John Whelan

He holds a PhD in Physics and has worked as a software developer and business analyst with Davy and Daiwa Securities in Tokyo.He is the founder of three technology start-ups, two of which raised seven-figure venture capital rounds. One of these companies, Alatto, traded successfully for nine years. He later served as a consultant to Vodafone Ireland.

Since 2008, he has been Technology Transfer Case Manager at Trinity College Dublin, where he is responsible for the commercialisation of ICT research. During his time at Trinity, he established and led the university’s start-up accelerator, LaunchBox, and became Executive Director of Blackstone LaunchPad at Trinity College Dublin. He also designed and secured European funding to implement Trinity’s Connected Health accelerator, “Validator,” as well as a Europe-wide technology transfer training programme.

He has served as an Adjunct Lecturer at NUI Galway, where he taught the Innovation and Technology Transfer module as part of the Master’s in Technology Management programme.

More recently, as part of his role at Trinity, he established and now manages Trinity’s Open Source Programme Office. The mission of the office is to promote and support the principles of open source and open data in knowledge transfer and industry engagement for Trinity College Dublin researchers. Personal Motto: “Done is better than perfect.”