HIRANI are delighted to announce that for the first time, two people from NI have been accepted onto the Future Leaders in Innovation, Enterprise, and Research (FLIER) programme.

Professor Joan Condell and Dr Julie-Anne Little both work at Ulster University and in congratulating them HIRANI CEO, Joann Rhodes said, “This immersive leadership programme is a fantastic opportunity for Joan and Julie-Anne, who want to bring about change in their sphere of work and have ideas about how to work with others to solve problems in health. It also shows the strength of talent we have in NI, and we hope Joan and Julie-Anne are the first of many of our people from the health and life sciences sector to be accepted onto the FLIER programme.”

Julie-Anne is a senior lecturer in optometry and leads the Centre for Optometry and Vision Science. 
She is Associate Research Director for Biomedical Sciences, comprising of 88 researchers spanning nutrition, diabetes, genomic and personalised medicine, pharmaceutical and vision science. 

Her research has a strong clinical focus, concerning the investigation of structural and functional aspects of vision, with the aim of improving vision, education outcomes and quality of life for individuals across the world. Publications in high-impact journals and international presentations disseminate this work, and she was returned in the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021, with Biomedical Sciences ranked 5th in the UK for biomedical research, with a 100% world-leading research environment.

Professor Joan Condell works within the School of Computing, Engineering and Intelligent Systems focusing on data analytics, AI and (wearable/ambient) IoT sensors.

Awarded a Distinguished Teaching and Learning Fellowship in 2011, she regularly has external examiner positions in UK and Ireland in teaching and research and is also a member of the Royal Irish Academy Engineering committee, regularly sitting on funding review panels for the UK Research Councils, the Irish Research Council, Innovate UK and UK Research and Innovation and is a member of the Royal Irish Academy’s STEM committee. 

She manages PhD researchers and Research Associates/Fellows across 24 national, EU and commercial projects; and has published 250+ papers, actively securing grants from external sources over £34M. 

Joan has won Innovation and Enterprise awards for commercialisation work, creativity, and bio-entrepreneurship; also, having been involved in innovation voucher and Fusion projects.

The programme equips these emerging leaders with skills to help solve the biggest health challenges and enables them to seize opportunities afforded by new discoveries in science, technology, and medicine.