Martin Hynes became Chief Executive of the European Science Foundation in January 2012. Prior to this, he was Director of The Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) and in this role he implemented a number of innovative funding schemes with a special focus on early career researchers. He devised special incentives for engaging young researchers with enterprise across public and private sectors and won significant Marie-Curie co-funding for these programmes.
Hynes was formerly Senior Science Advisor with the Science Foundation Ireland and a Senior Policy Analyst with Forfás, the national policy and advisory board for enterprise, trade, science, technology and innovation. His experience lies in policy formulation and he has an excellent record of implementing policy decisions. He has been instrumental in the formulation of major national funding initiatives supporting research in the ICT and biotechnology sectors. He also contributed to the formulation of first National Framework of Research Needs and was a significant contributor to the Technology Foresight initiative that laid the ground work for what became Science Foundation Ireland.
With specialist training in Governance, Martin has served on a number of Boards including that of the Irish University Quality Board and the Digital Enterprise Research Institute as well as those of private companies.
An Engineering and MBA Graduate, he has considerable commercial experience having mentored private sector start-ups during a three year period. He also worked for several years in product line management with Westinghouse Electric.
