholders did not support it setting hard targets for emissions from its products. Critics point out that investing up to $1bn a year in renewables is less than 0.5 per cent of its revenues. Looney counters that it’s  $1bn, but out of a $15bn overall annual investment. He also highlights the fact that a $200m investment by BP in solar power firm Lightsource helped to leverage $7bn of projects around the world, the equivalent of powering three million homes in the UK or Ireland.

In aviation fuel, Looney is ambitious for an investment in Fulcrum Bioenergy, which makes jet fuel from household waste that cuts emissions by 80 per cent, though current production levels are relatively very low.

“Fulcrum is very much in expansion mode. Imagine if we can help aviation cut its emissions by 80 per cent,” Looney says. BP has also invested in Chargemaster, the UK’s largest electric vehicle charging network. It is adding 200 rapid chargers in the UK, to add to 450 existing ones among over 7,000 of its charging points.

Looney is a fan of electric cars, but actually doesn’t own a car himself, preferring to take taxis or public transport. He’s also a passionate advocate of emerging and cutting-edge technologies. Meeting him at BP’s central London headquarters, he enthused about everything from software bots and robotic pipeline crawlers to how it uses fibre-optic wires to monitor wells.

On a large touchscreen on one of his office walls, live data from all the Upstream division’s activities is streamed in real time, giving a picture of the performance of drilling and production around the globe and the related financial numbers.

A snapshot of recent work includes visits to India and Rio de Janeiro, and meeting the Prime Minister of Trinidad in London, as well as talking to staff in Houston about the aforementioned software bots.

Looney recounts how he spent time with technology investment arm, BP Ventures, in California, sharing insights with car companies including Mercedes and Renault, car parts maker Bosch and ridesharing app firm Uber.

“One thing we’re trying to do is become the first agile oil and gas company, empowering our people, removing management layers, and increasing staff autonomy. We’ve looked at agility in technology and banking, and we would say that 4,500 of our people – a quarter of my staff – are now agile in how they approach their work,” he explains.

He has worked for BP for 29 years, starting out as a drilling engineer in various locations, then working in Alaska in a senior VP role, rising to MD of BP North Sea, and then in development and production roles before his current one.

The charismatic Kerryman emphasises the importance of diplomacy and humility in a role where he often meets with heads of state. “We work with governments, but we are guests in their countries. Our job is to work with whoever is in power to do what we can to help countries achieve their objectives. We try to do it well, but we don’t always get it right,” he adds.

The only one in his family to go to university, he was encouraged to read everything he could by his mother, who was a big believer in education. “She said if I could read, I could do anything.” Neither parent stayed in school beyond eleven.

When asked about his idea of success, he frames his answer as a reflection on leading and managing people. “The thing I enjoy most about my work is meeting great people from all around the world, and helping them. At a dinner in Cairo last year, I met a young female mechanical engineer who had worked for BP there for twelve years. Her integrity, values and behaviour resonated with me, as did her management skills and efforts to become a chartered engineer.

“She recently came to London for a week to shadow myself and my team. She really contributed, including in some highly sensitive discussions. She will return home, having learned a lot. That gives me a lot of pleasure. A saying I recall is that your title makes you a manager, but it is your people who make you a leader.”

Written by John Reynolds
Photography Graham Trott

EVENTS EARLIER THIS year made the business world sit up and take notice. It wasn’t a good time to float a company on the public markets. Political uncertainty over Brexit, anaemic economic growth in parts of Europe, and nervousness over US-China relations all meant investors were in a sluggish mood.

So when Trainline, a transport technology company led by UCD graduate Clare Gilmartin, made the bullish call to price itself towards the upper end of its valuation when it floated, eyebrows were raised. When the stock took off like a rocket rising to £4.11 from £3.50 on the first day of trading, it became clear that something special was going on at Trainline. The rapidly growing company and its CEO, are now centre stage.

Gilmartin told UCD Connections that she has always been drawn to the working world, even while still a student in Belfield. “I always wanted to be out there, earning and doing something,” she says.

As chief executive of one of the UK’s fastest growing and most innovative transport technology companies, employing more than 600, over half of whom are travel tech specialists and engineers, Gilmartin has come a long way, in every sense. But the instincts that drove her when she was a UCD student, and the skills she acquired then, are still core to her professional life.

Gilmartin always wanted to understand more about business – why it thrived, and why it failed. “I’ve always had a deep-rooted interest in technology-driven businesses, in how they progress, and where they struggle, why they struggle. And where they do well, why they’ve done well.”

Gilmartin describes herself as the ultimate generalist, which drew her to a BComm degree, which she says “really opened my eyes and was probably quite influential in what I went on to do”.

“Twenty-two years later, I realise that as a CEO, I am a true generalist, and I quite like that – working with diverse teams and individuals across the business to drive growth.”

LEADERSHIP STYLE

Gilmartin describes herself as “a very customer-centric leader”. Throughout her career, she has sought out and put great value on different perspectives, moulding an approach to problem solving that involves viewing an issue from as many different angles as possible.

After graduation, she got a job with Unilever, and was placed on secondment to Asda Walmart as part of the conglomerate’s graduate programme. The company wanted its junior executives to experience a frontline position, not to be remote and detached from its customers’ perspective. Understanding what the consumer wanted, and how to react to that, was key. “I loved it. It gave me the customer view of the world, which was hugely helpful in going back into Unilever,” Gilmartin says.

Trainline allows its users to plan and purchase tickets for train and long distance coach journeys across the UK and Europe. While the front end process is seamless for users, the company is like the proverbial swan – serene on top, but beneath the surface, there is enormous and complex industry. Trainline works as a marketplace, connecting consumers with travel companies. Gilmartin’s job is to ensure that marketplace works well, which involves deep analysis of customer behaviour, world class online infrastructure, and an ability to manage relationships with both consumers and providers. It’s the perfect job for a generalist who puts huge stock in understanding the customer perspective.

After leaving Unilever, Gilmartin joined Ebay in 2003, when e-commerce was in its infancy. Again, she put a ground-up understanding of her customers’ point of view at the centre of what she did. Her first role was as head of Ebay motors – she immediately called and visited 40 different motor dealerships. There is a core principle underpinning her approach – that in a rapidly changing commercial world, first principles of business matter: know – and understand – your customer. “Particularly in technology and online, where there is so much change, literally every day, I have found that throughout the last 15 years, maintaining as a constant that ear to customers can be very grounding and has been a tremendous guide to my team in the decisions we have made all along the way.”

Today, Gilmartin travels widely, meeting train and coach carriers across Europe and the world. She also sits in on consumer research groups. “I believe you have to hear it direct,” she says.

If customer-centrality is one key aspect of her leadership style; another is what she calls “an innate restlessness”. “I’m always trying to improve the status quo, and I love innovation. I love finding solutions tomorrow for things that were hassle today. I like where tech can improve everyday life, and I love that it changes every day, and that what we do next year will be better than what we’ve done this year.”

Gilmartin places a great emphasis on exceeding expectations, yet rejects the culture which demands that long hours are spent in the office, to the detriment of everything else. “Things like focusing on hours worked are totally irrelevant,” she says. “I realised after I had kids that if success were to be measured in terms of hours worked or hours at a computer screen, then I wasn’t going to win. But if it were to be measured on impact on customer and impact on business results, then I probably had a chance,” she says. This is part of being a “human and grounded leader”. “I know we have built a very low-ego culture and environment here at Trainline and I think I had the same at Ebay. That’s important – we don’t think there’s any room for ego in business. Being humble and human and listening well is a really important part [of leadership].”

Before she started with Trainline, she spent a couple of days “just travelling around on trains and asking people questions about their travel”.

“I got very funny looks, not least because I was six months’ pregnant at the time,” she recalls. The approach goes to the core of Gilmartin’s leadership style; understanding how complex problems can be solved by seeking a wide variety of viewpoints. What she learned – and continues to learn – about the rail and coach transport sector makes her very excited for the future.

In 2012, she embarked on a family trip through Europe by rail, which she found “unusually difficult,” navigating clunky websites in different languages. Improving this experience is Trainline’s aim.

“When the CEO [of Trainline] opportunity arose, I relished the notion that this is a huge travel vertical globally, and yet it’s still very low online penetration, only 30 to 40 per cent, and that to me seemed a big opportunity,” she says. There are several big and important trends, Gilmartin believes, which will continue to drive the sector’s growth.

But beneath the surface, there is enormous and complex industry. Trainline works as a marketplace …

“As a generation we have all signed up to a massive reduction in transport emissions over the next several decades, and it’s fairly obvious to me that will only be achieved by a shift in travel mode, and in particular greater use of environmentally friendly transport like trains,” she says, pointing out that travelling by train produces around 1/20th of the emissions of air travel, and just one quarter of car travel.

Huge investment by governments in capacity expansion and high speed rail will also drive consumer behaviour, she says, citing the relative collapse of the Milan- Rome air route after high-speed rail was introduced, and how rail took almost 80 per cent of the London-Paris travel route once Eurostar was introduced. Politicians around the world are also committed to reducing congestion and improving urban transport systems. Navigating these new systems requires smart technologies that reduce friction for consumers, she says. Trainline aims to be the connective tissue between society’s new major transport arteries.

Gilmartin is also confident that Trainline can withstand any potential onslaught from the behemoths of the digital world. Google, Facebook, Amazon, and to a lesser extent Uber, are constantly looking for the next online growth segment, voraciously hunting a new corner of the internet where consumers will spend money and time. However, Trainline is no minnow, and won’t be easily consumed. Its sales were over £3bn last year, and Gilmartin says that it has built a system that would be difficult to replicate, even with the resources of a Google or Facebook. What’s more, the relationships and industry knowledge the company has accumulated are the product of years of work.

“We’re growing fast. Given our size, we have a huge amount of rail and coach specific data, which we’re able to leverage uniquely to create bespoke features for our customers, things like price prediction, platform prediction, even available seat prediction. We are uniquely in possession of that very rail and coach specific data which means we can create a user experience that is very hard to replicate,” she says.

“We can create a user experience that is very hard to replicate …”

EDUCATION AND GENDER

London is home, but Gilmartin retains a strong sense of pride in Ireland, including in the Irish education system, which she says is superior to its British counterpart, especially on numeracy. She also sees this as a key part in advancing gender equality in the workplace.

“I love the fact that maths is mandatory in Ireland right up to the point you leave school. In the UK, only eight per cent of girls take maths at A Level. If I think about the digitisation of the world, and the role of numbers in business, I think it’s a crying shame that we have so few female school leavers in the UK who have maths as part of their toolset.”

Making the world of business a more gender representative place, Gilmartin says, is key. “We still live in a world where the majority of leadership positions are held by men, and that’s something I would love to see change. Some of the basics have already been addressed by previous generations around maternity leave and flexible working. The job for our generation is to change attitudes and cultures around the workplace.”

Her emphasis on a corporate culture that emphasises results rather than presenteeism can be attributed in part to a desire to rebalance the gender scales in the business world. Female employees at Trainline now account for 40 per cent of the total. There is a business rationale, as well as a moral imperative, at work. “Diversity creates diversity of thinking which lends itself to better problem solving and better business results and ultimately better products for a diverse global customer base,” she says.

MEMORIES OF BELFIELD

When she was at UCD in the mid 1990s, the technologies that would later surround her and which she would use to forge a hugely successful career were in their infancy. “I loved UCD; it was vibrant and I think it set me up incredibly well for the career I’ve had since.”

These days, a blend of skills – human, business and technological – is core to her and Trainline’s success. Outside of the working world, her life is centred around family. “My ideal day in general is spent with my family. We love being out in the countryside, walking the dog, having picnics or pub lunches; that’s where I’m happiest.”

Written by Jack Horgan-Jones
Photography Jason Alden