Agenda
APR 11th
The Venue
Hodson Bay Hotel, Athlone, Co. Westmeath
Hodson Bay Hotel has proudly hosted thousands of conferences throughout the years and is known nationally for its warm welcome and attention to detail. The Hodson Bay Hotel has hosted the annual polymer seminar for over twenty years !
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Central location just one hour from Dublin or Galway
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Complimentary WiFi and car parking
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Ph: (090) 644 2005
Our Sponsors
LEADING IN THE INDUSTRY
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Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers
Tom Bouchier
Tom Bouchier FANUC UK’s Managing Director, has over 25 years’ experience within robotics and automation industry. Tom has occupied multiple positions at Fanuc after joining the company
Philip Menge
Philip Menge is the Product manager for Plates/Steel at HASCO. He has been in this position within the company since 2014, prior to this he worked as project engineer for copper and nickel alloys at Isabellenhütte.
John Wallace
John graduated from UCD in 1978 with a B.Eng.( Mech.Eng) and in 1989 an MBA from TCD. He worked with the ESB and the Pilkington Group. He also spent 5 years working in Development Aid in Uganda and Bangladesh. In the 1990’s he moved to Shell Chemicals where he spent 10 years ending as New Business Development Manager for Europe. He left in 1999 and formed a Distribution company – Extrapol, which was purchased by Distrupol in 2001. He was MD for Distrupol Ireland and European Commercial Director for the Distrupol Group until 2013. John is currently Chairman of Polymer Technology Ireland.
Dr Luke Geever
Luke is Technology Innovation Manager for the APT Gateway, Ireland’s National Centre for Polymer Materials & Processing Research, based in AIT. He graduated from AIT in 2004 Polymer Science and with a PhD in 2008. He now leads one of the largest polymer materials research groups in Ireland, the Smart Polymers Research Group. Luke has fulfilled various research based managerial positions, securing €8.7 million in research funding, attracting significant competitive state & industry funding including €5.7 million as PI since 2012. He currently works with an extensive network of distinguished industry, clinical and academic partners. Luke has international research experience as a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard Medical School & in the Mayo Clinic (USA), and has over 100 journal and conference publications.
Joe Wall
Joe has worked in the Petrochemical industry for 37 years ymostl in Polymer sales. After nearly 20 years with ExxonMobil, including jobs in Shipping, Business Analysis, Finance and sales – Joe joined JL Goor Materials and moved to Dublin. His Degree in Management was followed by a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Strategy & Innovation. Joe is the Chairman of the IOM Polymers Group Ireland South
Christoph Lhota
Christoph Lhota is the VP Medical of ENGEL Austria, which is the leading manufacturer of injection moulding cells in the Medical, Automotive and Packaging markets. Christoph graduated in 1994 in Polymer Engineering and held various management positions in the injection moulding machinery industry including engineering, automation and sales. In his current position he is responsible for the global medical market development including ENGEL´s cleanroom capability and regulatory activities
Michael Rice
Michael is a KPMG trained Chartered Accountant with over 20 Years’ experience as C-Level Exec and Entrepreneur. His first Industry experience was as COO/FC managing a £12m greenfield Heavy Engineering manufacturing site aged 24, and helping drive it from £0-£40m turnover in 18 months. He then became MD responsible for the turnaround of a £100m/500 employee Agricultural Machinery Manufacturer, aged 27. After a number of years as a Turnaround Specialist acting for a mix of owners and investors across Manufacturing and then Digital Industries, Michael founded Trixter PLC, a disruptive technology Company merging cutting edge Mechanical/Electronic Engineering and Interactive Software in 2005. Having grown across Europe, Asia and North America he successfully exited in 2015 and returned to Northern Ireland. Immediately retained by a number of Irish Venture Capital firms as their Turnaround Executive Michael was engaged as CEO of Causeway Aero Group Ltd in July 2017.
Rita Shah
Rita is CEO of Shabra Plastics & Recycling Ltd, Irelands leading plastic reprocessing plant in Ireland. Shabra reprocesses LDPE and PET materials and has the state of the art facilities in Castleblayney. Rita is Indian by origin, born in Kenya and started her business with late Oliver Brady 20 years ago. The company also manufactures recycled bags and sacks and supplies to local industries closing the loop and major player in the circular economy. Shabra’ s PET recycled is supplied to home and export markets for the manufacture of fibre and PET sheeting. The company is accredited for ISO9001, 14001 and 18001 and employs 70 people
Meet The Speakers
IOM3 Scholarship Students
Joint Recipients of the JLGoor Sponsored IOM3 Scholarship, Alan Nugent and Cian Mulvey are Students on the Mechanical And Polymer Engineering Degree at AIT.
Cian is a second year Mechanical and Polymer Engineering student at Athone Institute of Technology and a recipient of the JL Goor Scholarship. He has a keen interest in the producing and manufacturing of material along with machining of polymers as he feels there are great opportunities for the future in this industry
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Alan Nugent is currently a second year Mechanical and Polymer Engineering Student at AIT, and current recipient of the JL Goor Scholarship. Alan has a huge interest in Engineering and has previously worked as a Plant fitter engaging his interest in the mechanical side of things. Alan’s dream is to find a rewarding job as an engineer, pursuing his interests in Polymer engineering and research
Eamon Brady
Eamon is CEO of WhiteSwell Ltd a medical device therapy company focused on developing a novel treatment for acute heart failure patients. He led the company in raising a $30m funding in 2018. This funding will support work in pioneering a new medical device therapy for acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) patients. Eamon has accumulated 27 years MedTech experience. He was founder and CEO of Neuravi Ltd. a stroke interventional company acquired by Johnson & Johnson in April 2017. He led Neuravi (as CEO) from its formation to exit and then completed the handover of the business to J&J. Neuravi’s EmboTrap device was approved by FDA in 2018 and the device has treated over 10,000 patients to date. Eamon was part of the founding team and Head of R&D at MedNova Ltd. He previously held leadership roles as Global Director of R&D and Director of New Ventures at Abbott Vascular.He has over 200 US patents, is an AIT Polymer Engineering graduate and has raised over $75m of funding for his enterprises over the last ten years.
Stefanie Kohler
Stefanie studied Chemical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany (KIT), and a PhD Renewable energy from Institut National Polytechnique de Lorrain at Nancy France. Following this Stefanie worked for R+D at Veolia Environment in France on Wood gasification to generate electricity and power. In 2011 she joined Total working on gasification on Fischer Tropsch and Methanol joining the Plastics group in 2015 working on Methanol catalyzation to Olefins. She is working for Total Medical Business since 2018
