John G. Hughes was elected the second president of the National University of Ireland, Maynooth in 2004 for a ten-year term and is Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the National University of Ireland.[1] He resigned this post in September 2010 to take up the position of Vice-Chancellor at Bangor University, Wales.
Professor Hughes was born and raised in Belfast, educated at St. Mary's Christian Brothers' Grammar School and at Queens University Belfast where he obtained a BSc with First Class Honours in Mathematics and a PhD in Theoretical Physics[2]
Following appointments at Queens and at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, he became Professor of Information Systems Engineering at the University of Ulster in 1991. He held a range of senior academic positions at the University of Ulster and was actively involved in promoting research and technology transfer initiatives which attracted substantial funding to the University. He sits on the boards of a range of public and private sector organisations.
He has extensive international links in Europe, the US and Asia. He has initiated a large number of successful research collaborations with prestigious institutions including the Max-Planck Institutes, Carnegie-Mellon University, MIT and Tsinghua University in Beijing.