Mount Temple Comprehensive School - Inter/Leaving Cert. Trinity College Dublin - B.A. (mod), Mathematics Trinity College Dublin - M.Sc. Computer Science Newpark Music Centre - Professional Musician Training Course (1 year) Guildhall School of Music London - Diploma in Jazz Performance
What subjects did you take in school and how have these influenced your career path?
For my Leaving Cert. I took Maths - higher, Applied Maths - higher, Physics - higher, Chemistry - higher, Music - higher, English - higher, German - higher, Irish - ordinary As you can see my abilities and interests were more in the maths+science sphere than anything else.
I was very lucky that at the time Mt. Temple had very capable maths+science teachers, which certainly made things easier for me. To be honest, in school I didn't really think about 3rd level or careers or anything until I was in 6th year (by which stage I'd already picked my subjects). I just picked the subjects I enjoyed and felt I had a natural knack for.
For the career I'm in now I don't think I could have picked better school subjects. It might have helped me to know a bit more about business-related subjects, but I had no interest in accountancy or commerce at the time.
I am considering taking an evening course in the legal+financial aspects to running a business to make up for this. However, as a teenager I think I was better off studying subjects that I had a genuine interest in, otherwise I would have found it very hard to motivate myself to study.
What aspects of your education have proven most important for your job?
I haven't taken any courses that are 'directly' relevant to my current job. However, as part of my maths degree I took courses in numerical analysis (i.e. computer programming as a tool for solving mathematical problems), operating systems design, computer graphics and machine vision. All these courses involved lots of practical programming assignments which gave me some real-world software engineering experience.
Have you undertaken, or do you plan to undertake any further training as part of your job?
I did an. M.Sc. in machine vision while I had my first job with MVT. At the moment I'm not planning on doing any more formal training, but I think it's likely I will take a business-related course (perhaps an MBA) at some point in the future. I might wait until my kids are in school first!
