Short Bio

Professor Sir John O'Reilly is the Vice-Chancellor of Cranfield University since December 2006.

Professor O'Reilly graduated from Brunel University with first class honours in Electrical Engineering. He later obtained a PhD from the University of Essex. He was awarded a DSc by Brunel in 1991.

Professor O'Reilly began his career at RRE, Malvern. He then held posts successively as a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the University of Essex. In 1985 Professor O'Reilly took up the chair in electronic Engineering at the University College of North Wales, Bangor (now University of Wales, Bangor), where he was Head of the School of Electronic engineering and Computer Systems until 1993.

After a period as a Principal Research Fellow with BT, Professor O'Reilly joined University College London as Professor of Telecommunications, where he was also Head of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering until 2001.

From 2001, prior to joining Cranfield, Professor O'Reilly was Chief Executive of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), leading various strategic developments in research, teaching and knowledge transfer.

Professor O'Reilly's technical interests focus on Information and Communication Technologies, with an emphasis on communication networks and applications. He serves as a specialist advisor to UK Government and the European Commission, and currently chairs the UK's Network Interoperability Consultative Committee (NICC) for Ofcom and the telecommunications industry.

In 2004-05 Professor O'Reilly was the President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (now the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)). He was awarded the J J Thompson Medal for "distinguished contributions to electrical engineering". A fellow and former member of the Council of the Royal Academy of Engineering, he was also a former president of EUREL, the Confederation of European Professional Electrical Societies. Professor O'Reilly is widely published, with over 350 journal and conference papers, and is the author or editor of three books.

Short Bio

David Faulkner is a founder of Climate Associates Limited where he works since January 2010.

Previously, he was with "British Telecommunications plc" working in the in the field of access networks with specialisation in PON systems since 1983 when he gained his PhD in Electrical Engineering.

Between 2000-2008 he was Rapporteur for ITU-T/SG15/Q2 on 'Fibre Systems for Access Networks'. He now chairs the ITU-T Focus Group on ICTs and Climate Change. He co-chairs the conference on Networks and Optical Communications.

He is studying climate change issues with interest in ICTs and aviation and has adopted a more environmentally friendly lifestyle. He is keen to promote low energy networks and has adopted audio and web conferencing to minimise travel to meetings.