Danny Moore is CEO of Options Technology, a global provider of capital markets infrastructure, cloud services, cybersecurity, and AI solutions. Headquartered in Belfast, Options supports financial institutions across major global markets, delivering secure, scalable, and high-performance technology platforms.

Danny is also the founder of Lough Shore Investments, and previously led Wombat Financial Software to a $200 million acquisition by NYSE Euronext. His career spans software development and executive leadership roles at Kx Systems and NYSE Technologies, where he helped shape commercial technology strategy and operations.

With a career defined by innovation and leadership at the intersection of finance and technology, Danny brings a unique perspective to what he calls a life in data—the focus of his upcoming talk.

With over 40 years of experience in the semiconductor and software industries, Sean started his career designing digital stereo ICs for television and then the first embedded processor used in mobile phones with VLSI technology. He became VP & GM of Cadence EMEA, leading a team of over 300 people and doubling its business in Europe. On joining ARC, a London Stock Exchange listed Design IP company, as VP WW Sales and Marketing he helped turn it cash flow positive, leading to the eventual sale to Synopsys.
Sean is President of Silicon Catalyst Europe, the semiconductor startup incubator and accelerator. He leads its contribution to the UK government’s semiconductor strategy, the ChipStart UK semiconductor startup incubator and the ChipStart EU incubator funded by the CHIPS JU.
Sean was awarded the Techworks contribution to industry award for his work to connect, support and reinvigorate the UK semiconductor startup community.
Sean has a BSc(hons), MSc EE from Kings College, London and MBA from Henley Management College.

For the past 20 years, Roger has been designing high performance ASIC and FPGA-based signal and data processing systems and has published over 250 papers. He has collaborated with numerous companies including SAP, Seagate, SAP, DTS and QinetiQ and has co-founded the spin-off company, Analytics Engines which specialises in software solutions for data science. He is a recognised expert in programmable hardware platforms and is undertaking a detailed analysis of semiconductor expertise in the UK.

John is a qualified Barrister and accredited Mediator with a strong commitment to innovation in legal practice and judicial systems. Over the past five years, he has led the design and piloting of two Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) platforms aimed at improving access to justice in small claims and consumer disputes. In November 2024, he was appointed Director of the newly established Centre for Legal Technology at Ulster University.
John’s research explores the transformative potential of technology in the legal domain, with particular focus on online and digital dispute resolution, the integration of AI in judicial systems, and the ethical adoption of LegalTech.
He currently serves as Principal Investigator on two major projects: a groundbreaking study funded by the UK AI Safety Institute on the responsible use of agentic AI in judicial decision-making — the only legal research project to receive funding in 2024 — and a high-impact collaboration with the Labour Relations Agency and a Northern Ireland legal tech start-up to pilot AI-driven solutions for mass case management.
John’s work is rooted in real-world legal challenges and aims to enhance access to justice, promote transparency, and improve the efficiency of courts and public sector dispute resolution systems.
With over 15 years of teaching experience, John has lectured across a wide range of subjects including International Commercial Law, Commercial ADR, Corporate Law, Equity & Trusts, and Land Law. In 2018, he successfully developed and launched an industry-leading LLM in International Commercial Law and Alternative Dispute Resolution, which is now also delivered at Ulster University’s international partner campus in Qatar.
A passionate advocate for legal system reform through technology, John was appointed by the Office of the Lord Chief Justice in 2021 to the Judicial Steering Group on Digitisation in Northern Ireland. He also serves as External Examiner for the undergraduate law programme at London South Bank University and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Beyond academia, John is Chair of Family Mediation Northern Ireland, a Board Trustee at Relate NI, and was recently appointed to the Shared Island Mediation Project.

Stephen McCabe is Interim Executive Director and Senior Responsible Owner for Momentum One Zero, working as part of the Belfast Region City Deal Programme Delivery Team at Queen’s. After several years active in research, and policy development in the NGO sector, Stephen has recent significant experience in the design and set-up of collaborative research and innovation projects across academia, industry and government. This has included the negotiation of large private sector contracts on behalf of Queen’s, the development of the AI Collaboration Centre for Northern Ireland, and the Momentum One Zero Full Business Case.

Darren Borland is a Technical Product Manager in Pytilia with a wealth of experience from delivering solutions across domains including Cyber Security, Telecoms, Financial Services & beyond. Darren’s currently leading Pytilia’s project in the Cyber AI Hub using advanced AI-based technologies to deliver “Context-aware Vulnerability Management”, and earlier this year, led Pytilia’s engagement with the Laboratory for AI Security Research (LASR).

With over 30 years of experience in electronics hardware and software development Andy has worked across many sectors including medical devices, telecommunications, security systems, and cyber security. He has successfully built and led large, multidisciplinary R&D teams, delivering more than 50 innovative products from concept to market. Currently serving as Engineering Director at Momentum One Zero, Andy continues to lead innovation and transformation in complex technology environments.

David is Director (CEO) of the $20m Artificial Intelligence Collaboration Centre (AICC), a joint venture between Ulster University and Queen’s University Belfast. It is backed by Invest Northern Ireland and the Department for the Economy. The AICC exists to drive the responsible adoption of AI across Northern Ireland’s business landscape. It is delivering 390 post-graduate scholarships in AI to build capacity and enhance workforce capabilities, providing hands-on industry support for 250 small businesses to take the first steps in adopting AI, fostering a collaborative AI innovation ecosystem, and maximising AI research and innovation funding for industry and academia.
He was appointed to the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) College of Experts in 2021, the NI Cyber Security Steering Group in 2018 and was, until recently, Chair of SpecialisterneNI. David was a Fellowship recipient on the U.S. State Department’s All-Ireland Strengthening Cybersecurity International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) in 2018. He was awarded a prestigious Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by King Charles III in the 2024 New Year’s Honours List for services to the UK economy.

He is a senior and experienced IT professional working at Informatica, who is versatile, dynamic, and a natural technical leader. His experience demonstrates an ability to mould culturally diverse global teams to ensure the delivery of high standards of client satisfaction, solutioning, architecture, governance, and service delivery against the conflicting priorities of cost limitations.
He is able to effectively use and balance authoritative and delegatory leadership styles to foster the development of strong relationships and achieve positive outcomes in both team and individual circumstances.
He possesses focused problem-solving skills and demonstrates a rigorous approach to the acquisition of new knowledge. His methodical approach ensures that he operates well under pressure, as he can prioritise tasks to find the most workable solution in any given situation.
He seeks challenging opportunities that align with his leadership skills and experience in driving, motivating, and managing global IT teams towards delivery excellence.

Briege Donaghy joined RQIA on 1 July 2021 as Chief Executive. Briege has worked in health and social care across Northern Ireland since graduating from Queens University Belfast in 1983.
Prior to her appointment to RQIA, Briege was with the Northern Health and Social Care Trust for 14 years where she held a number of Director positions, including most recently Director of Integrated Care and Partnership from October 2019.

Craig is a Partner at PwC and leads their Intelligence team, within Forensic Services. He works closely with Premier League clubs, governing bodies, and leagues, advising on compliance and reputational risks associated with commercial partners, such as sponsors. Craig has delivered over 100 projects in football, helping clubs assess the suitability of sponsors, agents, and contractors, and manage reputational risks.
He also supports governing bodies on regulatory reviews, combining forensic technology with investigative insight to protect the integrity of competitions.
Outside of sport, Craig has deep experience in open-source intelligence and third-party risk management, working with clients across a number of industries to manage risk.

Michael Willis is a Partner at PwC and leads the firm’s UK Legal Technology team.
He specialises in the design and deployment of AI-powered solutions that transform how legal work is delivered. Over the past eight years, Michael has helped global clients harness technology for large-scale legal transformation and remediation programmes, spanning contract digitisation, regulatory repapering, and business-as-usual process improvement.
His work now focuses on agentic AI workflows, moving beyond experimentation to building and testing solutions ready for release into production at scale. These include applications for contract management, legal data, customer claims and redress, and counterparty outreach in investment banking. By combining deep legal domain knowledge with cutting-edge AI, Michael enables clients to process complex obligations at speed, manage regulatory risk, and unlock new efficiencies.

We’re delighted to welcome Thomas Pulling, Data & AI Partner and Data Transformation Leader for PwC UK.
Tom leads PwC’s Data Transformation capabilities, specialising in complex data transformation and AI enablement for businesses across multiple industries, including Financial Services, Manufacturing, Construction, Energy and Utilities. He has 20 years of experience delivering major system implementations, technology strategy programmes and, more recently, AI transformations.
Tom’s role is focused on helping businesses to understand and utilise their data and technology more effectively to help them solve difficult problems. He leads and develops teams that are at the heart of PwC’s continual investment in AI, data and cloud alongside alliance partners – all with the focus of helping clients find practical solutions to their challenges.
At Big Data Belfast 2025 presented by Analytics Engines, Tom will speak about the opportunities and challenges we are all facing with AI and how PwC is helping clients to tackle them.

John Southworth sits within PwC’s Global Threat Intelligence team, where he has spent the past eight years helping organisations navigate an increasingly complex cyber threat landscape. Specialising in advanced persistent threat (APT) groups, he combines malware analysis with infrastructure tracking to uncover the tools, techniques and procedures of some of the world’s most sophisticated adversaries.

As PwC’s Digital Risk Intelligence Lead, John also supports clients in protecting their external attack surfaces, monitoring the deep and dark web for emerging risks, and identifying potential exposure of sensitive data. His work enables organisations to transform data into actionable intelligence, ensuring that decision-makers are equipped with the insights they need to defend effectively against a wide range of threat actors.

At Big Data Belfast 2025, John will explore how threat intelligence can be operationalised, demonstrating how data-driven insights provide not only technical recommendations but also strategic value for business resilience in the face of evolving cyber threats.

A proven leader and entrepreneur, Scott co-founded the company on the back of his research during his PhD at Queen’s University Belfast around image and signal processing. He has a strong engineering background and technical skills, which he uses to translate customer business requirements into technical solutions. Over the last 15 years he has grown the company from spin-out to a leading provider of analytics and AI solutions.
Scott is also a certified data ethics professional from the Open Data Institute, and he applies this knowledge with customers across the public and private sector, focusing not only on areas of data ethics, but also the ethical and responsible usage of AI.

Deirdre has over 20 years’ experience working in the media industry and is responsible for leading the Solutions team within the Technology division within RTÉ. Primarily focused on working proactively with business units, external partners and technology teams to understand business issues, identify appropriate technology, workflow or process-based solutions. The goal is to bridge the gap between technology and the business, by challenging existing workflows, thinking and ways of working to implement technological solutions and facilitate change. Key to the success of this department is cultivating a culture of challenge and impactful change, leveraging our investment in technology to deliver our strategic objectives.

Mark Barr has a work experience spanning several companies and roles. Mark currently works at First Derivative as a Principal Software Engineer, starting in April 2022. Prior to this, they worked at First Derivatives as a Software Engineer from July 2019 to April 2022. Before that, they were a Software Developer at Applied Systems from January 2018 to July 2019. Mark also has experience working at the Northern Ireland Civil Service, where they held the positions of IT Solutions Developer from October 2014 to January 2018 and Civil Servant from March 2004 to October 2014.

Mark Barr completed their Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Computing and IT from The Open University in 2016. Mark also obtained additional certifications, including a Bsc (Hons) Computing and IT from The Open University and a Professional Scrum Master I from Scrum.org, both in the same year.

Ihsen Alouani received his Ph.D. from Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France in 2016 and held a postdoctoral position at the Technical University of Munich in 2017. After five years as Associate Professor in France, he joined Queen’s University Belfast’s Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) in 2022. He is also CEO and founder of Upper Bound, a startup building frameworks for AI security by design, and host of the Trustworthy AI Chronicles podcast. He leads several projects funded by EPSRC, Horizon Europe, LASR, and others, and serves on program committees of major AI and cybersecurity venues.

Conor is a seasoned technology leader with responsibility for providing strategic, managerial, and technical oversight across significant change programmes in the public sector. With a breadth of experience in all aspects of project delivery and digital transformation, Conor has a proven track record of leadership in senior IT roles, as a Senior Application Architect, Enterprise Architect, and Head of Data and Geographic services. Currently, Conor serves as Acting Deputy Digital Director within Digital Services for the Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA). Conor’s work for the department is focused on identifying opportunities, and delivering innovative technological approaches that improve decision making, enhance departmental efficiency, and drive excellence in digital, data, and AI initiatives.

Michael McCloskey is part of the commercial team at Analytics Engines helping Public Sector customers to innovate using Data and AI. Michael’s experience spans Central, Local and devolved government, including working with customers that have been able to reduce a 4 day process into just 4 minutes and adopt AI solutions with the potential to add £200k+ in additional revenue per month.

Jack Rubin is a dynamic business leader with decades of experience in Technology, Financial Services, Consumer Goods, and Retail.

As Senior Vice President for Consumer Financial Solutions and member of the Executive Leadership Team at DailyPay, the industry’s leading on-demand pay solution, Jack is responsible for leading the strategy and growth of DailyPay’s emerging consumer business and is accountable for its P&L.

Before joining DailyPay, Jack served in key leadership roles at Intuit, Total Wine & More, and Procter & Gamble.

Jack is a graduate of Yale University, where he double-majored in History & Political Science. Jack grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana and lives in San Diego, California.

Jean-Christophe “JC” Desplat is a technology expert with over 25 years’ experience in high-performance computing (HPC). His particular interest lies in the innovative use of HPC technologies in emerging domains. He has served as advisor to a number of committees in Ireland and abroad, including the strategic advisory team of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the ICT sub-committee of the Irish Medical Council, the Climate Change Research Co-ordination Committee of the Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as the scientific board and the infrastructure advisory board of the IT for Innovations national centre in the Czech Republic. JC is also the national representative for Ireland on the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) AISBL Council since 2010.