Chair of the NI Region Jonathan Hegan welcomed attendees to a meeting of the NI Region held in Catalyst Offices on the 2nd October 2025.
A very important part of Regional Academy meetings is the opportunity to socialise with colleagues before the meeting and over a light lunch after the meeting.
Jonathan Hegan, Michael Shaw, Seamus McKeague, John McCanny, Paddy Larkin, Tom Leahy, Danny McCaughan.
Jonathan Hegan(Chair) welcomed Tom Leahy (Special Advisor) and past President Seamus McKeague and also Gillian Gregg RAE, who briefed the meeting on the Enterprise Fellowships & ‘People and Place’ Initiative with the Royal Academy of Engineering. It is anticipated that the Engineering Economy People & Place Ireland (EEP) report and dashboard will have a launch towards the end of the year. Funding is being sought for Enterprise Fellowships open to both RAE and ROI applicants next year.
President Sean Finlay joined the meeting by VC as did Hon. Sec. Joe Harford and Gavin Campbell and Prof. David Jones QUB.
President Sean Finlay briefed the meeting on the importance of Infrastructure and work by the Academy to brief Government on the ROI National Development Plan. He also announced his plan to create an Academy Eastern Region where 50% of Fellows reside in the greater Dublin area.
Tom Leahy and Gillian Gregg RAE briefed the meeting on the planned Euro CASE conference 2026 in the Waterfront International Conference centre in Belfast.
The approved 2026 Euro CASE conference theme is: Engineering Resilience, securing Europe’s critical infrastructure in a changing world.
The event will be designed to lead the conversation on how engineering thinking can shape Europe’s resilience to growing risks facing critical infrastructure, considering key challenges, geopolitical tensions and systems interdependencies. We hope to bring a diverse group of up to 300 leaders from across Europe to Belfast for the event, including stakeholders from government, academia, industry and civil society.
This event is taking place in Northern Ireland where the memberships of RAEng and IAE
overlap.
A joint RAE/IAE invitation to Conference 2026 was delivered by Tom Leahy IAE and Shane McHugh RAE at the closing of the Vienna conference. Announcement of Euro CASE 2026 conference in Belfast . Please save the Conference date 19th November 2026 in your diary!
John McCanny FIAE briefed the meeting on progress on Parsons Medal Award 2025 – Event planned for Birr Castle on 16th October 2025.
Tom Leahy briefed the meeting on work of the standing committees (Programme is published on our website www.iae.ie)
Prof. Maire O’Neill briefed the meeting on a cross- border project she is currently involved in.
Cyber Unite is a €4m North-South project which will run for 4 years, starting 1st January 2026, to research Adaptive Resilient Security for Cross-Border Critical Infrastructure.
The project partners include the University of Limerick, University College Cork, Munster Technological University, Queen’s and Gas Networks Ireland.
Further details can be found at the following links:
https://www.ul.ie/news/ul-researchers-to-lead-eu4-million-cross-border-cybersecurity-project
https://www.iPad.ie/UL-4M-CyberUnite-Project
There was a very good round table discussion on Academy matters and President Sean Finlay will discuss these at the next meeting of the Academy Executive.
Jonathan Hegan (Chair) asked for suggestions for future site visits, reminded the meeting that nominations should be sent to him for Vice Chair for 2026. In addition, members should be considering nominations for new Fellows in 2026. Tom Leahy reminded the meeting of the importance of increasing our female membership to reach and exceed the target set in our 5-year business plan.
Save the dates
- Next meeting of NI Region will take place on Thursday 12th February 2026.
- Annual Sir Bernard Crossland lecture will be held in the Great Hall at Queen’s on Thursday 19th February 2026.