McCaughan Associates

Prof Daniel V McCaughan OBE, BSc, PhD, DSc, FREng, FIAE, FIEI, FRAeS, FIEE, CEng, SMIEEE, FInstP, CPhys, FInstD

Biography

Daniel McCaughan is a versatile industrial executive who has held senior management and Board level positions in the electronics, telecommunications and defence industries since the early 1970s. As well as managing McCaughan Associates, he is an associate and technical adviser to Kernel Capital Partners, a leading Irish venture capital fund, and sits on the main board of DHSSPS, the Northern Ireland Health Service.

He is widely experienced in most aspects of technology-based businesses, both through his long career at high executive level in large and small companies, and with government departments and universities. He has dealt with a wide variety of customers, and has led major technical projects from component to system level.These, in combination with Board roles and Government experience provides him with unique skills in evaluation of company business and technical product plans and projects, and partaking in Company development.

In 2000 Dr McCaughan was President and Chief Operating Officer of CDT Ltd, the world leader in light-emitting polymers.

From 1988 to 2000, he held senior and board positions in Nortel Networks, including that of Chief Scientist of Nortel Technology. While at Nortel he founded, and was the first Director of Nortel's NITEC laboratories.

From 1981 to 1988, he held senior and board positions in GEC Marconi, and was the Technical Director of several subsidiaries.

In the 1970s, he was a Senior Principal in the UK Ministry of Defence QinetiQ, (formerly RSRE, then DERA, before becomong QinetiQ), responsible for developing silicon technology.

From 1968 to 1974, he was a member of technical staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories (now Lucent Technologies), developing novel and exploratory technologies, especially silicon.

Dr McCaughan has an unusual academic record for a senior industrialist. Since the 1980s he has been a Professorial Fellow of Queen's University, Belfast, and is a Visiting Professor in UMIST. He holds two doctoral degrees: a PhD in physics and a DSc in engineering. He was awarded the OBE (Order of the British Empire) for his contributions to technology, and has been elected to Fellowships of the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Irish Academy of Engineering. He is a Chartered Engineer and a Chartered Physicist, and has also been elected to Fellowships in the Institute of Physics, the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the Institution of Engineers of Ireland, and the Royal Aeronautical Society, and is a senior member of the IEEE. .

Dr McCaughan has been awarded over 20 patents and has published over 100 book chapters and papers in both technical and managerial subjects.