Meet the people at the Scotland 5G Centre
We’re a small team at the Scotland 5G Centre but our connections reach across the industry, public sector and research community. From our base in the Glasgow City Innovation District, we work with people the length and breadth of Scotland, and beyond. We also work closely with our Governing Board.
Our Staff

Paul Coffey
CEO
Paul takes a vision and make it reality through strategic development. He is passionate about mobile telecommunications and delivering socio-economic benefit to a broad range of stakeholders enabling digital connectivity.
Previously, as founder of his consultancy practice, Paul advised both private and public-sector organisations on major strategic initiatives, taking advantage of the latest wireless capabilities to develop coherent plans to deliver organisational goals and increased business value.
Paul began his career on the first graduate training scheme run by Orange, now EE, and rose through the company to become head of strategic development. There, he played a key role in establishing the UK’s first deployments of 4G services in rural communities.

Dr Malachy Devlin
Interim Operations Director
Malachy is currently Interim Operations Director at the Scotland 5G Centre and latterly Chief Operating Officer at AAC Clyde Space, a satellite spacecraft specialist.
Prior to this Malachy has been a founder in a number of high-growth technology companies gaining over 25 years’ high-level technical and management experience in the aerospace and defence, high-performance reconfigurable computing, software defined radio communications and agri-tech IoT markets.
Malachy obtained a BEng in Electronics, before completing his PhD in Signal Processing at Strathclyde University and has also achieved a MSc in Corporate Leadership at Edinburgh Napier University. Malachy is a Chartered Engineer and a fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) as well as a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Michael Burns
Business Development Manager
Michael is seconded to the Centre from the Research and Innovation Services team at the University of Glasgow and leads on project and partnership development. He has a background in education, training and economic development across the Scottish and UK public, private and not-for-profit sectors. Most recently he has developed the University’s smart campus programme as an institutional-level initiative exploring innovations in sustainable urban infrastructure. He is a graduate of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities.

Alison Orr
Marketing and Communications Manager
Alison has over sixteen years’ experience in marketing and communications, in both private and public sector roles. Prior to starting at The Scotland 5G Centre, Alison worked with a brand and design agency in Edinburgh for two years as Head of Marketing. Alison also worked for Strathclyde University for six years managing the marketing and communications for the Technology and Innovation Centre, before joining the main Communications team and managing marketing the marketing team.
Alison has also managed marketing and communications teams for VisitScotland and RBS, she has a Marketing degree from the University of Stirling.

Brad McGuire
Programme Manager
Brad leads on delivery – this includes the wave 1 projects being delivered by our founding partners as well as the creation of the Scotland 5G Connect Hubs .
Brad joins us after an extended spell with Glasgow City Council where he delivered their transformational digital connectivity infrastructure project.
An experienced digital infrastructure & telecoms, business and IT change consultant – Brad has many years working at a strategic and delivery level across the private and public sector.
Meet our Governing Board
Helping steer the Scotland 5G Centre’s direction and focus is our experienced and expert Governing Board, which provides leadership, strategic direction and oversight for the Scotland 5G Centre.
The Board comprises our Chair, CEO and individuals appointed by each of our founding partners.
Governing Board

Julie Snell
Chair
Julie Snell has over 30 years’ experience as a business leader having successfully established new technology markets and leading technology innovation in telecoms / digital IT.
Julie was part of the leadership team that developed BT’s first public Wifi project, BT Openzone. She spent five years on the board of the global telco group Wireless Broadband Alliance, two years as Chair. In 2017, Julie was appointed as director and CEO of Bristol’s smart city infrastructure and computer network company Bristol is Open.
She is also Vice President of the Urban Technology Alliance, non-executive director at Col8, director of a building maintenance company and a mentor for Babbasa, to help young people realise their employment or enterprise ambitions.

Paul Coffey
CEO
Paul takes a vision and makes it reality through strategic development. He is passionate about mobile telecommunications and delivering socio-economic benefit to a broad range of stakeholders enabling digital connectivity.
Previously, as founder of his consultancy practice, Paul advised both private and public-sector organisations on major strategic initiatives, taking advantage of the latest wireless capabilities to develop coherent plans to deliver organisational goals and increased business value.
Paul began his career on the first graduate training scheme run by Orange, now EE, and rose through the company to become head of strategic development. There, he played a key role in establishing the UK’s first deployments of 4G services in rural communities.

Sarah Eynon
Scottish Futures Trust
Sarah is an Associate Director in the Digital Infrastructure team at Scottish Futures Trust. She supports the Scottish Government in the delivery of its 5G Strategy. Sarah led the founding partners in the establishment of the Scotland 5G Centre, and has an acute awareness of the opportunities and challenges of the Scotland 5G Centre and what benefits it can bring to the Scottish landscape.
With a background in commercial law and as a company secretariat, she has coupled this private sector experience with a high level of understanding of the public sector and academia, to be able to consider matters from all stakeholder perspectives. In addition to her Board role, Sarah also leads the Infralink project and is a member of the UK5G SME and LEP working group.

Derek Graham
Scottish Futures Trust
Derek is a Chartered Manager and electrical engineer with over 20 years’ telecoms industry experience gained by developing and leading successful multidisciplinary infrastructure and service delivery teams.
His past six years have been spent working with the Scottish Government’s Digital Directorate to explore opportunities to showcase world-class technology by demonstrating its practical uses for Scottish society by testing the application of innovative solutions that encourage participation, future investment and wider deployment.
The focus of this ongoing work is to leverage the knowledge, contacts and experience gained from partnerships established between private, public and academic sectors to support the delivery of the Scottish Government’s 5G strategy and inform future policy development.

Helen Harkness
University of Glasgow
Helen Harkness is the Head of Research for the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Glasgow. She has an MBA and a BSc Hons in Physics and brings over 25 years of management experience working in manufacturing, healthcare and academia.
Throughout her career, Helen has worked with UK and International customers, and she spent three years in Hungary as part of a start-up team at a greenfield manufacturing facility. She is passionate about the opportunity to support the Scotland 5G Centre and the businesses, innovators and pioneers of Scotland who will deliver creative case studies to showcase 5G capabilities.

Dr Olga Kozlova
University of Strathclyde
Olga is Director of Innovation and Industry Engagement at the University of Strathclyde, where she leads entrepreneurship and investment functions, industrial engagement and development of the Technology and Innovation Centre Zone within the Glasgow City Innovation District.
Olga has a strong track record of delivering successful translation of innovative research into economic growth and societal impact. She founded a technology company based on her PhD research and worked in a variety of roles supporting industry-university collaborations. In her previous role she founded Converge Challenge and grew it to become the largest Scotland-wide programme for converting university knowhow and intellectual property into company creation.
She is a Trustee of Young Enterprise Scotland and a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh ‘s Enterprise and Economy Committee.

Professor Chris Pearce
University of Glasgow
Chris is Professor of Computational Mechanics in the James Watt School of Engineering at the University of Glasgow. He holds the Royal Academy of Engineering / EDF Energy Research Chair and is co-Director of the Glasgow Computational Engineering Centre. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a Chartered Engineer. He is currently Vice Principal (Research) at the University of Glasgow, and a Director of the Scottish Research Partnership for Engineering.
His research has delivered advances in the computational analysis of materials and structures, and has led him to work closely with the civil nuclear industry, providing computational modelling tools and advice for assessing structural integrity.

Professor Bob Stewart
University of Strathclyde
Bob Stewart is a Professor at Strathclyde University where he leads a 5G Software-Defined-Radio team, and where he is also the lead on the University 5G Industry Cluster within the Glasgow City Innovation District.
He has more than 30 years of experience in wireless and mobile, from 1G to today’s 5G architectures. He was previously a Visiting Professor at UCLA Extension School for 20 years, and a founder and the Director of the tech company Steepest Ascent Ltd, prior to acquisition by MathWorks in 2013.
Most recently Bob led the University’s 5GRuralFirst project activity, and now chairs and manages the 5G New Thinking project co-funded by DCMS with lead partner Cisco.
Connect with the team
Engaging with the Scotland 5G Centre and the 5G ecosystem in Scotland can help organisations of all sizes to access 5G opportunities and benefits.
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